Fangs of Murder: Phantom Detective Saga. Robert Wallace
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"Well, gentlemen," grunted Inspector Gregg a bit peevishly an hour later. "After all your hullabaloo, your Nemesis doesn't seem to have even got off the boat. If you can wait another hour, I'll have the ship inspected from stem to stern to make sure your man is not aboard."
"Please," whispered Meade in his odd articulation. "We must be certain."
"Where's Andrews?" demanded Drake suddenly. "He's supposed to be watching the D to G section."
"There he is," Gregg pointed. "Guess he just went down to the washroom for a moment. You haven't seen this building until you tour it. It is conveniently arranged so that everything is accessible from almost any part of building or grounds. Well-engineered construction. Well, let's go on board and—"
The sudden wail of a police ambulance beat upon their eardrums and rose in a sharp crescendo of sound. Police whistles shrilled. Somewhere a woman screamed. A uniformed officer dashed up to Inspector Gregg and began murmuring in his ear. At once Gregg stiffened. He motioned brusquely for the policeman to lead the way. As they followed, very white of face, the seven elderly men who had been responsible for him being here tonight fell in line as he passed their posts, and streamed along after him.
Down in the parking area the night had turned into bedlam. Red-faced patrolmen were forming lines to keep back the surging crowd and divert traffic. Screaming sirens announced the arrival of radio and squad cars. Frantic terror clutched at the hearts of the men following the chief detective as they realized the direction they were heading.
The Marcy limousine, still in an area of shadows, but no longer avoiding publicity, was before them. The car itself was harshly outlined now in the concentrated glare of police hand torches. The first thing of significance that caught Inspector Gregg's eye was the liveried chauffeur, lolling over his wheel. The back of his skull was a bloody ruin, bashed in by some blunt instrument.
The inspector's eyes went to the rear of the car. He braced himself for this look. The uniformed man had told him what he would find. Even so, hardened to crime as he was, he recoiled. His usually placid face went grey, eyes widening in a shock of horror and revulsion.
Benjamin and Lyle Marcy were still together in the back seat, but they had slumped down. Where their abdomens should have been, there was a gaping hole in each corpse, in the back of which the very spinal columns were exposed. Blood and viscera splattered and fouled the seat, the sides, and the floor of the tonneau.
The faces of the two brothers were frozen in grimaces of agonized horror. Their sightless, staring eyes seemed still to be looking at the hideous, brutal death monster that had struck them down. A very bad joke, indeed, Messrs. Marcy!
Paul Corbin had pushed forward behind the chief detective. He saw, and 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