Killer's Town (7 page)

"No, daddy," the voice mocked. "Not yet," it added.

The widow's walk was suddenly dark, then searchlights once more blazed into Weeks's eyes.

"Okay pop, that's it. You know the deal. Get rid of those snoopers. Those Boy Scouts. I want them gone—by dawn! Think it over. Now, blow!"

The lights went out. There was ribald laughter from the town. Back in her little room, Caroline heard it. She had heard it all. She pictured her father out there beyond the gates. What a fool I was to ride into this place, she told herself again, for the tenth or twentieth time. "Poor daddy," she sobbed aloud.

Weeks drove back alone, slowly. Everything he loved and believed in was at stake. His child, the Patrol, his honor. How could he bow to this blackmail? The morale of the Patrol would disintegrate. His own private moral standards could not allow it. Yet he had to think of Caroline. He reached headquarters, and went directly to his office, ignoring the waiting patrolmen. There, not a drinking man, he downed two slugs of whiskey, then called Chief Togando. News had reached the police chief and he got to Weeks's side in ten minutes. Togando had never seen his old friend so gray and broken.

"That hood's got my little girl," he said.

Togando nodded and touched his shoulder.

'You got a note?"

Weeks showed it to him, and then, with some effort, pulled himself together and told about the incident at the gate.

"Isn't there some legal way we can get into that place?" asked Togando angrily.

"We've been through all that. None that we know of yet. And certainly not now, with Caroline in there."

"We might talk to Sago," said the Chief.

"Your cousin, the General? No, he'd be all out for a frontal attack. How I'd love to see that," said Weeks bitterly. "What can I do, Mano? I can't give in to blackmail." It was the first time he'd ever called the Chief by his first name.

"I don't know, Randolph. We keep going around the bush."

"But now Caroline's in the bush," said Weeks tensely.

"We'll think of something. Meanwhile, we'll keep this to ourselves. Don't let it out."

Weeks nodded. The Chief got up, patted Weeks on the back, and left

Give it time? Think of something? What was there to think about? Police, army, navy—none could help; none had the authority. Exhausted, he lay forward on his arms on his desk and fell asleep.

Dawn at Killer's Town. From the widow's walk atop the inn, Koy, Eagle, and Sport peered through binoculars. In the distance, at four points of the compass, the Jungle Patrol cars were holding their observation posts. Koy swore.

"What'll we do now? That idiot Colonel hasn't moved."

"Give it an hour," said Eagle.

Koy agreed. They left the roof for breakfast—a raw egg in whiskey was Koy's usual meal. They discussed the next step if the Patrol cars did not pull out. There were several ideas, then Eagle the lawyer came up with a good one, something he had seen in an old building on the grounds. Koy chuckled approvingly. The hour passed. Returning to the roof, they could see that the Patrol cars were still there. Koy nodded with a cruel grin.

"Do it," he said.

About an hour later, Colonel Weeks was awakened by the telephone on his desk. It was a direct report for him from one of the Patrol cars at the site of Killer's Town. What the Colonel heard made his eyes smolder with fury.

A cage had been put up on the side of the inn, hanging from the roof, near the sign: Killer Hilton. Inside the cage was a figure, a girl. Caroline Weeks, alive and weeping. Weeks slammed the phone back on the receiver. He looked about wildly, then rushed to the rifle rack on the wall. If the Patrol, police, army, and navy were helpless, he wasn't, he assured himself. Two patrolmen burst into the room as he pulled the rifle from the rack. Despite his angry commands, they forcibly led him back to his desk. He glared at them.

"They've got Caroline in a cage!" he shouted.

They nodded. They'd heard the report.

"They want our men taken away. But that won't end it. Then they'll want something else. That's the way it is with blackmailers," he said brokenly. The patrolmen stood silently, watching their leader wrestle with himself.

"But she's in that cage. Those rats won't stop at anything —they know we're helpless." He suddenly stopped and stared at the men, then slapped his hands together.

"I want to be alone," he said.

"Colonel, are you sure ?"

