Robert Wallace - The Black Ball Of Death

In a smaller back room of the apartment, he found the billiard table. He located the eight ball in one of the side pockets. It looked and felt like any ordinary billiard ball. He dug at the surface with his penknife. The material chipped. Underneath it was just another billiard ball. Like the one found at the feet of Arthur Arden’s corpse, it was no different from a million other billiard balls.

The Phantom placed the black ball in the center of the pool table and left it there. In his mind a new idea was forming. If these eight balls meant nothing in themselves, then there was something about them that had a meaning. Perhaps the color, perhaps their silly reputation for being a symbol of bad luck. Perhaps even the number eight possessed some significance.

He returned to the living room for one last look around and noticed the plain Mason jar standing on the mantel of the imitation fireplace.

It was greasy and dirty, and certainly didn’t belong there.

The Phantom took it down and removed the flat glass top. He dumped some of the contents into the palm of his hand. The slight frown on his forehead grew deeper. That simple Mason jar contained more of that bronze colored powder which he had first seen near Arden’s corpse. The powder he had proved to be some metallic alloy. These clues at the Arden lakeside home were taking on more meaning.

The Phantom replaced the jar and its contents on the mantel, quietly left the apartment and the building, and paused on the sidewalk for a quick look around. Then he crossed the street and took up a position down a fairly dark driveway.

JUST two minutes of nine, a taxi slid to the curb in front of the apartment house, and Vicki Selden got out. She paid the driver, didn’t look around at all, but hurried into the building. From his hiding place, the Phantom saw another cab pull up half a block down the street, and Len with the twisted ear got out. He flung a bill at the driver and began running toward the building.

He entered it, and must have been in time to see the elevator signal indicate what floor Vicki had gone to. The Phantom started moving toward the building too. Vicki might be in danger from this man.

The Phantom was halfway across the street when another cab pulled up. Someone got out of it, holding two immense shopping bags heaped full of groceries. Apparently the man had already paid his driver, for the taxi pulled away. The burdened man hoisted the two heavy bags a little higher, so they shielded his face, turned, and walked into the lobby.

When the Phantom reached the elevator he saw that it was stopped on the eleventh floor. Vicki had gone there, so had Len apparently, and now this man loaded with groceries seemed to have visited the same floor. When the Phantom rang for the elevator and it didn’t budge, he sprinted for the steps and went up them three at a time. Someone was holding the elevator at the eleventh floor!

Eleven floors will take the breath out of any man, and the Phantom was puffing by the time he reached the tenth. He heard the elevator mechanism working now. Whoever had been holding the elevator had at last released it.

On the eleventh floor, the Phantom found the door to Arthur Arden’s apartment closed but not locked. He turned the knob, drew his gun, and stepped into the living room. Then he heard the muffled cry.

He came through the doorway into the bedroom, and there was no hesitation in his next move. Vicki was outside the window on the fire escape; and Len with the twisted ear was savagely grappling with her, twisting her arm as he tried to pull her back into the room.

Len turned, grabbing for his gun as he saw the Phantom. The detective shot him through the shoulder. Len screamed and lunged through a door into another room. The Phantom went to the window. His helping hand brought Vicki back inside, and she sank to the floor.

He turned his attention to the other room then, and he realized abruptly that his unwillingness to plunge headlong into a trap that Len might have set for him there had cost him his capture of the twisted eared man. Taking advantage of the Phantom’s necessary caution, Len had fled from the apartment through its service entrance. The Phantom went out into the hall, but the criminal hireling had vanished.

Returning, the Phantom closed and locked the door. Then he carried Vicki to a bed in the bedroom and placed her on it. He allowed her head to lie a bit lower than her body and gently chafed her wrists. When she came out of her faint, the Phantom was smiling down at her with an assurance that she, too, felt the moment she recognized him. In a few moments she was able to sit up.

“I’m sorry,” the Phantom said. “This was partly my fault. I never intended that our twisted-ear friend would hardly do more than show himself. I was unable to follow him quickly enough. Somebody else got the elevator before I could reach it.”

“He – followed me to an office.”

“Park Sunderland’s Model Agency?” the Phantom asked.

“Yes. I’ve been trying to become one of the models there, but Mr. Sunderland is very hard to see. Then I started here, just as you instructed. That man – never lost sight of me. After I was in the apartment, someone knocked on the door. I didn’t know if it was the man with the bent ear or – you. If it turned out to be him, I was sure you’d be close by, so I opened the door.”

“Then what happened?” the Phantom asked.

“This man seized me, and I became terrified. All I know was he meant to kill me and that I had to get away. The fire escape goes to the roof, and so I made a break for it. Then -” her voice broke with remembered horror – “he caught me again.”

“I winged him when I came in,” the Phantom said, “but he got away from me.”

“There was someone else,” Vicki said. “I’m sure someone came in after this killer attacked me. In the first place, this killer held me while he pushed the latch on the door so it wouldn’t lock automatically. Then, as he was grappling with me on the fire escape, I’m certain I heard the outer door slam shut.

PROMISING to return in a moment, the Phantom sped to the elevator and brought it up from the ground floor. Propped in the corners of it were two grocery bags, heaped full of supplies. The Phantom shook his head in self-reproach. The man laden with those bags had been working with Len and guessed Vicki’s coming to this apartment might be a plant. He’d made very certain that his features were not seen. But what had he been after?

Vicki asked that same question a moment later when the Phantom returned to the living room.

The Phantom gestured. “On your former visit here, did you ever notice a glass jar on that mantel?”

“No,” Vicki replied. “I did not.”

“Such a jar was there a little while ago. Now it is gone. The man who followed Twisted Ear into this apartment, came here for one reason – to get that jar and its contents. He made one slip though. It may give me what I’ve been hoping for.”

“I don’t understand -” Vicki began.

The Phantom interrupted her. “Twisted Ear wore no gloves, and he grabbed that door knob on his way out. Its surface is smooth and should take fingerprints well. I’d stake my reputation that Twisted Ear has a police record. Now I’ll be sure of that; and if I identify him, we’ll be on a more definite trail.”

Quickly, with the screwdriver blade of his pocket knife, the Phantom removed the knob and wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief.

Vicki stirred restlessly. “I’d better get out of here before Twisted Ear decides to pay me a return visit – a more deadly one this time. I’m not a brave girl, Phantom. If I ever see that man with the bent ear again, I’ll promptly do more than faint.”