The Emperor of Death (15 page)
“It was only a matter of time,” answered the girl in a hollow voice. “It was inevitable. If he hadn’t killed himself Hesterberg would have. First, I must tell you — Carl was no traitor; no coward. What he did, he did for me — because he loved me. He was my husband.”
The Phantom nodded his head in understanding.
“Go on,” he said.
“It was my fault. I was foolish, vain; wanted jewelry and clothes. Because he loved me he stole. Stole from
The Clarion.
Somehow, Hesterberg found out. That devil finds out everything!”
A sudden transformation came over her. She jumped to her feet in a frenzy, grabbed the Phantom by the lapels of his coat.
“You’ve got to believe me,” she pleaded in a wild voice. “He stole for me. Carl was no thief!”
The Phantom nodded his head in sympathy but said nothing. The girl continued after the outburst in a dead voice.
“When we tried to pay back the money it was too late. Hesterberg had Carl in his power; threatened to expose him; put him in jail. And I was too weak, too selfish again to let him go.
“Then Hesterberg promised to release him if he did one service for him.”
“That was the Washington affair!”
The girl nodded mutely.
“And then Hesterberg didn’t keep his promise?”
“No; he had us deeper in his power than before. And then I — I took to drugs. It was the end!”
The Phantom bowed his head; never before had he been so moved by a confession. The girl continued:
“But you are not interested in the downfall of a foolish woman. What do you want to know? What do you want to know about Hesterberg? If I can have but one finger in his downfall, Carl will be avenged and I will die happy.”
The scene was too pregnant with tragedy for the Phantom to derive any great satisfaction from the information he was about to receive. But he had to press the issue. More was at stake than the anguish of one woman.
“First,” he said tersely, “who is the traitor in Clairborne’s office? Who called Hesterberg instead of the police to protect Clairborne at the Union Club?”
“The man is Mearson — Clairborne’s secretary,” replied Ruby.
The Phantom cursed himself for a fool for not having arrived at that conclusion himself. But no time now for vain regrets.
“That’s the only question I have to ask now,” he grated. “You speak; I want to hear everything you know.”
Ruby was silent for a brief moment, collecting her thoughts. But the mask of hate never lifted from her face and her eyes were baleful pools of fire.
“First,” she began, “you should know this. There is a sign — a signal that is passed between all of Hesterberg’s men. It is this.”
As the Phantom watched with fascinated eyes she took the ring from the small finger of her right hand and transferred it to her left.
“Whenever you see that sign you are looking at one of the Russian’s creatures.”
The Phantom’s pulse kicked out a steady hundred and thirty. At last he was getting somewhere, learning things; concrete things.
“Fine,” he exclaimed with satisfaction. “Go on.”
Ruby was still marshaling her thoughts when suddenly the heavy feet of O’Neal pounded down the corridor. He stopped before the prisoner’s cell, fitted a key into the lock and swung the door in.
“Sorry to break in on this conference,” he said, “but there’s a mouthpiece out at the desk with a writ of habeas corpus for the dame here. He demands that we produce her immediately. Order signed by Judge Pinelli.”
At his words and the mention of the judge’s name, the Phantom felt the girl press close to him. He was aware of the violent trembling of her body; of her panting breath as her hands went to his coat in an imploring gesture. O’Neal’s message had awakened all the old fears in her.
With ill-concealed impatience the Phantom turned to the detective.
“Can’t he wait five minutes?”
“Sorry,” grumbled O’Neal. “But a writ’s a writ. This mouthpiece is a tough guy. He’ll make it rotten for me if I don’t produce. Come on, Ruby — somebody’s springin’ you.”
But despite the fact that somebody was trying to get her out of jail, Ruby had no desire to go. She clung to the Phantom.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered. “Hesterberg is back of this. Follow.”
The Phantom pressed her hand reassuringly and nodded, then turned to the detective.
“Okay, O’Neal — take her. But remember, her safety is in your hands. I’ll hold you responsible. Where is Judge Pinelli sitting?”
“At his home; joint up on Riverside Drive.”
“Okay. Take the girl. I’ll make my exit through the rear.”
