Tycoon of Crime: Phantom Detective Saga. Robert Wallace
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joined them. It was he who had made this outburst. His agitation seemed to have driven away all remembrance of his anger; his face was ashen. Madly he waved towards the coursing, illuminated words.
"The sign!" he choked. "He must have got at the box that makes the sign go!"
But while Jenson and Harvey both looked as bewildered as Strickland, the scientists in the group had all jerked rigid, their faces blanching.
Even the hard-featured Paul Talbert looked shaken.
Then Vincent Brooks, who had made the sign, suddenly dashed toward the gallery stair. John Eldridge, the thin-haired surveyor, also broke away at a run.
The bold words which thousands read continued to leap into view, and run around the sign like letters of fire.
—SOME HAVE LEARNED THIS VERY NIGHT OF MY POWER—OTHERS WILL SOON LEARN—MORE BLOOD WILL BE SPILLED—MORE WILL DIE—TAKE THIS LAST WARNING—
The explosion was deafening!
It crashed thunderously in the spacious interior of the dome-ceilinged concourse, the sheer concussion hurling many of the gaping crowd off balance.
From the center of the balcony, above the coursing sign, had leaped a blinding, hissing sheet of flame! The sign went dark even as the detonation followed. And at the same instant—
A scream of horror burst from scores of throats as, whisked off the balcony like some mere feather, a human shape came hurtling straight down—a shape of limp but flailing arms and legs.
That the body didn't fall on the panic-stricken crowd seemed sheer luck. With a ghastly thud it crashed to the tiled flooring beneath the balcony.
Strickland, Jenson, and the rest of their group rushed over as the din rose higher, though railway police were struggling to restore order.
They reached the inert heap on the floor, looked down. A scream broke from Charles Sprague, who pointed.
"It's Eldridge! Good God—Eldridge!"
John Eldridge was a gruesome sight. His body was a maimed, bloody heap which stained crimson the white-tiled floor. A whole portion of his chest had been blown out. A gaping hole showed the broken bones, ripped flesh, tatters of clothes. His face was frozen in a grimace of contorted agony, the eyes glazed and protruding like marbles.
Strickland cried out hoarsely. "And he was blown off the balcony—just when the sign went off! Where's Brooks? Brooks should know about the sign!"
His question was quickly answered by Donald Vaughan. The geologist had rushed up to the balcony, and his voice called down shakily. The rest hurried up there, oblivious that Andrew Harvey was no longer with them.
They found what was left of Vincent Brooks piled against the balcony wall. His head had almost been severed from his torso by the explosion. The chin was blown away, leaving a broken bulge of bloody jaw-bone. The features, bloated in death, were barely recognizable.
Opposite the corpse, on the stone balcony construction, was a shattered box of metal, its parts strewn about.
Strickland stared at it.
"That's where the strip that controlled the sign was running!" he burst out hoarsely. "It's blown to hell! This is ghastly—ghastly!"
Quick glances were shot up and down the balcony. It was empty. But the crowds from below, in mingled panic and morbid curiosity, were already surging up the stairs. Railway police fought them back. Then came the shrill whistles of regular city police on duty in this precinct.
And outside in the night, in the next moment, rose the scream of sirens.
The law was coming swiftly. And a certain shield-bearing limousine carrying a worried inspector was now hurtling straight to the terminal.
Chapter IV.
The Corpse on the Pavement
Richard Curtis Van Loan, debonair young society man and bon vivant, turned his sixteen-cylindered Cadillac roadster onto upper Park Avenue and headed downtown through a neighborhood—which, in this section, was shabby and unkempt.
A slender, dark-haired girl in a pert, Buddhistic hat sat beside Van Loan, her dark, liquid eyes wistfully stealing now and then to his well-cut profile, etched in the dashboard lights.
In the spacious rumble seat, another couple sat, in each other's arms, and it could have been seen at a glance that they were newlyweds. The girl, blond and hatless, clung possessively to the young groom who had been one of the social register's most eligible bachelors until he had looked into her blue eyes.
"Say, where are you taking us, Dick?" the man suddenly leaned forward to ask.
"To my apartment," drawled Van Loan, without turning from the wheel, "where we will do justice, with champagne, to your marriage, then let you go off on your honeymoon in peace. Do you agree, Muriel?"
Muriel Havens smiled up at him.
"If you ask me, I have a sneaking suspicion the newlyweds are just dying to get rid of us!"
"Now Muriel!" the girl in the back protested. "We're not leaving until tomorrow. We even hoped to get your father's blessing before we went. Do you suppose we'll get a chance to see him?"
Muriel sighed. "I don't know. The paper's been keeping him pretty busy. He's in his office night and day."
"Isn't it extraordinary," Van Loan drawled languidly, "how some men will bury themselves in work? Why doesn't your dad let the Clarion run merrily along, Muriel, and step out for a good time?"
Muriel Havens's small but firm chin lifted. A momentary anger swept her eyes.
"Some people wouldn't understand it, I guess," she said pointedly. "But Dad feels he's doing something useful in this world."
Van Loan made a sad, clucking sound with his tongue.
"Ouch!" he said. "That remark has a vaguely personal tinge. But really, can you imagine me getting up the energy to indulge in hard labor?" He stifled a yawn.
On Muriel's lovely, intelligent face was disappointment. She could not have felt surprised.
Richard Curtis Van Loan was hardly a man of action. Good-natured, lazy, he fitted only into the social set, whiling away the hours with his select friends in pleasure and amusement. Because he was handsome and too wealthy for any one man, he was one whom doting mothers longed to have their daughters ensnare.
Yet, oddly, Muriel Havens had never accepted Van Loan as a mere lazy, social parasite, an idler who gayly flung to the winds the wealth his father had slaved to attain.
Again she glanced at the well-built young man beside her; at his strong hands, gripping the wheel with steady ease. And she shook her head, her lips pressed against any words of protest she might have felt like uttering.
As the roadster continued downtown the avenue changed in aspect. The shabby district suddenly gave way to Manhattan's most exclusive and wealthy residential section. They were riding down past the green-parked "islands" under which trains rumbled.
"Why so silent, Newlyweds?" Van drawled. "This is a celebration, not a funeral."
"Oh, don't mind us!" the young bridegroom laughed. "We're just sitting here smugly enjoying the idea of being married. And let me tell you, Dick, it's great! Why don't you try it sometime?"
"It is a thought," Van Loan grinned—and looked at Muriel Havens. For a moment, she saw in his eyes something that was seldom there; and so briefly now that she might have only imagined it. It was so totally out of gear with the languid, idling Van Loan.
Van saw her dark eyes glow—for that one moment. And turned back to the wheel, covering his expression with another suppressed ostentatious yawn.
Dick