Van had left his own small, powerful coupé parked near the hotel. He paid his check, rose, and sauntered out just before Blackie Guido and Dolly DeLong finished their meal. He got in his coupé and waited, slouched in the shadows, until Guido and the girl came out. He saw Guido put Dolly DeLong in one taxi, then take another himself and drive away in the opposite direction.
Van didn’t make the mistake of following too soon. He was an old hand and an expert at the difficult game of shadowing. He knew every maneuver, every trick. He had spotted the number of the taxi’s license and the cab’s color and shape. And his eyes were so far-sighted, so well trained in the observation of small details, that at times his range of vision seemed uncanny.
He started his own coupé, swung it around after Guido’s cab was three full blocks away. He watched the traffic lights with hawklike attention. In them lay the greatest threat of defeat while shadowing a man by auto. There was the danger always that the car ahead might speed across a light that was just going red.
Van might cross it, but that would arouse his quarry’s suspicions. It might also bring on the risk of a delaying argument with a traffic cop. So Van slowed when the lights first went green, sped up when they were about to change, timing his speed so perfectly that he was able to keep in the same block when cross traffic halted the taxi.
He was close enough, five minutes later, to see Blackie Guido get out, pay his fare, and swing along the street. Fear clutched at Van’s heart for a moment. He thought that Guido might have suspected that he was being followed. Van drove on, staring straight ahead. But, in the windshield mirror, he saw Guido climb into another taxi. Guido’s movements seemed perfunctory, almost casual, Van sensed instantly then that this was just a routine. Guido wasn’t suspicious yet. He had merely schooled himself to take precautions.
The chase went on while Van’s excitement grew. Much depended on his work tonight. The whole baffling case seemed to hang by a slender thread. If Guido became suspicious, got onto the fact that he was being followed, Van might never have another chance. He had never exerted himself so in his sleuthing as he did tonight.
Once, when Guido changed taxis for the fourth time, Van almost missed out. For the new cab that Guido took shot off down a side street at an abrupt angle. Van pulled his coupé around in a screaming turn that almost wrecked it. A police whistle shrilled at him. He swung down a side street that paralleled the one Guido’s cab had taken, cut through another short block, and once again saw Guido’s taxi. Sweat dampened Van’s forehead now. The strain of the chase, the knowledge of what depended on it, created a suspense as great as any he’d felt so far.
Ten blocks more and Guido’s cab approached a quiet, dark residential section of the city. Crime seemed far away from these dignified old brick and brownstone houses, these straight fences and small shadowed lawns. But once again Guido got out. And this time there was no other cab in sight, nor did there seem a likelihood of any approaching.
Van had taken a chance as the streets grew darker and more deserted. He had switched off his coupé’s headlights. Now he was glad of it, For he knew that Guido, three blocks ahead, would hardly see him. He drew up to the curb, stopped slowly, waited.
THE red tail-light of Guido’s cab moved off. Van could make out the criminal’s tall figure standing by the curb. Guido started walking up the block away from Van’s coupé, and Van climbed out and followed. It was easier now. On foot there were dozens of ways of avoiding and throwing off a quarry’s suspicion.
Van kept to the darkest side of the walk, seemed to steal along like a prowling shadow. But he got steadily closer to the man ahead. He saw Guido stop at last before the high wall of what must once have been a luxurious mansion. A millionaire’s home, perhaps, back in the fading glory of the Victorian era.
Van dropped, flattened himself on the steps of a house, as Guido turned and looked up and down the street. Satisfied that all was safe, Guido stepped in close to the street wall. A moment later his tall figure disappeared. Faintly Van heard the sound of a hinge of a big rusty gate.
His pulses hammered. He moved to the spot where he had last seen Guido, his steps more catlike than ever. Locks were no barrier to the Phantom. Early in his career he had known that he must make a close study of them. And when locks proved difficult he could fail back on the expert use of a jimmy.
But he feared something else now. A criminal gang such as the one whose activities he was tracing would be likely to protect their hideout with some sort of an alarm system. So Van did not use his pass-keys on the gate Guido had gone through. And he was breathlessly cautious as he reached up to the top of the high brick wall.
His fingers probed stealthily. He felt porcelain insulators directly behind the wall’s coping. His body stiffened. There must be a wire strung along them. Any contact with it would probably ring a bell.
VAN used his body like an acrobat’s, brought into play those powerful muscles that he had trained and sharpened with the series of exercises a Japanese Samurai had taught him. With his fingertips barely touching the top bricks, he raised himself inch by inch on his arms, higher and higher, till his head and shoulders were above the top of the wall.
Then, with arms stiff, his feet came up. He balanced there for a moment, seeming to defy gravitation, not touching that dangerous signal wire. His body appeared to ooze silently over it. In another moment he was sliding down the opposite face of the wall.
He crouched in utter darkness for many seconds. Dimly, against the cloud reflection of the city beyond, he could see the silhouette of the big mansion. But there were no lights in it, no hint as to where Blackie Guido had gone.
Not till he was certain that there was no guard prowling around the grounds did Van move forward. He had the instinct of the hunter who feels that he is getting close to his game. A false step now and they might break cover. He remembered how the gang had left and set fire to the garage. That must not happen again, or he might never be able to solve this sinister riddle and bring the Chief to justice.
For almost fifteen minutes Van skirted the outside of the house. He dared not turn on his flash. There might be eyes watching. Like a blind man he touched the walls he came to, oriented himself with corners, studied the location of steps. He went around three times, before his eyes, grown almost as sharp as a cat’s in the darkness, made out one tiny sliver of light.
It came from a minute chink in a shuttered and curtained basement window. It could not have been seen five feet away. But Van was closer than that, three feet, and he was watching for just some such thing. It told him what he wanted to know. The strange activity behind the closed doors and windows of this mansion was concentrated down stairs. He would not have to risk entering above and moving across sagging, squeaking floors that would betray his presence.
He left the chink where the light showed, stole along the side of the big house till he came to what he felt sure was a furnace room door. For his hands, reaching down to the ground in the darkness, reading signs, came in contact with bits of broken clinkers and angular pieces of coal, And now, for a brief instant, he switched on his slender, fountain pen flash; and he was relieved to see that the door had had an old-fashioned lock and that there were no footprints in the soil around it.
The lock gave him trouble, however, not because jt was elaborate, but because it was rusty. It wouldn’t yield till Van spilled benzine from his cigarette lighter into the oxidized mechanism. He did the same to the hinges, got the door open at last, and stepped into a black, icy room. The cement floor told him he had been correct in his surmise. And in a moment, hands before him, he came in contact with a boiler.