the life and property toll at Rock Canyon Dam.
Havens fingered the ticker-tape with a trembling hand, looked searchingly at the Phantom. "I didn't tell them"—he nodded toward the three police officers, and lowered his voice—"who you were, because I thought you'd want to work on that Arizona disaster, Van."
Jim Doran's slatey eyes were inscrutable. "I saw the Clarion tower lights signaling just before the N.B.C. network started to put the President on the air. Yes, Frank," he agreed in a grave, low-pitched tone, "I'd like to go after the brain that is directing these catastrophes. I heard his voice—if that was his voice, making that threat over the radio. Somebody will have to stop him!"
The Phantom looked keenly at the famous publisher. Havens was staring out through the wide windows overlooking Manhattan and the New Jersey hills green against the background of dark, scudding rain clouds. The older man's blue, moody eyes seemed to be envisaging the calamity that threatened those peaceful, rolling lands and the vast country beyond, presaged in the thin, endless record of the tape sliding implacably through his fingers.
"Somebody must stop him!" Havens repeated with a note of despair in the almost-whispered words.
Van asked shrewdly, "What did you send Gimble to Niagara for, Frank? It wasn't just a news article you wanted!"
"You're right," Havens confessed. "Dr. Junes is trying to unite two metals, aluminum and calbite, heretofore impossible of fusion because high enough temperatures couldn't be reached. It's an experiment a lot of steel and munitions manufacturers would like to know about.
"If those two metals can be fused, the result will be the most impenetrable armorplate in the world, a new metal ten thousand times harder and stronger than the toughest of modern steels!"
"At least tough enough to get Lester Gimble murdered," Van commented, and glanced at the three big men from Pennsylvania. "What are those fellows here for?"
"Ex-Congressman Arnold came here with the other two prison officials to ask me to stop giving publicity in my newspapers to the graft and corruption that's been reported at Alleghany Penitentiary. They were here when Gimble came in. Harry Arnold is chairman of the Pennsylvania Board of Parole and Pardons. He and Bluebold and Jessup claim the publicity I've been giving their prison has interfered with their attempts to ferret out and clean up the prison rottenness. I'm convinced they're right, too."
Van nodded, and said to Havens as the police captain called to them, "Keep the Phantom out of this, Frank, until I tell you otherwise."
Captain Walters had finished phoning, with flustering results.
"A sour mess this is turning out to be!" he exclaimed. "Doran, you wanted to get a line on that bird Jackson, the detective, killed."
Van's voice slipped into character again, became a harsh, demanding growl.
"If it's a lead, hand it out," he grumbled.
"It's a lead that's going to raise hell over in Pennsylvania," Walters declared. "That gunman Jackson shot is Snakey Willow, a lifer at Alleghany Penitentiary!"
The three brawny prison officials eyeing Captain Walters glanced sharply over to Frank Havens and Jim Doran.
"Snakey Willow—" Warden Bluebold's voice was a dry rasp. "He was in the prison three days ago, when we left. By—"
"Yeah," Walters said caustically. "He ain't there now! And I didn't see any police teleflash about his escape yet, neither. But that's not all. The rogues gallery picture of him we had at Headquarters don't fit his face. He had a fresh operation on his mug! If he'd been able to erase his fingerprints, we'd never have found out who he was!"
Dr. Maurice Jessup, the prison's resident surgeon, frowned, and glanced sharply at Bluebold. "I don't think the report you received is correct. Not in intent, anyway, sir. I remember Willow—I should, because he had an accident in the prison foundry and I operated to save his life. His face was very badly burned, so I did my best to patch it up. If that's what you refer to, Captain."
"Well," Walters said grudgingly, "that's different!"
Harry Arnold, the ex-congressman from Pennsylvania, broke in with, "It's a mistake that Willow was able to escape at all! Mr. Havens, you can see the state things are in at Alleghany Prison. If there's any more adverse publicity, we're apt to have a prison riot or an organized jailbreak. If you'll give us some help, by stopping advertising the conditions, I'll guarantee the prison is cleaned up!"
"You're right, Mr. Arnold," Havens said determinedly. "I'll do my best to keep this escape quiet. But see that the prison is reorganized at once, or I'll have to expose the whole situation, and you're apt to have the Federal Prison authorities step in!"
Jim Doran's slatey eyes had become the color of muddy marble. He nodded abruptly to the men in the office. "The police can handle this. I'll get the details later from them," he announced curtly, and strode out of the room.
But only Frank Havens caught and appreciated the determined, eager gleam that had crept into Jim Doran's sardonic gaze.
Several police officials, two internes and a man from the medical examiner's office were waiting in the bulletproof glass cubicle down on the eleventh floor when Van got out of the elevator. The editorial room was still a bedlam of cyclonic confusion.
Out on Eighth Avenue a persistent rain was wetting the shouted Clarion extras:
TITANIC EXPLOSIONS WRECK
HUGE FEDERAL PROJECT
Weird Radio Voice Threatens Further Disasters
Chapter Four.
Dread Snatch
Snakey Willow's body lay flat and deflated on the cold morgue slab when Van pulled back the disinfected white sheet and bent close over the dead killer's wax-like face. Even in death, the escaped murderer's features were menacing and evil.
Special attention had evidently been given Snakey Willow's face-lifting operation by the Bellevue Hospital medicos, for the recently healed incisions under the tight-skinned jowls and along the high cheekbones had been slit open again by the autopsy scalpels.
Studying those freshly reopened incisions keenly the Phantom smiled thinly to himself.
He was no M.D., but mechanized crime hunts had led him deeply into the study of modern drugs, hypnosis and medicine. He recognized here, in Snakey Willow's now mutilated features, the sensitive hand of an exceptionally fine surgeon.
The criminal's nose had been remoulded, shortened and widened in a manner that tended to broaden the appearance of the unchangeable bone structure of the narrow head. No wonder the sharp eyes of the New York City police had failed to recognize that revamped face.
But it was the deft, startlingly liberal application of skin grafting that held the Phantom's concentrated attention. He fingered a small, powerful magnifying glass from his vest pocket, focused it upon those hundreds of individual skin grafts that had covered the incisions of the original plastic surgery operation.
Each graft, he knew, had been a separate detail taking time and
