"The Phantom of Vaudeville"
"The Phantom of Vaudeville"
3/2-3/3/1943
I.
Crossing 48th Street with a chill wind trying to get up her skirt, Kelly O'Connor was grateful she was wearing her Green Devil costume under her dress. Nylons were getting so difficult to find that she went without stockings that day and prayed no one noticed. This early in March, every little bit helped. At five-thirty, the crowds were thick but she wove and darted through them with the ease of long practice. At twenty-three, tall and slender with trim legs, the young reporter was at her best in the pale lilac dress matched with a plain cloche hat perched far back on her brick-red hair. Her likeable good looks had been a mixed blessing in her journalism career so far but in day to day life, they helped out immensely.
Over by Eighth Avenue, she found the front door of the old Mialgo Theatre, windows boarded up and marquee long blank. Once a center of the city's vaudeville activity, it had been left to droop with disrepair. Standing in front of the double doors with their frosted glass panes were two men she had only met once before.
Little Willie, William O. Gillis, was a short, slightly built colored man with processed hair and a friendly, cheerful face. He would be a few inches shorter than Kelly's own five feet eight, but he was dapper to an extreme in a tailored dark blue suit with charcoal pinstripes, a pearl-grey fedora and an ebony walking stick. As he saw the attractive redhead hurrying his way, Little Willie's face split in a grin that had graced hundreds of newspaper ads in his heyday.
It was the man next to Little Willie that made Kelly skid to a halt in her heels. Doc Valentine.
The beachball-shaped torso with the sixty-inch waist was wrapped in a bilious purple suit with canary-yellow shirt, barely-buttoned matching vest and a floppy loosely-knotted orange bow tie. That bulbous nose with blood vessels becoming more prominent every day, the thinning blond hair and leering half-closed eyes all made an unforgettable impression. Kelly had listened to Doc Valentine on the radio, she had sat through his film BOTH WAYS GO NOWHERE and she had never found him amusing in the least.
"Ah, behold, a shamrock on legs," Valentine drawled. "Fairer thistle the unhappy Isle ne'er spawned."
Kelly could not remember the last time she blushed. Being a crime reporter in the big city had gotten her oblivious to stares from men or from women. But the way Doc Valentine regarded her made her feel as if her clothing had fallen completely off and lay in a heap at her ankles.
"Hello, Willie," she managed to croak in an unfamiliar voice. "I didn't know you were acquainted with... this fellow."
"Mr Gillis and I date back to the halcyon days of Vaudeville," replied Doc Valentine. "When the Mighty Ajax bent horseshoes in his hands, when Lilly Wren sang her fair heart out, when minstrels shows ruled the land and our hearts were young and gay..."
"That was ages ago," Kelly interrupted. "My editor at THE NEW YORK MESSENGER wants fresh material. What's the score today?"
Little Willie produced an oversized key from his waistpocket and flourished it. "Ah, dear girl, Vaudeville has declined but it has not yet breathed its last. Dr Valentine has agreed to help fund me in my effort to refurbish this palace."
The redhead folded both arms across her modest chest, the leather handbag swinging behind her on its gold chain. "Pull the other leg. You birds think Vaudeville is coming back? Have you seen Technicolor? Have you seen those new television cabinets the ritzy crowd are installing?"
"The barbed tongue of youth," muttered Doc Valentine, placing a white-gloved paw to his chest. "Like the sting of the enraged hornet to my heart are your doubts."
"Get this and get it straight," she snapped, jabbing a slim index finger at his doughy face. "Willie is a good man. I don't intend to see him lose his last pair of socks on some harebrained scheme from the most notorious conman of the metropolitan area. And by that I mean you!"
"You look healthier, my little cupcake, you've eaten well since landing a job with the Fourth Estate..."
"I have not put on a pound!" Kelly barked, then caught herself. Doc Valentine had this effect on everyone as far as she could tell.
"Sugar, hear me out." Little Willie put a hand on Kelly's elbow, which she didn't mind because she could tell he was a gentleman. She subsided much like a cat which had arched its back and begun sputtering before a fight.
"This theatre is spacious," Willie continued as he steered the redhead away from Valentine. "We think it can offer different shows simultaneously, perhaps with different entrances. A large beaded screen showing the latest Hollywood epic. A stage for baggy-pants joke tellers and fan dancers. Rooms toward the rear for a dance floor and a swing band. All these venues humming and buzzing at the same time, but separated by soundproofed walls and offered at reasonable ticket prices."
Kelly raised one elegant eyebrow. Her eyes were a bright lambent green that caught the afternoon light with a flash. "You may be on to something there, my friend. So the great unwashed masses arrive at your emporium and select what diversion suits their mood?"
"That's our hope," Little Willie said. "The old soft-shoe is not beyond me yet, perhaps I will open a few shows. Come on in, it may be dusty." He turned the key which met some resistance and the door creaked outward.
Meager light came in through gaps in the two by fours over the tall windows and by the open door. The dim lobby was cluttered with debris, old props and stacks of papers held together by twine, paper coffee cups that had long since dried. A large travel trunk covered with city stickers leaned up against a wall. Twin ticket booths were shuttered. Over all, a musty odor hung heavy, and spiderwebs were plentiful.
"Scrubbing with apple cider vinegar and hot water will restore the pristine patina to this palace..." began Doc Valentine. He stopped at the foot of a marble staircase which led up a walkway encircling the area. "Reminds me of my days at the horrid Grand Guignol in the City of Lights..."
Disregarding him, Kelly O'Connor swung open a glass panel which held a coiled firehose and an axe with a spike on the back of its head. A manila tag INSPECTED 1/9/1922 hung from the hose. "Gracious. Has anyone even been in here since the days of Coolidge?" she asked.
"Not that I---" Little Willie's sentence ended abruptly as a thick hemp noose dropped around his neck and he was hauled straight up ten feet into the air. At the same time, a two hundred pound ballast bag thumped against the floor where he had been standing.
As Willie gagged and choked, legs kicking wildly, it was Kelly who reacted instantly. She tugged the fire axe loose of its clamps, wheeled around and sliced neatly through the rope extending up from the sandbag. Willie fell directly on top of the dumfounded Doc Valentine, whose soft belly did not provide a comfortable a landing spot as one might expect. "Thunderation!" bellowed the old reprobate.
