The Black Ball Of Death

CHAPTER XI

EXACTLY at nine o’clock the next morning, the Phantom walked into the anteroom of Frank Havens’s office, high up in the Clarion Building.

Miss Marsh, the publisher’s secretary, gave the Phantom a distrustful glance as he moved over to her desk. She didn’t like his looks particularly. Somehow she had the impression he was a broken down newspaperman about to proposition her boss for a job.

The Phantom said, “The name is Gray. Mr. Havens expects me,” and Miss Marsh snapped to attention.

One of the most rigid rules of the office was that anyone giving the name of Gray was to be admitted instantly to Mr. Havens’s sanctum. For months, the Phantom in his various disguises had used that name. Miss Marsh had her own ideas concerning the identity of the ubiquitous “Mr. Gray”, but was careful never to voice them. She was fully aware that the man who paid her the generous salary she received every Friday was the one who pressed the button to bring the Phantom Detective out of the mists of obscurity.

The Phantom walked into Havens’s sumptuous office.

“One arrest.” The Phantom shrugged. “A small time character, working for a man higher up who gave me the slip yesterday afternoon. The small timer’s name is Daniel Fordyce. Neither his prints nor his picture has a listing.”

The Phantom dropped into a chair. Interested, Havens said, “That’s what kept you at Headquarters so late.”

“Gregg’s men worked Fordyce over for hours. He stuck to his story. He doesn’t know anything. A month ago someone who calls himself Pennell approached him and put him on his payroll. He was to open a mail-order business, selling novelties, on the third floor of a building in the West Thirties.”

The Phantom shrugged as he stopped speaking. Frank Havens leaned back in his swivel chair.

“Gregg’s holding him?”

“On a Sullivan violation, technically. I’ve had Fordyce locked up until I can pour some light into the case. He may be lying, I don’t know. Anyway the Inspector will keep him away from shyster lawyers until he hears from me.”

“What do you make of Arthur Arden’s murder?” Havens queried bluntly.

“I haven’t begun to uncover even the hint of a motive,” the Phantom said, frankly. “From what I’ve run into so far, I know that there’s a deep-laid, well-constructed plot back of his killing. Someone with brains and intelligence has been at work. Neither Fordyce, nor the others I’ve encountered can be called ‘underworld’ or the ‘gangster’ type of criminal. Which indicates there is a certain gloss to the case that takes it out of the usual, subterranean-crime category. Despite,” he added, “Arden’s penchant for Broadway.”

“Chip called early this morning.” Havens reached for a memo, handed it to the Phantom, and repeated Dorlan’s telephone message.

The effect was almost electrical. The Phantom was on his feet instantly.

“So Dorlan found her! Splendid.” He ran an eye over the name and address Havens gave him. “This is the girl Matthew Arden said was friendly with his son. The one I’m sure had a cocktail with Arthur shortly before he was shot. A girl who dropped her gardenia out on the driveway of the lodge.”

“Chip didn’t do anything about it,” Havens said. “He didn’t check the address or the telephone number.”

“Good. I’ll get after it at once. I have a feeling -” the Phantom smiled tautly – “that Miss Victoria Selden is going to turn on some of that light I mentioned a minute ago!”

THE address on Central Park West was in the upper Seventies. A four-story, bulge-front, aristocratic-looking private house was wedged in between tall apartment buildings on either side. The Phantom, stepping out of a taxi, had the impression of glimmering windows, expensive curtaining, and a well-polished bell close to double vestibule doors. His brief ring brought a neat, colored maid in a starched uniform.

“I’d like to see Miss Selden,” the Phantom said. “This is a personal matter.”

The maid ushered him across a rug-strewn length of parquet and into a well-furnished reception room. She left him there and went on. The Phantom was examining a painting on the wall when he heard footsteps coming in. He wheeled around, anxious for a glimpse of the blonde Miss Selden.

Instead, he found himself confronting a gray haired little woman dressed completely in black. Her hair was modishly arranged on her well-shaped head. Old-fashioned jewelry was at throat and wrist. The frothy white of a handkerchief showed from the edge of one black sleeve.

“My maid,” she said, her voice cultured and quiet, “tells me that you are calling on Miss Selden.”

“That’s right.”

The Phantom waited. The woman went on, “My name is Mrs. Wayne. This is my boarding establishment. Miss Selden has been a guest here for several months. But she’s no longer with me. She left yesterday morning.”

The Phantom looked directly into Mrs. Wayne’s eyes. They met his gaze steadily. “Let me have the details, please. This is police business. You’ve probably read of the Arden murder in New Jersey. Miss Selden is wanted for questioning in connection with it.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Wayne looked startled.

“What were the circumstances of her leaving?”

