The Golden Circle (3 page)

"Just great What you might call jim-dandy."

"Now there's an expression I haven't...."

"Which way did that guy go?"

"You mean Mr. Walker?"

"Him, yeah."

"Why, that way," replied the fat conductor, pointing. "He said you'd told him to go fetch our stewardess."

"I didn't" said Colma. "What else can he do in that direction?" "Any number of things." The enormous man lifted it corner of his blue vest and scratched his stomach, thoughtfully. "He might have gone to see his dog."

Huh, he's traveling with a dog?"

"Yes, it's in the baggage car, four coaches forward, lieutenant," said the conductor. "Quite a large animal. You might almost say...."

Lt. Colma was already walking fast, not listening to the fat man.

In the next car, another sleeper, he encountered the porter. "Seen that Walker guy?"

"Why yes, sir."

"Where was he going?"

"He didn't say, sir."

The stocky lieutenant hurried on, breaking into a trot.

He went through the coach cars more slowly, glancing rapidly at all the seated passengers. The lights were dimmed, many of the people were sleeping or frying to.

Colma came to the baggage car finally and found

the door locked. Standing in the swaying pass way between cars, splashed by gusts of wet wind, he crouched and studied the lock. It looked as though

t had been recently tampered with. Squeezing one hand into a fist, the lieutenant pounded on the door. "Open up in there," he ordered. "Come on, come on. This is the police."

No answer came.

The night train thundered on, clattering and rocking through the storm.

The lieutenant hit the door again, his fist slamming against the ocean-blue safety glass. "You're not going anyplace, Walker! If you're in there, open up!"

From inside the baggage car came the sound of Glass shattering.

Drawing his .32, Colma fired at the door lock.

Then he put his shoulder to the door and shoved hard.

The door swung inward.

There were no lights on in the musty-smelling car. Colma threw himself to one side, so that the faint light coming through the open door would not silhouette him.

To his right a crate of pigeons were making soft gurgling cooing sounds. A cat had awakened in a wire-sided traveling case and was wailing with great sadness.

Standing in the shadows among stacked trunks, Lt. Colma felt the rain-laden wind on his cheek. He narrowed his eyes and made out that one of the baggage car windows had been smashed out.

Carefully he went over. The few fragments of glass which had fallen inside crunched underfoot. The lieutenant peered out. Rain slapped him in the face. "Huh, what the hell," he said. "Don't tell me he jumped."

After he found the light switch, the lieutenant made a rapid tour of the car. There was no one hiding there. And no sign of any big dog.

"Could both of them have jumped?" Colma leaned back against something. He realized it was a crated coffin and moved.

Then he noticed the clothes. Walker's tan overcoat and the rest of what he'd been wearing were in a pile on the car floor. "Is he out there naked as a jaybird?" The stock policeman quickly went through the discarded clothes. He found nothing, no scrap of paper, not even a label or laundry mark.

When he finished he shook a new cigarette out of his pack. "Still two left. That's not bad. Maybe I can cut down to half a pack a day pretty soon." As he lit the cigarette his eyes fell again on the crate which held the coffin.

Colma crossed to it, felt at the nails. "Sealed up tight." he observed. "But I wonder. Maybe Walker smashed that window, then ducked inside one of these big trunks or crates. Better check it out."

A half hour later the stocky lieutenant wiped his forehead, lit his final cigarette, and admitted to himself "Nope, they must have jumped."

The Phantom had gone rolling and tumbling down the muddy hillside. He was in excellent shape and he notonly knew how to jump but also how to land.

beneath the civilian outfit he'd donned for his sojourn among relatively civilized men he wore the skintight uniform of the Phantom. He had stripped to thet in the train in order to give himself unencumbered mobility for the leap to freedom.

"A little muddy," he remarked, standing up. "But no great harm done."

Devil, his gray mountain wolf, had leaped along with him. Surefooted, the great animal came padding up to him now, nuzzling his master's side.

"Good boy," the Phantom told him. He scanned the rainy dark. The last lights of the Manhattan bound train were tiny blurred dots far off. "So much for Lt. Colma of the New York City Robbery Division."

In the distance he heard the swish of highway traffic. "Don't think we want to head that way, Devil. Although we want to get out of this storm for a while. No need for the good lieutenant to know where we landed. Let's head up that hill over there and find ourselves a less traveled road."

As the masked man began trudging through the field the wolf fell in at his side.

In his hand the Phantom still held the golden arrow pin the blonde girl had lost in his compartment. "We could simply forget about this business tonight,

Devil," he said. "Hop a jet and get back to Bangalla and the
Deep Woods."

The Phantom tossed the pin once, caught it. "But there's been a murder done. We're going to find our lethal pair of lady friends."

The wolf gave a low growl.

CHAPTER FOUR

the community of Thornburg is approximately 152 miles from New York. It has a population of just under 11,000; a small town which the railroad tracks
rut
almost exactly' in half. Because Thornburg is a small town, patrolman Wally Reisberson of the municipal police patrols alone in his three-year-old sedan.

