The Emperor of Death (7 page)
Eyes that a moment before had been bleary and wild, cleared up, brightened. From them shone the clear, cold light of a man with one set purpose; a man driven forward to his goal by an indomitable will.
The transformation was complete. In the place of the drug-ridden Dope, stood the grim, determined figure of — the Phantom!
HE LOST LITTLE TIME. O’Neal, the hard-boiled policeman, had given him the information he wanted. Cokey Day was the man who could steer him back to the lost trail of Hesterberg. Now that he could go to Cokey as a fellow stool, the owner of the joint would vouch for him to the underworld.
Swiftly he ripped open a shabby suitcase. From its interior he took an automatic and tucked it away in the holster under his shoulder.
Then he sat down and smoked a cigarette meditatively, the one moment of relaxation that he allowed himself before resuming the role of the Dope, and venturing forth in search of the Mad Red.
He threw the butt on the floor, stepped on it, then sat down before the mirror. Once more he adjusted the little pieces of wax on his face. Yellow grease paint streaked his face, giving it that dead doped look. He scraped the floor with his nails until they were black. In the mirror the features of Richard Van Loan evolved slowly and completely to those of the Dope.
Then he went out into the street. Cokey Day’s joint was, as a matter of cold hard fact, the meeting place for the dregs of humanity. If you waited in Cokey’s barroom long enough your eye would fall on almost every criminal in the world. It was their sanctuary.
In its grim walls many a deed of violence had been plotted or discussed. Accustomed as its habitués were to seeing peculiar people without asking questions, or even glancing askance, the Dope made his entrance unnoticed.
He weaved his way through the dotted tables toward the bar. Then, leaning confidentially over the mahogany, he asked the bartender for Cokey Day.
A fat finger indicated a door at the rear. The Dope shuffled toward it slowly. He knocked softly and a gruff voice said:
“Come in.”
The Dope entered to see an evil-faced, hard-eyed individual seated behind a battered desk.
“Is this Mr. Day?” asked the Dope, wheedling respect in his tone.
Day nodded. “What the hell do you want?” he said. “Who are you?”
“They call me the Dope.”
“So what?”
The Dope lowered his voice and spoke confidentially.
“O’Neal sent me.”
Those three words seemed to have a thunderbolt effect upon Cokey Day. He half rose to his feet, fear and wrath flaming in his little eyes. Then he sat down again and beckoned his visitor closer.
“Shut up, you fool! Do you want the whole world to hear you? Now, what do you want?”
The Dope shrugged. “Nothing,” be said. “I just dropped in to get acquainted. O’Neal said I would report through you.”
Day swore a mighty oath, and raised his hands appealingly to heaven.
“My God,” he said. “Is O’Neal crazy? Sending a dope like you. Does he want to queer the racket? A mug like you’ll talk for the first shot anyone offers you.”
The Dope smiled craftily. “I thought maybe you’d want to keep me supplied,” he said with a leer.
Day glared at him savagely. “All right,” he said. “I’ll look after you. But for God’s sake keep your mouth shut. If you don’t, you’ll die. And,” he added ruefully, “so shall I.”
The Dope nodded and turned toward the door. “Mind if I hang around a while?”
Day shook his head. “No. But don’t talk, that’s all.”
The Dope nodded. His hand reached out for the door knob. But he never completed the gesture.
The door suddenly swung open so violently that it almost knocked him over. Something silken and white and fragrant swept past him. He turned his head to see a girl, slim and blonde, bend over Cokey Day’s desk. Her pupils were dilated. Her hands trembled and there was agony, supplication in her voice as she addressed the dive keeper.
“Cokey, for God’s sake give it to me. He’s cut off every supply. Not a dealer in town’s got the guts to let me have any. Cokey, for God’s sake. Just an ounce. Just an ounce, Cokey.”
There was something terrible in the spectacle of this beautiful girl, humbling herself to a beast like Day. Yet it was evident that as long as her tearing nerves cried for the drug that would bring them surcease, there were no lengths to which she would not go. She looked appealingly in Cokey’s eyes.
“No,” said Cokey laconically, with an air of irretrievable finality.
With trembling fingers the girl fumbled in her bag. Something green and yellow fell on the desk.
