Читать книгу The Phantom Detective: 5 Murder Mysteries in One Volume - Robert Wallace - Страница 7

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The editorial offices of the Clarion were on the eleventh floor and Frank Havens had a bulletproof glass cubicle there, raised above the floor level in a far corner.

But the publisher's real office was a triplex suite on the eighty-fifth and top floors of the towering press building, reached only by a private express elevator entered through a sliding panel in that non-shatterable glass cubicle overlooking the editorial rooms.

Turmoil and cyclonic confusion seemed to have hit the enormous editorial office when Jim Doran stepped off the public elevator and was stopped by the wise-eyed blond receptionist at the railing gate. Telephones jangled, typewriters and teletypes clattered, adding to the bedlam of excitedly shouted orders and rushing copy boys.

But the suspense-ridden, grinding overtones of the Clarion's frenzied editorial department, the Phantom realized grimly, was only a larger duplicate, of the frantic commotion occurring in every metropolitan press editorial room in the country at this moment. The universal, terse newspaper cry was:

Hold that Rock Canyon wire open!

"Jim Doran, to see Mr. Frank Havens," Van told the girl curtly. Jim Doran was one of the score of names that Dick Van Loan and the publisher had agreed upon as Phantom aliases. "Mr. Havens is expecting me," he added as the girl at the desk hesitated.

She gave him a sharp, respectfully curious glance as she finished putting through the call to Havens' quarters, and a moment later Jim Doran was slouching through the familiar maze of editorial desks, guided by an alert copy boy.

Toby, the publisher's trusted elevator guard, rode him up in the private express car from the glass cubicle, watching him warily but without recognition. Toby had known Richard Curtis Van Loan for some years.

Van's veiled grey eyes hid his satisfaction, as the keen scrutiny of the operator failed to catch the slightest flaw in the quick character make-up of nondescript Jimmy Doran. Toby's shrewd, bold eyes were always an infallible first test.

At the eighty-fifth floor, the swarthy operator slid back the elevator door. Jim Doran stepped out of the car, stood a moment in the ornately furnished reception foyer staring belligerently at the uniformed policeman eyeing him suspiciously. Behind him, the car door slid shut silently as Toby took the elevator down again.

"I'm here to see Mr. Havens," Van announced in a deep, gruff voice that was not at all the smooth baritone of Richard Curtis Van Loan. "Didn't expect to find you cops up here."

Before the policeman could question him, Judkins' tall, bald-headed figure appeared on a balcony at one end of the room. The publisher's confidential secretary called down to the cop:

"If that's Mr. Doran, send him right up, officer."

Van nodded to the cop, brushed past him and mounted the staircase to the balcony.

Judkins' sallow glance was nervous but his worried brown eyes were without recognition as he led Jim Doran through a doorway into a large room that was more lounge than office.

"Mr. James Doran," he announced, and withdrew, closing the door.

Frank Havens' penetrating gaze darted up sharply as Dick Van Loan crossed to the wide, polished walnut desk behind which the publisher sat drumming his fingers anxiously. Six other men, one in the uniform of a police captain, looked up quickly from the armchair about which they were grouped.

But the figure slumped in that chair did not move.

As Van's swift glance took in the unusual tableau, his right hand swung across the desk toward Havens in a hearty handshake that hid the small platinum-and-diamond badge palmed in his long fingers. The significant emblem of a mask outlined by the brilliant gems was the only design on the smooth platinum surface of that cryptic shield. But it was enough.

Frank Havens' worried eyes glinted with recognition as Van's swift fingers gave him, but not the others, a flashing look at that Phantom badge. The emblem disappeared again in Jim Doran's hand.

"Gentlemen, Mr. James Doran!" Havens said and stood up from behind his desk. The name had weight now as he spoke it. Jim Doran was no longer a password name, but had become a reality. "Mr. Doran will represent me in this investigation." He nodded his grey head toward the silent figure in the armchair.

Van stepped over to the armchair, his eyes on the domelike head of the middle-aged man slumped there. A small fleck of blood stained the fellow's white lips as the Phantom raised the lolling head and studied the fixed expression of sheer surprise stamped on the dead man's face.

Rigor mortis had not yet set in, and there were no visible marks of violence on the neatly dressed body.

"This wants some preliminary explaining," Jim Doran grumbled. "I didn't think anybody'd be interested in just one corpse, after what happened at Rock Creek Canyon."

"We know about that," the officer in the captain's uniform said. "This happens to be New York City, not Arizona."

