DYING MAN ACCUSES THE GRAY PHANTOM
Presently his quickening eye was running down the column of type. It was a lurid and highly colored account of the murder of Sylvanus Gage, a crime said by the police to be one of the strangest on record. Headquarters detectives confessed themselves baffled by several of the circumstances, and especially by the fact that the murderer seemed to have accomplished the apparently impossible feat of making his escape through a door which had been found bolted on the inside when the police reached the scene.
The murder, it was stated, would probably have gone down in the annals of crime as an unsolved mystery but for the fact that the dying man had whispered the name of his assailant to Patrolman Pinto, who had been summoned to the scene by the housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Trippe, after the latter had been disturbed by a mysterious sound. The name mentioned by the victim was that of Cuthbert Vanardy, known internationally as the Gray Phantom and regarded by the police as one of the most ingenious criminals of modern times.
However, the account went on, the Gray Phantom’s guilt would have been clearly established even without his victim’s dying statement. It had been learned that for some years a feud had existed between the two men and that the Gray Phantom had threatened to take his enemy’s life. The total absence of finger prints and other tangible clews strongly suggested that the deed could have been perpetrated only by a criminal in the Phantom’s class. The perplexing features added further proof of the Phantom’s guilt. Who else could have made his escape in such an inexplicable manner? Who but the Gray Phantom, who was known to be pursuing a criminal career for pleasure and excitement rather than for the profits he derived from it, would have left behind him a small fortune in perfect stones, taking nothing but a worthless curio?
These and other details Vanardy read with interest. He smiled as he reached the concluding paragraph, stating that a countrywide search for the murderer was in progress and that the police confidently expected to make an arrest within twenty-four hours. He glanced at the accompanying likeness of himself, made from a photograph taken in the early stages of his career.
“What drivel!” he exclaimed, tossing the paper aside. Then, one by one, he glanced through the other early editions of the New York evening newspapers. All featured the Gage murder on the first page, and all the accounts agreed in regard to essential details. In The Evening Sphere’s story of the crime, however, he detected a subtle difference. It presented the same array of damning facts, pointing straight to the inevitable conclusion of the Phantom’s guilt, yet, between the lines, he sensed an elusive quality that differentiated it from the others. He read it again, more slowly this time; and here and there, in an oddly twisted sentence or an ambiguous phrase, he caught a hint that the writer of the Sphere’s article entertained a secret doubt of the Phantom’s guilt.
The suggestion was so feeble, however, that a casual reader would scarcely have noticed it, and whatever doubts the writer may have felt were smothered under a mass of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. He threw the paper down with an air of disdain. Here, in this sheltered retreat, what the world thought of him was of no account. Serene in his seclusion, he could snap his fingers at its opinions and suspicions. He sat down at the piano, and a moment later his finely tapering fingers were flashing over the keys.
Suddenly, in the midst of one of his favorite arias, his hands began to falter. For a time he sat motionless, with lips tightening, gazing narrowly at the point where Helen Hardwick had stood at the moment when he held her hand. His face was grim and troubled, as if a disturbing thought had just occurred to him. He got up and with long strides passed to the desk, where he pressed a button.
“Wade,” he crisply announced when the fat man reappeared, “I am going to New York in the morning.”
Wade sat down, drawing a squeaky protest from an unoffending chair. “To New—New York?” he stammered.
“Exactly. Tell Dullah to pack my grip. I shall leave early, about the time you are getting your beauty sleep.”
Wade blinked his little eyes. “But why, boss?”
“Here’s the reason.” Vanardy handed him one of the papers he had been perusing, watching with an amused smile the flabbergasted look that came into the fat man’s face as he read. As he approached the end of the article, wheezy gasps and indignant mutters punctuated the reading.
“Rot!” he commented emphatically. “If I wasn’t a fat man I’d lick the editor of this sheet within an inch of his life. Why, you always played the game according to the code, boss. You never killed a man in all your life.”
“No, never.”
“And you were right here at Sea-Glimpse at the time the murder was done.”
