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throat; the knotted veins of his gnarled hands stood out like whipcords. For a moment he was assailed with a swirl of mad chaotic emotions. Why not whip the automatic from his shoulder holster and empty its load of lethal death into the madman’s heart?
    Then with Hesterberg’s sharp reiterated phrase came sanity. Van had no desire to commit suicide just then.
    “Well, Number 8 — what word — what word?”
    The Phantom knew now that the inquiry concerned his own demise.
    “Dead!” he answered in a clear monotone.
    A sharp breath whistled through Hesterberg’s nostrils.
    “Magnificent, Number 8. Stand by my right. Details 1 and 4 are in the bank by now. 5 and 2 have the building surrounded and are holding the street.” A sharp grating as of steel on steel came from behind the massive doors of the bank, to be greeted by another sharp exhalation from Hesterberg’s nostrils. “So — the door opens to us — like all other doors in the world shall open at my command.”
    The six-inch portals swung slowly inward. Hard at Hesterberg’s right with the detail of men close behind them, the Phantom moved swiftly across the threshold of the bank.

CHAPTER IV
PAPERS OF DEATH
    HIS KEEN ANALYTICAL BRAIN was working at high speed. It was quite obvious from the few words that had passed between him and the Mad Red that the Number 8 he was impersonating was of some importance in the Hesterberg councils.
    A lieutenant, an adjutant of crime! So much the better! If he had been ordered to stand hard by the Master’s right, he would stand there — with his index finger coiled around the trigger of his gun.
    But all such thoughts were momentarily wiped from his mind. Hesterberg’s pocket torch was darting like a hungry tongue of flame around the vaulted quadrangle of the bank. In weird, lurid flashes it depicted scenes of fantastic unreality.
    Off to the right, behind a steel shield, three men worked with torches and explosives on the combination of a safe. Behind the grilled windows squads of men systematically rifled cash boxes. At every point of vantage, at every window and door stood a gas-masked giant with a gaping-mouthed submachine-gun crooked in ready hands.
    Through the murky haze of the cloud of gas the scene was bizarre. At Van’s feet a blue uniformed watchman writhed in agony as the poison gas settled in a ball of fire in his chest. The Phantom’s first impulse was abruptly checked by the cursing snarl of Hesterberg as the latter stumbled over the prone body.
    “Fool of a Bourgeois!” spat out Hesterberg. “Slave for a pittance to guard the treasures of your betrayers. You have suffered blindly long enough. Suffer now for a cause. The glorious Red cause of Alexis Hesterberg.”
    Before the phantom was aware of what was happening the Mad Red whipped out a heavy German Luger and, aiming it point blank at the convulsed chest of the watchman, fired twice in quick succession. Two jets of smoke coughed from the nozzle of the gun; but there was no explosion. The gun was silenced. The Phantom’s eyes were twin gimlets of steel behind his protecting gas mask but his voice was calm, impersonal when he spoke.
    “A good end for the old fool. But it was gold that killed him — not steel!”
    “Red gold!” chortled Hesterberg. “Come, Number 8, we have work to do.”
    Not quite knowing what his cue might be, the Phantom strictly obeyed his first order and kept close to the side of the Mad Red. With rapid strides they traversed the broad marble floor of the bank.
    The Phantom’s keen eyes took in the scene of frenzied activity about him; corrected his first impression and realized that though the masked figures were working at top speed there was an assurance about their movements that could only come from organization, precision and a technique dominated by a super-master mind.
    He was only permitted a few brief glimpses of the systematic looting of the bank. Hesterberg — with a show of arrogant contempt at such a mad