“That’s all I got,” she said. “There’s enough dough there to buy ten pounds of it. And all I want’s one ounce. One little ounce, Cokey.”
Cokey Day eyed the money greedily. Avidity and fear of reprisal shone in his eyes. The fear won. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Now, get out.” The girl turned a beaten, suffering face away from the desk. The Dope still stood at the door. As she passed the girl turned to him, desperately, as if she knew there were no hope, but any chance was better than none at all.
“Sell me some snow,” she said. Then as she really saw him for the first time, her hope grew. For in the Dope’s face she recognized the ravages of cocaine. “Don’t tell me you don’t take it. Give me a shot; I’m dying. Give me a shot.”
The Dope’s brain moved swiftly. He was eager to understand this little drama. Why it was that a girl with money could not buy dope? Who it was that had forbidden the dealers of the underworld to sell it to her? Who had enough power to frighten Cokey Day away from money?
“Well, yes,” he said slowly. “I guess I can spare you one shot.”
“O-oh!” The girl fell upon him gratefully. Her arms went around his neck. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her trembling fingers stretched out for the soothing powder which would miraculously silence the shrieking of her nerves.
The Dope reached into his vest pocket and withdrew the bottle which O’Neal had given him. He held it out to the girl. She snatched it, and fumbled in her bag. She produced a hypodermic needle.
“Lay off, you fool!”
Cokey Day rose from his desk and threw himself across the room. The girl, seeing him coming, uttered a shrill cry and fled, still holding the bottle and the needle in her hands. The Dope slammed the door hurriedly, thus effectively checking Cokey Day’s pursuit.
“You fool. You fool!”
Cokey was beside himself with rage. The Dope turned an ingenuous face toward him.
“Why? The kid was dying for a shot. I’ll give anyone a shot. I know what it is to go without it.”
“You’ll never give her another shot if the boss finds out about it. You idiot!”
“What boss? Why?”
Day seized him by the arm, wrenching it brutally.
“Listen, mug. How the hell O’Neal picked out such a fool as you I don’t know. But if you care for your worthless life, mind your own business in here. You’ll be lucky if the boss doesn’t find out where Ruby got that stuff
.”
He opened the door and pushed the Dope through it roughly. Once outside in the large room, the disheveled figure of the dope fiend shuffled over toward a table and sat down. He lit a cigarette and alertly watched the people around him.
He started as a hand tugged at his threadbare sleeve, then looked up into the eyes of the girl called Ruby. Her whole demeanor had changed now. Her eyes were bright and sparkling. Her hands were steady. Her voice was husky, but firm. Cocaine, that insidious robber of the mind and body, had enhanced her youthful beauty.
“Thanks,” she smiled at him. “Thanks a lot. You’ve done me a favor, and I’ll never forget it.”
The Dope was about to ask her to sit down. He wanted to see if he could extract any information from her. Perhaps Day’s mention of the boss who had cut off her dope supply was knowledge he could use in his own grim game.
“Won’t you sit —” he began. But suddenly the invitation froze on his lips.
He inhaled deeply, and his heart picked up a beat as the picture of a familiar face filtered through his retina. In answer to a friend’s hail, Ruby walked away.
The Dope made no move to stop her. He sat immobile and tense at his table watching a figure walk across the floor. The man walked slowly, heavily, as if in a daze — like a drunk or a person under the influence of some soporific drug.
And deep inside the Dope’s brain something clicked, something whispered: “Danger!” For the man who shuffled so lethargically across the floor was Frank Havens!
Van Loan fought down his impulse to stand up, to call out to his friend. Something sinister was about to happen. Death skulked unseen as Havens shuffled aimlessly and dully across the room.
Then Van was aware that another person had entered the room and was following Havens, some few feet behind. Swiftly he glanced at the second man, and then, in a flash he understood. For the second visitor to Cokey Day’s was a cripple — a little unshaven cripple with eyes like diamonds in a setting of mud.
Havens had again been hypnotized by the little man with the eyes of death. For what motive, what purpose, Van did not know. But both his heart and mind told him that jeopardy was imminent.
Havens and the cripple disappeared around a white pillar at the far end of the room.
