The Emperor of Death (17 page)

He picked up the phone again and called a number.

“Hello! City Prison Hospital. Give me the superintendent. Hello! I want to inquire about Ruby Wooley. How is she? Can she be seen at once on a matter of the utmost importance?”

“Wooley?” repeated the voice at the other end of the wire. “Just a minute.”

There was silence as the superintendent fingered through his files. At last he said: “Mrs. Wooley’s not here.”

“Not there?” Apprehension trembled in Van’s voice.

“No. She was moved a few hours ago by special order of the commissioner. He sent a car for her. I think it was a transfer to Welfare Island, but I’m not sure.”

“Thanks,” said Van, and hung up.

Then he turned to Havens.

“Well,” he said a trifle bitterly. “That seems to be that.”

“What’s happened?”

“Hesterberg’s licked us again. He stole my star witness.” He told the publisher the story of his afternoon’s adventures. Havens sat open mouthed at the recital.

“Then it must have been Wooley who somehow found out that I was sending the car to take you to the White House.”

Van nodded. “But knowing that doesn’t help us now. This is Hesterberg’s hour.”

Havens rose to his feet. “We
must
do something,” he said excitedly. “This apparently is our last chance. I’ll go inside and send Muriel off to bed. Then we can plan.”

Van didn’t answer. He nodded his head abstractedly, and a frown distorted his brow as he grappled for a plan that could stop the Mad Red from the complete consummation of his plans.

Havens went to the study door which led to the living room, and opened it. For a moment he stared wild-eyed across the threshold. Then he gave a shout of alarm.

“Van. She’s gone! Look here!”

In an instant Van Loan was at his side. His receptive eyes swept the room hastily. The portieres which hung over the doorway from the hall were torn down. Lying on the floor by the window lay Havens’s butler bound and gagged, his eyes turned appealingly toward his employer.

Van raced across the room, and hastily severed the man’s bonds. Havens stared ashen-faced, speechless. The butler came to his feet stiffly. Van questioned him abruptly.

“Where’s Miss Havens?”

“They took her out, sir. They chloroformed her.”

“Why?”

“Two men, sir. Armed with revolvers. They chloroformed her and bound me up.”

“How long ago?”

“About fifteen minutes, sir.”

“How do you account for the fact that we didn’t hear them in the study?”

“They worked very quietly, sir. Efficiently. They had the guns on us and we didn’t dare make a move. Desperate characters, sir.”

“Yes,” said Van grimly.

Havens tore across the room and seized Van by the coat lapels.

“The dogs,” he said. “The filthy dogs. Now they’ve got Muriel in this. We’ve got to get her out, Van. We’ve got to.”

Van removed the other’s trembling fingers from his coat.

“Take it easy,” he said soothingly. “There’s no use going off the handle. Look, what’s that?”

His eyes noted a white envelope lying on the table in the center of the room. In a scrawling hand, it was addressed to Frank Havens.

Van’s index finger ripped open the flap. He extricated a stiff piece of notepaper. He glanced at its message, then folded it again in his hand.

“You may go,” he said to the butler. “Mr. Havens and myself will be in the library if you want us. Come on, Frank.”

He took Havens’s arm and led him back to the library. He forced his friend into a chair and poured him a stiff shot of brandy. Like a man in a coma, Havens obeyed the other’s directions.

“Now,” said Van as he seated himself on the other side of the desk, “pull yourself together, man. We can only win this fight, we can only get Muriel back to safety if we avoid panic. Now, come on, snap out of it.”

With a tremendous effort, Havens forgot that he was a frantic father. He realized that calmness, coolness were the prime qualities needed in this crisis. He turned a wan face to Van, but when he spoke his voice was steady enough.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do my best. What now?”

For answer Van handed him the paper he had found on the table outside. It read:

Havens:

At exactly 3 A.M., turn your radio dials until you tune in on the message I have for you.

Hesterberg.

The publisher crumpled the paper in his hand.

“What does that mean?” he asked hoarsely.

Van was already at the radio. “We’ll soon find out,” he said grimly as his sensitive fingers fumbled at the dials.