Surprising herself, Kelly was neither shaken nor confused by the sudden flurry of action. Over a year as the Green Devil had honed the way she reacted to the unexpected. She dropped the fire axe to one side and bent over the faintly struggling Little Willie.
"Ack. Arrgh," complained the old dancer. "Gack."
"Take it easy. It's a miracle your neck's not broken." Kelly noticed that even in his distress the man's eyes were fixed at something behind her. So were the watery blue eyes of Doc Valentine. She froze into position and swiveled her head to see what both men could be staring at.
On a catwalk thirty feet above them, a bizarre figure loomed up. Well over six feet high but gaunt as a starvation victim, wrapped in a black winding robe, the apparition raised an arm to reveal a skeletal hand pointing down accusingly. Kelly could clearly see it was not a normal hand wearing a glove, but made of bones with openings between them.
"Begone! You dare laugh where men died screaming!" called down a hollow sepulchral voice. "The Phantom warns only once!" Then the grisly sight melted from view as if instantly collapsing.
II.
Surprising both Little Willie and Doc Valentine, Kelly raced headlong to scamper up a ladder as nimbly as any squirrel might have done. In a heartbeat, she vaulted up onto the catwalk where the strange menacing shape had stood. No one was there. The young redhead swung around, peering into gloomy corners and heavy draperies which could have concealed many lurkers.
"Kelly Catherine Mary O'Connor!" screamed Little Willie. "What is wrong with you? Get back down here this minute!" He had gotten back up onto his feet with a grudging assist from Valentine.
"I must recommend prudence also, my Titian-tressed lark," added the old reprobate. He tugged down his vest where it had ridden up with even the slightest motion. "That revenant may well be armed."
Catching her breath, Kelly smirked to herself at her own foolishness. Fighting criminals and spies as the Green Devil had erased any tendency she might have had toward caution. Her work for the MESSENGER hadn't helped either. "I'm fine and dandy, there's not a footprint or hair of that Phantom. Hah, I must have scared him away." Crouching over the catwalk, she found only a litter of wood scraps, bits of abraded rope, sawdust and a grimy red bandanna she declined to touch. "I'm coming back down, don't you jokers try to look up my dress."
When she was back on the floor, she accepted her handbag which she had discarded. "Sorry if I gave you fellows a fright," she said with as serious a tone as she ever managed. "I am a reporter, you know. We run toward gunshots and three alarm fires."
Doc Valentine produced a voluminous silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his damp face. "What an unappealing visage that chap presented. The Phantom, no less. His locution hints he must have grown up reading Penny Dreadfuls."
"What did he mean, 'we're laughing where men died screaming?'" asked Kelly.
Willie found a rickety old folding chair and fell onto it rather than sitting down. "Oh God. The Mustard Gas incident. That was twenty years ago."
"Yeah, spill the beans, brother." Kelly tapped one toe impatiently.
"It was a terrible accident. It made all the papers but you would have been in diapers then." The old vaudevillian took a deep breath. "Some cleaning men mixed chemicals carelessly. Common items, bleach and ammonia and vinegar in hot water. They must not have known that this creates a deadly gas."
"Not unlike that vile miasma misused in the Great War," added Doc Valentine. Protruding from his lapel was the end of a soda straw and he bent his head to suck at it for a second. Kelly had noticed him doing this before and figured he had a whiskey flask stuck in an inner pocket of his jacket.
"You mean.. Mustard Gas? Here?" Kelly asked.
"Yes. Two cleaners died choking almost instantly. A stagehand screamed and fell to his death from a catwalk. Three chorus girls died before anyone could help them. And a screenwriter, Erique Bruscal from Paris, ran off clawing at his face. No one knows what happened to him. He was never seen again."
"That's horrible," Kelly whispered, but her mind was thinking like the Green Devil now, looking for connections. "That was when they closed this theatre?"
"Yes. One of the owners was selling out anyway, he intended to move West. The other declared the theatre needed a generation to mourn. It was his children who paid taxes on it all this time and now they accepted my offer to buy it." Little Willie placed small clever hands on his knees and rose. "I must admit my nerves have been shaken by that hanging business. Although my father always swore I'd be hanged some day, come to think of it."
"You gave a creditable imitation of a pendulum," Doc Valentine drawled. "Your range of talent seems without limit."
"Let's step outside and get some air, gentlemen." Kelly led them to the street door and they stepped out to a prosaic scene of passers-by rushing along the sidewalk. From a passing car, a radio blared swing with a clarinet doing gymnastics. A boy not more than eleven marched past, hawking his papers and declaring that the latest war news was so important that no one could afford to miss it.
"The mundane parade goes on in its stultifying crassness," Doc Valentine observed. He scratched a wooden match with his thumbnail and lit a thin black cheroot which smelled like licorice, took two puffs and then held it without inhaling further.
Kelly O'Connor regarded the old fraud without affection. She had no forgotten the time Valentine had offered to help her up off the floor when she had fallen and his hand had slipped right over her right breast. An unfortunate mishap, he had claimed but she watched him warily now.
"Someone has to say the obvious," she burst out. "Enrique Bruscal wasn't killed by that gas. He survived. Maybe he was horribly disfigured, maybe he's just crazy as a sackful of wild geese, but I'll bet the rent money he's calling himself the Phantom and threatening you two for trying to open the theatre."
III.
Her story about re-opening the Mialgo Theatre barely made it to the late afternoon edition. As a tiny item buried on the sixth page, with no mention of the Phantom or of the attempt at hanging Little Willie. Kelly was fuming at the injustice of her treatment, not for the first time. Her editor had trimmed her copy by half. He had blue penciled out the mystery and the excitement to leave a dull business item. And he had not even listened to her arguments but simply instructed her to go do some rewrites for the sports reporters who still couldn't spell anything longer than two syllables.
Seething inside, she happily daydreamed about storming in here someday in full Green Devil costume and wrecking the joint. Kicking over the desks, flinging typewriters through those grimy windows, tossing the filthy ash trays in all directions, while the out of shape middle-aged men tried to stop her and she evaded them like a hummingbird escaping turtles.
