The Phantom Detective: Fangs of Murder. Robert Wallace
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a shrill, high-pitched scream left his lips.
“God!” he shrieked. “The Fang! He’s killed the Marcys. We told you, Inspector Gregg — but you wouldn’t believe —”
“Get a grip on yourself, man!” snapped Gregg curtly. “We’ll see about this. There’s been murder, yes; but shut up about this Fang business if you don’t want publicity. You’re as jittery as a woman.”
He turned to the police captain near at hand. “Okay, Donaldson, boil it down for me — quick!”
“Very little, Inspector,” was the grimly terse answer. “No sound, nobody seen approaching or leaving the car because all eyes were on the docking Charlemagne. A late-arriving taxi driver noticed the slumped body of the chauffeur, took one look, and yelled for help. We are holding him for questioning. Rather weird, sir.”
“Check,” nodded Gregg. “I’ll say it’s weird. No clues?”
“Only this, sir,” said the captain, and he held out a large saber tooth — a tiger fang. “I found this in the front seat by the chauffeur.”
As he stared, Gregg’s color drained out of his cheeks. Was it possible, after all, that Al Millett had come back after a lapse of twenty years to avenge himself for a fancied wrong?
His eyes went to the big, lighted liner with her rakishly slanted funnels still smoking at her berth. His men had watched every egress from that vessel. Seven anxious and determined men had gazed carefully at each disembarking passenger. After forewarning his victims, had some fantastic, theatrically inclined madman eluded all detection and slipped ashore to commit his first murder?
“All right, Donaldson,” Gregg spoke. “You’re in charge. Get pics, prints, suspects — everything you can. I’ll go over it with you later. As for you seven gentlemen, I think, perhaps, you’d better go —”
A cop from a prowl car dashed up.
“Inspector,” he saluted hurriedly, “there’s been a near-riot at the Marcy Gold Slipper. Monk Gorman at the head of a big mob pulled a hijack stunt right under the noses of the theater crowds. Captain Waltham is over there hollering for you.”
Marcy Gold Slipper! The finest, newest playhouse the Marcy brothers had built. And Monk Gorman — Monk Gorman, a muscle-man of no outstanding intelligence — had headed a successful robbery there! Robbery at their own theater while the Marcys themselves got murdered here! It didn’t make sense, didn’t tie in with the story of the nine alarmed men at all.
“On second thought,” Gregg said to the white-lipped and shivering men behind him — towering figures in the entertainment world, but frightened children beside him now — “you men had better go home and stay there until you hear from me again. As soon as I look into both of these crimes closely, I’ll get in touch with each of you. I’ll furnish a police escort to see you home, a guard to stay all night, if you wish.”
Paul Corbin, the excitable, laughed hysterically. He was assisted away by two uniformed officers. His wild cry came back over his shoulder.
“We’ll need the whole police force to guard us now, Inspector Gregg,” he shouted sobbingly. “For whoever heard of murder by appointment?”
CHAPTER III
ENTER THE PHANTOM
THE TOWERING, MIDTOWN CLARION Building, which housed the city’s leading newspaper reared high in the night mists. Its windows glowed with lights; from its lower floors came the pounding of rotary presses — giving evidence that here activity went on perpetually, day and night.
It was well after midnight when a large but unobtrusive Cadillac sedan swung around the corner, its lights dim. It slowed near the chrome and glass doors which were the imposing front entrance of the Clarion Building.
Four slouch-hatted men peered from the open front and rear windows of the sedan. Their hat brims, snapped low, obscured their hard, brutal faces.
“Stop right here, Tony.” A broken-nosed man leaned forward from the rear to tap a pallid, nervous driver.
“Okay, Gus!” Tony applied the brakes, but even when he had the car stopped at the curb, he kept the engine purring. “Hope this ain’t gonna take long —”
“Don’t be so jittery! This is a cinch!” Gus was leaning from the window, eyes covering the pavement. Every time a pedestrian neared the front doors of the building, especially when some hurrying newsman or other person connected with the paper entered those doors, Gus tensed a little, hand darting to his armpit holster. “Be ready, guys — we gotta pull this job smooth!”
“Say, who we gonna smoke?” the hatchet-faced man next to Gus demanded now. “This is the Clarion’s joint, ain’t it? Seems to me I heard somethin’ special about this place —”
“You sure did, Choppy!” the fourth man, in the front, spoke through a gash of a mouth from which a cigarette dangled to bob with his words. “Hell, the Clarion’s the rag that acts the contact for that bird called the Phantom!”
A strange awed dread followed the pronunciation of that sobriquet — a dread which seemed instantly to course through his companions, like a wave. Hate, the hate born of utter fear, gleamed from their eyes.
The Phantom! Throughout the underworld of the entire nation, that name had become a byword of fear. The Phantom, lone Nemesis of Crime, a living, elusive scourge who personified the antidote to crime!
“The Phantom!” Tony cried, hoarsely now. “Say, Gus — is that who we’re waitin’ for?”
Gus quickly shook his head. “Take it easy, guys! The Big Shot ain’t interested in anyone unless he sticks his nose into this — which he won’t if he’s got brains! They say the Phantom made things pretty tough for us, sendin’ so many of us up the river — but this boss is one guy he can’t buck! Naw, we ain’t after that slippery bird. We’re just doin’ a job on a punk named Eddie Collins, who draws them funnies you see in the papers.”
“Funnies? You mean comic cartoons?” the gash-mouthed man said in surprise. “Hell, what do we want to bump a guy who draws them for?”
“Maybe the Big Shot don’t like his funny pitchers, Pete,” Tony put in, with sardonic mirth.
“You don’t know how right you are!” Gus chortled, a purposeful look in his eyes. “But you just follow my lead — I’m runnin’ this job. ’Course I’d rather be with Monk and the rest — they got another big heist job. The boss certainly knows how to get things movin’ fast — why, he’s only taken over the mobs last night, and we’ve done more than we did in years for our old big shots! The coppers’ll never keep up with us now! Hell, there was hundreds of ’em down at that pier when the boat landed, and right under their noses —” he paused, as if realizing he was getting loquacious.
BUT THE OTHERS BROKE IN eagerly now. “You was there, Gus. Did you see him?”
The broken-nosed Gus swelled instinctively with a sense of importance. “Sure,” his voice was unconvincingly casual. “Sure I seen him.”
“What’d he look like, Gus? What kinda guy was he?”
“Well now — he was kinda muffled up in a coat. Couldn’t spot his mug. But I seen his work — and that was enough! What he done to them two brothers, all by himself —” Despite himself he gave a shudder. “Don’t know how the hell he done it. I’d sure hate to be on the wrong side o’ that guy, and —”
Abruptly he broke off, body tensing, hand snaking from his armpit holster. A taxi had just pulled to the curb, ahead of the parked sedan. Out of it leaped a figure, turning in the gloom as the cab rolled on its way.
The figure strode down the pavement towards the Clarion entrance. Light from a street-lamp revealed him in the next instant. A stocky young man, hardly more than a grown kid — he was walking hurriedly, carrying a flat envelope under one arm.
“It’s