“She – Miss Selden told me she received a telegram from her father – from somewhere in Minnesota. She seemed very much upset. She said her mother was ill, dangerously ill. She had to go to her at once. She paid me what she owed up to yesterday morning, and I called a cab for her. I – I had no idea -”

The Phantom’s brow wrinkled into thought lines. Abruptly, he said, “What do you know about Miss Selden? Was she employed? Did friends come here? Do you know any of their names?”

“I know hardly anything at all about her.” Mrs. Wayne breathed harder. “She was employed, but I never knew where. I don’t pry into the private lives of my guests.”

“Friends?”

“They didn’t come here – ever. I know different men brought Miss Selden home and left her at the door. But I never knew any names, or who they were.”

“How about telephone calls?”

“She seldom made any. A few times a week she received some.”

The Phantom’s mouth tightened. He took a quick step away from Mrs. Wayne, his mind clicking with thought. He wheeled around, as an idea struck him.

“When she first came here, you must have asked her for references.”

“That is my custom,” the woman told him.

“Good.” The Phantom’s face cleared. “Then you must have Miss Selden’s on file.”

“I have.”

To back up his authority he showed Mrs. Wayne the badge he had retrieved from the porcelain-topped table in the room where he had nailed the narrow-shouldered, gravel-voiced Dan Fordyce.

The woman nodded and excused herself. She came back after a few minutes with an alphabetically arranged letter file. From the S‘s she took out a sheet of paper.

“This is what Miss Selden gave me. I made the usual telephone calls and received an excellent recommendation from both the bank and the gentleman whose name is written here.”

“I’ll take that.” The Phantom folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “If you hear anything from Miss Selden, communicate immediately with Mr. Havens at the Clarion.”

With a word of thanks he bowed himself out.

PICKING up a taxi at the corner beyond, the Phantom opened the paper. The first name was that of the National Trust Company on Madison Avenue. He gave it to the driver as a destination. Then he glanced out of the rear window, through force of habit.

The twisted-eared Len and the thin-faced Pennell were still in circulation. The Phantom knew they would be more interested in him now than ever. Bullets out of the woods at Lake Candle hadn’t stopped him. Neither had a length of sash cord, nor Dan as a watchdog. He knew that Pennell – and whoever directed the activities of the man in the pearl-gray hat – would redouble their efforts to cut him down before he moved further into the complications of the murder case.

But no one was trailing him.

The manager of the National Trust saw the Phantom immediately. To his questions, he said, “Miss Selden usually keeps a balance of about six hundred dollars on hand. I believe she’s a model. She came in once with a magazine. Her picture was on the cover, painted by an artist named Hugh Royal.”

“She hasn’t notified you of a change of address?”

The manager picked up a desk telephone. He asked someone the same question, waited a minute or two, and said, “No, there’s been no change of address.” He added, “Odd. Miss Selden gave Mr. Arthur Arden as a personal reference when she filled out her card here. And Mr. Arden was one of our depositors, too.”

The Phantom didn’t waste time. He seized that information avidly. “I’d like all of Arthur Arden’s canceled checks. Have them delivered to Mr. Haven’s office at the Clarion as soon as possible.”

“We’ll do that. Anything else? I might add that Arden’s balance was rather low. Merely a few hundred dollars.”

The Phantom nodded. Matt Arden had told him as much, and it was no news. But what held his attention was the second name on the paper with which Mrs. Wayne had supplied him.

Vicki Selden’s other reference was the same Hugh Royal the bank manager mentioned in connection with her magazine cover picture. And this Royal, the Phantom found when he went down the Rs in the telephone directory, had a studio in the Hotel Trois Arts on East 49th Street.

It was a lofty, slender edifice, inhabited mostly by illustrators, artists, and radio and theatrical people. But not the small, struggling variety. The names of the tenants were tops in their respective professions.

The lobby was modernistic in design with a quantity of black glass and mirrors. The Phantom, at a pickled pine desk, asked an immaculately groomed clerk if Hugh Royal was in.

“He is. He had a caller a few minutes ago. Studio Nine. You can go right up.”

The Phantom left the elevator on the ninth floor. There were evidently three studios to each story. Royal’s was at the end of the corridor. A chime-bell sounded musically at the touch of the Phantom’s thumb.

He waited. No one came to answer his ring. Again he put the chimes to work, and again there was no response.

Had the clerk made a mistake? Had Royal gone out? It was when he was asking himself the second question that the Phantom saw something that sprayed a quick nerve current through him.

On the plain gray rug that. paved the corridor was a smear of red. It looked like a paint stain. But it wasn’t. The instant his finger touched it and came away with a slight ooze, the Phantom knew it was blood.

His master-key slid out of his pocket and went into the lock of the door. That clever contrivance, invented by a Viennese locksmith, never failed. Swiftly, he adjusted the mechanism on its shaft so that its flanges spread, fitting accurately into the wards and tumblers of the latch.

He gave it a turn; listened to the click; and, opening the door, walked into a north-lighted studio.

A man in a white shirt and blue slacks lay face down on the wide planked floor, half under an easel on which a picture had been started!