Richard Van Loan was standing idly at the curb hailing a cab before the Fourth Precinct Police Station, when Ruby came down the steps of the Station House escorted on each side by a burly policeman. A sharp nosed bespectacled individual, carrying a brief case, brought up the rear. Van tagged him as the lawyer who had presented the writ. As his own cab pulled up to the curb he saw from the corner of his eye that Ruby was being ushered into a high powered limousine. The car slid away from the curb immediately. Van jumped into his own taxi and slammed the door behind him.
“I’ll give you twenty dollars above the clock if you don’t lose that car,” he snapped.
“You’re on, boss,” grinned the driver. “Let’s go.”
Despite his suspicions, the limousine ahead traveled at a normal rate of speed northward. It stopped for traffic lights, turned west on Seventy-second Street and proceeded at a leisurely rate of speed up Riverside Drive. Van’s taxi had little trouble keeping its tail light in sight.
Crouched forward on the cushion, a cigarette between his lips, watching the car ahead, Van wondered for a moment if Ruby hadn’t been wrong, her fears ungrounded. Judge Pinelli was a respected member of the bar. If her detention by the police was unlawful, he would discharge her.
And then Van understood. That was exactly it. It wasn’t what would happen to Ruby before she got to Pinelli, it was what would happen to her after her dismissal.
He threw his cigarette out the window of the cab as he saw the car ahead pull to the curb before an ornate four story gray stone house.
“Here! Quick! Pull into the curb,” he ordered.
His cab pulled up before the canopied entrance of a large apartment house. Van jumped out, made a great show of searching in his pocket for money while he kept his eye on the car ahead. He watched Ruby escorted out of the limousine by the two policemen; saw her, surrounded by the two officers and the lawyer, mount the steps of Judge Pinelli’s home.
The Phantom was undecided for a moment as to his next course of action. As long as Ruby was guarded by the two policemen, he felt that she was reasonably safe. Still, he couldn’t get out of his mind the note of fear in the girl’s voice, her final word to follow. He knew enough of Hesterberg’s machinations to realize that it was entirely possible that Pinelli was one of the Russian’s allies.
As he stood there hesitant on the sidewalk, a second limousine pulled up at the curb, before the judge’s home. The curtains were drawn; though the streets were dry, the license plate on the rear was bespattered with mud. The Phantom had seen that trick played before.
There was something phoney about that car. Some psychic sense warned him that Ruby had been right. Strolling slowly up the sidewalk he shot a swift glance at the second car. What he saw was not reassuring. A dark, beetle-browed gangster sat hunched over the wheel, while two others sat poised and tense in the rear in attitudes of expectation.
That decided the Phantom. He crossed the street, lost himself in a dark hallway and shifted his automatic from his shoulder holster to his side coat pocket. When Ruby came out of that house he was going to escort her away — and no one else.
With his keen eyes on the doorway opposite him, he tied a silken handkerchief around his neck and adjusted it so that it could be flipped up over his face in a second.
He had just prepared himself for a long vigil when things began to happen. The door to Judge Pinelli’s opened. The Phantom stiffened and his hand dropped to the pocket of his coat. But it was not Ruby who darkened the portal. The two policemen who had escorted her into the building pounded heavily down the stone steps to the sidewalk.
The Phantom hesitated. That meant that the judge had released the girl. But why hadn’t she availed herself of the protection of the police and left with them? The Phantom was filled with a vague apprehension. If anything should happen to Ruby he was lost. If her suspicions were correct and the Russian was the power behind the writ, he had to go into action at once.
He crowded against the shadows of the hallway considering his next move. The two policemen had turned the corner and were by now out of sight. Then again for the second time in two minutes the Phantom stiffened while his hand dropped to his automatic.
More action on the far side of the street. The door of the limousine that had arrived a few minutes before swung open. The two occupants of the rear seat stepped out, hurriedly mounted the steps of Pinelli’s house. The door was opened immediately to them and they disappeared into the dark interior.
That decided the Phantom. Something was wrong; decidedly wrong. He, too, had to get into that house.
He took the silken handkerchief from around his neck, stuffed it into his pocket and hurriedly crossed the street to the apartment house. Waiting his chance when the elevator was making a trip to the upper floors, he made a hurried exit through the trade entrance in the rear.
