Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 15] Read online

  “Llionto,” said the Phantom weakly, only half believing his own words, “these things can happen to anybody and often do.”

  “But not to Llongo!” roared the old High Chief. “Before our sacred image was stolen, Lomo never lost in the poker game at the Blue Dragon. He was never attacked by bandits. Our people always won at the track. Tigers never got into our goat pens. Storms never damaged our village. Bees never stung our women. And my throne never broke.”

  Exhausted and shaken by all this bad luck, the huge old man signalled the waiting warriors who carefully lowered him down to the piles of straw.

  “Tell me about the theft of the image. Do you know who did it?”

  “We know.”

  “But you’ve told me it is protected by the curse. No outsider may touch it and live.”

  “True”

  “That means . .. ?”

  “That means, I am ashamed to say, a man of Llongo did it. My own no-good nephew Loka.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The old chief pointed to the side. There was a wooden cage there, with heavy ironwood bars, the sort used to hold big cats. A young Llongo warrior sat inside the cage, head lowered, his face in his hands. Llionto told what had happened.

  Loka, the ne’er-do-well, had come by night while the rest of the village slept. The man in the cage had been on guard duty that night. Loka offered him a bottle of beer, which he accepted. It is against the rules to drink while on duty, but Loka had persuaded the young guard. What harm in a bottle of beer? In the morning, the guard was found by the altar in a drunken sleep, a beer bottle at his side. The sacred image was gone.

  “That’s how it happened,’’.said Llionto bitterly.

  “What will you do to him?”

  “Thanks to you, my father banned the old punishment, death by beheading,” said Llionto. The Phantom reflected. His father or, perhaps, his grandfather Phantom had done that, “Otherwise, the fool would lose his head,” said Llionto. “Now, I don’t know. We are so mixed up.”

  “Did Loka live in the village?”

  “Him? No, he left years ago for the life in town. We hardly ever saw him here. He’d taken up with a putzka” —the Llongo word for a non-Llongo of alien race, white or Asian—“and was always in trouble. A bad sort.”

  “I’ll ask you more about Loka in a moment. What have you done so far to recover the image?”

  “Done? Sent out word to all the jungle. Sent my own son, Loma, to report the disaster to our own Lamanda in Mawi-taan.” Lamanda was President Luaga, who’d sent the call for help on the leg of Fraka, the falcon.

  “Loma, tell him what happened.”

  Loma, son of the chief, stepped out of the shadows of the hut. He was a husky young man, handsome like all Llongo males. His arm was in a sling; his head was bandaged.

  “How did you hurt your arm, Loma?”

  “I fell out of a tree,” said the young man, embarrassed.

  “Never before, in his entire life, has he fallen out of a tree,” said High Chief Llionto.

  “And your head?”

  “Bandits, on the way to Mawitaan to see my cousin Lamanda.”

  Loma told his story. When the theft was discovered, his father sent him at once to the capital to report to Lamanda Luaga. The President was Llongo, the smartest of all of them, and he would know what to do. On the way, Loma reported the following incidents: he fell into a tiger trap, stepped on a porcupine and was hit with a score of painful quills, almost drowned and was bitten by fish in crossing a stream, and finally was attacked by bandits who took all his money and beat him.

  “In all the history of our people, no Llongo has ever suffered such disasters,” shouted Llionto.

  Loma continued. When he reached the city and the palace gates where his cousin lived, the guards refused him entrance. “And no wonder,” he explained. “I was bruised and bleeding and muddy and filthy. I pleaded and begged, while they laughed when I said Lamanda was my cousin. Though I was weak and hungry and tired, that angered me. I said that I was Llongo, and Llongo people did not lie. This, they knew, as all jungle people know. And one who was kinder than the others talked into a telephone, and soon I - was taken into the palace, the home of Lamanda.

