The Banshee Murders

CHAPTER XVI

IT was dusk when Lamont Cranston stopped around to see Craig Farnsworth. The evening was balmy so they went out on the high terrace that overlooked the park.

“It’s very strange, Cranston,” stated Farnsworth, “the things that have been happening in the park of late.”

Cranston nodded.

“You mean those disappearances. What were the names of the two chaps? Wait, I have them: Ames and Older.”

Farnsworth gave a puzzled stare.

“I didn’t know they disappeared in Central Park, Cranston. Who gave you that idea?”

“You did, Farnsworth, when you mentioned strange things.”

“I meant about the animals getting loose. Several people have claimed that they saw some prowling leopards. But the zoo keepers haven’t discovered any missing.”

Cranston shrugged.

The result of that banshee talk, he decided. “After the things that Miss Selmore and Officer Reilly imagined, people might cook up anything. But getting around to business, have you heard from Ronjan lately?”

Farnsworth’s rugged face turned worried.

“I haven’t,” he admitted. “I suppose Ronjan intends to wait me out. Why not?” Farnsworth gave an annoyed laugh. “He has my money all tied up.”

“Our money,” Cranston reminded.

“I know,” nodded Farnsworth. “Well, throwing good after bad is a wrong policy, but by next week, I’ll be doing it. I don’t know how you feel, Cranston, but -”

A servant arrived to explain a ringing telephone that Cranston had been hearing. The call was for Cranston, so he went into the apartment to take it. Farnsworth called after him:

“Invite Miss Lane up here if she’d like to come.”

The call wasn’t from Margo. Instead, Phil Harley was on the wire and he was very earnest, with a trace of tension in his voice.

“You spoke about phony jobs, Mr. Cranston,” stated Phil across the wire, “and the people who take them. What about the people who hand them out - would you like to know who they are?”

“It would be very interesting.”

“Then talk to yourself,” announced Phil, “unless you’d rather have me tell Miss Lane that you hired a certain girl for a rather useless task.”

“You haven’t called Miss Lane, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you should,” suggested Cranston. “Unless you’d prefer to give me more details first.”

“As if you didn’t know,” snapped Phil. “All right, the girl’s name is Arlene Forster. She’s getting paid for checking coastal charts, only she’s seen less of them than I have seen of patent papers.”

“I’m beginning to think that Margo really would be interested.”

“A nice bluff,” complimented Phil. “I guess you figure you have that old fool fixed.”

“I wouldn’t call him a fool.”

“I’ll find out if he is,” retorted Phil. “I’m going up to see Niles Ronjan right now!”

The receiver clanked heartily at the other end and Cranston stepped away from the phone with a shrug, to meet Farnsworth, who had just come indoors.

“Miss Lane is coming up here, Cranston?”

“I hope not,” replied Cranston. “Some smart dealer wants to sell her a mink coat cheap because it’s summer. But a mink coat is never cheap. I said I wouldn’t call him a fool for trying to make the sale, but I meant it differently than he took it.”

With that, Cranston glanced at his watch and added:

“The real fool would be Margo, if she made such a buy. I’d better go hunt for her before she receives a call.”

While Cranston spoke, Farnsworth was dialing the telephone, trying to get Ronjan’s number. Receiving no response, Farnsworth followed Cranston to the door and said in parting:

“Not that mink coats aren’t important, Cranston, but Ronjan has me worried. There’s only one place where he could have gone.”

Cranston made a half-jesting inquiry while half way through the door.

“Somewhere out in Central Park?”

“Be serious, Cranston,” returned Farnsworth. “I think Ronjan may be digging up some new investors. He may intend to drop the Good Wind job and go hunting treasure elsewhere. There’s one place he would take such investors.”

“Out to Skipper’s Rock?”

“That’s right. To see the full-sized articulated subsea tunnel. I’m going down the Battery and hire a boat myself to go out there. Call me at midnight; that’s about the soonest I can hope to be back.”

Cranston gave a nod and closed the door behind him. As he came out on the avenue, a taxicab swung around the corner only to be disappointed when a limousine pulled in front of it to pick up the gentleman in evening clothes.

Having just lighted a thin cigar, Cranston was drawing on it idly while his chauffeur was opening the limousine door. As a result, the lighted end of the cigar gave tiny glows that delivered a coded message.

Therefore the cab driver wasn’t disappointed; he happened to be Shrevvy and he already had a passenger huddled in the back seat, namely Hawkeye. There would be work for the speedy cab driver and the ace of spotters tonight.

Since Farnsworth’s apartment house was situated well up the avenue, Cranston had some distance to travel before reaching Central Park South. Lights were already beginning a mysterious series of blinks before Cranston’s needed minutes had ended.