He came out in a dark and shadowy courtyard, surrounded by a high board fence. Two houses away to his left was the rear of Judge Pinelli’s house. The Phantom never hesitated. Adjusting the mask about his face he scaled the board fence as agilely as a cat, crossed another dark courtyard and pulled up ten seconds later before the basement of the judge’s house.
IT was but the work of a minute to force a window with his pocket knife. Slowly, carefully, inch by inch, he raised the casement, straddled the sill a moment, gun in hand, then dropped softly to the room beyond.
He paused a tense moment, listening, every nerve and muscle on the alert. He was impelled forward immediately by the necessity of speed. He had to locate Ruby at once. When Hesterberg struck, he struck surely and swiftly.
He negotiated the basement rooms of the house successfully, felt his way to the flight of steps that led upward. Pushing his gun before him he mounted swiftly, came out a moment later onto a small landing on the main floor. Darkness! No lights, no sounds!
For a panic stricken moment the Phantom thought that he was too late; thought that Ruby had left the house by the front while he was effecting his unlawful entrance through the basement window. Then a harsh, grating sound set his teeth on edge. The breath whistled sharply through his nostrils and his finger constricted on the trigger of his gun.
But a moment later as his jumpy nerves settled, he smiled grimly to himself with satisfaction. He wasn’t late after all. That grating sound that had made his pulses pound was the striking of a match against a wall. It had come from the floor above. Simple deduction told him that the man who had struck that match was probably on guard.
The Phantom began the ascent of the second flight of stairs. Unless he missed his guess, Ruby was in a room above him, still in conference with Pinelli and one of the men from the car. The Phantom’s plan was simple in conception but not quite so simple of execution. He had to listen in on what was being said behind the locked door on the second floor.
He reached the top of the stairs, crouched low by the banister. His keen eyes were accustomed to the gloom now. He focused them down the corridor to his left. Nothing. To the right — and his teeth clamped together. He made out the scarlet tip of a glowing cigarette. Suddenly it disappeared — then after a pause became visible again.
“Pacing up and down before the door,” thought the Phantom.
He counted the interval between succeeding appearances of the glowing cigarette and judged that whoever on guard was walking a post of ten paces. He himself was some fifteen paces away from the sentry when the latter’s back was first turned to him.
That was all the Phantom needed to know. The red eye of the cigarette was coming toward him. He counted the paces. Seven — eight — nine — ten! And in that second that the glow of the cigarette was extinguished as the sentry turned around, the Phantom leaped.
Lithe as a tiger, swift and silent as his name, he sped over the thick, velvet carpet on the floor. He was on his man; his gun described a swift arc through the air and descended with crushing force onto yielding flesh. Even as he smote, the Phantom’s left arm went round his victim’s throat in a strangle hold.
The guard slumped beneath the blow without a sound, without a protest.
“Out for a long time, fellow,” whispered the Phantom as he eased his limp burden to the floor. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t have given you the other end of the gun.”
He wasted no further time on the guard. Straightening up, he sped swiftly back to the door from beneath which a thin blade of light cut the opaque darkness of the hallway. He pressed his ear to the jamb and listened. Voices came to him, heavy threatening masculine voices against the frightened words of Ruby.
“Now listen, baby, Carl’s dead, see. He can’t do nothing more for you. What we want to know is what’s this gag about the pinch by O’Neal? How come?”
Ruby’s voice came plaintively to the Phantom through the closed door, weak and tired from her struggle.
“I’ve told you, Joe, for the hundredth time, I don’t know. He just picked me up and asked me a lot of damn fool questions.”
“Questions about what, my dear?” came a cultured suave voice — the voice of Pinelli.
“About Carl.”
“Yeah — I thought so. And you squawked.”
“You lie!”
“Then what did you tell him?” pursued the judge.
His voice was cool, menacing — far more dangerous than the brutal accents of her other inquisitor.
“I — I told him I didn’t know who killed Carl,” pleaded Ruby. “Can’t you believe me?” Her voice suddenly cracked and a piteous note crept into it. “Please, Joe, for God’s sake, give me a shot. My nerves are all on fire. I’m all broken up. Can’t you see — ah, for pity’s sake Joe — give me, give me —”