“True enough. But I might have some difficulty proving it. Your own testimony wouldn’t be particularly impressive. Besides, there’s just enough of truth in the police theory to give color to the lies. It is true Gage and I quarreled, and I believe I once threatened to give the old skinflint a beating. It was a foolish wrangle, involving nothing but a cross made of imitation jade. I’d been wearing it attached to a chain around my neck as far back as I could remember. Who put it there I don’t know. Perhaps——”
“Your mother—maybe,” suggested Wade, slanting a searching gaze at Vanardy.
“I don’t know, Wade. You may be right. I remember neither father nor mother. All I know is that the cross seemed to be the only connecting link between my present and the past I couldn’t remember. I fought like mad when the street urchins and gangsters tried to take it away from me, and somehow, through thick and thin, I managed to cling to it. Then, one day about six years ago, I lost it. Probably the chain parted. Anyhow, in some mysterious manner the cross fell into Gage’s possession. I went to Gage and demanded it. He must have seen how anxious I was to recover it, for he put a stiff price on it. I was willing to pay—would have paid almost anything—but each time I began to count out the money Gage doubled his price. So it went on for years, and I admit I sometimes felt like strangling the old miser. But I never threatened to kill him and I never wrote the letter mentioned in the papers.”
“Somebody’s been doing some tall lying,” declared Wade irately. “If I wasn’t so fat I’d make the fellow that wrote this article eat his own words. But you should worry, boss. They can’t get away with it.”
“I am not so sure, Wade. Seems to me they’ve made out a fairly complete case against the Gray Phantom. The motive is substantial enough. There are enough mysterious circumstances to suggest that only the Phantom could have committed the crime. The fact that the murderer stole a cheap trinket and left fifty thousand dollars’ worth of real diamonds behind him is rather impressive. And you mustn’t forget that a little evidence against the Gray Phantom will go a long way with a jury.”
Wade, a picture of ponderous wrath, crumpled the newspaper in his huge fist. The fretful look in the small round eyes signified that his mind was grappling with a problem.
“The letter Gage got the day before the murder must have been forged,” he ventured at last.
“Of course; but it may have been done skillfully enough to deceive all but the keenest eye. Handwriting experts have been known to disagree in matters of that kind.”
The fat man reflected heavily. “Why didn’t Gage beat it for the tall woods when he got the letter?”
“Because the tall woods are full of ambushes. Likely as not the letter gave him a jolt at first. Then, upon giving it a sober second thought, he cooled down. His principal consideration was that the Gray Phantom had never been known to commit a murder, and that consequently the letter was either a joke or a bluff.”
“But he told the cop it was the Gray Phantom that stabbed him.”
“Naturally. A wound in the chest isn’t conducive to clear thinking. We may assume that the murderer approached his victim by stealth and that Gage never saw the man who struck him down. Under the circumstances it was natural enough for him to suppose that, after all, the Gray Phantom had carried out his threat. What else was he to think?”
An ominous rumble sounded in Wade’s expansive chest. “You’ve been framed, boss.”
Vanardy nodded. “And it doesn’t require a great deal of brilliance to figure out who engineered the frame-up. The Duke has the reputation of being a good hater.”
The fat man seemed startled. “But the Duke’s in stir,” he argued. “You sent him there yourself.”
“So I did.” A pleased smile lighted Vanardy’s features. “But two or three members of his gang were not present at the round-up, and I have received tips to the effect that they have been organizing a new crowd. I suppose the Duke has been communicating with them through underground channels and instructing them in regard to this frame-up. The Duke has sworn to get me, and undoubtedly this is his method of accomplishing his aim. He chose the mode of revenge which he thought would hurt me most.”
“If I wasn’t a fat man I would—” began Wade.
“Save your threats. The Duke is a crafty rascal, just as clever as he’s vindictive. That kind of a man makes a bad enemy. The only way to queer his game is to track down the man who did the crime. That’s why I am going to New York in the morning. The police will never find the culprit, for they are wasting their time and energies looking for the Gray Phantom. Therefore it’s up to me.”
A scowl deepened in Wade’s rubicund face. “The world must be coming to an end when the Gray Phantom turns detective. It’s the maddest, craziest thing you ever did yet, boss.”
“It will be quite an adventure.” Vanardy’s eyes twinkled.
“It’s too risky, boss. Why, every dick and harness bull and amateur sleuth on the American continent is on the lookout for you.”