It was then that Van arose. It cost him something to maintain the slow, dragging walk of the Dope at that moment when every nerve in his body was counseling him to run. But he did not increase his pace one iota.
Arriving around the pillar, he was just in time to see the cripple slowly stumping up a rickety flight in the rear. Havens was already out of sight. Van cast a hasty glance about him. No one was in sight.
It was then that he cut and ran. He came breathless but silent to the foot of the steps. With a cat-like tread he slowly made his way up the creaking, rickety stairs. At the third landing he stopped. He heard a door open. He heard a babel of voices — and in that babel one voice stood out saliently. It said:
“So you have him? Good. Now we can strengthen the one weak link in our chain.”
The door slammed again, but not before Van had recognized the voice of Alexis Hesterberg!
For a moment he hesitated. Should he leave Havens there and go for help? That way was too big a gamble. What would happen to Havens in the meantime? Further, there was an excellent chance that Hesterberg would be warned in time, so perfect was his spy system.
No, Van put his loyalty to his friend first. He, the Phantom, would see this through alone.
Cautiously he mounted the remainder of the stairs. By dint of applying his ear to each of the three doors on the landing, he ascertained by the low rumble of voices from within which room Havens was in.
He hesitated no longer now. Swiftly he mounted the iron ladder that led to the roof. Once there, luck came to his aid. At the side of the building was another ladder of iron which led to a fire escape landing below at the very window of the room where Havens was held prisoner.
Like a feline he descended, wrapped his arms tightly around the iron half-way down, and hung like a monkey where he could observe whatever went on, hear whatever was said.
His mouth became a grim, thin line as he took in the scene below him.
Havens sat still as death in an arm-chair in the middle of the room. Behind him stood Hesterberg. In the foreground, his glittering snake-like eyes never leaving the publisher’s countenance, was the cripple. Two other men stood near Hesterberg. The Mad Red spoke.
“Then, this,” he said, “is the end of the international angle. Once I procure the torn half of those papers from the Phantom I am ready to plunge Europe and America into war. Then, I shall embark on the financial angle. Then, I shall force the bankers to send gold to Russia. Then,
THE DAY!”
Van Loan nodded grimly. So, it seemed, Hesterberg was as eager to see him again as Van had been to see Hesterberg. The Mad Red wanted those papers, and he could not get them without getting the Phantom first.
Yes," said Hesterberg inside the room. “This is the end. Now we have in our power the one man in the world who knows the true identity of the Phantom. He shall tell us who he is. Then we shall get the papers and the Phantom shall get — death!”
He paused a moment. Van strained his eyes so that he could see the dramatic tableau more clearly. Hesterberg’s guttural voice continued:
“So, Sligo, keep your wicked eyes on him and ask him who and where the Phantom is?”
The iron rung of the fire escape cut deeply into Van’s arm. Now he understood. Hesterberg had sent his hypnotic cripple to bring Havens here. Now, while he was under the cripple’s influence they were asking him who the Phantom was. That should, as Hesterberg had said, be the end. But Van reflected grimly that the Phantom was by no means through yet.
Sligo, the cripple, with the eye of death, took a step toward the helpless Havens. His gleaming agate gaze bored into those of the newspaper man. Hesterberg moved forward impatiently.
“All right,” he said testily. “Ask him, Sligo.”
Sligo nodded. Never taking his eyes from Havens’s face, he spoke.
“Listen to me,” he said.
Havens answered in a dull lifeless monotone.
“Yes, Master.”
Van’s blood boiled, to think that Havens should address this rat of the underworld as “Master.” Still he bided his time.
“Tell me,” went on the cripple. “Tell me, who is the Phantom?”
“The Phantom?” Havens repeated the name hesitatingly as his subconscious fought against his revealing the secret. Van could see the beads of sweat on Sligo’s brow as he used every ounce of his will to wring an answer from Havens’s lips.
“Yes,” he said, “the Phantom. Who is the Phantom? What is his name?”
“Ah, yes, the Phantom,” said Havens in that inanimate tone. “The Phantom, Master is R —”
That was enough for Van. He dropped down upon the iron rung. He leaned through the window with his gun in his hand. The automatic spoke once. Sligo, the cripple, uttered a sharp cry of pain and fell to the floor, the blood that ran from his temple crimsoning the rug.