laboratory if anything new developed.
IT was forty-eight hours later that an item in a late edition of an afternoon paper caught Van’s interest:
PRISON AUTHORITIES WILL ALLOW CONVICT
TO VISIT DYING RELATIVE
Those were the headlines. The item went on to state that the warden of the State penitentiary had received a request from Judd Moxley to be allowed to make a short visit to his cousin, Esmond Caulder. Caulder had expressed a wish to see his relative before he died.
There was a picture of Moxley. Van was impressed by his striking resemblance to the rest of the Caulder family. He had the same square jaw and high cheek bones as old Esmond. The same look of arrogant independence. In making a decision on his request the prison board had taken into consideration the fact that Moxley’s sentence would be up shortly.
Van studied Moxley’s face for a long time, then strode back to his microscopes and worked more feverishly than ever. It was plain that Moxley would be in greater danger out of jail than in. The thought that another murder was possibly brewing brought home to Van the need of haste. Soon, some way or other, he must have his reckoning with the Chief.
For two hours more Van isolated and examined particles of dust. Then at last he bent over the lens of his microscope in tense excitement. Tiny tell-tale outlines showed on his slide – outlines that he had seen somewhere before in the past week.
The silhouettes of different types of dust, Van knew, were different. He looked again at the label of the bag from which this dust had come, then abruptly he got up, lighted a cigarette, and paced his laboratory, deep in thought. He had run across one of the most interesting leads he’d met in the whole case.
The jangling of the telephone roused him from his reverie. It was Frank Havens of the
“Van, the big break has come! I’ve got a visitor who wants to see you. Simon Blackwell’s housekeeper – you remember, the old woman – is here asking for the Phantom. She won’t tell me what she wants; but she hints that she’s representing her master. She knows where he is, I think.”
“Good!” said Van. “That will be one point cleared up, anyway.”
“But don’t you get it?” snapped Havens. “It’s a trap obviously – a trap for you! It can’t be anything else. This woman is working with the Chief to bring about the death of the Phantom.”
“You think so?”
“I do, certainly. But you can turn the tables against him. You can outwit this woman into making her betray her master.”
“There’s only one trouble with that,” Van answered. “It would take time – lots of it. And right now I’ve got something else on my mind – a direct clue to the Chief’s whereabouts. I’m practically certain he plans another murder tonight.”
“Where is he?” asked Havens. “If you know why not go get him?”
“To convince the police that I have the right man,” said Van tensely, “I’ve got to catch the Chief red- handed.”
“How?”
“Just this way,” said Van. “Judd Moxley’s coming out of prison tonight. He’s the one I think the Chief has marked for murder. So Moxley mustn’t leave the pen. It’s as much as his life’s worth. I want you to call up Farragut and ask him to meet me immediately in your office. I’m going to make arrangements to impersonate Moxley and leave jail in his place.”
CHAPTER XVIII
LATER, they met in Havens’s office, and Inspector Farragut shook his head.
“I’m against it!” he announced positively. “It’s dangerous as hell, Phantom, besides being unethical. Caulder’s dying and wants to see his cousin. You can’t play a trick like that with a man on his deathbed.”
Van shoved his hands in his pockets. His face was troubled.
“I know it seems like a dirty hoax, Inspector. But I’ll do my best to make Caulder think I’m his cousin visiting him. If I can make it stick he’ll be satisfied. Meantime we’ve got to consider that a man’s life’s at stake. I swear I’ve definite grounds for believing that Moxley’s marked as the next victim.”
Farragut frowned. “Havens here says that Blackwell’s old housekeeper wants to see you. She’s hinted that she knows where Blackwell is and has a message from him. We all think Blackwell’s the Chief. Why not get a little tough with her and make her lead us to him?”
“She wouldn’t,” snapped Van. “Not even if you used third degree methods. I sized that woman up the night we were out there. She’s loyal to her boss. It’d take patience, argument, and a lot of time to find out what she knows. And time is one thing we can’t spare, Inspector. Moxley will be leaving prison in less than an hour. How about it? Do I impersonate him, or are you willing to have another murder on your hands?”
Farragut weakened under Van’s steady gaze. He respected the Phantom’s judgment too much to keep on blocking him. He shrugged at last.
“Okay, Phantom,” he grumbled, “but you’d better let me go along with you to explain things to the warden and to Moxley.”
Van agreed willingly. There was a big possibility that Moxley might not take to his plan. If persuasion were necessary Inspector Farragut could help in his official capacity as Homicide Squad head by making Moxley realize his danger.
They took Farragut’s own car, a trimly uniformed police chauffeur at the wheel, and raced through the night with siren blaring till they got outside the city limits. Farragut’s face still showed disapproval.
He spoke grumblingly again.
“I’m not reconciled yet. You’ll be running a hell of a risk. We don’t know how or when the Chief will strike.”
His words echoed Van’s own thoughts. He didn’t know either just how or when the Chief would strike. If he made a miscalculation this time it might easily result in his own murder. He felt sure the Chief would attack again tonight somehow, somewhere. He had an idea – They rode on in silence for many minutes. Then Van was jerked out of his grim reverie by the squalling of the police car’s brakes. They’d been tearing over the State highway at a sixty-mile-an-hour clip. Now something white showed up under the long beam of their headlights in the exact center of the road. So great was their momentum that the police chauffeur had all he could do to stop before they reached it.
But Van, eyes hawklike, already saw that that white thing was a human figure. A woman! She was wearing a light polo coat. She lay half across both lanes of concrete, her silk-clad legs in one of them, her shoulders, arms and hatless head in the other. It seemed that she must have fallen or been thrown from a speeding car.
The sedan came to a stop twenty feet from her, and the chauffeur tooled it off to the side of the road. They all leaped out, eyes intent on that prone figure. It was a lonely stretch of highway, with barren ground and scrub thickets on both sides. Was this, Van wondered, another victim of cold-blooded murder?
“A girl,” breathed Farragut. “Look at that figure and those legs!”
They couldn’t see her face. Her head was turned away and covered by streamers of dark, wind-blown hair. Farragut spoke again as they reached her.
“She’s tied up! Her ankles and wrists are wired. She looks – dead.”
Horror gnawed at the Phantom’s mind. The girl seemed young, attractive. In trying to prevent one murder it looked as though they’d stumbled on the victim of another. But his feelings changed a moment later, when he stooped and touched her. For his hands encountered warm, yielding flesh.
“Not dead,” he said. “Knocked out or wounded.”