"Don't worry. I won't do anything foolish."

The men left the office. Weeks grabbed his phone. "Why didn't I think of him at once?" he told himself. Then, into the phone. "Radio, put me on the X band at once."

What if he wasn't there? He could be anywhere. Waiting for the call to go through, Weeks kept his fingers crossed. He had to be there.

Excitement erupted in the Patrol radio room. The X band was the only contact with the Jungle Patrol's unknown Commander, the figure at the top of the Patrol organization chart. There was an office next to the Colonel's. On the door was the lettering: "Office of the Commander." The door was always locked. Only one man had the key, Colonel Weeks. The few who had peeked inside this office, when the Colonel went in, described it as a bare room—no windows, no furniture, no rug, only a heavy iron safe set into the wooden floor. Inside this safe, in some unknown way, orders from the Commander appeared. Their arrival was signaled by a light outside the door. When the Colonel opened the safe—he alone had the combination, there was a note, always brief and to the point, seemingly materialized out of thin air. Replies back to the Commander were also placed in the safe, where after a time they vanished.

There were also other ways to reach the Commander: by radio, by mail through a post-office box under the name Walker, by homing pigeons at cotes at the jungle's edge, or by the swift falcon, Fraka, also kept at the cote. Radio was the swiftest, and now Colonel Weeks waited at his phone impatiently. Maybe the Commander wouldn't be there, wherever there was. No one knew where the Commander's transmitter was. Somewhere . . . out there. There had been a Commander ever since the Patrol was founded two hundred fifty years ago. He had always, it seemed, remained anonymous. Patrolmen speculated. Was he one man or many? Why was he unknown? Who was he—or they? There were never any answers.

Now, the Colonel's phone rang. He grabbed it anxiously.

"Hello, Colonel Weeks here," he said.

A voice replied, deep, pleasant, but with the ring of immense authority, the voice he had heard many times, of a man he'd never seen.

"This is the Commander. How are you, Colonel Weeks? What can I do for you?"

The man speaking, and the place where his voice was coming from, was far stranger than anything any of the patrolmen had ever imagined when they discussed the mystery of their unknown Commander. At the eastern end of the jungle, near the remote Misty Mountains, was a place all jungle folk knew as the Deep Woods. No one in the Patrol had even heard of it. And though few had even been close to it, and only a handful had actually seen it through the centuries, all jungle folk knew it was taboo. Even the fierce Tirangi, on their occasional relapses into headhunting, avoided it as did the primitive Massagni, rumored to be cannibals in this age of moonwalks. The Deep Woods was feared and avoided for several reasons. This was the land of the pygmy Bandar, whose poison weapons caused instant death. The pygmies, it was well known, treasured the privacy of their shadowy domain and resented intruders. Then, too, even if you were foolish enough to go looking for them, the Deep Woods were hard to find. You never knew you were there, until a pygmy peered out of the bushes, with a poison arrow in his tiny bow. There was one clue, the sound of a roaring waterfall. When you heard that, if you were wise and not bent on suicide, you turned around and ran in the opposite direction.

But the real taboo concerning the Deep Woods was another more mysterious matter. Somewhere behind the waterfall, reached by secret entrances, were the fabulous Skull Throne and Skull Cave, the legendary home of the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, the Man Who Cannot Die.

At this moment if you were there, you might see a large animal resembling a dog enter the cave. The mouth of the cave, carved by the wind and water of eons, looks like a giant skull. And the animal that looks like a dog is actually a big mountain wolf with the pale-blue eyes of his kind. He trots through the cave, past rocky chambers containing a variety of wonders: a dim grotto containing rows of engraved stone plaques behind which are the vaults of long- dead Phantoms—twenty generations of them. Another chamber contains shelves filled with large folio volumes, the chronicles of the Phantom. Another chamber glitters and gleams In the torchlight, filled with treasure chests brimming over with precious jewels, gold, silver, and platinum objects. A deep, pleasant voice comes from another chamber and the wolf heads for that. Inside is a powerful radio transmitter. Seated, speaking and listening, is a large man clad in tights, hooded and masked, with two guns in holsters on a gunbelt that bears his ancient insignia, the Sign of the Skull.