"What are YOU grinning about?" rasped Leo Markovitch, the columnist who retyped whatever gossip he heard on the radio the night before, only with more innuendo and spice.
"Hee hee, wouldn't you like to know?" was her answer. Kelly did not need to glance at the big clock over the door to see it was close to five. Half the reporters had snubbed out their thirtieth cigarette of the day and wrestling into their baggy jackets while pretending they knew how to knot a tie.
"Not that Green Devil troublemaker again?" Leo asked, parking part of his ample butt on the corner of her desk. "I been warning you, she's trouble. You keep trying to get an angle on that skirt and you'll find yourself with hoods shooting through you to get to her. Maybe she has some circus trick that deflects bullets but you sure don't."
Kelly straightened up the mess of loose papers and tried to fit them into a manila folder. "Hey, Leo. You know all kinds of goofy Big Apple screwballs. Suppose I give you a name. Doc Valentine."
"Look, Red. Stay away from fleabags like that. Doc Valentine shoulda been hanged before you was born. He's been caught in a hundred crooked schemes but somehow he wriggles free or disappears before they slap the cuffs on him. He's a charlatan. A con man. A mountebank. A fraud."
"Is that his real name? What might he be a doctor of?"
"A doctor of griftology, putting other peoples' moolah into his own pocket, honey. One cop said his real name was Erasmus Valentine. I saw a warrant with the name Llewelyn Llanwelly on it. And a couple times, he mentioned his first name is Fred. I don't think he even knows anymore."
The young redhead pushed back her chair and clasped her hands together to crack her knuckles. "Leo, you may be grouchy and grumpy but you know your beans. If I see Doc Valentine, I'll be sure to keep a safe distance. Thanks, pal."
Tugging a fedora that badly needed both laundering and blocking, Marcovitch glanced around and hesitated. "Listen. Keep this next part to yourself, okay?"
"Oooh, that change in your voice. Go ahead, Leo, I cross my fingers and swear."
"You carrot-tops are born to stir things up, I swear it's in your blood. Anyway. I was digging through city records a while back. Found an old yellowed photograph of a dozen businessmen who planned on building a bridge down by the battery. It was 1891, get it?"
For some reason, a chill ran up Kelly's spine and made her scalp tingle. "Yeah? Go on."
"Like I said, 1891. Year I was born. Cyrus Vandersanden's father was there, the steel magnate who built half of Central Park West. A coupla other historical figures. And right in the center of the photo, grinning like a fool, was Doc Valentine. He looked the same. If he was sixty back then, he's gotta be pushing a hunnerd today."
Kelly O'Connor dropped back down into her chair without realizing it. "Not some clown who looks like him, I suppose?"
"Not on your life. The caption under the picture identified him as 'Dr E.W. Valentine of Tuxedo Park.' Geez, Kelly, when I saw that photo I felt like I stepped outta the real world where things make sense."
"Maybe.. it was his father? His uncle?"
"Nature wouldn't play such a cruel joke. Lissen, honey, it's a shady world with some dark corners that aren't safe for nosy little chicks. You got a way with words, I read some of your articles. You oughtta write a few steamy novels and retire comfortably to a beach in France or something." With that, he dug in his inner jacket pocket for a cigar and was ripping the cellophane off as he walked away.
"Thanks, buddy," called Kelly at his retreating figure. She could not understand why that anecdote disturbed her so much. It had to be a mistake. How could a two-bit grifter be a century old and still running around loose? Things like that didn't happen.
Or did they? Since she had started the Green Devil game, she had seen the Dragon of Midnight walk through a solid wall. She had seen the Sceptre in action. She had met Mark Drum and the squadron of Archangels. The line between possible and impossible had become blurred. It was a stranger world than she had ever imagined existing. It even had a title that Mark Drum had revealed to her.. the Midnight War.
Glancing up, Kelly watched the three men of the night crew shuffle in and slump down at the desks they shared with the daytime reporters. She tapped her perfect teeth with a thumbnail as she digested what Markovitch had told her. It was true that Doc Valentine gave her the willies whenever he showed his alcoholic mug, but that meant nothing. So did a lot of men destined for Skid Row.
Little Willie had said they would be back at the Theatre tonight. A couple of electricians had been hired for hooking lights up to make sure the wiring was still safe. If this bird who called himself the Phantom showed up again to scare everyone away, the Green Devil should also be there.
Snatching up her handbag, Kelly galloped sharply out into the hall. She could make it on time to snare dinner at the boarding house where she lived. It was meat loaf night. She'd grab a quick nap for an hour or two and then head back to Times Square in her little roadster as the night settled in. And she would bring her favorite costume with her, the one with the horned helmet and the jacket with the white trident across the back.
IV.
The Theater District was a subdued shadow of its glory of only a few years ago. So many young men were in the Service and so many young women were working night shifts who would have been out on dates. Rationing meant driving was becoming more difficult. More and more, people sat by their radios at night and turned in early. By eleven, the area near the Mialgo Theatre was nearly deserted and few windows were even lit.
Having lucked onto a parking spot nearby, Kelly had watched for an possible observers before leaping out of her snappy little roadster and darting into the darkness of an alley. A lifelong New Yorker, she had spent the past two years figuring out possible hiding places and darkened nooks during her daytime hours. Now, in the midnight green pants and leather jacket, with the modified crash helmet hiding her face, she was a dark slim figure that would have been difficult to spot even if she had not kept to the shadows.
As the Green Devil, she never carried a weapon. Her weird ability to deflect attacks with circular motions of her hands extended even to bullets. So far that had been enough. On top of the clear-visored helmet were two short curved horns she had carved and affixed herself. Across the back of the snug leather jacket was the outline of a trident in white. Kelly didn't kid herself that mobsters were terrified of the Green Devil the way they were of the Monk or Mark Drum, but she felt she was doing her part.
Avoiding a battered metal garbage can, she found the side door of the theater. The shielded light bulb that should have illuminated that entrance had long ago burnt ago and the alley was gloomy to the point of utter darkness. That afternoon, while wandering around Mialgo and listening to Willie and Valentine boast of their plans, she had quietly unlocked this side door and wedged a folded piece of cardboard at its base.
