Mystery Of The Sea Horse (6 page)

Seconds before, he had detected the sound of its paws pounding the ground of the rocky hillside.

As the silent animal came for him, the masked man made a pivoting sidestep, like a skilled matador eluding a charging bull. He swung out expertly with one fist and dealt the big dog a cracking blow to the occipital region of the skull.

Letting out a single whimpering sigh, the guard dog fell to the ground and stayed there, unconscious.

The costumed Phantom continued on his way across the fogbound island.

Soon he was among trees, low, gnarled trees much twisted by long years of facing the sea wind. At the far edge of this small, stunted forest stood a human guard: a bulky man in a black windbreaker, carrying a rifle.

Unlike the dog, the man did not sense the Phantom's presence at all. The jungle-reared masked man moved by him silently and unobserved.

Dimly up ahead, the lighted windows of Sea Horse Villa glowed through the fog. The Phantom halted.

A second dog took notice of him. This one began barking, a loud chesty bark as it came galloping through the fog toward the Phantom.

He dropped abruptly to the ground and the gray police dog sailed completely over him. Leaping to his feet, standing wide-legged, he faced the bristling animal.

It darted at him, growling and barking, then darted back.

Before it worked itself up to another leap, the Phantom felled it with two chopping blows.

he left the fallen animal and ran directly toward the house, the fog thick around him.

"Over this way," called a man off in the mist. "Sarge was barking at something over here."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," said another man. can't see my nose in front of my—" He had glanced to his left to discover the Phantom standing there.

Before the guard could cry out, the Phantom had pressed one hand over his mouth and hit him three times in the neck. When the Phantom felt the man go limp, he let him fall to the damp ground.

"Diana's new friend," the Phantom said to himself, "is certainly anxious to maintain his privacy.

Then, from within the big house, he heard Diana's voice. She was screaming.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The man in the hallway reached under his coat when he saw the Phantom.

The masked man kept right on coming. He hit the man squarely on the jaw before more than the pistol grip showed outside the coat. The Phantom hit him with the fist which wore his skull ring. The force of the blow etched a skull design on the guard's face.

Snatching the pistol from the man's lax fingers, the Phantom tossed it into a nearby vase. Then he sprinted upstairs. That was where Diana's cry had come from.

He had let himself in through a rear door in the gray stone villa, using a small lock-picking tool from his belt.

There was no one patrolling the second floor. At the end of the shadowy corridor, yellow light was seeping out from under a closed door.

"This will not hurt at all, young lady," said a frail dry voice on the other side of the door. "Please to come back over here, so that we may proceed."

"No," said Diana, "I won't let you do this to

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me.

"You really haven't much choice, Diana," said another man. His voice was deep, self-assured. "Oh, and don't waste your time on another of those screams. No one's outside but my night

watch."

"Chris, this is all insane," said the girl.

"Please, young lady, let's get on," said the older man. "My time is at a premium and I find these delays most annoying."

"So come on over here and sit in the chair again," said Chris Danton.

The Phantom drew his twin automatics from their waterproof holsters. He raised one booted foot and kicked the door open.

The two men looked at him blankly for a second. Old Dr. Martinson had a hypodermic needle in one dry bony hand. Danton was standing next to a white metal table. The fight from the single hanging ceiling lamp colored his handsome face a watery gold.

"How did you . . ." began Diana. She was in the corner of the small laboratory. "Oh, never mind. I'm so glad you're here."

"Join me on this side of the room," the Phantom told the girl. "Danton, keep both your hands right where they are."

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir," said Danton with a gracious smile. "You know my name and I don't know yours. Looks like you've had a spell in the water. Bit chilly for swimming, isn't it?"

Diana crossed the room, keeping as far away from the two men as she could.

"You're quite well known up and down the coast," the Phantom said to the owner of the Sea Horse Villa. "Particularly to the narcotics authorities."

"All," smiled Danton, "slurs and libels. No one has any proof."

"So that's it," said Diana when she was beside the Phantom on the threshold. "That's what you're using those concealed rooms for—to store narcotics that you must be smuggling up from Mexico on that yacht of yours."

"Diana, you really are starting to sound like a

n arc.

The Phantom gestured at old Dr. Martinson with the black automatic in his left hand. "Set the needle on the table, Doctor, and very slowly hand me that large roll of surgical tape."

The doctor dropped the hypo. "What tape? I don't see—"

Diana walked back into the room and picked up I the tape. "Let's have your hands behind your back, Doctor. It won't hurt a bit."

