the swarthy operator slid back the elevator door. Jim Doran stepped out of the car, stood a moment in the ornately furnished reception foyer staring belligerently at the uniformed policeman eyeing him suspiciously. Behind him, the car door slid shut silently as Toby took the elevator down again.
"I'm here to see Mr. Havens," Van announced in a deep, gruff voice that was not at all the smooth baritone of Richard Curtis Van Loan. "Didn't expect to find you cops up here."
Before the policeman could question him, Judkins' tall, bald-headed figure appeared on a balcony at one end of the room. The publisher's confidential secretary called down to the cop:
"If that's Mr. Doran, send him right up, officer."
Van nodded to the cop, brushed past him and mounted the staircase to the balcony.
Judkins' sallow glance was nervous but his worried brown eyes were without recognition as he led Jim Doran through a doorway into a large room that was more lounge than office.
"Mr. James Doran," he announced, and withdrew, closing the door.
Frank Havens' penetrating gaze darted up sharply as Dick Van Loan crossed to the wide, polished walnut desk behind which the publisher sat drumming his fingers anxiously. Six other men, one in the uniform of a police captain, looked up quickly from the armchair about which they were grouped.
But the figure slumped in that chair did not move.
As Van's swift glance took in the unusual tableau, his right hand swung across the desk toward Havens in a hearty handshake that hid the small platinum-and-diamond badge palmed in his long fingers. The significant emblem of a mask outlined by the brilliant gems was the only design on the smooth platinum surface of that cryptic shield. But it was enough.
Frank Havens' worried eyes glinted with recognition as Van's swift fingers gave him, but not the others, a flashing look at that Phantom badge. The emblem disappeared again in Jim Doran's hand.
"Gentlemen, Mr. James Doran!" Havens said and stood up from behind his desk. The name had weight now as he spoke it. Jim Doran was no longer a password name, but had become a reality. "Mr. Doran will represent me in this investigation." He nodded his grey head toward the silent figure in the armchair.
Van stepped over to the armchair, his eyes on the domelike head of the middle-aged man slumped there. A small fleck of blood stained the fellow's white lips as the Phantom raised the lolling head and studied the fixed expression of sheer surprise stamped on the dead man's face.
Rigor mortis had not yet set in, and there were no visible marks of violence on the neatly dressed body.
"This wants some preliminary explaining," Jim Doran grumbled. "I didn't think anybody'd be interested in just one corpse, after what happened at Rock Creek Canyon."
"We know about that," the officer in the captain's uniform said. "This happens to be New York City, not Arizona."
Van glanced up, curiously aware that Havens, in his repressed excitement, had not named him as the Phantom, although two of the men in street clothes were obviously homicide detectives.
The other three men in the room were big, well dressed fellows. Frank Havens made the brief introductions.
One of the strangers was Warden Jack Bluebold of Alleghany Penitentiary at Mountainview, Pennsylvania. The next man was Dr. Maurice Jessup, resident surgeon at the Alleghany prison. The third was ex-Congressman Harry Arnold, a Pennsylvania politician. The three of them stayed close together in a compact, capable group.
Havens eyed the lifeless figure in the armchair, frowned and said:
"Lester Gimble is—was—one of the leading metallurgists in this country. Because I wanted an article on the subject, I induced him to interview Dr. Waldo Junes, the famous scientist who is conducting some unusual experiments in metals at the General Electric laboratory at Niagara Falls. Gimble was on his way back here—"
Havens broke off, nodded to the plainclothes men.
"Simmons and me," the taller of the two dicks said, jerking his head at his partner, "were standing in Grand Central Station near the taxicab entrance about two-thirty this afternoon, when this fellow Gimble shows with a suitcase and a briefcase, coming from the lower level train platforms.
"He starts to get into a cab, when two guys take a shot at him from behind. He dropped his bags and swung round. One of the gunmen grabs up his suitcase and the other one got the briefcase. Simmons and me opened up on 'em then and there was a hell of a lot of racket and commotion.
"I killed the bird with the suitcase before he got ten steps, but the one with the briefcase got into the crowd where Simmons didn't dare shoot. So far as we heard yet, the second guy got away. A lot of cops were after him by that time, so Simmons and me took care of this Gimble who'd been shot at.
"He claimed he wasn't either hit or hurt, and had to get over here to see Mr. Havens in a hurry—" The tall detective shrugged and glanced deprecatingly at Captain Walters.
"Well, we knew who Mr. Havens was, so we took Gimble and his suitcase and brought him over here."
Frank Havens nodded. "The right thing to do, under the circumstances." His blue, penetrating eyes swung to the Phantom. "Mr. Gimble came in here with these two officers and sat down in the chair he's in now, he hadn't said anything on the short ride over, and he was looking rather white. Before he had a chance to talk, he slumped over and died.
"I had the Clarion's staff physician rush right up here from downstairs, but nothing could be done. We found that Gimble had been shot in the spine."
"That's why we didn't see any blood," Detective Simmons stated. "Them kind of wounds don't hardly bleed at all, and the victim don't feel he's been shot because he's numbed. He don't die until the fluid in the spine drains out like an internal hemorrhage. But how was we to know—"
"The Clarion physician exonerated both of you," Havens declared. "I've heard of similar cases, particularly during the war. Gimble would have died anyway. But what are we going to do now?"
He turned to Van. "I phoned for Captain Walters and asked him to keep this free of the regular police routine for one hour. I'm glad you got here so quickly, Mr. Doran."
"If you haven't found anything of importance in Gimble's suitcase, or on his person, and if that scientist, Dr. Junes up in Niagara Falls, can't give you a lead of some sort," Van growled, "you don't need any help until the police catch the gunman who got away with Gimble's briefcase." He shot a look at Captain Walters. "That is, unless the man this detective killed can be identified."
"We're working on that angle," Walters snapped, and said pointedly to Havens, "If it's okay now, let's have the Homicide Squad and the Medical Examiner in on this."
Havens eyed Van questioningly, and when Jim Doran nodded, the precinct captain picked up the phone, asked for Headquarters.
"There was absolutely nothing in Gimble's pockets, nor in his suitcase, that points to a clue," Havens said emphatically. "We went through everything while we were waiting for you. And I've put a call through to the General Electric Experimental Laboratory, but Dr. Junes refuses to be disturbed and won't answer the phone."
He motioned Van to follow him across the large room to a teletype machine in the corner. The tape, twisting snakelike over the rim of the overflowing receptacle, was still uncoiling the grim
