Mystery Of The Sea Horse by Lee Falk

real sweet—"
"He's not staying here now?"
"Andy?" She shook her head sadly. "No, more's the pity. Andy and his other friend moved out more than a week ago. Yes, a good week or more it was. That day we had all that messy fog. And
couldn't we use a little moisture in the air today with all those fires burning."
"Where'd he go?" asked the Phantom. "Andy?" She took a jiggling step back from the counter. "Now he didn't leave me a forwarding address, because he said he just never got much mail to speak of. Funny thing, him such a sweet and friendly man."
"But you have some idea where he went?" She nodded her head, which caused her chins to ripple. "Andy and that sourpuss friend of his, Mr. Fulmer, got a chance to sublet a cute little place up in the hills. Now where was it?" She suddenly turned toward the half-open door behind her to bellow, "Collin!" Smiling at the Phantom, she explained, "Collin is my other boy."
Collin was long and thin, wearing a frayed jumpsuit. "Now what?" He gestured with the wrench in his bony right hand. "I can't run no more errands till I fix this faucet I thought you wanted . . ."

"Where did Andy go?"
"Not my turn to watch him." He started to return to the back room.
    "It's important," said the Phantom, taking out I his wallet, "that I find him."
Collin shuffled nearer. "Ten dollars' important?"
The Phantom took a ten-dollar bill from the wallet.
Collin said, "They got a place belonging to a guy I know. It's kind of isolated, off the end of a deadend road and sort of by itself. But her sweet Andy claims he likes privacy," "Where is it?"
    Collin tore a memo off the pad next to the regis
ter, and slowly hand-lettered an address. "There
you go."
The Phantom exchanged his ten-dollar bill for the slip of paper. "I'd like to surprise Andy. So don't call him."
"That'll cost another ten bucks," Collin told him. "To keep it a surprise."
Hearing the fire engines shrieking up behind him, the Phantom pulled his black coupe off to the side of the curving hill road.
Two scarlet engines roared by, heading in the same direction he was.
The sky up here was a smoky orange; cinders sparkled in the air. The Phantom was three blocks from the cul-de-sac block where Anderson might be holding Diana. He continued his climb. Pie was able to drive another block and a half.
Two uniformed men were setting out yellow sawhorses, closing off the street.
One of them waved him back. "Bad fire up here! Nobody can go in!"
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A little over a half hour earlier, Anderson had told Diana, "I don't believe in torture."
"I'm glad to hear that," she said.
"But there are many other ways to get information."
The dark-haired girl was tied securely to a straight-backed wooden chair. She was sitting in the middle of a round, hooked rug in the center of a narrow living room. The hot winds were buffeting the house, shaking the thin trees, chasing dry leaves and twigs down the street. "I don't know where Chris Danton is," she repeated.
Fulmer, wearing his suit jacket again, was on a chintz-covered chair near Diana. "If you cooperate, Miss Palmer, nothing bad will happen."
Diana laughed. "You don't consider being kidnapped and bound and held prisoner in this ramshackle house of yours is bad?"
"Nothing worse," amended Fulmer. "We wish you no harm. It is Langweil we . . . that is, it's Danton we want."
"What did you call him?" asked the girl.
Fulmer turned away, coughing into his hand.
Anderson smiled one of his calm smiles. "There's no need for concealing facts from you, Miss Palmer," he said. "Since you quite probably know them already."
"What facts?"
    "Your good friend, who at the moment prefers to
be known as Chris Danton, is actually Rolf Lang-
weil."
The name meant nothing to Diana. Her face showed that.
Frowning, Anderson said, "Surely, you've heard of Colonel Rolf Langweil?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Langweil had a nickname throughout Europe during World War II," continued Anderson. "They called him Doktor Tod, that is to say, Doctor Death.