While the old man mumblingly Complied, the Phantom cautioned, "Go carefully, Diana."

"That's a very individual outfit your champion is decked out in, Diana," said the handsome Dan- ton. "It reminds me of something."

"Turn around, Danton, with your hands behind you," ordered the Phantom.

Danton had moved slightly so that Diana and the old doctor were between him and the Phan- lom's guns. "Oh, of course. Anything to oblige, my mysterious friend." Suddenly Danton dived to his right and clutched at something on the wall.

The lights went out. Then glass was shattered.

The Phantom stepped into the room and caught hold of Diana. "Let's go."

Out in the hallway she asked, "Aren't you going after him?"

"He's off in the fog outside by now." He guided her down the stairway. "My first concern is to get you safely off this island."

"Jumping out the window like that," said Diana as they ran toward the front of the house. "It must be fifteen feet to the ground."

"I'd guess Danton is pretty good at surviving."

The Phantom opened the door. Fog came swirling in. He had holstered one of his automatics. He took hold of the girl's hand and led her out into the night.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, they were down the black cliffside and on Danton's private dock. The two motorlaunches, pale and chill in the mist, were bobbing gently in their berths.

Coming down here from the villa they had encountered one more guard.

The man had gotten off one shot before the Phantom had blasted the man's pistol from his hand and knocked him out.

There was no one watching the boats.

Diana climbed into the nearest launch while the Phantom prepared to cast off. "We're in luck," she called softly. "The keys are in this one."

"What?" The Phantom straightened.

"I said they'd left the keys, which will . .

The Phantom moved down the mist-slick planking to the other boat and hopped aboard. There were no keys in this one. "Well take this one," he said to the dark-haired girl.

Diana gave a puzzled shrug and left the boat to join him in the second. "Don't you like to do things the easy way?"

"Maybe too easy," he answered while he knelt below the wheel and sliced the wiring so he could run the launch without a key. "Maybe somebody would like us to use that particular boat."

"You don't think Danton can have come down here to booby-trap one of his own motorboats?"

"There," said the Phantom. The engine was turning over, chugging loudly. He returned to the dock, cast off, and jumped back to the launch to take it out of the little harbor and into the ocean.

Diana sat near him with her arms folded. "I thought you were ... I don't know—at one of the other ends of the earth someplace."

"And I thought you were spending a sedate vacation in polite Santa Barbara society," the Phantom said as he headed the launch back toward the California coast. "Instead I find you involved with a dashing playboy."

Diana laughed. "You're not jealous, are you?"

"No," he answered.

"I have to admit Chris Danton seemed . . . well, charming at first," the girl said. "But, Kit, he really turned out to be a pretty dreadful person. How did you hear about him, and all this narcotics business?"

"A federal agent I ran into up in the Bay Area happened to mention your playboy friend," answered the masked man. "As Danton pointed out, no one's ever been able to prove anything against him. Quite a few people, however, are convinced he's pretty deep into narcotics smuggling."

"I think they'll be able to prove something now," she told the Phantom. "I stumbled into a concealed part of the villa. I'm fairly certain they've still got drugs stored there."

"That's why Danton was holding on to you?"

"I'm not as subtle as you, I guess," she said with a sigh. "He found out I was in there and—this is really fantastic to me—they were going to brainwash me. So I wouldn't remember anything."

The Phantom said, "That's what the little doctor was for?"

"Yes," she replied. "Oh, and a funny thing, Kit, about the doctor . . ."

The rear end of the launch exploded with a great belching boom, spewing flame and twists of metal up into the misty night.

CHAPTER NINE

Danton stood with his hands on his hips high up on the black cliffs. When the sound of the motor- launch exploding reached him, his first reaction was deep hearty laughter. "One up on you, my masked friend," he said into the foggy night. Then his face became momentarily sad as he turned away from the sea. "But it's a shame poor Diana had to go as well."

He made his way back toward his villa, one hand in the pocket of his slacks, whistling an old European folk tune. "Yes, too bad about the girl. She was quite lovely," Danton reflected. "But there are more lovely girls in the world than million-dollar business enterprises. So there can never really be any question about which one has to be sacrificed. And I did, sincerely, try to spare— what's that?"

Someone was groaning off to his right, hidden by the thick fog.

The last guard the Phantom had knocked out was coming to. "Some guy," he said, "in a trick suit... he really clobbered me."