The door opened silently. Kelly almost hugged herself at her own cleverness. She stepped into murkiness and closed the door behind her. From what she remembered, she was by the rear of the main stage where two decades ago comedians like Rufus Lucas and dancers like Little Willie himself had entertained crowds. Ahead, a dim glow showed through the curtains and she heard voices.
"Careful, my lad, take care with those cables," came the nasal tones of Doc Valentine.
"We know our business, mister," answered a younger man's voice. "You stay back. We'll have them baby spots up in a second."
Creeping stealthily across the dusty stage, Kelly pulled the edge of the curtain aside a bare inch to get a peek. The rows of seats facing her were dimly illuminated by a pair of lamps set on the floor. Two men in workman's clothes had an electrical panel open on the wall and were studying it.
"I ain't got a fuse for this antique," one grumbled.
"There's a couple in the truck, I guess I gotta go fetch them. Maybe I'll get a few spare bulbs too, those over there look like Edison installed them himself."
From almost directly overhead, Kelly heard that hollow menacing voice again. "Idiots! You were warned not to return here! Now you shall pay for your foolishness!" Before the last word was spoken, the Green Devil had leaped to the same ladder she had climbed that afternoon and she raced up it with the agility of youth.
Standing not fifteen feet away from her was a horrifying figure too thin to be alive, a shrouded dark presence with its face hidden in a cowl. The Phantom had not seen her. That skeletal hand was pointing accusingly down at the men below. Kelly never hesitated. She charged with her right arm drawn back and unleashed her best roundhouse right in a swing that would have knocked down a man twice her weight.
But her fist met nothing to stop its arc. Her swing continued without connecting with anything solid as the cowl flapped out of its way and she reeled wildly to flat backwards off the catwalk. In that split-second, the Green Devil grabbed out for anything to break her fall but too late. She landed with a horrendous thump on something soft but firm as an inflatable air mattress.
For a few seconds, she was too dazed to realize what had happened. She was alive. She hadn't broken her neck with that fall and, for a moment, that was enough. Kelly twisted around, trying to sit up. Suddenly she realized she had landed directly on top of Doc Valentine's immense belly, knocking him down.
Not only hadn't he been hurt either, somehow one of his hands had closed unerringly over her butt. More relieved at being alive than affronted, she slapped that hand away and scrambled to her feet. She heard the old reprobate mutter something like, "Feel free to drop in any time, my dear..." as she got her bearings.
The Phantom was gone. The two electricians had also vacated the premises, leaving the street door wide open. She heard a truck start up outside, indicating they were not likely to be returning immediately. Disregarding Doc Valentine and Little Willie who were gawking at her, she hurdled up the ladder again to the catwalk.
No sign of the Phantom. Her pulse was racing as she swung around but she saw no way he could have clambered out of the area in those few seconds. This couldn't be a real ghost manifestation.. Could it?
From the seating area, a rough man's voice called up to her, "No more acrobatics, girly. Get down here slower than the way you went up and these geezers won't get perforated."
V.
Staring at the three newcomers, Kelly felt her adrenalin surge. Three men in suits, two of them big goons who held .45 Colt automatics right at Doc Valentine and Little Willie. The third man was older, heavier, with an impressive mane of silvery white hair and a beaked nose. Working as a crime reporter meant that she recognized August Salvucci at once. Wanted by the Feds for tax evasion, he had dropped out of sight weeks earlier. He looked enraged.
"Hey, boss! It's the Sceptre. Where's her magic wand?" asked one of the gunmen.
Kelly did not reply as she stepped off the ladder and crossed over to stand between her two friends and the mobsters. Even under circumstances as dire as these, where her continued existence was uncertain, part of her mind decided not to speak if she could help it. If Little Willie or worse Doc Valentine recognized her voice, her game as the Green Devil would be over.
"No," Salvucci corrected him. "I do not recognize this one, but she is one of the so-called 'super-heroes' who have been causing so much inconvenience for businessmen like myself. Bah! And now I am forced to leave before I am ready."
"If you'll excuse me," began Doc Valentine, "I believe I left a roast in the oven..."
"Stay where you are. Oh, how I hate all three of you. Another twenty-hour hours and my passage back to Palermo would be waiting. Now I must leave prematurely. I must run and hide, perhaps disguise myself until I can leave this hopeless country." The old mobster's face was turning red and his raised fist trembled. "But you leave me no choice!"
"You were.. concealed here? In this theatre?" asked Little Willie. "Then who was the Phantom?"
"Don't try to delay your executions, you miserable fools," Salvucci yelled. "You have ruined everything for me. Jack! Vinnie! Cut them down and then we have to go."
That was Kelly's cue. She took one step forward and relaxed her conscious mind. As the gun muzzles flared white flame and shots rang deafeningly loud in the echoing theater, her arms whipped back and forth in circular arcs. Her palms stung agonizingly. Two bullets ricocheted wildly up into the overhead rafters, one broke a window with a crash of flying glass. But at least three were deflected directly backwards toward their sources. A gunman doubled up, clutching at his chest and the other thug fell straight down with his face caved into red ruin.
A final .45 slug caught Salvucci high in the chest, below the collarbone. He turned halfway around, dropped to his knees and then fell onto his back with a wheeze.
Watching, cautiously lowering her arms, the Green Devil could not help but take a secopnd to inspect her palms. The material of her gloves was not even scratched. Bullets did not literally hit her hands to be deflected, something inexplicable redirected them before contact was made. It was beyond her understanding.
The two gunmen were obviously dead. From the whistling noise Salvucci's chest made with his final breaths, he could not be saved either. Everyone drew closer to the dying mobster as they saw he did not have the strength to draw any weapon he might have.
Outside, voices were yelling. It would only be a minute or less before an officer might show up. The Green Devil bent over Salvucci, uncertain what if anything she should say.
Then the mobster's final words came in a barely audible gasp, "I don't know nothing about any Phantom...."
People were beginning to peer through the open doorway. She had to leave or risk being detained and exposed. Kelly was stunned by Salvucci's last statement, she had thought the Phantom was some sort of scarecrow rigged up to frighten them away. Now she was more uncertain than ever. The Green Devil swiveled and saw Doc Valentine gaping at her as if she were a real devil. She gave him a resounding open-handed slap across the cheek before running out into the night.
"That's for being fresh," she muttered into her helmet as darkness hid her.