Particularly mysterious tonight, those lights. They cleaved the lush darkness that belonged to Central Park but it was difficult to tell which flank they came from. Indeed, the blinks seemed to come from within the park itself, which was puzzling, since they were from a considerably high level.

Phil Harley didn’t know about the lights and perhaps he wouldn’t have cared. Phil was coming from a phone booth in the lobby of the Chateau Parkview after a heated talk with Arlene Forster. It seemed that Arlene was about to leave her hotel and wouldn’t tell Phil where she intended to go. There wasn’t time for Phil to race as far as the Plaza Central to flag the blonde before she started.

So irked was Phil that he didn’t realize he’d done a very odd thing. Stepping from a phone booth in the Chateau Parkview was a novelty. You usually walked into them and wound up somewhere else. So Arlene had claimed and Phil vaguely remembered a similar experience.

Right now, Phil was wondering if Thara Lamoyne was around. She was a person who might answer some pointed questions, if Phil could only find her. Not seeing Thara, Phil had another idea. He’d go up and call on old Niles Ronjan, who seemingly had some remote connection with matters involving Arlene. At least the blonde had mentioned Ronjan as a go-between where Cranston was concerned.

Phil caught an elevator too soon. If he’d waited for the next car, he’d have met Thara Lamoyne coming out of it. As it was, the cars passed and when Thara did appear in the lobby, she looked relieved when she didn’t see Phil there. However, Thara didn’t leave the lobby; she merely went to make a phone call in one of the alcove booths.

By then, Phil was knocking at Ronjan’s door.

The man who opened the door was Dom Yuble. The captain from the Caribbean shook his head when Phil asked for Ronjan, whereupon Phil became persistent. Thrusting himself into the room despite Yuble, Phil looked around as though expecting to find Ronjan hiding somewhere.

Yuble’s scars turned very white. It was a bad sign if Phil had noticed it, for it meant that Yuble’s face was purpling invisibly under his peculiar tan, the scars staying white because they weren’t included in the process.

Yet Yuble’s tone was still a purr, polite and persuasive.

“Mr. Ronjan has gone out to Skipper’s Rock,” Yuble informed. “If you wish to know why - look there!”

By “there” Yuble didn’t mean the Rock. He was gesturing to the huge tank in the center of Ronjan’s main room. For the first time Phil saw the model ships and the peculiar articulated tunnel, formed in miniature, that was designed to give safe passage to a treasure hunter.

“It is very interesting,” purred Yuble from beside Phil’s shoulder. “You may study it closely if you wish.”

Phil’s training as an engineer was coming to the fore. He leaned to take a better look at the device. In turn Yuble leaned forward and made a gesture as if to point out certain features of the invention. Only Yuble’s hand didn’t stop.

With a hard downward thwack, Yuble’s flattened palm struck the water with the violence of a beaver’s tail, hoisting a regular geyser right into Phil’s face. Before Phil could recover, Yuble gave him an arm clamp that somersaulted Phil over the tank, clear beyond the water and across the other side to a hard landing on the floor beside the window.

Yuble didn’t pause. Like a pirate boarding a merchant ship he clambered onto the tank, sprang across it and landed at Phil’s side with a drawn and lifted knife, like those that Phil had seen in the fists of the leopard men. But Phil, leaned back against the tank, was too groggy to attempt any warding of the stroke that was to come.

It didn’t come quite yet.

With a leer, Yuble gestured to the window, outside which the distant blinks had ceased.

“Maybe you have understood the first message?” The scarred man sneered. “If so, what should matter? You have not yet found out the important thing.” Yuble paused, as though hoping Phil would revive enough to comprehend. “You have not learned it, fool! You have not guessed that I, Dom Yuble, can receive a special message at any time.”

Turning to the window, Yuble let his eyes betray an expectant glitter.

“Look!” Yuble gloated. “I shall let you live long enough to see how a confidential message arrives!”

Maybe it was Phil’s swimming head, but he was sure he saw blackness loom suddenly up into the window. No longer sheer fancy, that blackness became a growing creature with great, outspread arms that looked like webbed extensions of its body.

Yuble’s manner was a greeting, as he waved a hand as if to gesture the creature upward, so it would dwindle from the light; then, so suddenly that Phil was jolted out of his mental whirl, Yuble gave a piercing scream of horror.

Instead of melting, that creature from the great outside flung its arms around Dom Yuble as though enveloping him in the folds of a death-delivering cloak.

To Phil Harley, the action of Yuble’s unknown foe symbolized The Shadow!