Then once again, across many feet of Stygian darkness, he saw a faint glimmer of light. It was low down this time. It seemed to come from under the crack of a door. Van’s heart sounded a muffled drum-beat of excitement as he moved ahead stealthily in the gloom.
And then he could hear men’s voices! Faint at first, a mere quavering rumble. Louder as he came close to the door. They were in the room beyond, that was certain. But the door seemed thick; and when Van, after several seconds, risked using his flash for an instant again, he saw that it was made of metal. Not only that – whatever lock there was seemed to be on the inside.
But his flash, sweeping across the wall of the room he was in, revealed to Van that age and dampness had taken effect. He glimpsed a spot where plaster had spilled from the intervening partition where the bricks looked loose. He stole to it, worked tensely for a full minute and got one brick out. Instantly light made him squint as it came across six inches of air space from a wide crack in whatever substance formed the partition’s opposite wall.
He couldn’t see the whole room beyond, but putting his eye close, he could see enough to puzzle him and hold his rapt attention. For lights gleamed on water. There was a dank, stagnant swimming pool directly in front of the tiled face of the partition where Dick Van Loan stood.
Gathered at one edge of it was a group of men, many of whom he had seen before. Bowers was there, with his evil, black-browed face. The same pallid hopheads who had accompanied Van from Blackwell’s. The man they called “Doc,” with his glittering glasses and his thinning hair that made his high forehead taper up in devil’s horns. And Blackie Guido, looking out of place with his fine clothes in this motley gathering, except that his face was stamped with criminality like the faces of the rest.
Others moved into Van’s line of vision as he watched, gunmen and human gorillas with the build of riverfront thugs. A man with a depraved face and long spiderlike arms who looked as if he might have been the monster who had strangled Mrs. Tyler.
Van watched lynx-eyed, and sensed that something was about to happen. He had arrived just in time apparently. For Blackie Guido looked at his watch, then said to Bowers in a voice that Van could hear distinctly:
“Get your men out of here and keep ‘em out. Go into the billiard room. I’ll come in when I’m through. I gotta talk to the Chief. And remember – I ain’t saying he won’t raise hell at what happened in the garage.”
BOWERS’S ugly face looked scared suddenly. “I don’t get it, Blackie. How can you talk to the Chief here? The door to the furnace room’s bolted shut. All the windows are nailed. You say you’re gonna lock yourself in. Where does the Chief come from? Is he really comin’ himself, or does he just call you?”
“Beat it!” said Blackie. “Scram! And you better start worryin’ about what’s gonna happen to you.”
Bowers shuffled off toward the door into the next chamber, beckoning the others with him. Van saw them dart half curious, half fearful glances at Blackie Guido, as though he had some sort of supernatural powers. And Guido seemed to take a grim satisfaction in the knowledge that he was being mystifying. He looked at his watch again.
“One forty-five,” he snapped. “The Chief is due in five minutes; scram, all of you.”
He strode after them, locked the door into the billiard room, then Van saw him go to the wall. He reached down behind a piece of loose molding, did something that Van couldn’t quite fathom. After this he came and sat down in a chair directly in front of the pool. Van felt his own scalp grow tight when he saw that Guido was staring fixedly down at the black, oily water. What did it mean?
In five minutes Van got his answer. The pool’s surface grew strangely agitated. Sluggish bubbles came up as though some hellish devil’s brew were being concocted. And then water broke around the black, monste-like dome of a man’s helmeted head. Van saw outlines of a diving suit below the helmet. He knew in that instant of frozen wonder that he was looking at the Chief!
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHIEF’S ORDERS
HERE was the unknown being whose crafty brain had already arranged three murders and attempted two others! Here was the killer who prefaced death with music, whose wax manikins with their tinkling tunes led men and women to their graves in a Danse Macabre.
Van watched, and felt at that moment that he was peering into a nightmare world of fantastic horror. For there was something utterly devilish about that round, black, up-thrust head. There was weirdness in the way the man was poised there just above the water, and in the whole manner of his appearance so late at night in the musty, ruined seclusion of this ancient house.
Blackie Guido seemed to feel the spell of the strange presence, too. His arrogance had left him, dropped off like a discarded cloak. He had grown visibly paler. His hands were clenched nervously around the arms of his chair.
The helmeted head turned toward him. The single round glass in front goggled at him like the inhuman eye of some giant crustacean. A voice, as sepulchral as though it came from a tomb and blurred by a buzzing diaphragm in the helmet’s top, sounded.
“Your report, Blackie!”
The Phantom, listening, trained to recognize and remember people’s voices, was at a loss now. Somewhere it seemed to him he had heard inflections like those of this goggled monster. But the distortion of that buzzing diaphragm was cleverly calculated to throw anyone off the trail.
Blackie Guido was trembling. “Svendal got the woman all right. Your plan with her worked out smooth as butter. She fell for the bait. Svendal roped her and pulled her out of the window right under the cops’ noses. Svendal’s the best guy for a strangle job there is in the country. He’d choke his own mother for an extra ten bucks. If only all the other boys were as good – I guess you know we’ve had some tough breaks, Chief?”
“Yes!” There was some contempt, reproval, menace in that single word.
“They did their best, Chief – honest! The only guy I really blame is Bowers. He had the Phantom trapped and let him go. I warned him to look out, too. He shoulda been more careful.”
“Yes!” said the helmeted man again. “And how about O’Banion and the other hopheads? They let one man, that same Phantom, get the best of them! And how about Joe Vanzanni whom you posted in your apartment to kill the Phantom?”
“You know about that, Chief?”
“I read of his death in the afternoon papers. Do you think I didn’t know where you lived under the name of Warburton? It was plain that the Phantom had traced your private wire, that you arranged for his death without consulting me, and that Vanzanni slipped up, just as Bowers did in the garage. I rather thought you’d show better judgment in your choice of employees, Blackie! I’m paying for the best – and I expected to get them.”
“There wasn’t time to get in touch with you when I tried to bump the Phantom. I tried to call Hog-face back, and when he didn’t answer, I thought there was something fishy in the air. So I got things all set just in case. It looked like a sure bet. I don’t know why Joe slipped up. It’s the Phantom that’s made it tough for us, Chief. Otherwise -”
“You’re sure he hasn’t followed you here?”
“Sure. I took everything away from the studio. The Phantom didn’t help himself any by bumping Joe. You’re the only one that knows I called myself Warburton. I don’t know how you found out -”