He was cruising along West Street at 3:00 A.M., listening to an all-night talk show on the transistor radio he kept sitting next to him on the seat. Thorn- burg was usually quiet at this hour and his police radio receiver emitted only static. On his transistor a woman with a nasal voice was telling the host about her first-hand experiences with extrasensory perception.

Patrolman Reisberson slowed at the intersection of West and Mandell streets. The rain was really coming down. There were instants between the flicks of the wipers when he couldn't see out the windshield at all.

. . not more than three months later the very
exact
thing actually
did
happen to me. Well, not the precise same . . ." the ESP woman was saying.

Reisberson saw a wolf.

He hit the brake a bit too hard, causing his patrol car to skate a few feet sideways and hit the curb.

Parking where he landed, Reisberson took his flashlight from the seat, turned down the transistor and unsnapped his holster flap. The city council of Thorn- burg hadn't approved the new budget this year, so there weren't enough police raincoats to go around. Reisberson wore a nonregulation transparent vinyl poncho.

Pulling the garment over his head, he slid cautiously out the car.

The rainwater was billowing along the gutter, sputtering and splashing, carrying away a day's litter.

Reisberson was certain he'd seen a large gray wolf turn down the alley between Orlando's Quick-Pizza and the West Street Haberdashery. There hadn't been any reports about wolves running away from the zoo or a circus. It was odd.

Waiting at the mouth of the alley, Reisberson shined his big flash in. Garbage cans, soft-drink cartons, cigarette butts. No wolf.

Reisberson had the habit of rubbing his tongue over his prominent upper front teeth when he was thinking. He did that now.

Shaking his head, he started down the alley. Maybe The wolf was hungry and had been drawn to Orlando's kitchen.

As the patrolman passed the back door of the haberdashery he noticed it was a good half inch open. How many times had they told Eisman to put in a burglar alarm system? He'd always said he put his faith in the municipal police and their night patrols.

Reisberson stood, holding his breath, out in the hard rain. Gingerly he reached out to push at the door. It swung a foot open before it made a high- pitched squeeking sound. Something moved inside the darkened clothing store.

Hopping through the opening into the black room

beyond, Reisberson sprayed the room with light as he drew his police special.

Later when he repeated his story to his superiors this was the part where their faces took on strange expressions. Nonetheless, Reisberson swore he saw a large powerfully built man in some kind of tight-fitting costume and mask go jogging out the front door. Close at the masked man's heels was the gray wolf.

"Halt or I'll fire!" warned patrolman Reisberson.

'they didn't halt. In a few seconds they were gone In the rainy darkness outside.

Heisberson bounded through the racks and coun
ters
of menswear. He went sideways out the front door, shouting, "Stop, come back! This is the law!"

The street was empty. The rain hit hard on the pavement. The street lamps glowed a distant moonlight white.

"Lets see what they took."

When he shined his flashlight beam on the cash register, Reisberson said, "I'll be darned." Seventy-five dollars in crisp bills was stuck to the face of the ornate old register with a piece of tape.

Reisberson eyed the fresh money, decided he'd better leave it alone. He trudged out to his patrol car to report in. Nothing like this had ever happened to him in the six and a half years he'd been a cop.

The roof leaked. Rain dripped down from the flaked ceiling of the shadowy living room, splashing into the half-dozen puddles on the bare wood floor. The rain, still falling hard and heavy, drummed on the shingled roof of the boarded-up farm house. The weathered planks nailed over the windows and doors groaned and creaked in the wind. An old weathercock up on the roof spun, gratingly, in the gusts.

Stretched out on the stones before the big cold fireplace was Devil. The gray wolfs jaw rested on one forepaw and his eyes were closed. There was a tenseness about him, a readiness even in repose.

The Phantom stood by one of the blind windows. He had changed into the slacks, shirt, and sport coat he'd unconventionally purchased in Thornburg. He'd removed the cowl of his costume. A pair of dark glasses rested atop the raincoat folded on a dry stretch of floor nearby.

"Well stay here until the storm lets up, which it should do by morning. We're still about a hundred and fifty miles from Manhattan," he said. He looked down once more at the golden arrow pin in his hand. "That's where the answers to this puzzle are, in New York City."

Turning, he began to roam about the abandoned living room, facing a zigzag course between splotches of damp. '1 wish I'd been able to talk Lt. Colma into searching the train for those three women. Could they have gotten off the train somehow? Pretty tough trick for a woman to try, jumping from a moving train." He laughed a short laugh. "Still, if they can kill a man they can probably do most anything."

The Phantom held the pin up between thumb and forefinger. "Since I couldn't follow my blonde friend to her hideout, I'll use this to lead me to her."

He settled into a dry corner of the room. Folding his arms he said, "A couple hours sleep will help."

Exactly three hours later, as the thin light of daw was fighting through the drizzle, the Phantom awok Moments later he and Devil were on the road again.

CHAPTER FIVE