6/15/2020
3/2-3/3/1943
I.
Crossing 48th Street with a chill wind trying to get up her skirt, Kelly O'Connor was grateful she was wearing her Green Devil costume under her dress. Nylons were getting so difficult to find that she went without stockings that day and prayed no one noticed. This early in March, every little bit helped. At five-thirty, the crowds were thick but she wove and darted through them with the ease of long practice. At twenty-three, tall and slender with trim legs, the young reporter was at her best in the pale lilac dress matched with a plain cloche hat perched far back on her brick-red hair. Her likeable good looks had been a mixed blessing in her journalism career so far but in day to day life, they helped out immensely.
Over by Eighth Avenue, she found the front door of the old Mialgo Theatre, windows boarded up and marquee long blank. Once a center of the city's vaudeville activity, it had been left to droop with disrepair. Standing in front of the double doors with their frosted glass panes were two men she had only met once before.
Little Willie, William O. Gillis, was a short, slightly built colored man with processed hair and a friendly, cheerful face. He would be a few inches shorter than Kelly's own five feet eight, but he was dapper to an extreme in a tailored dark blue suit with charcoal pinstripes, a pearl-grey fedora and an ebony walking stick. As he saw the attractive redhead hurrying his way, Little Willie's face split in a grin that had graced hundreds of newspaper ads in his heyday.
It was the man next to Little Willie that made Kelly skid to a halt in her heels. Doc Valentine.
The beachball-shaped torso with the sixty-inch waist was wrapped in a bilious purple suit with canary-yellow shirt, barely-buttoned matching vest and a floppy loosely-knotted orange bow tie. That bulbous nose with blood vessels becoming more prominent every day, the thinning blond hair and leering half-closed eyes all made an unforgettable impression. Kelly had listened to Doc Valentine on the radio, she had sat through his film BOTH WAYS GO NOWHERE and she had never found him amusing in the least.
"Ah, behold, a shamrock on legs," Valentine drawled. "Fairer thistle the unhappy Isle ne'er spawned."
Kelly could not remember the last time she blushed. Being a crime reporter in the big city had gotten her oblivious to stares from men or from women. But the way Doc Valentine regarded her made her feel as if her clothing had fallen completely off and lay in a heap at her ankles.
"Hello, Willie," she managed to croak in an unfamiliar voice. "I didn't know you were acquainted with... this fellow."
"Mr Gillis and I date back to the halcyon days of Vaudeville," replied Doc Valentine. "When the Mighty Ajax bent horseshoes in his hands, when Lilly Wren sang her fair heart out, when minstrels shows ruled the land and our hearts were young and gay..."
"That was ages ago," Kelly interrupted. "My editor at THE NEW YORK MESSENGER wants fresh material. What's the score today?"
Little Willie produced an oversized key from his waistpocket and flourished it. "Ah, dear girl, Vaudeville has declined but it has not yet breathed its last. Dr Valentine has agreed to help fund me in my effort to refurbish this palace."
The redhead folded both arms across her modest chest, the leather handbag swinging behind her on its gold chain. "Pull the other leg. You birds think Vaudeville is coming back? Have you seen Technicolor? Have you seen those new television cabinets the ritzy crowd are installing?"
"The barbed tongue of youth," muttered Doc Valentine, placing a white-gloved paw to his chest. "Like the sting of the enraged hornet to my heart are your doubts."
"Get this and get it straight," she snapped, jabbing a slim index finger at his doughy face. "Willie is a good man. I don't intend to see him lose his last pair of socks on some harebrained scheme from the most notorious conman of the metropolitan area. And by that I mean you!"
"You look healthier, my little cupcake, you've eaten well since landing a job with the Fourth Estate..."
"I have not put on a pound!" Kelly barked, then caught herself. Doc Valentine had this effect on everyone as far as she could tell.
"Sugar, hear me out." Little Willie put a hand on Kelly's elbow, which she didn't mind because she could tell he was a gentleman. She subsided much like a cat which had arched its back and begun sputtering before a fight.
"This theatre is spacious," Willie continued as he steered the redhead away from Valentine. "We think it can offer different shows simultaneously, perhaps with different entrances. A large beaded screen showing the latest Hollywood epic. A stage for baggy-pants joke tellers and fan dancers. Rooms toward the rear for a dance floor and a swing band. All these venues humming and buzzing at the same time, but separated by soundproofed walls and offered at reasonable ticket prices."
Kelly raised one elegant eyebrow. Her eyes were a bright lambent green that caught the afternoon light with a flash. "You may be on to something there, my friend. So the great unwashed masses arrive at your emporium and select what diversion suits their mood?"
"That's our hope," Little Willie said. "The old soft-shoe is not beyond me yet, perhaps I will open a few shows. Come on in, it may be dusty." He turned the key which met some resistance and the door creaked outward.
Meager light came in through gaps in the two by fours over the tall windows and by the open door. The dim lobby was cluttered with debris, old props and stacks of papers held together by twine, paper coffee cups that had long since dried. A large travel trunk covered with city stickers leaned up against a wall. Twin ticket booths were shuttered. Over all, a musty odor hung heavy, and spiderwebs were plentiful.
"Scrubbing with apple cider vinegar and hot water will restore the pristine patina to this palace..." began Doc Valentine. He stopped at the foot of a marble staircase which led up a walkway encircling the area. "Reminds me of my days at the horrid Grand Guignol in the City of Lights..."
Disregarding him, Kelly O'Connor swung open a glass panel which held a coiled firehose and an axe with a spike on the back of its head. A manila tag INSPECTED 1/9/1922 hung from the hose. "Gracious. Has anyone even been in here since the days of Coolidge?" she asked.
"Not that I---" Little Willie's sentence ended abruptly as a thick hemp noose dropped around his neck and he was hauled straight up ten feet into the air. At the same time, a two hundred pound ballast bag thumped against the floor where he had been standing.
As Willie gagged and choked, legs kicking wildly, it was Kelly who reacted instantly. She tugged the fire axe loose of its clamps, wheeled around and sliced neatly through the rope extending up from the sandbag. Willie fell directly on top of the dumfounded Doc Valentine, whose soft belly did not provide a comfortable a landing spot as one might expect. "Thunderation!" bellowed the old reprobate.
