Robert Wallace: The Black Ball Of Death

The Phantom’s first questions brought ready answers.

“Your son entertained a feminine companion here last night. Was he engaged to be married?”

“Not that I know of.”

“He had a number of women friends?”

“Too many.”

“Do you know of anyone in particular he was interested in?” the Phantom persisted.

“There was one young lady he used to call quite frequently. He never confided in me or mentioned her, but I overheard him on the telephone once or twice. Her name is ‘Vicki.’ At least that’s what Arthur called her.”

“You never saw her?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Tell me about your son’s finances. They may have a direct bearing on last night’s affair.”

Matthew Arden passed an unsteady hand across his face. For a minute he was silent. Then he drew a breath.

“This is confidential, of course,”he said.

“Arthur’s financial status wasn’t any too good. He ran through most of the money his mother left him. He never learned the virtue of economy, unfortunately. I believe in the last month or so he began to realize his spending days were nearly over. Arthur was pretty close to being broke.”

ARDEN’S servants had come down that morning. A wooden-faced butler loomed in the doorway.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said to Arden. “The telephone.”

The Phantom said, “Thank you, Mr. Arden, I won’t detain you further. I have to see the sheriff. I’ll get in touch with you again.”

Outside, in the bright morning sun, the lodge and its surroundings had a different aspect. The somber, funereal gloom that hung over it the night before had vanished. Even the rhododendron wall looked more cheerful in the sunshine.

The splash of a hose took the Phantom to the garage. Arden’s chauffeur, a young blond lad, was spraying away some of the well-known Jersey clay from a convertible coupé’s white-walled tires. He stopped whistling when the Phantom came up to him.

“Who rents boats around here?” the Phantom inquired.

“Sam Ruddy, down at the end of the lake.” The chauffeur pointed. “Take a short cut – down the steps to the boat-house and along a path you’ll find on the other side of the dock. You can’t miss it.”

The Phantom descended the cement steps. For an instant he looked across Lake Candle, at the opposite shore, and the previous night’s meeting with Dr. Winterly and the giant, Luke, came back to him. What the Phantom had told Steve about Winterly’s after midnight trip to the Arden dock was still keen in his mind.

Later that day, he had plans to talk with the aged scientist.

Meanwhile, his next stop-off was the lakeside pavilion of Sam Ruddy. The Phantom found the designated path without trouble. It twisted its way through the trees. Birds sang in their branches, the sun slanted through them, and the lake lapped along the shore.

Ruddy’s pavilion was built out over water. A planked runway led down a large wharf. More than a dozen rowboats were tied up to it. There was no one around except a girl in faded dungarees, bare feet, and a soiled yellow sweater.

When Van asked for Ruddy, she cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted “Hey, Pop. Someone to see you!”

A short, fat man came out of the building back of the pavilion. Sam Ruddy bald and sunburned, had evidently been working on an engine. He wiped his hand on a bit of waste and waddled down the runway.

“Want to rent a boat? Got plenty.”

“I’m after information.”

The Phantom flashed his Detective Bureau badge, with which Homicide had supplied him. More than once he had found it useful.

Ruddy looked from the badge to the Phantom’s face and swallowed. “Guess it must be about what happened over at the Arden lodge last night. Sorry, mister, don’t know nothing about it.”

“You know the boats around here.”

“Sure. Tell you anything about them.”

“Did you rent any last evening – prior to ten o’clock? A boat with an outboard motor?”

Ruddy shook his head. “No, I didn’t. The last rental I had was around four o’clock. Couple of gals hired a canoe go up the lake. They brought it back this morning.”

In the pavilion the telephone rang. Ruddy said, “Answer that, Bess,” and girl in the faded dungarees, who had been listening attentively to what the Phantom asked, reluctantly obeyed.

She came back in a minute. “It’s for you, Pop. Mrs. Stewart’s lost her boat. She wants to talk to you about it. She tried to get you twice this morning but the line was busy.”

Ruddy excused himself and wheezed up the wooden walk. Bess, transferring live bait from one tin can to another, looked up at the Phantom.

“I know something,” she said suddenly.

“What, for instance?” The Phantom’s glance moved to her freckled face.

“That Dr. Winterly’s man was around last night. His name is Luke, and he lives over there.” She nodded up the lake. “He’s a great big guy; and I saw him around nine o’clock, rowing a flat-bottomed fish boat they keep over there. I’m afraid of him. He looks bad.”

Her father came down to the wharf while she was talking. He pushed her aside.

“Lady up the lake says somebody borrowed her boat last night and didn’t return it,” he told the Phantom. “Rowboat with a kicker on it. Same kind you were asking about. I’m going to look around. Want to come along?”

The Phantom followed Sam Ruddy into one of the rowboats tied up at the wharf. The boathouse keeper cast off and pulled at oars. The boat moved out from the wharf, and the Phantom’s frowning eyes watched while Bess stared after them.

SAM RUDDY rowed leisurely north along the eastern shore of Lake Candle.

With his hat’s brim turned down to shield his musing eyes from the sun glare, the Phantom watched the fat man peer into the coves and inlets they passed. His mind was busy. Outwardly he resembled someone indolently enjoying a row up the water. Inwardly, his sharp, analytical brain reviewed the facts available.

He had little doubt the killing of Arthur Arden was no inspirational, done-on-the-spur-of-the-moment crime. The circumstances, as he saw them, hinted heavily of organization. That meant a directing force, with offshoots, to further darken and tangle the problem.

Some proof of that theory was substantiated by the man with the twisted ear, who had been watching across from the Clarion Building. The man who had loitered on the opposite pavement, ready to follow Steve Huston when the little reporter came out. The Phantom took that as a sample of the killer’s strategy.

He – or they – weren’t leaving any loose ends. They were determined to find out whether Frank Havens had waved his wand and produced the Phantom Detective. If so, – and the Phantom smiled grimly at the thought – measures would be taken to meet the challenge.

He went back to his examination of the billiard room at the lodge. What Steve had told him regarding the number eight pool ball stirred in his memory. Was that eight ball a macabre touch to the killing? A grisly gesture of defiance and contempt? Or was it merely a warped sense of moronic humor?

The Phantom shook his head. The position of the eight ball could have been any of those things. But he had an idea it went deeper than that. His trained mind told him that the eight ball had some peculiar and mysterious significance, something baffling which tied in with and had a direct connection with Arthur Arden’s sudden death.

He brooded while the fat, perspiring Ruddy continued to pull at the oars. They were far up the lake now, the dock of the Arden lodge dropping out of sight behind the arm of the cove out of which the boat with the outboard had fled in the dark of the early morning hour.