The Golden Circle (8 page)

"As long as you're here," suggested the Phantom, "stay and talk a while."

Setting the tray aside, Mimi said, "Okay. First we can chat about who you are. I heard something last night about your name being Walker. What happened to the Devlin we all know and love?"

"You can keep thinking of me as Devlin if you'd like. For now I'm Walker, though."

The girl knelt beside the breakfast she'd brought, reaching for the top hotcake on the stack. "Sure you don't want any? Well, I might as well then." She rolled the flapjack into a cylinder and nibbled on it.

"There's something else we can discuss, Mimi," he said. "I'd like to know where I am. Mara never got around to explaining."

The dark girl frowned up at him. "Oh, so she's the one who beat me to the punch on your breakfast," she said. "What do you think of dear Mara?"

"She's very amiable," said the Phantom. "Dresses well, and is probably well-read. Now tell me where you folks have got me bottled up."

Mimi gestured at the half open metal door. "No big secret. We're on Long Island."

"Is that the Atlantic I hear out there?"

'It's Long Island Sound," replied Mimi. "We're on that side of the island, facing Bridgeport across the Sound and roughly an hour and a half out from New York City."

The Phantom raised his eyes toward the low ceiling. "What's on top of my little prison here?"

"A house, what else?" she said. "Big old rambling Victorian mansion sort of place."

"This is golden arrow headquarters?"

Mimi stood up, licking at her fingers. "One of them anyway," she answered. "I notice you haven't lost your curiosity, Walker-Devlin. Even though it's gotten you into quite a mess."

"Got me out of a lot of tight places, too," he said. "Do you know when the vote is going to take place?"

The girl was eyeing the tray. "What vote?" She rolled up another pancake. '1 can eat and eat and it never shows. That's a great gift to have. Mara, on the other hand, practically has to exist on bread and.. .."

The Phantom put in, "I've suggested to Mara that I be allowed to join your organization."

"Oh, really? That might be nice." The dark girl smiled at him. "The few guys we deal with aren't much to look at. Though Sweeney Todd is sort of sparsely attractive. Trouble there is, he's got a mean streak and...."

"The vote?" reminded the masked man.

"Can't be until tonight," said Mimi after she'd finished the second hotcake. "I should have brought you some maple syrup along with the marmalade. If they're voting on you, well, it takes the whole group. Which means tonight, since some of the girls have other jobs by day. May be quite late, with some of them having to depend on the Long Island Railroad. And you know how unreliable that can be. Or do you?"

"I've heard rumors."

"What I mean is," said the girl as she stood to face him, "you sometimes strike me as . . . well, sort of different, sort of alien. I don't mean like you came over from Sweden or something, but more like a ..."

"Martian," suggested the Phantom, grinning.

"In a way, yes." Mimi smiled back at him, gave a small shrug. "I don't know. Maybe it's only because you're not like anybody I've met up until now."

"Running with a gang of jewel thieves can restrict your social opportunities."

Mimi said, "Don't start a sermon. I heard enough of those back home in . . . well, back home." She crossed to the doorway. "I hope you make it, Walker. YouH get my vote, for what it's worth."

"A lot," he told her.

She started to say something more. Instead she turned away.

"Nothing but familiar faces," said the Phantom when his cell clicked open many hours later.

This time it was Nita, the black girl who worked 67

for Sweeney Todd. "Hi. They sent me to fetch you." Lamplight poured in from the corridor, the sun had set. "Come along and stay just ahead of me." She beckoned with the snubnose .32 revolver in her right hand.

"Everyone's assembled?"

"Everyone who's going to be."

"Have they voted already?"

"Nope, they want to get a look at you first."

Two other girls were waiting in the corridor, both carrying hand guns.

The corridor floor consisted of unfinished planking. The stairs at its end had ten steps. The Phantom started toward the swayback steps, with the three girls trailing behind.

When they were up on the ground floor, Nita told the Phantom, "Walk straight along here and on through the doorway up ahead."

The upstairs hall was carpeted. There was a pale rose and a thorn pattern underfoot. An authentic looking Tiffany lamp glowed on a sandlewood table midway along. The Phantom became aware of talking on the other side of the carved wooden door.

When he turned the gold knob, the talking ceased abruptly.

An intense glare hit him when he stepped into the big meeting room. All the light was concentrated on a circle in the center of the floor. Tiers of seats rose up in circles around the brightly fit area. It was like an operating theater. "And I'm the patient," said the Phantom.

"What?" Nita pushed him toward the desk and chair which were the only pieces of furniture in the glaring circle.

"I get the feeling I'm going to be operated on."

"Maybe so," said Nita. "Go and stand by the desk."

The low-hanging overhead fights burned directly

down on him. He was aware of many women seated all around him. He could sense them, at least two dozen or more. A few of them shifted in their chairs, some whispered. A complex mixture of several par- fumes drifted down to him, along with wisps of cigarette smoke.

The Phantom's jungle life in the
Deep Woods
had developed many characteristics in him. One was patience. He stood calmly beside the desk, waiting. Not uneasy, not restless. Simply waiting.