Van glanced up, curiously aware that Havens, in his repressed excitement, had not named him as the Phantom, although two of the men in street clothes were obviously homicide detectives.

The other three men in the room were big, well dressed fellows. Frank Havens made the brief introductions.

One of the strangers was Warden Jack Bluebold of Alleghany Penitentiary at Mountainview, Pennsylvania. The next man was Dr. Maurice Jessup, resident surgeon at the Alleghany prison. The third was ex-Congressman Harry Arnold, a Pennsylvania politician. The three of them stayed close together in a compact, capable group.

Havens eyed the lifeless figure in the armchair, frowned and said:

"Lester Gimble is—was—one of the leading metallurgists in this country. Because I wanted an article on the subject, I induced him to interview Dr. Waldo Junes, the famous scientist who is conducting some unusual experiments in metals at the General Electric laboratory at Niagara Falls. Gimble was on his way back here—"

Havens broke off, nodded to the plainclothes men.

"Simmons and me," the taller of the two dicks said, jerking his head at his partner, "were standing in Grand Central Station near the taxicab entrance about two-thirty this afternoon, when this fellow Gimble shows with a suitcase and a briefcase, coming from the lower level train platforms.

"He starts to get into a cab, when two guys take a shot at him from behind. He dropped his bags and swung round. One of the gunmen grabs up his suitcase and the other one got the briefcase. Simmons and me opened up on 'em then and there was a hell of a lot of racket and commotion.

"I killed the bird with the suitcase before he got ten steps, but the one with the briefcase got into the crowd where Simmons didn't dare shoot. So far as we heard yet, the second guy got away. A lot of cops were after him by that time, so Simmons and me took care of this Gimble who'd been shot at.

"He claimed he wasn't either hit or hurt, and had to get over here to see Mr. Havens in a hurry—" The tall detective shrugged and glanced deprecatingly at Captain Walters.

"Well, we knew who Mr. Havens was, so we took Gimble and his suitcase and brought him over here."

Frank Havens nodded. "The right thing to do, under the circumstances." His blue, penetrating eyes swung to the Phantom. "Mr. Gimble came in here with these two officers and sat down in the chair he's in now, he hadn't said anything on the short ride over, and he was looking rather white. Before he had a chance to talk, he slumped over and died.

"I had the Clarion's staff physician rush right up here from downstairs, but nothing could be done. We found that Gimble had been shot in the spine."

"That's why we didn't see any blood," Detective Simmons stated. "Them kind of wounds don't hardly bleed at all, and the victim don't feel he's been shot because he's numbed. He don't die until the fluid in the spine drains out like an internal hemorrhage. But how was we to know—"

"The Clarion physician exonerated both of you," Havens declared. "I've heard of similar cases, particularly during the war. Gimble would have died anyway. But what are we going to do now?"

He turned to Van. "I phoned for Captain Walters and asked him to keep this free of the regular police routine for one hour. I'm glad you got here so quickly, Mr. Doran."

"If you haven't found anything of importance in Gimble's suitcase, or on his person, and if that scientist, Dr. Junes up in Niagara Falls, can't give you a lead of some sort," Van growled, "you don't need any help until the police catch the gunman who got away with Gimble's briefcase." He shot a look at Captain Walters. "That is, unless the man this detective killed can be identified."

"We're working on that angle," Walters snapped, and said pointedly to Havens, "If it's okay now, let's have the Homicide Squad and the Medical Examiner in on this."

Havens eyed Van questioningly, and when Jim Doran nodded, the precinct captain picked up the phone, asked for Headquarters.

"There was absolutely nothing in Gimble's pockets, nor in his suitcase, that points to a clue," Havens said emphatically. "We went through everything while we were waiting for you. And I've put a call through to the General Electric Experimental Laboratory, but Dr. Junes refuses to be disturbed and won't answer the phone."

He motioned Van to follow him across the large room to a teletype machine in the corner. The tape, twisting snakelike over the rim of the overflowing receptacle, was still uncoiling the grim account of the life and property toll at Rock Canyon Dam.

Havens fingered the ticker-tape with a trembling hand, looked searchingly at the Phantom. "I didn't tell them"—he nodded toward the three police officers, and lowered his voice—"who you were, because I thought you'd want to work on that Arizona disaster, Van."

Jim Doran's slatey eyes were inscrutable. "I saw the Clarion tower lights signaling just before the N.B.C. network started to put the President on the air. Yes, Frank," he agreed in a grave, low-pitched tone, "I'd like to go after the brain that is directing these catastrophes. I heard his voice—if that was his voice, making that threat over the radio. Somebody will have to stop him!"

