Professor Bendix was a big man physically as well as scientifically, and spoke with a slightly guttural accent. Van made a few practise gestures before the mirrors, then turned to the shelves of specialized technical books and magazines.
For a solid hour he pored over involved treatises dealing with metallurgy and explosives. Rock Canyon Dam was supposed to have been engineered to withstand even T.N.T. and the newer picric acid explosive compounds.
And for another hour he studied various medical journals, confining his research to articles on plastic surgery and skin grafting. Dr. Jessup's operation on Willow might not have been a matter of sheer coincidence.
By seven o'clock he was finished, his mind a bit fagged from the strain of such continuous concentration. But his confidence was backed now by definite knowledge of the specialized and seemingly unrelated subjects he appeared to be up against.
He let himself out of the laboratory through the heavy steel door that opened directly onto the stubby concrete dock jutting out into the East River. Van had bought and equipped this abandoned warehouse under the name of Paul Bendix, so in character he was free to come and go as he chose, without the handicap of secrecy—a stooped, hulking and harmless old gentleman steeped in abstract problems of pure science.
He phoned Frank Havens from a booth, caught him still in the Clarion office, and identified himself with a clipped: "Jim Doran."
"I'm going to Niagara, flying with the Champ," he said cryptically. "Dr. Bendix. But unannounced, Frank. Anything new come up?"
Haven's voice was irritable with worry. "Yes. Mort Lewis, the radio announcer at Rock Canyon, was the last man alive off the dam. He was found partially buried in a tunnel exit, but was revived. He reports that two men wearing black robes and black hoods ran out of the bottom of the dam after the first two explosions, and were drowned in the flood. Several soldiers claim they saw two similarly robed figures walking away from the building there that was used for the radio control station. Every man in that radio station was murdered, including the guards!"
The Phantom whistled tunelessly through clamped teeth. Havens' voice went on:
"Somebody tried unsuccessfully to break into the ore exhibit of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, D. C., last night. An F.B.I. man has been added to the building's regular watchmen.
"How do you figure a connection?" Van asked. "The Smithsonian is a long jump from a revival of the Ku Klux idea in Arizona."
"I'm not figuring," Havens' voice snapped, and the publisher added apologetically a moment later, "It's only that I know Dr. Junes visited the Smithsonian a month ago and was given a chip off a meteoric fragment on display there. He was using it, how I don't know, in his Niagara experiments with aluminum and calbite. I rather expected you'd go out to that Alleghany Penitentiary, after finding Willow had escaped."
"There's the two choices," the Phantom explained. "Remember, Gimble was murdered evidently for information he'd got from Dr. Junes. If I can see Junes first, I might have something positive to work on from the prison angle, afterward. You'll hear from me."
He hung up. Out on the street, he bought a late Clarion extra. The dam disaster in Arizona, the headlines screamed, was still spreading destruction through the lower valley of the enormous Federal project.
Arizona state militia had taken charge of the paralyzed flood district, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a number of men on the job. But as yet nothing definite had been unearthed regarding either the mechanics of the terrific explosion, or the fiendish operators who had set off those devastating blasts.
On a back page, crowded in with the comparatively inconsequential local news, was a short item about the shooting that afternoon in Grand Central Station. It was given out that Lester Gimble had died suddenly on his way home from the attack, with a bullet lodged in his spine, But the fact that he had actually died in the Clarion Press Building was omitted.
The motive was given as probably robbery.
Professor Paul Bendix left the newspaper on the counter of a diner where he ate a hurried meal, and climbed into a taxi. As the cab rolled over Queensboro Bridge toward Holmes Airport, the nearest aviation field on Long Island, the cab radio began announcing late news.
The Phantom listened moodily to more flood reports from the Arizona area. But suddenly his eyes narrowed as a flash announcement came over the air:
Niagara Falls, New York. Dr. Waldo Junes, noted chemical scientist conducting secret metallurgical experiments in the General Electric Research Laboratories in that city, was driven from his underground workshop late this afternoon by an explosion that demolished a portion of the laboratory and wrecked his experiment. The Doctor is at home, recovering from shock, and claims he cannot explain the cause of the blast, but will never attempt the experiment again that he was conducting, because of the danger to humanity—a danger which he also refuses to explain.
Professor Paul Bendix leaned forward in the cab seat, his grey eyes sharp and penetrating beneath their shaggy brows.
"Faster!" he called to the taxi driver in a terse, guttural voice. "A bonus for speed!"
The cab spurted ahead, raced along Northern Boulevard, swung left through the entrance to Holmes Airport.
The swift red and silver Beechcraft cabin biplane was waiting on the line, its propeller already turning.
The Phantom threw a five-dollar bill to the cab driver, lurched out of the taxi, loping in hurrying strides to the plane. The fiery red head of Big Jerry Lannigan, visible through the open window of the cabin's cockpit, turned as Professor Bendix pulled himself into the ship.
"Hiya, Skipper!" Lannigan said, and grinned. "We're going places again, eh? Reminds me of—"
His good-humored voice broke off and the grin on his freckled, weathered face faded abruptly as he recognized the grim determination in the Phantom's darting eyes.
"Get going, Champ," Van then snapped. "Full throttle! We'll talk in the air. Head for Buffalo."
Jerry Lannigan's beefy shoulders hunched over the controls, and the powerful motor roared. The ship taxied rapidly, swung into the wind, thundered down the runway.
A minute later Long Island was dropping swiftly away below them as Jerry wound up the retractable landing gear. The climbing plane banked and headed north across the Sound.
Chapter Five.
Hooded Kill
Darkness had descended over the nation's capital. Yet Washington, sweltering in the heat, was a murmuring hive of excitement and near panic. The Rock Canyon Dam disaster was on everyone's tongue.
The lights in the Smithsonian Institute had been turned out, but that building of strange antiques and specimens was being guarded by a Secret Service man.
Standing in a window on the second floor of the Smithsonian Building, Jud Marks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation operative stationed in the building, was staring out at the red marker lights atop the shaft of the Washington Monument. He was a large, rawboned man, with sharp blue eyes, a blond mustache and a jutting jaw.
