The Black Ball Of Death

CHAPTER III

RICHARD CURTIS VAN LOAN was the Phantom Detective!

This closely guarded fact, known only to Frank Havens, tied in with the publisher’s unrelenting crusade against crime. Years previous, Havens, needing a scientific, super-clever aide, able to use highly developed crime-detecting talents that would go beyond ordinary police methods, had found in the son of his old friend the perfect answer to his problem.

So the Phantom Detective had been created.

From the first case that had claimed his attention, Frank Havens had found in Van a person of extraordinary ability. Vested in him were courage, imagination, an amazing education, and a thorough knowledge of crime in all its black and sinister aspects.

The Phantom Detective that Havens sponsored had launched himself on a brilliant and eminently successful career. Combating the forces of evil he had written into his case book a long list of achievements. But his specialized means of solving the most difficult and complex crime-riddles were not wasted on ordinary, run-of-the-mill cases.

The Phantom took only those assignments on which the police had admitted failure, or which, to him, presented problems intricate enough to be worthy of his interest.

But, in spite of his astonishing record, the Phantom laid no claim to any supernatural powers. He liked to think of himself as a laboratory detective rather than a man-hunting sleuth who tracked down the guilty with a plodding, old-fashioned technique. To Van a solution that came out of a test tube and brought a ruthless killer to the bar of justice was the perfect fulfillment of a job well done.

He opened the door and got in beside Havens.

“Drop me off at the nearest town. I’ll get a taxi back to the lodge. I want some time to elapse between Van Loan’s exit with you and the Phantom’s arrival. Steve’s a smart operator. I wouldn’t want him to get notions.”

The nearest town was some eight miles farther on. The Phantom found an all-night livery service at the railroad station there. Once more he shook hands with Havens, then watched the newspaper man drive off in the big black car.

Then, rousing a middle-aged taxi driver, who, inspired by the idea of a double fare, came out of a doze in a hurry, Van gave directions where he wanted to be driven and dropped down on the rear seat.

He lapsed into a thoughtful brown study while the taxi took him back to Lake Candle. While apparently uninterested when he had been in the billiard room, he had noticed something that had evidently escaped the eagle eye of Sheriff McCabe. The murder of Arthur Arden brought him the interest necessary for his entry into the case. In the short time he had been at the lodge as Van Loan, the Phantom’s quick mind had been absorbing the setting and details of what, to him, represented a particularly brutal and puzzling killing.

Some of the police cars had gone when the taxi went down the private road to the lodge. A few floodlights were still on, moved now to the north side of the property. The Phantom had paid his hackie; passed Havens’s familiar Cadillac; and, without being stopped, made the front door of the lodge and went inside.

Almost the first person he encountered in the entrance foyer was Steve Huston. Steve was taking a drag on a cigarette and waiting for McCabe to come in from out-of-doors. The redheaded reporter gave Van a casual glance. So far as he knew he had never seen the slightly stoop-shouldered man who entered the lodge.

STEVE scowled, puzzled, when the stranger walked over to him. “I think I know you. If I’m not mistaken you’re Huston, the greatest newspaper reporter of our day. Stop me if I’m wrong -”

Steve pinched out his cigarette. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed.

“Who do you think you’re kidding?” he asked.

The Phantom’s right hand moved up. Thumb and forefinger carelessly touched the lobe of his left ear. It was a natural gesture, meaningless to anyone who saw it. But to Steve Huston it was packed with dynamic significance.

That was the signal of identification used by the Phantom Detective!

The reporter dropped his cigarette and put a foot over it His eyes popped slightly as they looked at the unfamiliar face before him.

“Phantom!” He tried to smother his surprised exclamation, while he watched the man before him smile.

“Right, Steve.” Van shook hands. “Is Mr. Havens here? I saw his car outside.”

Confused, Huston shook his head. He knew better than to ask questions. But what was the Phantom doing there? How had he dropped in on the murder scene out of a clear sky? Many times in the past Huston had worked with the Phantom on some of his toughest cases.

To Huston the Phantom Detective was nothing less than an idol. He always looked forward to a chance to help on some assignment. After Centre Street and Homicide, the Phantom’s unorthodox methods were refreshing and stimulating.

Not only that, Huston had come to learn, they paid off in front-page stories that had done much to make him the Clarion’s ace reporter.

“Mr. Havens left a short time ago,” Huston said. “Mr. Van Loan drove him back to New York. His heap is out of order.” The little reporter couldn’t hold his curiosity in check. “You’re here to take over this case?”

The Phantom nodded. “Give me all the details you’ve collected so far. Start at the beginning, and make it short and comprehensive.”

Steve felt an inner glow. This was what he liked best. In the living room where the lamps still burned, he supplied a complete rsum, beginning with the hour he had left Baltimore with Frank Havens and ending with the publisher’s exit.

The Phantom listened attentively.

“You say there were the embers of a fire still giving out warmth when you broke in here? And a cocktail shaker on a tray with two glasses? What happened to that?”

“Nothing. It’s over there.” Huston pointed to a table across the room. “McCabe didn’t pay any attention to it.”

The Phantom went over to the table. The shaker was heavy sterling with the Arden coat of arms etched on one side. He shook it gently before he opened it and smelled the small amount of ice-diluted liquor that still remained.

“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.