Mystery Of The Sea Horse (2 page)

"Whom should we see about arranging our trip, anyone special you can suggest?" The woman with the plump voice had a body to match. She was wearing a red-and-yellow-flowered shift, a wide- brimmed straw hat, and wraparound dark glasses. She had a cocktail in each hand.

"Any travel bureau," answered the deep-voiced man. "You might talk directly to Bangalla Airways. They have an office here in Santa Barbara, I believe, and they're pleasant to deal with." He was tall and handsome in a slightly dated 'late-show" way. He had straight black hair, touched with gray, and a dark outdoor tan. At first, he seemed to be about forty-five, but somehow Diana got the feeling he was somewhat older than that. Noticing her, he grinned. "You're probably coming over to criticize me for not speaking to you sooner, Miss Palmer. You are the guest of honor, after all, but when I arrived you were surrounded. It was like moths around a flame."

"Or salesmen around a prospect," said the girl.

The plump woman said, "We haven't met either, dear. I'm Mrs. Hulbert Ruskin. That's my husband over across the pool, looking restless and wondering why I haven't brought him his drink. This gentleman is . . . what was your name again?"

"Chris Danton," he said.

That was how Diana met him.

CHAPTER TWO

The silver cigarette case sparkled in the glow of the soft restaurant lights. "Join me?" Chris Dan- ton asked Diana as he opened the case.

"No, thanks," she answered.

It was three days since she'd met him and they were having dinner in a huge Mexican-style restaurant, in a multileveled room with many arches and much decorative tile on the floors and walls. Diana wasn't exactly sure if she liked Danton. She found him interesting, but thought that wasn't quite the right word, either. At any rate, it pleased her uncle to know she was dining out, dancing, going to the theater. Maybe that was the main reason she was doing it. Diana wasn't quite certain.

Danton selected a cigarette, snapped the case shut. There was a drawing of a sea horse on the lid, etched in black. He saw she'd noticed it. "My talisman," he said.

"A sea horse, isn't it?"

"Right, yes, a sea horse," replied Danton with a smile. "I love the things, don't ask me why. Very fond of putting them on everything I own, sort of a trademark you might say. Been using it since I was a boy. Wait until you see my yacht, you'll notice—"

"Yacht?" Diana laughed. "You hadn't mentioned that."

"Haven't I? I must be getting modest as I grow older." He lit his cigarette by leaning toward the table candle. "At one point in my career, I would have told you about the yacht first thing. My yacht is named, as you may have guessed by now, the
Sea Horse."

Diana said, "I'd like to see it."

"At the moment, it is somewhere between here and Acapulco," said the dark and handsome Dan- ton. He seemed to keep all the cigarette smoke inside himself and not exhale any of it. "I loaned it, along with my trusted crew, to some friends of mine. It should be home again within a week or so."

"You mentioned your career," she said. "What is it exactly?"

"Something very dull, Diana. Having to do with the import and export trade. I inherited the family business."

"Were they Santa Barbara people?"

Chuckling, Danton answered, "No, most of them were ruthless and unscrupulous South Americans. I grew up down there myself, in Argentina and Brazil chiefly." He decided to snuff out his cigarette in the adobe ashtray. "When did you say you were in Bangalla last?"

"It's been over two years."

"You know the most fascinating thing about Bangalla," said Danton. "And we never got around to discussing it the other day or since. It's the legend of the Phantom. Did you hear about this mysterious fellow when you were out there?"

Looking at her folded hands, which were resting on the table, Diana answered, "Yes, I've heard of the Phantom."

"Do you think he actually exists?" Danton asked her. "I roamed around in some of the less- settled parts of the country and I heard about this Phantom almost everywhere. Yet I never ran into anyone who'd actually seen him. I'm wondering if he isn't simply a mythological figure, entirely dreamed up."

"He's red," Diana told him.

Diana knew the Phantom better than anyone now alive. She had first met him when they were both children. She had been a skinny little girl then, living in the quiet city of Clarksville, Missouri. He had been Eat Walker, sent to America by his father to be educated. She couldn't remember now when she'd first known she was in love with him. It was sometime later, when she had grown into a pretty college girl, that she became aware that Kit loved her, too. But even then, his destiny hung over them, though she didn't know it. Eventually, he had to go back to Bangalla, back to the
Deep Woods.
When his father died he would become the Phantom. Finally, it happened and he had gone away. But not forever, the way she had first thought. No, she . . .

"I said what makes you so certain?" Danton was repeating.

Diana shook her head, smiling. She leaned back in her chair. "Oh, I don't have any proof really," she said to the handsome man across from her. "It's only a feeling I have."

"It would be comforting to know there was at least one such fellow as the Phantom in the world," said Danton. "One runs into so few dedicated people. And now, let me change the subject once again."