Surprising herself, Kelly was neither shaken nor confused by the sudden flurry of action. Over a year as the Green Devil had honed the way she reacted to the unexpected. She dropped the fire axe to one side and bent over the faintly struggling Little Willie.
"Ack. Arrgh," complained the old dancer. "Gack."
"Take it easy. It's a miracle your neck's not broken." Kelly noticed that even in his distress the man's eyes were fixed at something behind her. So were the watery blue eyes of Doc Valentine. She froze into position and swiveled her head to see what both men could be staring at.
On a catwalk thirty feet above them, a bizarre figure loomed up. Well over six feet high but gaunt as a starvation victim, wrapped in a black winding robe, the apparition raised an arm to reveal a skeletal hand pointing down accusingly. Kelly could clearly see it was not a normal hand wearing a glove, but made of bones with openings between them.
"Begone! You dare laugh where men died screaming!" called down a hollow sepulchral voice. "The Phantom warns only once!" Then the grisly sight melted from view as if instantly collapsing.
II.
Surprising both Little Willie and Doc Valentine, Kelly raced headlong to scamper up a ladder as nimbly as any squirrel might have done. In a heartbeat, she vaulted up onto the catwalk where the strange menacing shape had stood. No one was there. The young redhead swung around, peering into gloomy corners and heavy draperies which could have concealed many lurkers.
"Kelly Catherine Mary O'Connor!" screamed Little Willie. "What is wrong with you? Get back down here this minute!" He had gotten back up onto his feet with a grudging assist from Valentine.
"I must recommend prudence also, my Titian-tressed lark," added the old reprobate. He tugged down his vest where it had ridden up with even the slightest motion. "That revenant may well be armed."
Catching her breath, Kelly smirked to herself at her own foolishness. Fighting criminals and spies as the Green Devil had erased any tendency she might have had toward caution. Her work for the MESSENGER hadn't helped either. "I'm fine and dandy, there's not a footprint or hair of that Phantom. Hah, I must have scared him away." Crouching over the catwalk, she found only a litter of wood scraps, bits of abraded rope, sawdust and a grimy red bandanna she declined to touch. "I'm coming back down, don't you jokers try to look up my dress."
When she was back on the floor, she accepted her handbag which she had discarded. "Sorry if I gave you fellows a fright," she said with as serious a tone as she ever managed. "I am a reporter, you know. We run toward gunshots and three alarm fires."
Doc Valentine produced a voluminous silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his damp face. "What an unappealing visage that chap presented. The Phantom, no less. His locution hints he must have grown up reading Penny Dreadfuls."
"What did he mean, 'we're laughing where men died screaming?'" asked Kelly.
Willie found a rickety old folding chair and fell onto it rather than sitting down. "Oh God. The Mustard Gas incident. That was twenty years ago."
"Yeah, spill the beans, brother." Kelly tapped one toe impatiently.
"It was a terrible accident. It made all the papers but you would have been in diapers then." The old vaudevillian took a deep breath. "Some cleaning men mixed chemicals carelessly. Common items, bleach and ammonia and vinegar in hot water. They must not have known that this creates a deadly gas."
"Not unlike that vile miasma misused in the Great War," added Doc Valentine. Protruding from his lapel was the end of a soda straw and he bent his head to suck at it for a second. Kelly had noticed him doing this before and figured he had a whiskey flask stuck in an inner pocket of his jacket.
"You mean.. Mustard Gas? Here?" Kelly asked.
"Yes. Two cleaners died choking almost instantly. A stagehand screamed and fell to his death from a catwalk. Three chorus girls died before anyone could help them. And a screenwriter, Erique Bruscal from Paris, ran off clawing at his face. No one knows what happened to him. He was never seen again."
"That's horrible," Kelly whispered, but her mind was thinking like the Green Devil now, looking for connections. "That was when they closed this theatre?"
"Yes. One of the owners was selling out anyway, he intended to move West. The other declared the theatre needed a generation to mourn. It was his children who paid taxes on it all this time and now they accepted my offer to buy it." Little Willie placed small clever hands on his knees and rose. "I must admit my nerves have been shaken by that hanging business. Although my father always swore I'd be hanged some day, come to think of it."
"You gave a creditable imitation of a pendulum," Doc Valentine drawled. "Your range of talent seems without limit."
"Let's step outside and get some air, gentlemen." Kelly led them to the street door and they stepped out to a prosaic scene of passers-by rushing along the sidewalk. From a passing car, a radio blared swing with a clarinet doing gymnastics. A boy not more than eleven marched past, hawking his papers and declaring that the latest war news was so important that no one could afford to miss it.
"The mundane parade goes on in its stultifying crassness," Doc Valentine observed. He scratched a wooden match with his thumbnail and lit a thin black cheroot which smelled like licorice, took two puffs and then held it without inhaling further.
Kelly O'Connor regarded the old fraud without affection. She had no forgotten the time Valentine had offered to help her up off the floor when she had fallen and his hand had slipped right over her right breast. An unfortunate mishap, he had claimed but she watched him warily now.
"Someone has to say the obvious," she burst out. "Enrique Bruscal wasn't killed by that gas. He survived. Maybe he was horribly disfigured, maybe he's just crazy as a sackful of wild geese, but I'll bet the rent money he's calling himself the Phantom and threatening you two for trying to open the theatre."
III.
Her story about re-opening the Mialgo Theatre barely made it to the late afternoon edition. As a tiny item buried on the sixth page, with no mention of the Phantom or of the attempt at hanging Little Willie. Kelly was fuming at the injustice of her treatment, not for the first time. Her editor had trimmed her copy by half. He had blue penciled out the mystery and the excitement to leave a dull business item. And he had not even listened to her arguments but simply instructed her to go do some rewrites for the sports reporters who still couldn't spell anything longer than two syllables.
Seething inside, she happily daydreamed about storming in here someday in full Green Devil costume and wrecking the joint. Kicking over the desks, flinging typewriters through those grimy windows, tossing the filthy ash trays in all directions, while the out of shape middle-aged men tried to stop her and she evaded them like a hummingbird escaping turtles.
"What are YOU grinning about?" rasped Leo Markovitch, the columnist who retyped whatever gossip he heard on the radio the night before, only with more innuendo and spice.
