Tycoon of Crime: Phantom Detective Saga. Robert Wallace
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Or just a shadow? The voice of the Manhattan inspector was barking questions in the receiver—but suddenly reaching a new decision, Bentley hung up without another word, without telling who he was.
He sneaked across the floor past the dozing clerk, glancing out. No one in sight. His imagination? Or perhaps a premonition. For the trail he had left would be wide open. They'd be after him.
He had done what had to be done immediately. Even as he had been talking he had realized he could not chance further information to any phone, nor tell what he knew to any police inspector. He must get to New York City, in person. He had phoned because he knew that not even a miracle could get him there before midnight, and at least he had warned the police, though they had no idea whose murder they were to prevent or who had given the information. But now—
As he hurried through the dark village streets, Bentley's eyes gleamed; those far-sighted eyes of the born flyer. There was one man to whom he could tell the whole ghastly story—the incredible story. The man who had been his boss when he was a newspaperman. Frank Havens, owner of the New York Clarion!
Havens would know what to do with this dynamite news that would be too inflammable for the police! For Havens knew how to contact the one person who could cope with such a thing; the great unknown detective who had unraveled other baffling and bloody enigmas.
"The Phantom!" Bentley's dry lips whispered, as they twisted in a crooked grin of hope. "The Phantom—must be—called!"
Chapter III.
Murder on the Balcony
Night in Manhattan. In Times Square, the city was wide awake and gay, the bright lights glaring. Crowds from the theaters were hurrying to nightclubs and restaurants. From the waterfront fog-horns tooted, factories still ground out their work, smoke belching from their chimneys. To the east, cars streamed like illuminated, linked chains across the bridges.
Other cars streamed west, too, to enter the Holland Tunnel, to whisk over the George Washington Bridge. There were but few lonely streets in the teeming metropolis.
Wall Street and the surrounding financial district were deserted, the office buildings rising like dark canyon walls. But its streets were still pounded by alert patrolmen.
The poverty-stricken tenement sections where evil figures stalked—drunks and derelicts, shifty underworld characters—also lay in sleepy gloom. And police were watchful, knowing that no night passed in these districts without some violence and bloodshed.
Police Inspector Thomas Gregg's bulking form sat in the cushioned shield-bearing limousine which was whisking him and a hard-eyed subordinate uptown, toward Grand Central, its short-wave radio bringing every police call that went out from Headquarters.
"I suppose that anonymous call from Mulford, New York, was from a crank," the inspector grumbled "But I guess it's just as well not to take chances. That voice I heard on the phone—There was something about it—something familiar. Kinda made me sure feel the tip was hot!" He pulled out his watch. "Pretty close to midnight. Get on up to Grand Central. If anybody thinks he's going to pull any murder there—"
* * *
In a huge, brightly lighted room six tense men sat at a long conference table, talking in low voices as they watched a wall-clock which showed that the hour of midnight was approaching.
A more diverse-looking group could not have been found. Yet these six men were all linked by mutual reputations in the field of science and engineering. All were famous throughout the country for their work in these lines.
Nor was that all that linked them.
There was another bond which seemed to hold them together as with some hidden magnet. A strange, furtive bond—one of conflicting fear and hope.
Near the unoccupied head of the table Vincent Brooks, one of the country's leading electrical engineers, ran a gaunt hand over his long, rugged face, his dark, hard eyes narrowing beneath beetling brows.
Next to him a wiry man with a shock of grey hair that kept getting into his eyes, hunched tensely forward. Leland Sprague, a surveyor.
Beside those two sat Joseph Ware and Paul Talbert. Ware was a quiet, well-built, grey-haired man who was a specialist in waterways and dams. Paul Talbert, a shoring engineer, was broad-shouldered, with a wind-burned face, a military mustache, blond hair and clear, far-seeing eyes.
The fifth man of the group, solid-built but pallid-faced, with crow's-feet under his eyes, toyed nervously with a pencil. He was a geologist named Donald Vaughan.
Finally, running his hand over his high, thin-haired skull, was John Eldridge, another surveyor.
"Well, gentlemen?" Paul Talbert spoke, sitting erect, his mustache bristling. "I still say the time is opportune! Everything has worked out as we planned it! We have only to go ahead." His eyes gleamed.
"What about the threats?" Joseph Ware demurred. The quiet-looking waterways man's voice was low and tense, and only his eyes showed the panic he kept from his quiet face, "Remember, I've been getting them. And now that we've learned what happened to Truesdale and Garth—"
"You're jumping to conclusions, Ware!" Sprague broke in, a little shrilly, pushing back his shock of grey hair. "They haven't found that plane yet! We don't know for sure."
"Besides, it was undoubtedly an accident, that disaster!"
"Undoubtedly." Talbert agreed. "And while it means a delay, we can still go ahead as we planned! This is no time for faint heartedness! Don't forget what's in this for all of us if it works out!"
There was a slight stir around the table. Greed, that dark driving urge which at times can overcome the best of men, flashed in several eyes. Greed—and fear!
"I agree with Talbert!" Vincent Brooks, the rugged-faced electrical engineer, clipped. He laughed harshly. "And I have been warned myself by these strange phone messages! But whoever this Tycoon is, he can't know our secret. Only we know it at this present moment! And no one but ourselves will ever know it fully!"
"Lord, if it ever leaked out!" Donald Vaughan strained forward, the crows-feet twitching under his eyes. "If this Tycoon suspected it he could ruin us all!" He shook his head. "And if the Government ever knew—"
He broke off abruptly, as if not daring to finish. And again the current of invisible fear coursed about the table.
"We've got to keep our heads!" Eldridge said, his thin-haired head bobbing. "We're in this thing together no matter what happens."
Like an invisible curtain a hush closed down on the group. Lips clamped suddenly tight. Eyes hid the emotions which a moment before had shown stark and clear.
The frosted glass door leading from an anteroom had opened unceremoniously. Three more men came in.
The one in advance, a heavy-set man, florid of face, his head bald save for a fringe of iron-grey hair, strode toward the table.
"Good evening, gentlemen! Glad to see all of you got here early. I hope you have made yourselves at home here in our executive office."
In the sudden silence, the six scientists heard the muffled but continuous bustle of sound outside the offices; the movement of hundreds of feet; and, further away, an occasional clang of bells, a hiss of air-brakes.
This big room, the New York office of the Empire and Southwest Railway, was situated on the gallery floor of Manhattan's biggest railway terminal, the Grand Central, famous throughout a continent.
Talbert was the first to speak, in a quiet, hard voice, to the rugged man who had strode forward.
"Hello, Strickland! We've been waiting for you!"
James Strickland, vice-president of the Empire and Southwest Railway, moved to the head of the table and took the chair there.