Fangs of Murder: Phantom Detective Saga. Robert Wallace

      Chapter I.

       Underworld Elections

       Table of Contents

      "You're wanted on the phone, Mr. Ricco. Long distance calling from New York City."

      The big, scar-faced man in a flashy bathing suit turned with a scowl of annoyance on the pier where he sat sunning himself over the clear blue waters of Lake Arrowhead.

      "Okay, bud," he growled. Getting up, he followed the white-jacketed attendant past other lolling guests of the quiet Adirondack summer resort to a chrome-studded, modernistic bath-house. Here, in the indicated private booth, he lifted a waiting receiver.

      "Yeah?" he demanded.

      "This 'Scars' Ricco?" came a voice, at once coarse and yet seeming to hold an acrid, mocking tone.

      "Yeah, go ahead!"

      "I'm a pal of yours, Scars. Got a little tip for you. Somethin' about what's been doin' here in N.Y. while you're tannin' that beef of yours—somethin' about your mob."

      Ricco scowled. But a crafty light showed in his eyes. "Mob?" he echoed naively. "I don't know what you're talking about."

      "Cut the stall, Ricco. Just get this! Your mob's taken a powder on you! They've all sold out to Monk Gorman—every one of 'em!"

      Ricco's fleshy body stiffened. The diagonal scar on his cheek suddenly stood out, livid. His voice roared.

      "Monk Gorman? Why that cheap, nickel-dipping punk ain't got enough dough to buy out—" He broke off, seemed with an effort to steady himself. The scar went dull again as he gave a harsh laugh. "Well, now cut the kiddin'. Who're you and what do you want? You're talkin' to a busy man."

      Unheeding this, the voice resumed, "Thought I'd get a rise outa you, Scars. I'm a pal of yours. And listen—"

      When Ricco hung up, his scar was livid again. Eyes blazing, he stormed out of the bath-house—only to burst in again, to grab his clothes.

      Fifteen minutes later the stucco, gabled Arrowhead Hotel lost one of its best-paying guests—Scars Ricco, a guest who had been no trouble, kept to his own business, tipped generously. The answer to a management's prayer.

      With luggage piled in the rumble seat of his canary-yellow Packard roadster, Ricco drove down the graveled road, out of the rustic gate, and onto the highway for New York.

      The big roadster gathered speed as it hurled along with muffler open. It took a long hill, then shot along a level but curved road where white fencing and signposts warned of a sharp, steep embankment. Ricco, his scar livid, hunched over the wheel, mouthing oaths in tune to his fierce thoughts. Before repeal he had controlled the biggest bootleg racket in New York. And he was still a big shot! He still knew how to hold a mob together and—He broke off from his thoughts with a sudden exclamation of alarm. A shadowy shape had closed in swiftly, overtaking him under cover of his exhaust and was now crowding him toward the precipice. He had no time to distinguish it; it was like some Juggernaut bearing down on him.

      Ricco's foot left the gas-pedal of his canary roadster. His hand tugged at the wheel. If he felt terror, his throat had no time to express it. For in the next instant there was a brief but jarring impact, the scrape of tortured fenders. There was a kaleidoscopic impression before Ricco's eyes of white fence-posts swinging towards him, parting crazily, flying to both sides.

      The careening roadster crashed through the fence, toppled over the embankment. It rolled and rolled, while glass broke and metal snapped groaningly. With a resounding crash the car struck the jagged, stony foot of the cliff-like embankment. Debris mushroomed up, settled—

      A pall of dreadful silence remained over the wreck.

      In the twisted, broken mass which a moment ago had been a sleek yellow roadster, Scars Ricco sprawled, dead, with broken steering wheel crushed horribly against his ribs, blood drooling from his parted lips.

      Above, on the highway to New York, that lunging shadow, a heavy, dark sedan, was shrinking speedily down the macadam, leaving the grim, broken fence far behind.

      * * *

      At Saratoga, the fifth race was well under way. Dutch Kaltz, comfortably settled in a grand tier box, grinned as he watched, his rubicund face wrinkled in satisfied folds around his Havana cigar.

      The horses—thrilling blurs of flying hoofs and huddled jockeys—were coming around to the last stretch.

      "Boy, oh boy, whatta race!" chortled Dutch Kaltz, his thick lips caressing the cigar. He turned to his companion, a bored-looking, faded blonde in a flashy green dress. She was stifling a wearied yawn.

      "Listen, baby!" he said to her. "If 'Hot Foot' brings home the bacon, I'll get you that new mink coat for the winter."

      The blonde came out of her trance with a snap that brought her to the very