  His eyes widened and all the people in the hut listened enthralled as he described the magnificence of the presidential palace—the marble staircase, the rich hangings, the blazing chandeliers, the polished floors. Lamanda remembered him, greeted him warmly (“hugged me,” Loma assured his listeners, who had all heard this tale before but were eager to hear it again). He called in his own physician to dress Loma’s wounds. He was given a bath in an enormous bathroom and fed a wonderful dinner. Lamanda asked him endless questions about the village and relatives and old friends. Then he told Lamanda what had happened. He told him all he knew.

  The news seemed to stun Lamanda. He sat at his desk in deep thought for many minutes. Loma noticed a small replica of the sacred image on his desk. (The others nodded. Lamanda had not forgotten his people.) Then Lamanda said he would do what he could. He also offered Loma a job if he wished to remain in the city. But Loma refused. He wished to return to the village. But first, a game at the Blue Dragon. Lamanda lent him the money for the game, since the bandits had stripped him clean. The poker players finished the job, and Loma returned to his home.

  That’s how Lamanda Luaga had learned of the theft. He must have sent the message to the Deep Woods right after that. The Phantom could visualize him riding in his long official limousine, flags flying, motorcycle escorts fore and aft, roaring up to the little hut at the jungle’s edge where Toma’s father kept the homing pigeon cotes and the cage of Fraka.

  Llionto and the others in the big hut were smiling happily during Loma’s tale of his visit to the presidential palace, enjoying the reflected glory of their own Lamanda Luaga who had made it so big. Now, as the Phantom continued questioning, they became glum again. Back to unlucky reality.

  “Could I talk to the guard ... the prisoner?”

  Llionto nodded. He was lifted to his feet again, and the whole crowd followed to the wooden cage. The young man inside looked at the Phantom fearfully. Was his crime so enormous that the Phantom himself had come? In answering the Phantom’s questions, his story was the same as the High Chief’s. The beer bottle itself, prime evidence, was tied to a bar.

  “How many beers did you drink?”

  “One, I think.”

  “Could one bottle make you drunk?”

  The man behind the bars looked confused. It didn’t seem possible, yet . . . The Phantom sniffed the bottle, then called the High Chief.

  “Smell this.” The Chief did. “Is that the way your beer smells?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “It was drugged.” The Phantom explained. The smell was that of a powerful sleeping powder not known in the jungle. “Your nephew Loka”—the Chief shuddered at that— “drugged the guard. This man is not to blame.”

  That was a vast relief to the man in the cage and to his family and friends who had gathered to listen. But it did not change anything.

  “When did you last see Loka, before that night?”

  He had visited the village a week before, with his putzka and a white man. They’d all come in Old Murph’s car.

  “Old Murph?” The Phantom’s mind reeled for a moment, memory banks clicking. “Are you certain it was Old Murph?”

  “Of course. We spoke. We were old friends. He often came here with visitors, tourists. We heard he died. Drowned. More bad luck,” said Llionto sadly.

  Memory banks purring, sights and sounds coming back. “Llionto, you told me, when you were a young man, you saw an outsider try to steal the sacred image. It killed him. True?”

  “True.”

  “Did you see the wounds made by the sacred image?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you remember what these wounds looked like?”

  “Who could forget? The wounds were made by the horns of the sacred
image. Sharp points, like two thin daggers. Two wounds at the heart. Small, round, deep.”

  Small, round, deep. At the heart, like Old Murph’s wounds.

  The dying whisper came back. “Damn thing . . . damn thing ... true ... true ... how you like that. ..”

  CHAPTER 4

  There are times, it is said, when the Phantom leaves the jungle and comes to the town as an ordinary man. This was one of those times.

  At a hidden corral near the jungle’s edge, he left Hero, the white stallion, with young Tona. Here, the Phantom changed his outer garb, putting on trousers, a topcoat, hat, sunglasses and a scarf that concealed the costume underneath. Then, with Devil at his side, he strode into the town, out of the foggy night.

