Description

When a medical scientist falls from a window high up in a tall building, the police believe it to be an accident, but The Black Ghost suspects murder! The doctor was performing medical experiments on animals, and the crime fighter encounters a team he suspects as being ALF (Animal Liberation Front). In a final battle, the Black Ghost discovers his mistake, but is he too late?

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Footnotes

Chapter One

Tonight, big Sammy Tollin was working late in his office. Darkness had descended upon the great city, and ominous clouds obscured the normally starry skies. But for Sammy, this was ideal for his work. His large bulk wandered around the spacious laboratory, as he studied the specimens included for his research. Cages and glass sided containers kept the creatures locked within. In one rested a giant centipede, its many legs a mixture of yellow and green. Sammy grinned at the thought of the use he had for the poisonous creature. Next came a black spider with a red hourglass on its underside. On the glass container was printed the symbol of Danger, should a technician wonder about her beauty in curiosity. In another glass cage was a small bug with a hump on its back. A sign designated it a cogwheel. Sammy picked the creature from its enclosed home and examined it closely. Only lightly poisonous, it did have a bite that brought more pain than either the Black Widow spider or a rattlesnake. He recalled with humorous excitement the day he had allowed the cogwheel bug to bite a curious little boy, who had wandered in unsupervised one day.

Walking to one of the larger cages, he looked in to see a half grown German Shepherd which looked up at him with a soft whine. The dog’s tail swished back and forth, and it tried to stand, but a broken leg gave way and it fell back to the floor of its cage in pain. Sammy reached in and petted the animal’s big head, and in return, the dog licked his hand.

"Stupid creature, " Sammy laughed. "I’m the one who broke its leg, yet it still worships me. I wonder how many more legs I could break before it begins to hate me? "

Sammy was a medical scientist. Actually, he had studied to become a doctor, but he discovered that he preferred to hurt things rather than help them. So had his teachers. They had told him of labs that performed experiments, and suggested he try their field. So, instead of becoming a doctor, he had become a medical scientist, and he loved his work!

A laugh rumbled up from deep in his stomach. Well, he would show them some day. Even now he was working on something that could make him millions. Soon, he thought, and he would be richer than all of them.

He did not see the movement from the dark corner of the room, but he did see a reflection of the movement on the window glass. Thinking that a bird may have landed on the sill, he walked over to the glass portal and opened it wide. There was no screen on the window, nor was there a bird.

A shadowy movement behind him was too silent for even his sensitive hearing. The calloused edge of a hand sliced into the back of his vertebra with enough force to break his neck. A strong hand then pushed on his back, and Sammy Tollin fell through the open window, twelve stories above the concrete sidewalk below.

Captain Wheeler sat in his office at police headquarters, admonishing a young man about the evil that idle hands could cause. The young man in question was his stepson, Jimmy Malone. "Dad, we’ve gone through all this before, " the young man told Captain Wheeler. "I’m not predisposed to taking orders, and I’m afraid that is what would await me should I join the police force. "

“Fiddlesticks!” His father shouted, as he took a big swig of coffee from the mug in front of him. Jimmy knew that the coffee was probably three days old, and he wasn’t even sure if it had been heated up. Two things that his father could be counted upon - day old coffee, and his one expletive, “Fiddlesticks!” A third was the current discussion they were now having. His father wanted him to join the police force, but Jimmy felt he could do more by staying out of uniform. It was their constant argument, and neither would budge.

“Besides, dad, mother would live in constant fear if we were both wearing the uniform. She lost one husband to a bullet, you remember.”

“Yes, of course, son. I knew your father, and that was when I met your mother. But I think she would really be proud of you if you wore the uniform.”

“But, dad, I don’t need the work, as you know. I am already independently wealthy.”

“I’m aware of that,” he replied. “I know there is some mystery in your past. The old couple you told us about, who left you their life savings when they passed away. I also know that they trained you in ways that young boys should never venture into.¹ 

"I am also aware of a certain comic opera in black that takes justice in his own hand! And somehow, I think he is connected to you in some way.

“I remember the last time you encountered him, dad, and I believe I was there when you ran into him!”² 

“I know that, son, but there was some curious points to that encounter. Questions that I have never been able to clearly answer.”

Jimmy knew that his father thought he was the Black Ghost, even though the police commissioner had quickly dropped the investigation into the subject.

Captain Wheeler was sipping another drink of coffee when the phone on his desk buzzed. Picking the instrument up, he growled a “What’s up?” in the speaker.

Slamming the phone back on its cradle, Captain Wheeler said, “A jumper. Took a dive twelve floors up from a down town building. Care to tag along, see some real police work?”

“Sure, dad. Why not?” Jimmy answered.

Captain Wheeler had a personal automobile assigned to him, and he drove the short distance to the scene of the incident. The police patrolman had marked off the scene with yellow ribbon, and then he kept the curious citizens away from the body. Captain Wheeler had a camera in his car, and started taking pictures of the scene immediately. The flashes lit up the gathering crowd, and Jimmy felt a strange sensation of being watched. Perhaps it was the hawkish profile of a predator that made eyes look towards him. Instinctively, Jimmy melted into the shadows away from the flashbulbs from the camera.

