On Top
There was no guard at the bottom of the elevator shaft when Van stepped out of the car.
He made his way back to the big cavern where he had entered the unnumbered tunnel. The two hooded sentries were still posted there, but they let him pass when their torch lights showed the green circle with the two zigzag yellow stripes of an Empire officer on his black sleeve. Evidently no general alarm had been sent out for him, since he was supposed to be securely locked up in that subterranean concrete operating room.
The Phantom passed on into the main tunnel from which he and Jerry Lannigan had fled to make their escape from their original guards. He turned left, away from the direction of Vonderkag's gas cavern.
He was moving without a light, but the guards at the tunnel gates ahead of him, were satisfied with his officer's insignia and with the password, September Third.
When he had got by the last of the six doors he'd counted on his way in blind, he discarded the robe, mask and hood. A quarter mile further on he came to a fork in the shaft, and took the tunnel that had the heaviest bracing.
The passage climbed steeply, opened into a broader shaft up which ran a cog-wheel rail line for coal cars. There were no cars operating now. Van struggled up the long, sharp incline, came out upon a slag dump beneath stars and a bright moon.
He ran off the dump, darted along a mountain side, and dropped down to a dirt road. The fresh night air that filled his lungs gave him new energy. He followed the road, heard a railroad train laboring up a grade somewhere in the near distance.
Van had no definite idea where he was, except that he was in the heart of a coal mining district, probably in Pennsylvania. But fifteen minutes later, when he walked into a small town, his location assumed a grim significance.
The name of the town, Mountainview, was the post office address of the Alleghany State Penitentiary!
Van had Frank Havens on a long-distance phone connection to New York City within ten minutes. He was talking from a booth in the waiting room of the local railroad station. He didn't dare say much, and used the name of another Phantom alias, Jimmy Lance.
"I'll be at the Mountainview Hotel," he informed Havens. "Is Lannigan back yet?"
"He is," Havens stated. "And he'll fly me right out there."
"That saves me asking you to come," Van said appreciatively. "It's hotter here than you think. Bring along all the authority you can. If I'm not at the hotel there'll be a message for you. Anything else happened?"
"Yes," Havens told him tersely. "The Twin-City Power Dam at Minneapolis was destroyed by a blast—one single blast did it—to-night! And several more hooded men were reported seen at the disaster immediately after the explosion. The Twin-Cities are in a panic, partially without light, and the State Militia has been called out by the Minnesota governor!"
The Phantom kept back the flow of words that leaped to his tongue. One single explosion—the new explosive Kag had perfected!
Havens' voice came over the line again:
"I'm leaving for Mountainview at once!"
Van cut off the connection. Enough had been said over the phone. The clock in the hotel lobby showed ten P.M. when he registered for a room and locked himself in.
There was still time to visit the prison, if he could get inside the grim walls. Jud Marks' F.B.I. badge should help him there.
The Phantom spent five more minutes at the mirror and wash basin, removing the grime of the mines from his face, brushing off the blue suit he'd taken from Rotz. When he finished, he looked like a hard-traveled man who might have been a salesman.
It took him twenty minutes to get a local taxi and ride to the penitentiary on the outskirts of the town. The prison appeared bleak and grey, and fortlike in the night. It was built on a mountain side, one high stone wall almost abutting the rock-ribbed mountain itself.
About the tough prison was an atmosphere of menace and mystery that seemed to hover even over the wooded, thickly undergrown background of rugged ranges and deep, boulder-strewn valleys.
Van announced himself to the prison turnkey as a Federal agent named Jim Lance checking up on the escape of Snakey Willow, shot to death in New York City. He flashed the murdered Jud Marks' gold badge, asked to see the warden at once.
A rangy fellow named Rowan listened to the Phantom's preliminary questions irritably.
"Can't give you no information," the deputy grumbled. "You'll have to see Bluebold himself. He's in a huddle right now with Mr. Arnold who's Chairman of the Board of Parole. Dr. Jessup, the prison physician, and the wall and cell captains are with him. We got Killer Kline, that two million dollar mail robber and murderer, coming up here from Pittsburgh to be electrocuted next week. We do all the state's killings up here, since we built the big new chair."
Van studied Rowan's dull features keenly. The deputy wasn't impressed by the presence of Jim Lance, G-man, but was obviously in considerable awe of the Pittsburgh big shot who was to be locked up here for the last brief week before his official execution.
"Kline gets delivered here in the morning," the deputy went on, "so we ain't taking no chances on anything happening to him while he's with us, until he gets the jolt in the electric chair. Bluebold and the others are in the Board Room getting up their plans to handle this killer now. So you'll have to wait until they're done."
He took Van into the warden's office inside the prison behind the double gates of the turnkey's cage, and sat with him for a half hour until Bluebold and the men in the conference came out of the Board Room door at one end of the prison chief's office.
During that wait, Van's attempts to get the deputy to talk about the prison's management failed dismally. The rangy officer was obviously under orders not to give out any information at all concerning the activities behind these grim walls.
Rowan had run completely out of conversation when the Board Room door opened and the conference filed out.
The Phantom eyed the seven men in turn as they entered the warden's office. They were all big, powerful sharp-glanced, with the hard look of prison officials accustomed to handling convicts ruthlessly. The two cell captains and the two officers in command of the prison wall guards went out immediately. The deputy introduced Jim Lance, told what he'd come for.
In the austere environment of the penitentiary, Warden Jack Bluebold was even more rugged and capable looking than he had appeared when the Phantom had first seen him in Frank Havens' office. He sat aggressively in the chair behind his desk, eyeing Lance with shrewd, suspicious appraisal.
Ex-Congressman Harry Arnold, the Parole Board chairman, seemed no different than he had been in New York. His bearing was confident, his manner unruffled and assured. The responsibility of handling Killer Kline and electrocuting the tough murderer hadn't disturbed the politician's suavely alert and open-minded appearance.
Dr. Maurice Jessup, Van observed, seemed to be the only one of the three who was not fully satisfied with what had been decided upon in that Board Room meeting. He kept darting unexpected glances at Arnold and Bluebold, as though on the verge of declaring himself on some point which he never quite voiced.