"Hee hee, wouldn't you like to know?" was her answer. Kelly did not need to glance at the big clock over the door to see it was close to five. Half the reporters had snubbed out their thirtieth cigarette of the day and wrestling into their baggy jackets while pretending they knew how to knot a tie.
"Not that Green Devil troublemaker again?" Leo asked, parking part of his ample butt on the corner of her desk. "I been warning you, she's trouble. You keep trying to get an angle on that skirt and you'll find yourself with hoods shooting through you to get to her. Maybe she has some circus trick that deflects bullets but you sure don't."
Kelly straightened up the mess of loose papers and tried to fit them into a manila folder. "Hey, Leo. You know all kinds of goofy Big Apple screwballs. Suppose I give you a name. Doc Valentine."
"Look, Red. Stay away from fleabags like that. Doc Valentine shoulda been hanged before you was born. He's been caught in a hundred crooked schemes but somehow he wriggles free or disappears before they slap the cuffs on him. He's a charlatan. A con man. A mountebank. A fraud."
"Is that his real name? What might he be a doctor of?"
"A doctor of griftology, putting other peoples' moolah into his own pocket, honey. One cop said his real name was Erasmus Valentine. I saw a warrant with the name Llewelyn Llanwelly on it. And a couple times, he mentioned his first name is Fred. I don't think he even knows anymore."
The young redhead pushed back her chair and clasped her hands together to crack her knuckles. "Leo, you may be grouchy and grumpy but you know your beans. If I see Doc Valentine, I'll be sure to keep a safe distance. Thanks, pal."
Tugging a fedora that badly needed both laundering and blocking, Marcovitch glanced around and hesitated. "Listen. Keep this next part to yourself, okay?"
"Oooh, that change in your voice. Go ahead, Leo, I cross my fingers and swear."
"You carrot-tops are born to stir things up, I swear it's in your blood. Anyway. I was digging through city records a while back. Found an old yellowed photograph of a dozen businessmen who planned on building a bridge down by the battery. It was 1891, get it?"
For some reason, a chill ran up Kelly's spine and made her scalp tingle. "Yeah? Go on."
"Like I said, 1891. Year I was born. Cyrus Vandersanden's father was there, the steel magnate who built half of Central Park West. A coupla other historical figures. And right in the center of the photo, grinning like a fool, was Doc Valentine. He looked the same. If he was sixty back then, he's gotta be pushing a hunnerd today."
Kelly O'Connor dropped back down into her chair without realizing it. "Not some clown who looks like him, I suppose?"
"Not on your life. The caption under the picture identified him as 'Dr E.W. Valentine of Tuxedo Park.' Geez, Kelly, when I saw that photo I felt like I stepped outta the real world where things make sense."
"Maybe.. it was his father? His uncle?"
"Nature wouldn't play such a cruel joke. Lissen, honey, it's a shady world with some dark corners that aren't safe for nosy little chicks. You got a way with words, I read some of your articles. You oughtta write a few steamy novels and retire comfortably to a beach in France or something." With that, he dug in his inner jacket pocket for a cigar and was ripping the cellophane off as he walked away.
"Thanks, buddy," called Kelly at his retreating figure. She could not understand why that anecdote disturbed her so much. It had to be a mistake. How could a two-bit grifter be a century old and still running around loose? Things like that didn't happen.
Or did they? Since she had started the Green Devil game, she had seen the Dragon of Midnight walk through a solid wall. She had seen the Sceptre in action. She had met Mark Drum and the squadron of Archangels. The line between possible and impossible had become blurred. It was a stranger world than she had ever imagined existing. It even had a title that Mark Drum had revealed to her.. the Midnight War.
Glancing up, Kelly watched the three men of the night crew shuffle in and slump down at the desks they shared with the daytime reporters. She tapped her perfect teeth with a thumbnail as she digested what Markovitch had told her. It was true that Doc Valentine gave her the willies whenever he showed his alcoholic mug, but that meant nothing. So did a lot of men destined for Skid Row.
Little Willie had said they would be back at the Theatre tonight. A couple of electricians had been hired for hooking lights up to make sure the wiring was still safe. If this bird who called himself the Phantom showed up again to scare everyone away, the Green Devil should also be there.
Snatching up her handbag, Kelly galloped sharply out into the hall. She could make it on time to snare dinner at the boarding house where she lived. It was meat loaf night. She'd grab a quick nap for an hour or two and then head back to Times Square in her little roadster as the night settled in. And she would bring her favorite costume with her, the one with the horned helmet and the jacket with the white trident across the back.
IV.
The Theater District was a subdued shadow of its glory of only a few years ago. So many young men were in the Service and so many young women were working night shifts who would have been out on dates. Rationing meant driving was becoming more difficult. More and more, people sat by their radios at night and turned in early. By eleven, the area near the Mialgo Theatre was nearly deserted and few windows were even lit.
Having lucked onto a parking spot nearby, Kelly had watched for an possible observers before leaping out of her snappy little roadster and darting into the darkness of an alley. A lifelong New Yorker, she had spent the past two years figuring out possible hiding places and darkened nooks during her daytime hours. Now, in the midnight green pants and leather jacket, with the modified crash helmet hiding her face, she was a dark slim figure that would have been difficult to spot even if she had not kept to the shadows.
As the Green Devil, she never carried a weapon. Her weird ability to deflect attacks with circular motions of her hands extended even to bullets. So far that had been enough. On top of the clear-visored helmet were two short curved horns she had carved and affixed herself. Across the back of the snug leather jacket was the outline of a trident in white. Kelly didn't kid herself that mobsters were terrified of the Green Devil the way they were of the Monk or Mark Drum, but she felt she was doing her part.
Avoiding a battered metal garbage can, she found the side door of the theater. The shielded light bulb that should have illuminated that entrance had long ago burnt ago and the alley was gloomy to the point of utter darkness. That afternoon, while wandering around Mialgo and listening to Willie and Valentine boast of their plans, she had quietly unlocked this side door and wedged a folded piece of cardboard at its base.