Surveying the crowd from a new vantage point, he noticed three individuals who stood out among the crowd. They appeared to be a little too curious about the jumper. There was something about their clothes, but he couldn’t pin point it. The three consisted of two men and a young woman. The woman, tall, and blond, had an athletic build, as if she did a lot of running. Perhaps an Olympics contender at some time, he thought. The two men were shorter; both were wiry, and moved with easy grace. One had short-cropped dark hair, and the second had longer hair, with a short ponytail in back. His hair was more brown than black.

When Captain Wheeler returned the camera to the car, Jimmy followed him to the body of the jumper. Something caught Jimmy’s eye, and he bent his head down to the crushed body, and his father heard a soft, “Damn.” come from his son.

When the ME arrived, Captain Wheeler told him, “I see no other wounds on his body. I suspect death come from the fall. But you’d better do an autopsy on him just in case.” Turning to his son, he said, “Let’s go, Jimmy. There’s no foul play here.”

But once in the car, Jimmy contradicted his father. “I don’t think he jumped,” Jimmy said. “At least not on his own volition. Have the medical examiner check the third vertebra on the neck. You may find something that’s not in agreement with your suicide theory.”

"If the vertebra was cracked, it could have been caused by the fall,” his father insisted.

"I don’t think so, dad,” Jimmy continued. There is a strange bruise as if a hand had struck that area before the fall.”

"What makes you think that?” Captain Wheeler asked him.

"Earlier, back in your office, you mentioned that I had been trained in ways I shouldn’t have been. Some of that training was conducted by the Japanese master, Yasuo Kazuhiro in the fine arts of Karate and Judo. One of the points of interest was to strike the third vertebra with the edge of your hand. I think that even if he died from the fall, the initial stroke was given in the room above. If so, then you have a murder mystery on your hands.”

"I’ll tell the ME of your suspicions,” his father told him. "But if it is a murder case, I don’t want interference from the comic opera in black.”

“If I see the Black Ghost, I’ll tell him,” Jimmy said.

The next morning, the telephone in Jimmy’s brownstone jingled to life. Peggy, Jimmy’s red headed wife rushed to answer it. "Hello,” she responded in her soft voice. Then listening for a couple of minutes, she finally brought the telephone over to her husband.

"Your dad,” she told him, and with the speaker still covered by her hand, she asked, "Is something in the works?”

Winking at his lovely wife, he took the telephone from her and asked, "What is it, dad?”

"Jimmy, my boy, if you join the force, you’ll be chief of detectives within six months.”

“No thanks, dad,” he laughed. "I take it that the third vertebra was crushed?”

"Yeah, and not by the fall. You were right, and I didn’t see it. The ME would not have found it, either, if I hadn’t advised him to look for it.”

"What’s next, then?” Jimmy wanted to know.

"I’ve sent a detective to question some of the building’s other tenants,” he said.

"Dad, could we accompany the detective? I’m curious about the building, and the business the dead man was involved in. Maybe I could find a clue that your buys might miss.”

"Meet me at the scene,” his father told him.

Telling Peggy in as few words as necessary, Jimmy explained the case. As he rushed for his fast little roadster, Peggy whispered a "Be careful, darling.”

For Peggy knew the secret that her husband hid from the world, that he was the dreaded nemesis of the underworld, the creature in black known as the Black Ghost. Peggy had met Jimmy in Charlotte, when mobsters were after her. A strange creature dressed all in black had rescued her, and fought the mobster’s gunfire with gunfire. Falling in love with Jimmy, she was surprised to learn that he was the mysterious fighter in black.³

Reaching the scene in record time, Jimmy found the captain of detectives waiting for him on the doorsteps. A man in plain clothes stood beside the captain. Jimmy shook hands with his father’s lead investigator, and then they all started up to the floor where the jumper had his laboratory.

The building manager was waiting for them with a passkey, which he inserted into the door lock once they had identified themselves. Once inside, they found that the lab had gone through a thorough search, as everything was tossed about the room. This time, the detective pulled a smaller camera from an inside pocket and started taking pictures of the small laboratory.

Jimmy sauntered around the room, and examined all the cages and the creatures they held. He recognized the poisonous creatures, and didn’t bother them. In the corner, he found the German Shepherd with the broken leg. Speaking softly to the animal, he was rewarded with a whine and gentle wag of the tail.

Jimmy walked over to the telephone and made a quick telephone call, unknown to his father or the detective. When the phone was answered on the other end, terse words were spoken over the lines, then Jimmy silently hung up the instrument.

Thirty minutes later, as the detectives were finishing up their investigation of the laboratory, a knock sounded at the door. Captain Wheeler opened the portal, to find an aggressive little bald headed man standing in the hall.

"I’m here to pick up the wounded animal,” he said.

“What wounded animal?” Captain Wheeler snapped.

"The one for which I have a court order for,” the little man said, not impressed with the captain of detectives.

"Gimme that court order!” Captain Wheeler snarled.

Looking over the paper, he found it was legit, for he knew the judge’s signature all too well. "Who called this in, and when?” the captain asked.

