Robert Wallace - The Black Ball Of Death

“That’s all.” The Phantom dismissed her with a gesture. After she went out, he turned back to Sunderland. “Let me have the particulars of the assignment she’s going out on.”

Fifteen minutes later, a telephone call to the Clarion brought Steve Huston to the Grand Central Terminal where the Phantom was staked out near the entrance to the railroad station’s huge waiting room.

“No tail?” The Phantom asked the question as he looked over Steve’s shoulder. “You’ll have to be extra careful from now on. Our friends know you, and it’s easy for them to pick you up when you leave the Clarion Building.”

“I’ve been using one of the rear exits,” Steve said.

The Phantom explained what he wanted. Steve was to go down to the Waverly Studio on Fifth Avenue. That was a place where fashion photos were taken and made. He gave the reporter a pinpoint description of Maxine Hillary while Steve memorized it all with growing interest.

“Sounds good. The gal has an hour’s appointment. You want me to follow her away from the bulb-and-shutter joint. What then?”

The Phantom gave him the sketch Hugh Royal had supplied. “There’s a chance that Miss Hillary might get in touch with this girl. She’s the Vicki Selden I’m trying to find. Now that Maxine knows a detective is hunting for Vicki, there’s a possibility she’ll contact her. It’s a long shot, but I can’t overlook it. Do the best you can, and the minute you have any news rush it through to me.”

Steve Huston put the sketch in his pocket. After a word or two further he was out of the waiting room and on his way. The Phantom lingered a few more minutes, searching the passengers and loungers who circulated around the Terminal. He had a feeling that Pennell – or Len – might have picked up Steve’s trail and followed him to Grand Central.

But he didn’t see a sign of the twisted-ear character or the thin-faced man in the pearl-gray hat.

Satisfied, the Phantom walked out to 42nd Street. He had plans to make, a diagram to draw up and follow – a crime pattern into which he still had to fit the frail, emaciated figure of Dr. Hugo Winterly, the doctor’s giant servant, and a drift of bronze colored powder, as well as the number eight pool ball which Arden’s fingerprints had marked.

As he walked west, the Phantom knew and understood the riddle of the murder case was to be one of the most difficult to solve he had tackled in his long, successful career.

PROPPED up in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue building where the Waverley Studio did business, Steve Huston had little trouble picking up Maxine Hillary when she stepped out of an elevator, about an hour after he started his vigil.

Recognizing her immediately from the Phantom’s graphic description, the little reporter, who admired a good-looking girl the same as anyone else, drifted along behind her as she started north up the famous avenue of shops and stores.

She walked with free-limbed grace, swinging on at a good pace, apparently oblivious to the admiring glances cast in her direction. Steve had to hurry to keep up. But he stuck resolutely to dodging in and out of the crowd, until at 43rd Street Maxine Hillary turned east.

Several doors down the street she descended the steps of a bar-grill with the name “Fowler” over it.

To Steve, that made it a hundred percent. It was close to noon and the metropolitan lunch hour. If the girl he followed was catching herself a bite there, he could pull up a chair at a nearby table and get his own lunch. He wasn’t hungry. The seven o’clock breakfast always sharpened his appetite when high noon rolled around.

Steve entered Fowler’s leisurely, hung his hat on a peg with a half dozen others, and spotted his quarry at once. Maxine Hillary had taken a table in the rear of a stone-floored room where the pine tables were covered with turkey-red cloths.

A few other early diners were scattered about Steve Huston sat unobtrusively down at a table in an opposite corner.

Twenty minutes later he had the thrill of his life. A blonde girl entered Fowler’s. One glance was enough for Huston to see that she matched the pastel sketch in his pocket. She wore a green dress and short coat, but in any color she would have been gorgeous. Vicki Selden! Steve’s pulses drummed. The girl who had been at the lodge with Arden on the murder night!

The girl the Phantom Detective had to find.

Steve’s glance showed him Vicki siting down at Maxine Hillary’s table. It showed him something else – a strained, apprehensive uneasiness she displayed in her pretty face and posture.

Steve had noticed a public telephone booth in the front section of Fowler’s, back from the bar. He pushed its door shut after him, fumbled for a nickel, and called his boss.

Frank Havens listened to what he said and added, “The Phantom is waiting to hear from you. I’ll get in touch with him at once.”

“Fowler’s, Forty-third Street, just east of Fifth,” Steve repeated and rang off.

He had lost interest in his lunch. Now, Steve Huston realized, he had two girls to shadow. He hoped the Phantom would arrive promptly and take over. He wasn’t quite sure of what to do next.

No more than fifteen minutes elapsed before the little reporter caught a glimpse of the Phantom coming down the steps. Instead of bustling into the dining room, the Phantom stopped at the bar. There, with a lime-and-seltzer, he rested an elbow on the mahogany and glanced casually into the rear room.

He made no move, did nothing to indicate he saw Steve – or the two girls at their table. He was careful to keep out of Maxine Hillary’s eye range. She knew him, and the Phantom didn’t want her to give the Selden girl any warning of his presence.

While he stirred the ice in his innocuous drink, the Phantom waited.

Maxine Hillary, evidently with another posing appointment, got up suddenly, and said goodbye to her friend. The Phantom turned his back to her when she paid her check and went past him. He watched her symmetrical legs hurry up the steps before he turned and walked into the dining room.

He gave Steve a finger signal to stay put and, at the corner table, helped himself to the same chair the Park Sunderland model had just left.

VICKI Selden gave an involuntary start as the Phantom sat down. Red lips parted, gray-green eyes widened. The color under her makeup faded fast.

“Probably Miss Hillary warned you about me,” the Phantom said, quietly. “I want to help you, and I expect you to help me. That is, if you want Arthur Arden’s murderer found.”

For a long minute she sat apathetically silent. The Phantom saw the glint of tears in her eyes. Finally, she nodded.

“What do you want to know?”

“You were with Arthur at the lodge at the lake the night he was killed?”

“Yes. We had dinner in town and drove down to the lodge later.” Her voice was low and husky.

“What time did you leave the lodge?”

“About nine o’clock, maybe a few minutes after that.”

“Did Arden say anything about expecting a visitor?” the Phantom asked.

Vicki raised her water glass and took a slow sip. Over the rim of it, she eyed the Phantom intently. “I’m not sure if I trust you,” she said candidly. “Why did you insist upon meeting me here and asking me these questions in such a public place?”

The Phantom shrugged. “I’ve been hunting you for quite some time, Miss Selden, and now that I’ve found you, I want to settle this business as quickly as possible. There’s a chance you might – well, vanish again.”

“Vanish!” She gave a ladylike snort. “A fine chance I have of doing that with your detective following me.”