Mystery Of The Sea Horse (18 page)

The Phantom sprinted to the end of the alley. Between the closed cafe and the wall of the other building rose a high wooden fence.

He climbed to the top of the fence in seconds. Poised there, he saw the gray-haired man wave a good-bye to a panel truck. The vehicle drove off into the night.

Silently, the Phantom pulled himself up onto the flat roof of the adjoining building. He moved along until he was directly over the other man. Then he jumped.

"Oof!"
bellowed Edwards as he was propelled forward by the force of the Phantom landing on him. He staggered, twisted, and fell over backward in the dust.

The Phantom picked him up, spun him around and locked a powerful arm around his neck. "Where is she?"

Choking, the man answered, "You just missed her, my friend."

"She was in that truck?"

"Right you are, in a box."

The Phantom increased the pressure. "If you've killed-"

"Easy, easy, she's only drugged," Edwards gasped.

"Where are they taking her?"

"Danton," said the man, "to Danton on the island."

"Which island?"

The gray-haired man told him all about the island.

When he was finished, the Phantom let him go. As the man turned, the Phantom hit him hard on the jaw. Edwards dropped to the ground with the Sign of the Skull imprinted on his face.

Tying him up with his own shoelaces, gagging him with his necktie, the Phantom tossed Edwards into the nearest doorway. Then he began running toward the ocean.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Danton looked up from his desk and frowned. "I have no time for you now," he said.

"Seems to me I've heard that song before." Laura came on into his cabin.

"We're going to have to get out of here no later than tomorrow night," he said. "There is still much to be done."

The pretty red-haired girl sat on the edge of the bunk.

The frown deepened on Danton's handsome face. "If you'd done your job well, dear Laura, we would not have all these current worries. But you failed miserably at getting rid of the Phantom."

"Oh, come on, Chris," she said. "Despite your gruff exterior at the moment, I know damn well you're smiling on the inside because sweet little Diana Palmer is still among the living."

"Perhaps," admitted Danton.

"Perhaps, my elbow," said Laura. "Why don't you admit that if you hadn't gotten yourself all tangled up with her, we'd still be operating safely up in Santa Barbara. Instead we're hiding in a cave and you've got her installed in the bridal suite."

Danton stood and began to laugh. "Ah, I see now what is really bothering you, Laura. You've
j
allowed yourself to become jealous of Diana. Isn't that a fact?"

"Isn't it a fact you were seeing her every single night and day? Isn't it a fact you invited her to Sea Horse Villa, which was a stupid thing to do?"

"Well, Laura, we all do stupid things now and again," said Danton, grinning at her. "Even you."

"Yes, I realize that now, Chris," said the red- haired girl. "One of my all-time classic stupid things was letting you . . . recruit me."

Danton crossed the cabin to place a hand on her shoulder. "I'm still very fond of you, Laura," he assured her. "And when—"

"Sure." She lifted his hand off her shoulder and walked quickly out of the cabin.

Danton watched the door she'd slammed for several minutes.

The Phantom, stripped down to his tight-fitting costume once again, swam through the black water with strong strokes. The lights of the island were quite close now and he could see three fishing boats moored at the rickety dock he was fast approaching.

Not even winded by the chill swim from the shore to the small island, he swam silently up beside the dock.

A lone man with a rifle was pacing the dock end.

Since he wanted to approach as unobtrusively as possible, the masked man avoided the guard and swam away from him.

A hundred yards further off, concealed from the guard by an outcropping of rock, the Phantom came ashore.

At some distance, dogs were barking at each other. They didn't sound dangerous.

Moving across the sandy ground, the Phantom sighted the small house Edwards had told him about. The house which enclosed the elevator to the lower levels.

There was another rifleman standing directly in front of the doorway.

Without making a sound, the jungle-bred masked man circled the house. There was no one inside. He approached the bedroom window and tried to open it.

The moment he touched the frame, a bell began ringing within the house.

The Phantom darted off into the darkness, circled the house again, and came around behind the guard who'd gone to investigate. He knocked the man out with two blows from behind. Trussing him up, much the way he had the gray-haired Edwards, he dragged the guard into the house.

The bell was still ringing. The masked man located it on the far wall, and got it switched off. "I wonder if that also rings down below," he mused.

From the bedroom came the sound of an elevator door opening. "What's wrong up here, Gill?"

The Phantom was across the room and next to the bedroom door before it opened.