"That’s protected information, sir,” he was told. "When someone reports an abused animal, their identity is protected. Now, lead me to the wounded animal!”

Jimmy called from within the room. “Dad, I think this is the animal in question.” Captain Wheeler saw the cage, and said. "Oh, yeah. I saw the dog inside the cage, but I didn’t know it was wounded.”

"Looks like a broken leg.” Jimmy continued.

“Yeah,” the bald headed little man said. Then: "This is an experimental lab. Someone broke its leg, and was watching how it heeled.”

"Fiddlesticks!” Captain Wheeler snarled. “Are you sure about that?”

“Just look around you,” the little man told him. “I’ve seen my share of these labs!”

“I’m starting to get a big dislike for the dead man,” Captain Wheeler snarled.

“Who is the owner of this lab?” the little man asked.

“A person named Sammy Tollin,” Captain Wheeler responded. “But you’re too late. I think someone murdered him last night!”

"I could’ve done it!” the little man said, calmly, and all eyes turned towards him, but they quickly dismissed the thought of this little man being the killer.

Hearing more sounds coming from the hallway, the plainclothes detective went to see what the ruckus was all about. Shortly, he re-entered the laboratory, and with him were two men. Both newcomers were wearing laboratory work aprons, and they looked a little worse for the wear. One was tall, lean, and sported a long beard and mustache, slightly graying with age. The second man was shorter, much heavier, and his belly jerked up and down as he walked into the room.

“This is Captain Wheeler,” the detective told the two men. "Sir, these men claim to have known the victim quite well, and were curious as to what was going on.”

“Who are you men?” The captain asked, "And what racket are you in?”

"It’s not a racket, Captain,” the tall man said. “I’m Josh Cunningham, and this is my associate, Mr. Jeff Breeze. We run a patent office, and help inventors market their product. We design, and make the products better.”

"For a little of the profit, no doubt,” the captain of detectives snorted.

"Of course, detective. That’s our business,” Jeff Breeze acknowledged. "Many of the folks who come to us only have ideas, and no working models. If we think the product a good one, we invest our own time and energy into the product. Why shouldn’t we make some of the profit, also?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Captain Wheeler said. "At least you aren’t animal abusers, are you?”

“No, sir,” Josh Cunningham calmly replied.

"Did you know what Mr. Tollin was doing in here?” Jimmy asked.

Thinking Jimmy was another detective, they responded quickly. "We had our suspicions,” Jeff Breeze said.

Nodding his head, Josh Cunningham added, "We used to hear animals screaming in pain. I wanted to bust into his place and strangle him!”

“Is he the dead man we’ve been hearing about this morning?” Jeff Breeze asked.

As Captain Wheeler started explaining the situation to the two men, Jimmy moved towards the door, and quickly looked out. His inward suspicions were quickly confirmed. Standing in the hall, close enough to hear what was being said, were the three young people he had spotted the night before. When they saw that they were spotted, they acted as if they were merely walking down the hall. They suddenly entered the stairwell, and headed downwards.

Jimmy whispered something in his father’s ear, and then departed also, leaving a confused captain of detectives standing behind him.

Jimmy Malone found the elevator and saw that it was still parked on the twelfth floor. Stepping inside, he pushed the down button, and felt the elevator crash downward.

As fast as the elevator was, he was just barely in time to see the fast-moving trio come out of the stairwell and rush to the street outside. Evidently, they had not spotted Jimmy at the elevator, for they never looked back.

The sidewalk was busy this morning, and Jimmy blended into the pedestrians walking along the sidewalk on whatever errands they may have been on. Covered by the mass of people, he could not be seen, although he was able to keep the trio in sight.

Their destination was a posh hotel in the down town area. Jimmy watched as they walked into the big lobby and entered an elevator. He continued to watch until the elevator indicator reached the sixth floor and stopped. Smiling, Jimmy entered the lobby himself and approached the desk. When the clerk looked up, Jimmy asked if there was a vacant room on the sixth floor.

“Yes sir,” the clerk responded. "May I ask why you want the sixth floor in particular?”

Jimmy smiled. "My wife and I spent our honeymoon on the sixth floor he responded, and the wife is demanding a second honeymoon now, on the same floor.”

Smelling the kitchen, Jimmy asked, “The restaurant still serving good food?”

"Yes, sir, the best in town. Plus, the bar is through those doors on the left.”

Jimmy made a mental note of the restaurant and bar. Paying for three days rent on the room, Jimmy took the keys and left, telling the clerk that he would be back with his wife in tow shortly. The clerk just grinned and went about his chores.

It was time for action, and the Black Ghost would have to make his appearance soon. There were too many questions about the murder of Sammy Tollin. Could it be pure revenge for what the victim had represented in life, or was there something deeper in the case. Something that wasn’t apparent on the surface. Regardless, the trio of suspects had to be followed and investigated. But first, he had to find out something about them. With Peggy lodged in a room on the same floor as the suspects, he had no doubts that he would learn something soon.

---

[1] (“The Black Ghost”, CPFS #15)

[2] (“The Black Ghost At Bay”, DDT #47)

[3] ("Hunter’s Moon", DDT #20)

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