The door opened silently. Kelly almost hugged herself at her own cleverness. She stepped into murkiness and closed the door behind her. From what she remembered, she was by the rear of the main stage where two decades ago comedians like Rufus Lucas and dancers like Little Willie himself had entertained crowds. Ahead, a dim glow showed through the curtains and she heard voices.
"Careful, my lad, take care with those cables," came the nasal tones of Doc Valentine.
"We know our business, mister," answered a younger man's voice. "You stay back. We'll have them baby spots up in a second."
Creeping stealthily across the dusty stage, Kelly pulled the edge of the curtain aside a bare inch to get a peek. The rows of seats facing her were dimly illuminated by a pair of lamps set on the floor. Two men in workman's clothes had an electrical panel open on the wall and were studying it.
"I ain't got a fuse for this antique," one grumbled.
"There's a couple in the truck, I guess I gotta go fetch them. Maybe I'll get a few spare bulbs too, those over there look like Edison installed them himself."
From almost directly overhead, Kelly heard that hollow menacing voice again. "Idiots! You were warned not to return here! Now you shall pay for your foolishness!" Before the last word was spoken, the Green Devil had leaped to the same ladder she had climbed that afternoon and she raced up it with the agility of youth.
Standing not fifteen feet away from her was a horrifying figure too thin to be alive, a shrouded dark presence with its face hidden in a cowl. The Phantom had not seen her. That skeletal hand was pointing accusingly down at the men below. Kelly never hesitated. She charged with her right arm drawn back and unleashed her best roundhouse right in a swing that would have knocked down a man twice her weight.
But her fist met nothing to stop its arc. Her swing continued without connecting with anything solid as the cowl flapped out of its way and she reeled wildly to flat backwards off the catwalk. In that split-second, the Green Devil grabbed out for anything to break her fall but too late. She landed with a horrendous thump on something soft but firm as an inflatable air mattress.
For a few seconds, she was too dazed to realize what had happened. She was alive. She hadn't broken her neck with that fall and, for a moment, that was enough. Kelly twisted around, trying to sit up. Suddenly she realized she had landed directly on top of Doc Valentine's immense belly, knocking him down.
Not only hadn't he been hurt either, somehow one of his hands had closed unerringly over her butt. More relieved at being alive than affronted, she slapped that hand away and scrambled to her feet. She heard the old reprobate mutter something like, "Feel free to drop in any time, my dear..." as she got her bearings.
The Phantom was gone. The two electricians had also vacated the premises, leaving the street door wide open. She heard a truck start up outside, indicating they were not likely to be returning immediately. Disregarding Doc Valentine and Little Willie who were gawking at her, she hurdled up the ladder again to the catwalk.
No sign of the Phantom. Her pulse was racing as she swung around but she saw no way he could have clambered out of the area in those few seconds. This couldn't be a real ghost manifestation.. Could it?
From the seating area, a rough man's voice called up to her, "No more acrobatics, girly. Get down here slower than the way you went up and these geezers won't get perforated."
V.
Staring at the three newcomers, Kelly felt her adrenalin surge. Three men in suits, two of them big goons who held .45 Colt automatics right at Doc Valentine and Little Willie. The third man was older, heavier, with an impressive mane of silvery white hair and a beaked nose. Working as a crime reporter meant that she recognized August Salvucci at once. Wanted by the Feds for tax evasion, he had dropped out of sight weeks earlier. He looked enraged.
"Hey, boss! It's the Sceptre. Where's her magic wand?" asked one of the gunmen.
Kelly did not reply as she stepped off the ladder and crossed over to stand between her two friends and the mobsters. Even under circumstances as dire as these, where her continued existence was uncertain, part of her mind decided not to speak if she could help it. If Little Willie or worse Doc Valentine recognized her voice, her game as the Green Devil would be over.
"No," Salvucci corrected him. "I do not recognize this one, but she is one of the so-called 'super-heroes' who have been causing so much inconvenience for businessmen like myself. Bah! And now I am forced to leave before I am ready."
"If you'll excuse me," began Doc Valentine, "I believe I left a roast in the oven..."
"Stay where you are. Oh, how I hate all three of you. Another twenty-hour hours and my passage back to Palermo would be waiting. Now I must leave prematurely. I must run and hide, perhaps disguise myself until I can leave this hopeless country." The old mobster's face was turning red and his raised fist trembled. "But you leave me no choice!"
"You were.. concealed here? In this theatre?" asked Little Willie. "Then who was the Phantom?"
"Don't try to delay your executions, you miserable fools," Salvucci yelled. "You have ruined everything for me. Jack! Vinnie! Cut them down and then we have to go."
That was Kelly's cue. She took one step forward and relaxed her conscious mind. As the gun muzzles flared white flame and shots rang deafeningly loud in the echoing theater, her arms whipped back and forth in circular arcs. Her palms stung agonizingly. Two bullets ricocheted wildly up into the overhead rafters, one broke a window with a crash of flying glass. But at least three were deflected directly backwards toward their sources. A gunman doubled up, clutching at his chest and the other thug fell straight down with his face caved into red ruin.
A final .45 slug caught Salvucci high in the chest, below the collarbone. He turned halfway around, dropped to his knees and then fell onto his back with a wheeze.
Watching, cautiously lowering her arms, the Green Devil could not help but take a secopnd to inspect her palms. The material of her gloves was not even scratched. Bullets did not literally hit her hands to be deflected, something inexplicable redirected them before contact was made. It was beyond her understanding.
The two gunmen were obviously dead. From the whistling noise Salvucci's chest made with his final breaths, he could not be saved either. Everyone drew closer to the dying mobster as they saw he did not have the strength to draw any weapon he might have.
Outside, voices were yelling. It would only be a minute or less before an officer might show up. The Green Devil bent over Salvucci, uncertain what if anything she should say.
Then the mobster's final words came in a barely audible gasp, "I don't know nothing about any Phantom...."
People were beginning to peer through the open doorway. She had to leave or risk being detained and exposed. Kelly was stunned by Salvucci's last statement, she had thought the Phantom was some sort of scarecrow rigged up to frighten them away. Now she was more uncertain than ever. The Green Devil swiveled and saw Doc Valentine gaping at her as if she were a real devil. She gave him a resounding open-handed slap across the cheek before running out into the night.
"That's for being fresh," she muttered into her helmet as darkness hid her.
6/15/2020