Farragut caught hold of the girl, too, and they lifted her easily. The muscular tension of her lithe body told Van at once that she was conscious, aware of what they were doing. They got her face into the beam of the car’s headlights, and then Van gasped.
She was pale, drawn, her eyes filled with abject terror. Adhesive tape had been plastered over her lips. But Van knew instantly that he’d seen her before. She was the night club dancer, Dolly DeLong!
Farragut straightened and spoke beside him.
“I don’t get it! She seems okay. If anybody wanted her to get run over they should have made her wear something besides that white coat. You can see it a mile away. What do you make of it, Phantom?”
FOR answer, Van suddenly straightened and struck the inspector in the chest with the flat of his hand. Struck him so hard that Farragut went spinning back across the road and fell sprawling in the ditch. Van followed this seemingly mad movement by diving headlong himself. He shouted a hoarse warning to the police chauffeur.
“Run!”
But the man didn’t understand. Van’s lightning move was all that saved any of them. For the darkness a few feet away, just outside the glare of the police car’s headlights, broke into pinpoints of flame. The wicked chatter of three machine-guns sounded.
Van, landing in the ditch on his shoulder, with lead fanning the air above him, caught a glimpse of the police chauffeur moving like an automaton, reaching for his service automatic. But the gesture was mechanical, hardly more than a reflex action. The man had already been struck.
Horror filled Van as he saw the policeman’s face disintegrate before his eyes, saw his body double up as he pitched forward onto the concrete, spouting blood.
Van had had no possible time to prevent this cold-blooded murder of a fine young cop. He and Farragut were marked for death, too. The instant he’d recognized Dolly DeLong his quick brain had sensed the reason for her being there, the reason for that white coat, that tape across her mouth.
Bullets were probing for him again, kicking up a spray of frozen dirt beside the road. Van hurled himself forward, grabbing the inspector’s arm as he went past, dragging the inspector with him down the bank of the highway, pulling him through a white fence into a rocky gully. Quick flight at the moment was their only hope against that cyclone of flying lead.
There would be three bloody corpses instead of one if those machine-guns had their way. It was one of the most deadly ambushes the Phantom had ever run into.
Farragut recovered his breath from the blow the Phantom had struck him.
“They got Sheehan!” he gasped fiercely. “The dirty, lousy murderers!”
“It’s the Chief’s men,” Van said. “The ones who slipped through the drag-net. Somehow the Chief got to them, hired them to get us. They used Guido’s girl for bait. They knew we wouldn’t stop unless -”
There wasn’t time for more explanations. Van had delayed their murder, but hadn’t as yet prevented it. For slugs were raking the darkness, searching for them now. Van jerked out his own gun, fired back, and tried to circle along the side of the road toward the police car.
HE saw what the Chief’s motive was now. Somehow the Chief had guessed his move to impersonate Moxley. He had hired these men to prevent it at any cost. He wasn’t going to let the Phantom stop Moxley’s murder. Not only that, orders had been given for the Phantom and Inspector Farragut to be ruthlessly destroyed. Van knew it was a fight to the death now – a fight with the Chief’s three remaining men, while the Chief carried out his sinister plan.
And the killers hiding in darkness on the other side of the highway obviously didn’t intend to let Van and Farragut make a getaway in the parked police car even if they could reach it. One of the yammering machine-guns was turned on the police sedan suddenly. Van heard glass shatter, heard bullets strike against metal. The next instant the big headlights went out as the car’s wiring was chopped to pieces.
In the impenetrable darkness that followed the killers crept forward. Van and the inspector were to be hunted down like rats.
“Drop!” hissed Van as machine-gun fire from two different angles swept toward them.
It was closer now. The murderers were advancing. Van and Farragut had found momentary shelter in a rocky hollow below the road. By lying flat against the cold ground they escaped that second fusillade. By keeping up a steady fire themselves, they held the killers at bay. But the flashes of their own guns let the others know where they were; and they dared not cease firing, for that would let the gunmen creep in close and slaughter them.
