Lee Falk - Phantom 12 by Vampires

Author:Vampires
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Phantom stared at the figure. As hardened as he was to the violent or unusual, this gruesome sight had given him a momentary shock. He reached out and touched the white cheek, then felt the chest under the fancy white shirt. Then he laughed, hearty laughter of relief and sheer amusement. The thing in the coffin was a wax dummy.

He turned and took a step back toward the direction the chief had fled in, then stopped. It was easier to work without the nervous officer, weakened as he was by alcohol and fear. By now, he would be headed for his car, and would soon be back in his office hitting the brandy bottle.

He studied the wax dummy. It was a clever, realistic job. Why would anyone go to all this trouble in this old cellar beneath the ruins? Not many outsiders would come here. At this moment in Koqania, it seemed more likely that nobody would dare to enter this place so widely known to be cursed and haunted. Then, why this theatrical prop, this gruesome scene, obviously intended to frighten? To frighten whom? Himself?

By now his presence, the presence of the stranger, would be known by whoever inhabited these ruins. The door had been left unlocked purposely. Torches lighted. He examined one. It couldn’t have been burning for more than an hour or so. Was he being watched? Was the hunter being hunted?

His jungle-trained senses did not dismiss this possibility. Without doubt, there would be watchers in the night, eyes that had observed his going and coming, had seen Chief Peta flee. The chief, once safely back in town, could be counted on to tell what he had seen in the coffin and so enlarge the legend and increase the fear. But how about himself? What would they—-the unknown watchers who had prepared this dummy and the torches—do about him? He would not wait to find out. He would find them first.

This chamber was as far as he had gone into the cellars. He saw dark corridors leading off at 'the far end. The old castle, its outbuildings and battlements, had covered many acres. That meant acres of cellars. He started toward the central dark corridor, and if there were eyes watching through chinks in the stone walls, he was unaware of them. .

Something suddenly raced out of the darkness, and his gun moved toward it. The rapid patter of claws on stone. It was a huge rat as big as a cat. It sped out of the darkness across the torture chamber, headed for the open air. Quick as a flash, Devil was after it. The wolf had a long-standing feud with rats. Once in a deserted slaughterhouse, a pack of them had almost killed him. He killed the pack, but still bore the scars. Before the Phantom could stop him, he was out of sight. The master knew his animal’s feelings about rats. Devil’s chances of catching this big one were remote. The wolf would rejoin him when the chase was over.

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