The Emperor of Death (13 page)
His muscles became cramped; the twisted cords in his neck were a living torture. His whole body cried out in anguish for sleep. But there was no sleep.
With an ever increasing sense of the inevitable doom that was closing in on him, the Phantom realized that only three short hours had passed. Three hours! How many more before he nodded off and the wolves pounced in?
By the sheer power of his will he lashed his mind to renewed efforts. He went over the bare four walls for the hundredth time. He stared wide-eyed into the blazing mazda lamp that lit up the scene. Was there no possible way he could compromise?
Another hour went by. Hesterberg awoke in his chair and continued his taunting tactics of before.
“If nothing else, my dear Phantom,” he mocked, “I can assure you an untroubled slumber at the end of your vigil. The peace of the grave.”
Hot words rose to the Phantom’s lips; in an insane frenzy he was tempted to empty his automatic into Hesterberg’s skull; tempted to still forever that taunting voice. But with an iron will, forged in the fires of hell, he restrained the impulse. Hesterberg should die. He had sworn that. But the Mad Red’s hour had not struck as yet. First he had to learn more of the Russian’s plans; find out how far they had matured, whom they involved.
Let him once get the key figures in Hesterberg’s colossal organization and he would not hesitate to be the one to wipe out the madman himself. He mentally lashed himself to an emotional frenzy in imagining the sadistic pleasure he was to get some day when finally he dispatched Hesterberg to hell. He reveled in the gory details of the execution he planned; he gloated over the dying anguish of Hesterberg. He —
And it was then that the Phantom called a halt. He realized that he was going a little mad, cracking under the strain. Exerting his last ounce of will power he mastered his failing brain and nerves and again concentrated on evolving some means of escape.
His fingers were numb, cold, constricted around the butt of his automatic. A terrific thirst assailed him while the beads of sweat on his forehead trickled crazily into his eyes. Hunger, thirst, sleep, slow paralysis — he had to fight them all.
Hesterberg was asleep again, his high-domed head slumped on one shoulder. In a frustrated frenzy the Phantom listened to the even breath rasp through the Russian’s nostrils. And then he was suddenly calm. He had an idea!
A slim chance, it was true — but nevertheless, a chance. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. For the past five hours he had been suffering the torments of hell waiting for the inevitable. Now he had a faint hope of being able to frustrate the net of doom that was slowly closing in on him.
Slowly, inch by inch, he began to put his plan into operation. Hairbreadth’s width at a time he eased his body slightly forward. So slow and steady that no eye could detect the movement his right hand went out toward Hesterberg’s slumped body.
It reached the Russian, crawled up the side of his coat, and with stealthy fingers probed into Hesterberg’s pocket.
A wave of exultation swept over the Phantom. His fingers had come in contact with the cold steel of an automatic in the other’s pocket. He wanted to shout; he wanted to risk all on whipping out that gun, but by some miracle of nerve he restrained the impulse.
As slowly as his hand had delved into the Russian’s pocket, it was withdrawn. The Phantom knew that the six grim pair of eyes were riveted on the gun pressed against Hesterberg’s skull.
They were watching his right hand, waiting — waiting until it had wavered the fraction of an inch. But his right hand did not waver and slowly, imperceptibly he removed the automatic from Hesterberg’s pocket with his left.
A quick analysis of the situation told the Phantom that his only possible chance was to kill the lights. The door to freedom was on the left, equally distant from himself and the six guards. With the advantage of the surprise attack on his side he had every confidence of making it.
He had noted in the hundred times he had searched the walls of the room that a fuse box was against the far wall. This must be the focal point of his attack and there were two problems that confronted him. First, from the awkward position he was in would he be able to hit it with the automatic in his left hand? Second, did that fuse box control the light in the room?
It was utterly futile to ponder the matter. The Phantom had to gamble and gamble then. His aching nerves reacted to the stimuli of the coming encounter; he took a deep breath; his index finger constricted slowly on the trigger of the automatic.
Four things happened simultaneously.