  As he walked through the dimly lit, quiet and deserted streets—it was late and most of the honest citizens of this tropical capital were asleep—he turned the events over in his mind. The linking of Old Murph to the theft of the sacred image . . . no, not really. No one said the old man had been there that night, although someone had heard a car drive off. Old Murph’s ancient Landrover? And those wounds—like the puncture of an ice pick. No answers yet. Maybe Lamanda Luaga had some.

  When he reached the palace gates, it was about three o’clock in the morning. A high picket fence surrounded the extensive lawns and gardens. Before the revolution, led by Lamanda, this had been the colonial governor’s mansion.

  The Phantom approached the two sleepy guards at the closed gates. They snapped to alertly, rifles in hands, looking suspiciously at this tall stranger wearing dark sunglasses in the middle of the night. And the long gray animal—a dog? No dog they’d ever seen had pale blue eyes like these, eyes that gleamed in the feeble light. No dog they knew had fangs that big. The stranger asked to see the President. Important, he said. They couldn’t help laughing.

  “See the President at this hour. Are you crazy?”

  “Got an appointment?” asked the other one, bringing up his rifle.

  “No appointment. But he’ll see me.”

  “And who shall we say is calling?” said the first guard, with mock politeness.

  “Mr. Walker.”

  “Mister Walker,” said the second guard. “May I inquire as to the nature of your business?”

  “You may not,” said Mr. Walker calmly.

  The two guards level their rifles at him.

  “You’re under arrest,” said the first guard.

  “What did I do?”

  “Coming here, at this hour? You’re either crazy or an assassin.”

  With that last word, they both stopped smiling and were grim. The dark sunglasses faced them for a moment.

  “Assassin?” he said. “How about them?” He looked to the side. They both followed his glance. As they looked away, he snatched their rifles from their hands. As quick as that. Their heads popped back, looking at their empty hands, then at the muzzles of their rifles pointing toward them. (“Phantom moves like lightning in the sky,” went an old jungle saying.)

  “Turn around,” he said in the same calm tone. Bewildered, they obeyed. “Don’t move,” said the voice. They could imagine those rifles pointed at their heads. They remained as they were for a full minute. No more sounds. They listened as hard as they could for the slightest sound. There was nothing. Not even breathing. One guard turned his head cautiously. The first thing he saw out of the comer of his eye was the two rifles stacked against the gatepost. He and his partner whirled about, grabbing the rifles. They looked into the foggy darkness beyond the gate lights. The man and the animal were nowhere to be seen. Had he gotten onto the palace grounds? They rushed into their booth and phoned- an immediate alert to the palace staff. An assassin or madman was in the area, on the loose.

  After placing the rifles down, the Phantom and Devil had walked off a few paces, soundlessly. (“The Phantom moves on cat’s feet.”) At his master’s signal, the wolf remained concealed himself in a clump of bushes next to the curb. The Phantom vaulted lightly over the picket fence and moved quickly across the dark lawn—all this before the guards turned around.

  There was a knock on the President’s office door. This was a large suite, part office, part bedroom. Lamanda Luaga, first President of BangaOa, stirred under the covers as the knocking persisted, then snapped on his bedside light.

  “Yes?” he called, irritated and sleepy. It had been a hard day.

  The office door opened. An officer peered in.

  “Some trouble at the front gate. Just wanted to make sure you are all right, sir.”

  “What trouble?”

  “A man trying to see you.”

  Lamanda glanced at his bedside clock.

  “At this hour?”

  “Obviously crazy, sir, or . . The officer cleared his throat.

  “An assassin?” said Lamanda, sitting up. “Assassins do not announce themselves at the front gate, at this hour. Did they get him?”

  “Seems he managed to escape, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Said his name was Walker.”

  - Lamanda Luaga smiled “That will be all, Colonel.”

  “Sir, we’ll post guards around your suite, just in case.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Colonel. Good night.”

  The door closed. Lamanda got out of bed, and had just finished tying the belt of his dressing gown when the French doors leading to the garden opened and the Phantom stepped in. The two men shook hands warmly, old friends meeting.