As the minutes passed, the whispering changed to murmuring. The masked man caught an assortment of comments about himself coming down out of the circling darkness.

Then Mara, wearing a dark floor length gown, was beside him. She held up one slim hand and silence returned. "Sisters," she announced, "this is Walker. You've already heard him discussed. Now you have had a chance to study and appraise the man. All that remains is to vote."

She took hold of the Phantom's hand, leading him to the edge of the circle of light Pressing his hand, she whispered, "Good luck."

Nita met him in the shadows. "We go back downstairs."

Out in the hallway, the Phantom asked, "Don't you get to vote?"

"I already filed an absentee ballot."

"Pro or con?"

"What do you think?" She nudged him ahead with her gun.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mara lit a lavender tinted cigarette. From the window beside her she could look out on the Sound. Their big old Victorian house stood on the edge of a cliff, three hundred feet above the beach. The water was a glistening black and across it the Connecticut coastline was only a few faint pinpricks of light. Exhaling smoke, she returned her gaze to the five other women in the room. "It's not that at all," she insisted.

Beth, a gaunt colorless woman of fifty-six, shook her head. She was sitting unright in a hardback wooden chair she always chose when the ruling six of the golden arrow circle had their meetings in this library. "Certainly, it is," she said in a low voice. "You've developed . . . developed what I can only characterize as a schoolgirl crush on this man. Because of that you want us to jeopardize the entire organization. We've had, as I shouldn't have to remind you, two very successful years. We did what we did with a minimum of masculine assistance."

Seated at a small drop-front desk was Mimi. Twenty-five unfolded slips of paper were scattered on the blotter in front of her. "Beth, the girls don't seem to agree with you. The vote was unanimous. They all want Walker to join the golden arrow."

"Walker," snorted the gaunt Beth. "I'm beginning

to wonder if we were wise to include you on the governing body of this organization, Mimi. Sometimes you act as moonstruck and immature as the rawest recruit." She plucked a tiny cigar out of her coat pocket, lit it with a bullet-shaped lighter. "All the sisters know about Walker is what you and Mara told them. Most of that, I must remind you, is based entirely on what the man himself chose to tell. Any attorney worth his salt would call that nothing more than hearsay evidence."

Mara said, "You've just admitted we've been highly successful, Beth. That success isn't based on your judgment alone, you know. It's been due to all of us, the six of us in this room in particular."

The three other women, who had been silent up until now, murmured their agreement.

"I'd say I'm a pretty good judge of people," continued the blonde Mara. "I feel Walker will be valuable to us."

"Feel,"
snapped the gaunt woman. "There's the real rub, dear Mara. You
feel
but you do not
think.
You accept this man simply on his word, without doing one single bit of checking. For all you know he's a police stooge, someone planted on us."

"The cops tried to shoot him at the masked ball," Mimi pointed out. "They don't do that with their usual undercover men."

Beth sucked on her little cigar. "Our old friend, Lt Colma, is not above staging an incident Bullets are relatively cheap."

"Come on now, Beth," said Mara. "If Colma, or anyone else in the robbery division, so much as suspected any of us, he would have been much more obvious that this. He's a blunt man, fast-acting."

"So you believe," said Beth.

Mimi placed both her hands flat on the ballots. "Why don't we aim for a compromise, Beth? Since

everyone except you would like to have Walker join, why not let him and ..

"I fail to see a compromise in that, Mimi."

"I'm coming to that," said the dark girl, tossing her head impatiently. "We can let Walker join on a trial basis. Say for a week or two. It shouldn't be too tough to keep an eye on him, monitor his actions."

"It would be much safer," said Beth as she blew smoke toward the shadowy ceiling, "to drop him into the underground river which runs underneath this place and let him disappear into the Sound. Much safer, and a damn bit smarter."

Mimi said, "He can't do us any great harm in a week."

"That's what they said about the Trojan Horse." Beth held the cigar between her small even teeth and cracked her knuckles.

"We've made concessions to you in the past, Beth," reminded Mara. "Why can't you...."

"Very well," said the gaunt woman in a resigned voice. "Let your buddy boy join. But, mind you, if he makes one false move, I won't wait for any more votes. I'll shoot him down where he stands."

"Did I wake you?" asked Mimi. She was standing in the doorway of the Phantom's cell.

The masked man shook his head. "No."

The dark girl took three steps forward, smiling. "You made it, Walker. Welcome to the club," she told him. "It was ... it was unanimous."

The Phantom said, "You hesitated. Do I have some opposition?"

"Well, you might as well know it, since youH find out soon enough. Beth doesn't like the idea at all."

"Sounds like Beth simply doesn't like me," he said, "I guess I didn't impress her during our brief meeting on the train. Or last night when she tried to crack my skull."

"Beth is . . . well, sort of strange," said Mimi. "She's very clever really, much more so than I am. She's very good at the logistics end of our business."

"A criminal mastermind?" suggested the Phantom.

"Almost," said the girl. "Anyway, watch out for her. She's got the notion you're some sort of fake. A cop, maybe."