The Phantom shouted hoarsely. The gun in his hand exploded. The lights over head went out. And before the weird, electrical flashes from the fuse box had died away, the Phantom was streaking toward the door.
All hell broke loose in the room on a rising crescendo of noise. Hesterberg’s wild bellow rang out high above the crash of the machine-guns. Chairs were overturned, tables barged into as the Russian’s henchmen milled about wildly.
A savage burst from one of the machine-guns was answered by a piercing curse in Russian. Hesterberg’s men were mowing down one another. Chaos; pandemonium reigned.
Hesterberg’s voice shrilled out again, frantic with fear and anger.
“Hold fire, you fools! Lights! Lights!”
But when the flickering light of a match lit up the scene some ten seconds later, the Phantom was gone.
Though the Phantom knew that Hesterberg and his men would have long since cleared out by the time the police arrived, he nevertheless called up Headquarters and gave them the address of his prison.
A roaring taxicab carrying him away from the scene of his late exploit, he sank back on the cushions, closed his eyes and completely relaxed for a moment. He felt strangely weak, weaker than he had ever been in his life. His muscles ached like a torment, his hands trembled, daggers of fire pierced his eyes.
There was nothing he wanted so much in the world as sleep. But bitterly he realized that there would be little sleep for him that night. Bitterly he realized that there would be little sleep for him so long as Hesterberg’s mad schemes were allowed to mature.
The dawn was still-born as his taxi, his third by this time, raced up the deserted length of Fifth Avenue. It came to a grinding halt at a block in the Fifties. Throwing a bill at the driver, Van raced up a short flight of stone steps, squashed the bell by the side of the door with an impatient thumb.
Two minutes later he was wringing the hand of Havens.
For a moment neither could speak. They merely stood there mute, dumb, staring into each other’s eyes for strength.
“God, boy!” mumbled Havens at last in a broken voice. “I never — I —”
Van waved the words away with a gesture and sank wearily into a chair.
“Neither did I,” he said simply. “A drink, man — I need a drink. A stiff one.”
Havens busied himself with whisky and soda, Van brushed away the soda and downed the Scotch with greedy gulps.
“You look almost ten years older right now,” breathed Havens in an awed voice.
“Not only ten years older, but ages older,” answered Van. “I’m back to you from the dead.”
“What happened?”
Van helped himself from the bottle again and in a few terse words told Havens of what he had gone through since leaving the Union Club with a gun at Hesterberg’s head.
Food was brought in. Van fell to with a prodigious appetite, renewing his frazzled nerves and energy. Over his second cup of coffee and a cigarette Havens again plied him with questions.
“What has been puzzling me all along,” he began, “is how you disposed of Hesterberg at the club. I know you drugged him, but how?”
Van permitted himself a smile.
“I accomplished that with your subtle aid.”
“You don’t mean that glass of whisky Hesterberg and I drank together?”
“Exactly.”
“But then how was it that I wasn’t drugged, too?”
Van lit another cigarette and smiled fondly at the publisher. “That part is very simple, old man. When you and I were having our little conference in the locker, I offered you my pocket flask. You took a long pull and along with the whisky you imbibed the antidote to the drug I put in the bottle of Scotch I offered to you and Hesterberg.”
Havens looked at his friend and smiled at him wryly. “And you wouldn’t tell me?”
Van shrugged. “There was no use in putting that added strain on you. But that part is in the past, forgotten. There are other worries to confront us. Frank” — and here his voice became tense and hard — “there is a traitor close to you; someone who knows your movements and consequently mine. How did Hesterberg know so positively that I would be at the Union Club last night?”
For another hour they discussed the matter, trying to place their fingers on the guilty man, but without success. For another hour they discussed Hesterberg and his diabolical plans, trying in vain to devise some master stroke to get the Russian into their power.
VAN SPENT the late afternoon and evening with Havens at the latter’s office at the
Clarion.
He was worried, troubled. That Hesterberg was slowly maturing his plans he knew but for once he felt himself absolutely helpless to frustrate the Russian.
Though he had succeeded on occasion to turn the tables on the Mad Red, he was accomplishing nothing to put a definite end to Hesterberg’s plan. Hesterberg was still at large; he still dominated his minions of the underworld. Where he would strike next, God alone knew.