Farragut spoke hoarsely. “it looks like the fade-out for us, Phantom. I’ve only one extra clip. We can’t keep this up. Even if I had more, the two of us with these rods can’t expect to hold off three guys with choppers.”
Van’s teeth were clenched. Their lives, he knew, hung by a slender thread. They’d been lucky to find this momentary shelter. But it would cease to do them any good when their clips were exhausted. And they had no chance to run. The others would hear them. Already they were partially surrounded.
“Can you handle a gun in each hand, Inspector?” asked Van suddenly.
Farragut turned in the darkness. “I can use both hands all right, but I’m no two-gun marvel, Phantom. My left’s pretty weak. Why?”
“Just this,” Van whispered. “We’re trapped. Our only chance is to get one of those machine-guns. But if I stop firing and leave this hole now they’ll be onto it. You’ve got to cover me, Inspector. You’ve got to take my gun and make them think I’m still here.”
“Let you go out after them Unarmed!” growled Farragut. “Nothing doing!”
“It isn’t only our own lives. We’ve got to get out of here in time to save Moxley. I know for certain now that his death’s in the cards.” Before the inspector could protest further, Van shoved his own automatic into Farragut’s left hand. “Keep firing!” he whispered. The next instant he’d slipped over the edge of the rocks.
Flat on his chest, snakelike against the hard ground, Van crawled forward. He stopped a moment, listened to Farragut’s firing. The inspector was playing his part well, blasting away with both guns almost simultaneously, two points of flame in the darkness that the killers could see. And that murderous stream of machine-gun death was still converging on the hollow.
Lead screamed past Van’s head so close he could have lifted his arm into the path of it. Grim-eyed, he continued up the slope toward the nearest of the crouching gunmen. But not straight. He made a cautious circuit, inch by inch, foot by foot, trying not to stir a leaf or pebble, testing each foothold and handhold before he trusted his weight to it.
And the bursts from one of the machine-guns sounded nearer and nearer. Van edged off to the right of it – then edged back. The noise of the gun told him that the mobster who held it was crouched behind a rock just in front. Van would have to run the risk of being struck by one of Farragut’s bullets, too. In his haste he hadn’t told the inspector which man he planned to attack. It would be bitterly ironic if a slug from Farragut’s automatic ended the life of the Phantom!
Now! Could he make it? The spewing, flaming muzzle of the machine-gun was not more than six feet ahead! But that six feet held countless possibilities of death. One of Farragut’s bullets might strike him. The gunman might turn on him in time, and literally chop him to pieces as Sheehan, the police chauffeur, had been cut down. The Phantom drew his knees up slowly, spread his arms out.
Then he leaped like a puma, leaped into utter darkness – and felt a squirming human body at the spot where he struck. There was a single hoarse cry close to him. The machine-gun whipped around for a moment, its hot breath searing the Phantom’s face.
STRUGGLING, clawing, Van and the machine-gunner fought madly behind the rock. They fought with Death leering down as the referee. For there could be no quarter. The man Van had jumped was still trying to force the barrel of his weapon around into Van’s chest. And Van, recalling vividly the brutal murder of the police chauffeur, was trying to get his fingers into that twisting neck.
The man squirmed like some kind of loathsome reptile. His clothes and flesh were wet with ground dampness. Van couldn’t get a clutch on him. And every second the machine-gun’s muzzle was coming nearer. Eternity seemed to hang in the balance.
Van felt hot metal touch against his throat. He struck then, struck savagely, smashing his right fist into the mobster’s face. This man was a killer, a mad human wolf in the pay of the Chief. He deserved no mercy.
Van felt savage joy in the stinging contact of his fists. He battered the man’s head back against the rock; battered till the machine-gun was silent, till there was no movement in that squirming human form. He didn’t know whether the man was dead or alive. But he was out, anyway. He would be out for many minutes. Van snatched up