  “I should have known it was you at once,” said Luaga. “Who else would upset my guards at this hour. How did you get in?”

  “Over the fence.”

  “Those guards have rifles.”

  “Had.”

  Luaga grinned. “They’re good boys. I hope you didn’t hurt them.”

  “No violence.”

  The Phantom removed his outer garments, and was oncc more the hooded, masked figure. Luaga heated up coffee on an electric burner on a sideboard, and the two settled at the wide desk for a talk. The Phantom noticed the little replica of the sacred image.

  “You know all about that,” he said.

  “Only that it was stolen.”

  “You know what it means to your people.”

  “I know. I know what it means to me. I am here, in this palace,” said the famed scholar-athlete-leader. “Take the boy out of the jungle; can’t take the jungle out of the boy,” he added with a short laugh.

  “Have you found out anything more?”

  “My intelligence people looked into it, didn’t find much. The image may still be in the country, though I doubt it.”

  “You know who was involved?”

  “One evidently was a white man, known as Duke. Background as a mercenary, soldier of fortune, smuggler, barroom brawler. The other one”—he hesitated—“was a Llongo.” —“His name is Loka. A nephew of the Chief.”

  Lamanda Luaga, President of Bangalla, sighed, and glanced over the top of his coffee cup at his masked visitor.

  “I know,” he said. “He’s my brother.”

  For a moment, the room was heavy with silence.

  “That’s a surprise.”

  “Yes, isn’t it. We’re both nephews of Llionto.” He picked up the little replica of the sacred image, the two-headed bull, and turned it over and over as he spoke of his brother.

  “This sacred image, the luck of the Llongo, didn’t do him much good,” he began. “He was four years older, always wild and undisciplined, even as a kid. Used to bully me when we were small. He was bigger and heavier. Maybe I developed faster, in self-defense. I learned karate from an , Asian kid in the missionary school. By the time I was twelve, I could take Loka. After that, he let me alone.”

  Lamanda Luaga chuckled. “Odd how things turn out. I’d probably never have gotten that athletic scholarship and wound up winning the Olympic gold medal if it hadn’t been for those early beatings my brother gave me. I worked hard. While I won scholarships, academic as well as athletic, Loka cheate
d in school and was thrown out. He continued to cheat at everything after that. Tampering with cards and dice, doping horses at the track, that sort of thing. Meantime, I’d left Bangalla and gone to England for premed and medi cal school. The Rhodes scholarship did that for me. I continually received cables from Loka for money. When I returned, a doctor, I got him out of a dozen scrapes. His friends were the riffraff—cheap gamblers, thieves, smugglers —the underworld of this seaport town. As a doctor, my pay was small. He kept me broke. I finally told him to leave me alone. It was a bad scene. We stopped seeing each other. That was long before I got into politics.”

  By this time, Lamanda was pacing the floor, still holding the little image.

  “But this,” he said, his voice rising angrily as he held up the image, “this is the worst thing he could do to our people. He has disgraced our family.”

  His voice broke and he breathed deeply to control himself. The Llongo are emotional people.

  “Lamanda, why would he do it?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Money, I suppose. It must have some value.”

  “Some value? What would you guess? You’ve seen it.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Lamanda opened a drawer and took out two newspapers'. One was a Paris daily newspaper. The other was a London Sunday supplement. Both papers featured a large photo of the two-headed bull, and a long story about its history. Also, it’s estimated value. The Phantom whistled.

  “Can that be true? I didn’t know the image was so well known.”

  “It wasn’t known, until about two years ago,” explained Luaga. “Two art dealers from London heard about it while on a tour here. They came to me to ask if it were permissible by our laws to purchase such antiques and take them out of the country. I told them that none of the art treasures of our country were for sale. They belonged to the nation. As for the sacred image of the Llongo, that was the most treasured and could never leave its village. One of them laughed—I recall his name was Helmsley. He said everything has a price and mentioned one for the image. It bowled me over.”