At any moment Van expected to hear that another figure of international importance had received the threat of death. Until that happened he was helpless, powerless to lift a hand against Hesterberg.
He realized bitterly that that was where he was at a disadvantage. He had to sit supinely by, twiddling his thumbs until Hesterberg made the first move. He was making no moves of his own! He was the one who was on the defensive.
“Yes,” agreed Havens. “But good God, man, what can you do?”
“I’ve got to contact the underworld. I’ve got to get a direct line on Hesterberg through the underworld. Can’t you see it, Frank? Once I have a few strings out on the Russian, I can move myself. I will be able to act, do things, make demands.”
He rose abruptly, to his feet clenched his cigarette with determined fingers. He called for his hat.
“Where away?” said Havens.
“No place — any place. I’m on the trail of Hesterberg.”
He left the publisher’s office and on a hunch decided to look in on Wooley, Havens’s managing editor. Some bit of crime news might have come in that would furnish him with a clue. He walked slowly through the smoke fogged city room, oblivious to the clatter of typewriters and jangling telephones about him.
He was deeply enmeshed in thoughts of Hesterberg. He was — And then a word caught his ear, snapped him out of his reverie.
“Listen, Ruby, I tell you —“
It was Wooley’s voice. He was speaking to a woman by the name of Ruby. Vividly there flashed to Van’s mind the wreck of a girl who had effected his escape from Cokey Day’s establishment. Could it by any possible chance be the same? Could Wooley be speaking to the drug-ridden girl? Could Wooley be —
A thousand possibilities flashed through Van Loan’s mind. He half concealed himself behind a filing cabinet, lit a cigarette and, cocking one ear, tried to catch the rest of Wooley’s conversation.
Unfortunately he was speaking guardedly over a phone and the clatter of typewriters and the hum and throb of the presses in the basement below, drowned his voice.
He hung up a moment later and through the cloud of smoke of his cigarette Van saw that his hand was trembling, saw that his face was pale and drawn. Wooley reached for his hat immediately, shoved back his chair and made for the elevator. Van was well to the rear of the crowded car as Wooley waited impatiently for the elevator to disgorge him on the ground floor.
Some psychic sense told Van that at last he had fallen onto a live clue. Of course, it was altogether possible he was running down a blind alley. There were hundreds of women named Ruby in the city. He hadn’t the slightest thing to connect Wooley’s feminine caller with the creature of the Russian.
But why had the newspaper man acted so strangely? Why had he trembled? And what was the message that made his face pale?
Van followed him for two short blocks, saw Wooley turn hurriedly into a small Italian restaurant. He slowed up his pace, passed the eating house once and grunted his disappointment as he saw that the interior of the restaurant was effectively curtained off.
He wondered whether it would be wise to go into the eating house and run the risk of being seen by Wooley. He decided he had to risk it. He had to know the identity of the mysterious Ruby who had called Wooley on the phone. Unquestionably the call had been put through from the restaurant.
Hesitating no longer he pushed open the door and stepped inside. While his eyes searched the tables he mumbled something to the cashier at her desk by the portal and headed for the telephone booth wall on his left. Yes, far in the rear against the wall sat Wooley. And opposite him was the girl. The girl Ruby whom he had first seen in Cokey Day’s.
He made his bluff good by dropping a coin in the slot of the telephone, waited another moment and then left the eating house.
Ten minutes later he was back in Havens’s office going over the personal cards of the employees of the
Clarion.
The Phantom entered the darkened hallway of a brownstone house in the Eighties. By the flickering glow of a match he examined the names under the row of bell buttons. With a murmur of satisfaction he pressed down firmly on the one that corresponded to Wooley.
The automatic lock on the door clicked immediately in response. The Phantom pushed open the door, hurried down a long hallway and rapidly mounted the steps at the far end.
He stopped a moment before the door of Apartment 3B, adjusted with his left hand the silken mask that concealed his features, while his right went to the pocket of his coat for the reassuring feel of his automatic.