"Please do."

"I'm having a few friends out to the island this

weekend," Danton told her. "I'd like you to join

»

us.

Though she hadn't heard about the yacht until tonight, Diana knew all about the island. Both

Danton and her Uncle Dave had told her about it. Danton had a long-term lease on one of the Channel Islands. This string ran along the Southern California shore, a few miles off the coast. The best known of the islands is Catalina. Danton's island was named San Obito and he had built an enormous house there on a bluff looking seaward.

"Yes, that sounds like it might be fun," the girl said to him. "Does your house have a name, by the way?"

Danton laughed again. "Of course," he said. "I call it Sea Horse Villa."

The house rose three stories high. On the morning Diana first saw it, the sharp slanting roofs were blurred by the prickly ocean mist that hung over Chris Danton's private island. There were towers at both ends of the L-shaped house and on each of these was bolted a large wrought-iron sea horse. Mournful gray gulls wheeled and screeched in the foggy air, circling in over the big gray stone house and then out over the chill ocean again. They disappeared and reappeared in the swirls of mist.

Diana had come over to San Obito with Danton and two other weekend guests in one of her host's two motorlaunches. Each launch had a small sea horse painted on the bow.

"Very nice, very nice," said one of the guests, a thin man of thirty-five, as they climbed up the winding steps which had been cut out of the black cliffside. "Quite a spread."

"Looks pretty gothic to me, Chris," said the thin man's rather pretty wife. "I expect to see a windblown girl wandering around up there carrying a candelabrum."

"Who knows what you're liable to see before the

weekend's over," said her host, laughing. "I do want to assure you, however, that the weather today is very uncharacteristic. Usually it's sunny and bright here."

"That's what our real-estate man used to tell us about the place he stuck us with," said the thin man.

There were three other guests. They arrived together later in the day. A small, very pretty red- haired girl, a man who had something to do with communications and the blond, close-cropped young man who had talked to Diana about football at her Uncle Dave's party.

By the time lunch was over, the fog had burned off. Danton suggested tennis. There was a bright, new-looking clay court behind his vast house.

First Danton played against the communications man and beat him quickly. Then Diana had a modest set with the red-haired girl, whose name was Laura something. After that, Danton suggested doubles, but Diana was beginning to feel cold. She left the rest of them at the tennis court and went back to the house for a sweater.

A long high corridor cut through the length of the house. The walls were painted a stark white. A half-dozen large flower still lifes failed to brighten the long hall; the afternoon sunlight was unable to warm it.

As Diana walked toward the staircase, she noticed that the door of the library was open. She had never been able to cure herself of the browsing habit acquired when she was a child back in Clarksville. She decided to make a quick survey of Danton's book collection.

The sea-horse motif recurred in the library, too. A heavy lamp sitting on the round marble coffee table had a bronze sea horse as a base and around the walls, at a height of about seven feet, were five wall lamps with black-metal sea horses worked into their designs.

Hands clasped behind her back, the dark-haired girl wandered around the room. The fireplace was large and clean, looking as though it had never been put to use.

After a few moments of exploring, Diana spotted a row of travel books high up one wall. Among them was a title unfamiliar to her,
Bangalla: Modem Mystery Land.
She couldn't quite reach the book, so Diana pushed a footstool over against the wall. Stepping on it, and stretching, she was able to reach the book. She stretched a little too far though, and lost her balance.

Grabbing out as she felt herself falling, Diana caught hold of one of the sea-horse wall brackets with her free hand. The bracket made a grating noise, snapped downward. As her feet touched the floor and she let go, the section of the bookcase swung inward.

"A romantic touch," she thought, peering into the opening. "I wonder why Chris had this built into his house."

Beyond the threshold was a stone floor. Diana crossed over, narrowing her eyes in the dim light. It was much cooler on the other side. Ahead was a passageway slanting downward. Far off in the dimness, faint light showed, glowing up from someplace below.

The travel book still in her hand, she took a few steps ahead.

Then she heard the sound of talking.

"It's going to have to sit a few more days," said a man with a nasal twang in his voice.

"Why? We've waited long enough." The other

voice she recognized. It was the close-cropped blond young man.

"He says we wait. He says it's a time for caution."

"With more coming in from down there? I should think he—"

"Tell him. Don't tell me."

Very carefully, Diana began backing away from the light and talk. Suddenly she bumped into a stone wall on her right. The book was knocked from her hand.

It went spinning toward the floor, scattering a handful of newspaper clippings which had been pressed between the leaves. J ,

Diana held her breath when the book slapped onto the stone floor.

The men down below went on talking.

She knelt, feeling around for the scattered clippings. In a moment she believed she'd retrieved them all. Stuffing them back into the book, she left the stone corridor.