"Your daughter, Colonel Weeks? Killer's Town. I've just returned to Bangalla from a distant place and know nothing of this. Tell me."

This is the voice on the other end of the X band. The unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol.

Colonel Weeks told him all about it—Killer Koy and the new town, the impotency of the Jungle Patrol and all other enforcement agencies, his night trip to the gates; the ultimatum from Killer Koy. Then of Caroline in the cage.

"Have you told me everything?" asked the Phantom.

"All that we know. The Lower Gamma banfc gang are there. Also the escaped lifers from here. But the plane goes in and out several times a week. Perhaps there are many more criminals."

"What happened to the old man who owned the place?"

"Matthew Crumb? We heard he's still there, unless they've killed him," said the Colonel. He waited for a moment.

"I will look into the matter, Colonel."

"What shall we do?"

"Nothing, Colonel, until you hear from me. Over and out."

There was a click and that was all. Colonel Weeks stared at the phone. Do nothing? How could he do that with Caroline in that cage? But what else could he do? Orders are orders.

Guran, the pygmy chief, and a dozen other little Bandar warriors were waiting at the Skull Throne as the Phantom dashed out of the Skull Cave with Devil, the wolf, at his heels. They were waiting for him to start the feast spread on mats on the ground before the throne, celebrating the Phantom's return from a distant mission. But he had no time for a feast now. He raced to a patch of grass where Hero, the big white stallion, was grazing, untied, and quickly saddled him. As he did, he explained to Guran the nature and location of the place where he was headed. Guran and the others pleaded with him to eat before leaving. They knew he was hungry. He glanced at the feast, sighed, but

shook his head, then leaped upon Hero. As he wheeled the great steed about, he swung low off the saddle, grabbed
a
roasted fowl from the mat, then raced off. The pygmies laughed and cheered, as he disappeared behind the roaring waterfall, pursued by Devil.

The jungle does not have planes, trains, superhighways, or even roads. Only thickly overgrown paths. But there is one way to move fast. The Phantom on Hero sped through the jungle, leaping over bushes and logs where no path existed, and reached the bank of a swift, foaming mountain stream. A drum message from the Deep Woods had preceded him, so that a large raft was waiting for him with two Mori raftsmen. They were of the Mori fisher folk, the most expert of jungle people in the skills of the sea and streams. The two men, wearing only loin cloths, smiled at the sight of their big masked friend. The Phantom dismounted, 5 shook their hands, then led Hero and Devil onto the raft. Without further ado, the Mori untied the raft and, wielding their nine-foot poles, pushed the raft into the channel of the stream.

This was icy water from the Misty Mountains. The grade here was steep, and the stream roared and foamed as it raced toward the distant sea, carrying the raft with it. It was a wild, bumpy ride. Devil, the wolf, remained in a crouch to keep his balance. The Phantom held tightly to Hero's reins as the stallion braced himself. The raft pitched and rolled, bounced over rocks, leaped through the air over low waterfalls, landing with a crash; rumbled over rapids, drenching men and animals in the icy spray. After three hours of this, the pace lessened, as the mountain torrent widened into a calm river nearing the sea. The Mori poled the raft to the bank. Another handshake and the Phantom, Hero, and Devil leaped onto the bank and were gone.

The Mori watched until they were out of sight. Usually their big friend joked with them, and was easy and relaxed. This time, he was grim and in a hurry, headed for some trouble he hadn't explained. Whoever was causing the trouble would wish they hadn't, now that the Phantom was on the way, the Mori told each other as they poled out into the stream.

From the top of a high tree that grew only a hundred feet from the wall, the Phantom could look into Killer's Town. He saw a few men walking idly in the streets. He noted the guard at the gate, and guards patrolling inside the wall. And he could see the cage hanging by the inn sign, with the girl sitting inside. It appeared to be an old tiger