The clock on the mantel indicated that it was slightly after three o’clock. All the regular stations were shut off at this hour, The two men sat tense and silent in the room, as Van twisted the dials. Nothing save the mechanical burr of static came through the speaker.

Then at last as the condensers whirled beneath Van’s fingers, they caught the sound of a human voice — a familiar voice. The dials stopped their timeless whirling. Carefully Van oriented them. The voice became clearer, articulate. The two men exchanged glances as they recognized it as that of Hesterberg.

“Havens,” it said. “You should have picked me up by now. I shall repeat this message at five minute intervals for the next hour in any event. I am broadcasting this from my car traveling to my base. You will be unable to trace the broadcast. I sincerely hope that our mutual friend, the Phantom, is listening in with you. What I have to say will also interest him.”

The voice stopped for a moment. Havens was frozen to immobility in his chair. His ears ached as he strained them, fearing to miss a word that might deal with the fate of his daughter. Van smoked a cigarette with an air of casualness which he was far from feeling.

“I am ready,” said Hesterberg. “I am ready to put into execution the coup that I have planned for so long. Soon my emissaries sail for foreign countries. In their possession are enough international documents to start a dozen wars. They will deliver them to the right people, to the people who have been unwittingly betrayed by other diplomats.”

Again he paused, perhaps, to enjoy his complete triumph for a moment.

“There is more than that, Havens. I am now in a certain city not far from New York. I am in complete control. I speak to you via the radio because all lines of communication from here are cut. There is no phone. There is no telegraph. My men have seen to that. But I have other things here. I have the Secretary of State of the United States. I have Lewis Bond, the banker. I have Remis, the munitions man. I have Naylor, the steel man. But I won’t bore you. I have other men, influential and wealthy. And their ransom shall be the granting of the credits to Russia that I desire. My men are already in communication with their families. And in a short time the cables will be granting Russia what I demand.”

“Good God,” said Van. “He’s done it!”

But Havens, intent on the disposition of his own daughter, paid scant attention to the fact that the madman who spoke to them was within an ace of wrecking civilization. The publisher sat upright in his chair at the next words.

“Yet, Havens,” went on the icy voice of Hesterberg, “there is yet one thing I want. The Phantom still has some fragments of papers that I need. I can do without them, but they will facilitate my purpose. You will get them from him. You will deliver them to my man who will shortly call on you. If you do this, your daughter shall he returned safely. If you refuse, she shall suffer as no woman has ever suffered.

“In a short time my most trusted man shall call on you. It is useless to attempt to get information from him. He is my best man, and for that reason I have given him this assignment. You may capture him, kill him if you will, but he will tell you nothing. If I have not heard from him within a reasonable length of time, I shall assume you have trapped him, and I shall treat your daughter accordingly. Havens! Have you heard me?”

Something clicked in the speaker, then there was silence. The most bitter and awful silence that Van had ever known. Disaster and defeat were imminent. He had failed in the most important mission that had ever been intrusted to him. Hesterberg, the Mad Red, had won!

Havens turned dull glazed eyes to Van. He was in the grip of a terrible emotion. Here he sat, helpless and supine, with his motherless daughter in the grip of a maniac, God only knew where.

“You can’t do anything, Van,” he said dully, despairingly.

To Van his words were nothing less than an accusation. He flushed, bit his lip and said nothing. Never had he known such a sensation of futility. Despair deluged him. Even his fighting heart, which never before admitted defeat, beat dully in his breast; and as he gazed at the agonized face of his friend he felt as if he had betrayed him, as if the fact that Muriel was in peril was solely his fault.

But after a few minutes the natural driving courage within him asserted itself. His brain cast itself about for a means of yet saving the battle, of outwitting Hesterberg.

Then he realized that there was but one answer. He must first find out where Hesterberg had mobilized his army of murder.

There existed but a single chance to do that. The Mad Red’s man was coming here to get the papers which Hesterberg wanted. That man would have the information that Van wanted. True, Hesterberg had warned them that this man was the pick of his motley crew, a man of courage who would not talk, a man selected for his fortitude and loyalty. Yet it was the only chance.
Van must make him talk!