The Phantom looked keenly at the famous publisher. Havens was staring out through the wide windows overlooking Manhattan and the New Jersey hills green against the background of dark, scudding rain clouds. The older man's blue, moody eyes seemed to be envisaging the calamity that threatened those peaceful, rolling lands and the vast country beyond, presaged in the thin, endless record of the tape sliding implacably through his fingers.

"Somebody must stop him!" Havens repeated with a note of despair in the almost-whispered words.

Van asked shrewdly, "What did you send Gimble to Niagara for, Frank? It wasn't just a news article you wanted!"

"You're right," Havens confessed. "Dr. Junes is trying to unite two metals, aluminum and calbite, heretofore impossible of fusion because high enough temperatures couldn't be reached. It's an experiment a lot of steel and munitions manufacturers would like to know about.

"If those two metals can be fused, the result will be the most impenetrable armorplate in the world, a new metal ten thousand times harder and stronger than the toughest of modern steels!"

"At least tough enough to get Lester Gimble murdered," Van commented, and glanced at the three big men from Pennsylvania. "What are those fellows here for?"

"Ex-Congressman Arnold came here with the other two prison officials to ask me to stop giving publicity in my newspapers to the graft and corruption that's been reported at Alleghany Penitentiary. They were here when Gimble came in. Harry Arnold is chairman of the Pennsylvania Board of Parole and Pardons. He and Bluebold and Jessup claim the publicity I've been giving their prison has interfered with their attempts to ferret out and clean up the prison rottenness. I'm convinced they're right, too."

Van nodded, and said to Havens as the police captain called to them, "Keep the Phantom out of this, Frank, until I tell you otherwise."

Captain Walters had finished phoning, with flustering results.

"A sour mess this is turning out to be!" he exclaimed. "Doran, you wanted to get a line on that bird Jackson, the detective, killed."

Van's voice slipped into character again, became a harsh, demanding growl.

"If it's a lead, hand it out," he grumbled.

"It's a lead that's going to raise hell over in Pennsylvania," Walters declared. "That gunman Jackson shot is Snakey Willow, a lifer at Alleghany Penitentiary!"

The three brawny prison officials eyeing Captain Walters glanced sharply over to Frank Havens and Jim Doran.

"Snakey Willow—" Warden Bluebold's voice was a dry rasp. "He was in the prison three days ago, when we left. By—"

"Yeah," Walters said caustically. "He ain't there now! And I didn't see any police teleflash about his escape yet, neither. But that's not all. The rogues gallery picture of him we had at Headquarters don't fit his face. He had a fresh operation on his mug! If he'd been able to erase his fingerprints, we'd never have found out who he was!"

Dr. Maurice Jessup, the prison's resident surgeon, frowned, and glanced sharply at Bluebold. "I don't think the report you received is correct. Not in intent, anyway, sir. I remember Willow—I should, because he had an accident in the prison foundry and I operated to save his life. His face was very badly burned, so I did my best to patch it up. If that's what you refer to, Captain."

"Well," Walters said grudgingly, "that's different!"

Harry Arnold, the ex-congressman from Pennsylvania, broke in with, "It's a mistake that Willow was able to escape at all! Mr. Havens, you can see the state things are in at Alleghany Prison. If there's any more adverse publicity, we're apt to have a prison riot or an organized jailbreak. If you'll give us some help, by stopping advertising the conditions, I'll guarantee the prison is cleaned up!"

"You're right, Mr. Arnold," Havens said determinedly. "I'll do my best to keep this escape quiet. But see that the prison is reorganized at once, or I'll have to expose the whole situation, and you're apt to have the Federal Prison authorities step in!"

Jim Doran's slatey eyes had become the color of muddy marble. He nodded abruptly to the men in the office. "The police can handle this. I'll get the details later from them," he announced curtly, and strode out of the room.

But only Frank Havens caught and appreciated the determined, eager gleam that had crept into Jim Doran's sardonic gaze.

Several police officials, two internes and a man from the medical examiner's office were waiting in the bulletproof glass cubicle down on the eleventh floor when Van got out of the elevator. The editorial room was still a bedlam of cyclonic confusion.

Out on Eighth Avenue a persistent rain was wetting the shouted Clarion extras:

TITANIC EXPLOSIONS WRECK

HUGE FEDERAL PROJECT

Weird Radio Voice Threatens Further Disasters