“Martinis.” Using a handkerchief, Van picked up one of the glasses and held it to the light, scrutinizing its rim. Then he did the same thing to the other glass. This one seemed to interest him more. “The faintest trace of lipstick.” He put the glass back.
“A dame!” Steve’s head jerked up.
“You said the doors and windows were all locked when you got in here around midnight?”
“Yes. I checked that myself – after we found the body and while waiting for the sheriff,” Huston answered. “Everything was locked up tight.”
The Phantom nodded. “That might indicate young Arden’s killer was expected. That Arden had an appointment with him – or her. What about this eight ball you mentioned?”
Steve explained the pool ball’s position on the floor. The Phantom’s disguised face mirrored no expression, but the sardonic relation of the pool ball to the murder impressed itself upon his mind. It indicated a killer with an ironic sense of humor. Or, possibly, there was something grimly purposeful in the eight ball’s being where it was found.
A few minutes later Sheriff McCabe returned with two men who had come in to remove Arthur Arden’s body to the local mortuary. The Phantom always carried his personal identification in a secret pocket. That was in the form of a tiny domino mask plate. It was known to the law throughout the world; and McCabe, when Van flashed it on him, was duly impressed.
“The Phantom!” The sheriff’s gaze swept over Van, wonderingly. “Never thought I’d meet you. But how -?”
Van knew what he meant to say. Like Steve, Sheriff McCabe was puzzled by his abrupt presence there. The Phantom never explained the how or why of a situation. Changing the subject, and leaving the sheriff’s question unanswered, he asked one of his own.
“You found the gun?”
“Not a sign of it.” McCabe Shook his head. “I had my men outside, working over the grounds with floodlights. No luck. We didn’t come up with anything.”
“What about servants,” the Phantom went on to ask. “Was young Arden alone here?”
“That’s right. He had a habit of stopping off at the lodge every now and then. By himself. According to his father, there wasn’t anyone with him.”
The Phantom, said, “Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll, browse around.”
McCabe rubbed his chin. “Count on me for anything I can do. But I don’t reckon there’ll be much. Looks to me like this case is about the toughest we’ve ever had down here.” He shrugged. “Not a clue.”
The Phantom had his own ideas on that subject. Leaving McCabe, he wandered down the long hall and into the billiard room where death had overtaken Arthur Arden at ten o’clock that night.
The Phantom shut the door behind him. The lights were still on. He remained motionless for a minute or two, mentally gauging the distance from where Arden’s dead body had lain to the doorway. The red stain on the floor was the X that marked the spot. The killer could have shot him from the doorway. According to Steve, there were no powder burns on Arden’s jacket or sports shirt.
The thing that had caught the Phantom’s eye when he had been in the room before took him around one of the pool tables.
It lay half in the shadow cast by the table’s overhang, half in light. To anyone noticing it, the little drift of bronze-colored powder on the wide-planked floor might have resembled dust. But to the Phantom it had a peculiar interest.
Someone, leaning against the pool table, might have shaken that powder out of his pocket when reaching for a cigarette – or a gun. Van dropped to a knee and scooped some of the substance into the palm: of his hand. It was odorless. He held it to the light, noticing its glinting particles. Finally he used an envelope to hold as much of the metallic powder as he could scrape up.
The sheriff’s men had tramped all over the room. The Phantom’s keen gaze flashed around. If there had been more clues, they had been obliterated by the heavy feet of the law.
Steve, digging up a cousin of one of the constables who ran an auto-repair shop at the north end of the lake, was watching the man tinker with Havens’s car when the Phantom went outside. The Phantom breathed in the cool night air The moon had gone under a cloud, and the landscape was darkly somber. Down the private road, the sheriff’s men were stowing away the last of the lighting equipment. The breeze in the trees made a sighing, eerie sound.
The Phantom went through the rhododendron hedge. The garage was somewhere back and to the east of the lodge. His pocket flashlight, with its special adjustable lens, cut a path in the gloom. The Phantom wanted a look at the garage. The thought of the two cocktail glasses remained sharply in his mind. If Arthur Arden had had a feminine guest – and the faint trace of lipstick on the glass indicated he had – had he brought her to the lodge or had she come there in her own car?
It was a four-car garage with the same slate roof and architecture of the lodge. The gravel driveway ended in a wide cement apron. The Phantom’s torch roved inquisitively. There were tire marks in the gravel, but they might have been made by one of the sheriff’s cars. The Phantom walked a few feet down the driveway.
He stopped. On one side was a strip of loam, half moss and half leaf-covered. A few drops of engine oil, or chassis grease, showed a car had been parked there. Van’s flash focused on the dirt below the moss. He bent closer to scrutinize the unmistakable heel prints of a woman’s shoe.
Then something white among the leaves caught his attention. He leaned over and picked up a gardenia. White and wax-like, it was as fresh and perfect as if it had just come out of a florist’s refrigerator.
The Phantom put the flower in his pocket and was turning to go back to the lodge when suddenly his nerves whipped a warning. He clicked off his flashlight, stood immovable, eyes and ears strained. His highly developed sixth sense that told him of impending danger was seldom wrong. Someone – something – was out in the bulking blackness beyond him – watching!
After a minute the Phantom picked up a handful of gravel He tossed it into the shrubbery, listening to it rattle against the leaves of the plants there. Nothing happened. Turning, he walked a few yards down the driveway, letting the cut stone crunch noisily under his shoes before he stepped over to the soft loam and retraced his steps silently.
For an instant he thought the ruse was going to work. That the watcher in the dark, thinking he had gone, would come into the open. Close to the spot where he had previously stood, the Phantom waited.
After a minute or two he heard a faint rustle in the shrubbery. But instead of coming toward him, the sounds faded in the distance. Almost at the same moment the moon came out from behind the clouds.
In its silver shine the Phantom had a glimpse of a man’s blurred figure making its way down the side of the cliff.
CHAPTER IV
URGENTLY, the Phantom pressed forward, following, but not with much hope of any great success. The tangle of underbrush slowed him considerably. By the time he had found the path that led down from the cliff, the figure in the moonlight had vanished.
After a pause Van heard the rapid putt of an outboard motor. A boat had left a cove some distance north of where he stood, a boat that seemed to hug the shore, keeping well within the shadows. Then, like the rustle in the shrubbery, the echoes of its engine died out in the night.
The Phantom followed the path down to the shore. Matthew Arden’s boathouse and dock were around a bend, a short walk from where the path ended. The Phantom, on the dock, looked up and down the lake. There were lights in a building on the opposite shore. He searched the northern stretch of Lake Candle for a sign of the boat he had heard. But nothing moved up there except the dance of the lake water in the moonlight.
An empty, cellophane-wrapped cigarette package lay crumpled on the dock. The Phantom picked it up. The absence of dampness indicated it hadn’t been there too long. He studied the boathouse, noticing its double doors