He rose from his chair with his jaw set. His face was a terrible thing to behold. Dick Van Loan had made up his mind that no matter what torture, what lengths he must resort to, Hesterberg’s emissary would talk. That was the only conceivable thing that would save the civilization that the crazy Communist had set out to wreck.

Then, again, there was Muriel.

Van liked the girl more than he would have cared to admit. Perhaps if he had not been the Phantom she might have been more to him than merely the daughter of his best friend. But, as it was, he had no right to declare himself to any woman. Not while he engaged in this dangerous business which was meat and drink to him. His heart was heavy at the thought, but that only stiffened the terrible resolution that he had made.

Havens started at the jangle of the doorbell. He glanced inquiringly, hopelessly at Van. Then, as he saw the other’s firm jaw, his purposeful eyes, his set shoulders, an inexplicable new faith was engendered within his heart.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

Van Loan took a black silk mask from his pocket and fitted it to his eyes.

“Do?” he said, and there was a murderous resolve in his voice. “Do? We’re going to make this gentleman talk.”

“How?”

“That I don’t know. But talk he will if I have to break every bone in his body. If I have to tear him slowly limb from limb. Send your servants to bed and bring him in.”

Havens rose slowly. He stared strangely at Van. Never had he seen him in such a mood; never had he seen those black snapping eyes of the Phantom so determined, so awful, bent on wreaking a terrible vengeance on his enemies.

Without another word, Havens turned and left the room. Van stood on the threshold of the library. He heard the publisher dismiss his butler. Then he heard the sound of the front door being unlocked. He started as he heard Havens give vent to a startled expression. Then he heard footsteps and a steady thumping noise approaching him from the hall.

As Havens reappeared there was an expression of panicky fear stamped indelibly upon his countenance. And Van, looking beyond him, immediately saw the reason for Havens’s newly born fear.

For the messenger of the Mad Red was Sligo, the cripple, with the eyes like diamonds glittering from a setting of mud!

This, then, was the man whom Hesterberg trusted most. This then, was the man that the Mad Red knew would not betray him. Van realized now that his hope of frustrating Hesterberg hung by a very slender thread. Then a thought struck him. Perhaps he could —

But he would wait. He would play that card last. Silently he closed the library door behind the pair of them. Havens seated himself in a chair, his eyes gazing vacantly at the wall. Sligo grinned sardonically. He knew the publisher was afraid to meet his snake-like gaze.

“Well,” said the cripple, “what are we waiting for?”

The Phantom put his hand in his pocket and walked slowly toward the cripple. His eyes glittered through the mask. Sligo shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Well,” he said again, “what about those papers? For the safety of everything involved, I’d suggest you give them to me at once.”

Van Loan came a step further. Havens stared at him, marveling at the deathly coldness of his manner. From his pocket he took a knife, a slim delicate thing with a three-inch blade, sharpened to nothingness.

As he moved nearer the cripple, the bridge lamp on the side of the room caught the blade, and the light glinted ominously, but the gleam in the Phantom’s eyes was no less cold and inclement than the light on the steel.

Van Loan grasped the cripple by the shoulder with his left hand. Their eyes met.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Van said. “You can either answer them or die slowly and painfully, just as you like. But you’ll do one or the other before you leave this room.”

There was hatred in Van’s heart; a hatred of his own that no one else could quite, understand. But there was another kind of murder in his eyes, an expression that no one could help understanding. Sligo well comprehended that this man was not threatening him idly. Yet he did not flinch.

“If you mean I’m to tell you anything about Hesterberg or his plans,” he said sullenly, “I’ll not do it.”

“No,” said Van.

He put his knee on the cripple’s chest. His left hand encircled the man’s neck. His right brought the knife close to the man’s eyes.

“Now, listen,” he said in a soft purring voice which belied the words he uttered. “When I was in Papua the natives had a grim form of amusement which used to entertain them very much. When they caught a white man against whom they harbored a grudge, they would cut off his eyelids. Now, before I start performing this operation on you, will you consider what that would do to your sleep? And it’s a shame to ruin such beautiful eyes as yours. Now, Sligo, will you talk?”