When this latest guard, a tall thick-necked man stepped into the room, the Phantom felled him with one chop.

"So much for my unobtrusive entrance," he said to himself.

He noticed the man was wearing a seaman's knit cap and a navy-blue peajacket. The Phantom borrowed these before tying and gagging the man.

There was another man ten feet from the elevator exit. "Some trouble up there?" he asked.

Keeping his back to the man, the Phantom replied, in a muffled voice, "Dogs fooling around at the windows."

"We ought to shoot the whole pack."

The Phantom saw the
Sea Horse
directly ahead of him now. He began to make his way along the metal walkway leading toward it.

"Hey, you're not supposed to go off-duty till midnight," called the other man.

Slowly, the Phantom turned.

"You're not—"

The Phantom got hold of the man, grappled with him on the black metal walkway. Before the man could speak again, the Phantom knocked him out. He left him lying inside the elevator cage.

When he came alongside the
Sea Horse,
treading on a narrow catwalk, he saw more men. They were working on the side of the ship, painting it gray. The Phantom went by, hands in the pockets of his heavy jacket. No one hailed him.

He climbed up the gangway and was aboard the yacht. There were no guards on deck. I don't have much time to find Diana and get her off of here, he thought.

Aft on the main deck, a small seaplane was lashed to its catapult.

He glanced at it before moving forward toward the cabin area. Edwards had told him Diana would probably be put in one of the forward cabins.

Cautiously, he looked through the first porthole he came to. Laura Leverson was in this cabin, by herself, sitting with her hands pressed to her face.

The masked man continued to explore. Two cabins further on, he located Diana. She appeared to be alone in the room. Very cautiously he tapped on the glass.

The dark-haired girl looked up, then shook her head violently. "No, go away!" she cried.

"Quite an impressive performance," said Chris Danton. He was a few feet behind the Phantom, with a gun. "Hard on my staff, but entertaining, none the less. I've been watching your approach on my closed-circuit television monitors."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"An old-fashioned touch perhaps," said Danton, laughing. "However they frequently prove useful."

Danton was referring to the manacles which held the Phantom's wrists to the metal walls of the cell. The cell was somewhere in the bowels of the yacht. Though he had been held fast in his position since the night before, he showed no outward signs of fatigue. "Where's Diana?" he asked.

The handsome Danton was still leaning in the doorway, toying with a silver ring of six bright keys. "In her cabin," he replied, "doing quite well."

The Phantom said, "What are you planning to do with us?"

"No need to use the word us,' Phantom. I have entirely different fates worked out for you both." He took two steps into the metal-walled cell, chuckling. "Diana will travel with me for a while, taking somewhat of a grand tour. And you will disappear once we are out to sea."

The Phantom said nothing.

"Aren't you interested in knowing when that will be?" asked Danton. "Don't you want to know how much longer you have to live?"

"Nobody really knows that."

"Ah," laughed Danton, "but you are one of those privileged people who do. We'll leave this place of concealment tonight. So it's safe to say you won't be alive by this time tomorrow, Phantom."

"And yourself?"

Touching his face, Danton asked, "What do you mean? Do you know something about that madman who's stalking me?"

"Only that he seems very dedicated to killing you," replied the Phantom. "That is, if you really are Rolf Langweil."

The other man moved closer to the manacled Phantom. "I'll tell you something you can contemplate as you wait to die," he said. "I am, indeed, Rolf Langweil. I've had many names and many identities since I smuggled myself out of Berlin in 1945." He laughed yet again. "And I've enjoyed them all. Furthermore, I intend to keep on living, Phantom, and keep on eluding these fools they send to track me."

The Phantom watched Danton. "You've enjoyed your most recent role as drug pusher?"

"Quite a lot, yes. I've been able to buy everything I've wanted, to afford anything," answered Danton. "It's quite a good life." He was only a few feet away from the masked man. "I had it all very carefully worked out, too, my smuggling operation, until you began giving me trouble."

"Lots of other people want to give you trouble," the Phantom told him. "Federal agents like Terry, Marcus, Busino. . ."

"They've never been able to prove a thing," pointed out the owner of the
Sea Horse.
He stomped gently on the metal floor with one white- shod foot. "After I bought this yacht, I had a few modifications made. There's a false section beneath us." He stomped twice again, softly. "But you can't reach it from within the yacht. You must go beneath the keel to reach what is stored there. So, with the judicious use of scuba equipment, I have been able to import substantial quantities of relatively pure heroin."