“Very likely.”
“The police have enough on you to send you to the jug for a million years, even without the Sylvanus Gage job. And you can just bet the Duke’s gang will have their eyes peeled, watching their chance to lead you into a trap.”
“I suppose so.”
The fat man sighed. He knew from long experience that his chief, once his mind was made up, was impervious to pleas and arguments.
“Why don’t you just sit tight?” was his final attempt. “I don’t see what you’re worrying about. They’ll never find you here. Nobody knows where to look for you. You’re safe.”
“Sure of that?” Vanardy smiled queerly. “There’s one person who knows where to find me.”
A look of startled comprehension came into Wade’s face. “You mean the little queen who was so heart-broken because the Duke had stolen a lot of old Assyrian junk from her dad?”
“I mean Miss Helen Hardwick,” declared Vanardy stiffly. “I was fortunate in being able to recover the collection from the Duke and restore it to Mr. Hardwick.”
“She was sure easy on the eyes!” rhapsodized Wade, unrebuked. “But you let her slip away from you, after you’d stirred up most of the earth to dry her tears. I never got you on that deal boss. Why, if I hadn’t been a fat man——” He sighed and rolled wistful eyes at the ceiling.
Vanardy scowled, then laughed.
“Chuck the sentiment, you old clod-hopping hippo. As far as I know, Miss Hardwick is the only living person, outside our own circle, who is aware of my whereabouts.”
“Will she give you away?”
“It depends,” murmured Vanardy. “If she believes me guilty of murder she may consider it her duty to inform the police, and she would be absolutely right in doing so. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m starting for New York in a few hours to track down the murderer of Sylvanus Gage.”
Admiration clashed with anxiety in Wade’s face. “I get you, boss. You want to keep the Gray Phantom’s record clean. You don’t want any bloodstains on his name. You don’t want the world to think that you’ve committed a murder.”
An odd smile played about the Phantom’s lips. “Wrong, Wade. It goes against the grain to have a foul murder linked to one’s name, but it isn’t that. I’m not lying awake nights worrying about the world’s opinion. The only thing that troubles me is——” He broke off, and his eyes sought the spot where Helen Hardwick had stood.
“You needn’t say it, boss.” Wade’s voice was a trifle thick as he struggled out of the chair and gripped the other’s hand. “If I wasn’t a fat man I’d tag right along, but I guess I’d only be in the way. Good luck—and give my regards to the little wren.”
With slow, trundling strides he left the room. A moment later the door had closed behind him, and the Gray Phantom was alone. Once more, as he paced the floor, his eyes were soft and luminous. Suddenly he paused and bent a reverential look on the rug at his feet, as if he were standing in a hallowed spot.
“Blue or gray?” he mumbled.
CHAPTER IV—MR. ADAIR, OF BOSTON
“Roland Adair, Boston, Massachusetts.” It was thus the Gray Phantom inscribed the register at Hotel Pyramidion, while an affable clerk beamed approval on his athletic and well-groomed figure.
“What do you require, Mr. Adair?”
“Parlor, bedroom, and bath, with southern exposure, preferably above the sixth floor.”
The clerk, intuitively sensing that the new arrival was one accustomed to having his wishes complied with, glanced at his card index. “We have exactly what you want, Mr. Adair.”
“Good! I wish breakfast and the morning newspapers sent to my apartment at once.”
“It shall be done, Mr. Adair.” The clerk bowed debonairly, little suspecting that the new guest, who so unmistakably presented all the earmarks of a cultured and leisurely gentleman, was at this moment the most “wanted” man on the North American continent. The guest himself grinned in his short black beard while an elevator carried him to the ninth floor, and an acute observer would have gained the impression that he was bent upon an adventure hugely to his liking.
He ate his breakfast slowly and with keen relish, meanwhile glancing over the newspapers, which were still featuring the East Houston Street murder as the chief sensation. Nothing had as yet been discovered which threw the faintest light on the peculiar manner in which the slayer had left the scene of his crime, and it was regarded as doubtful whether this mysterious phase of the case would be cleared up until after the Gray Phantom’s arrest. It had been ascertained that the notorious criminal was not aboard any of the vessels that had sailed for foreign ports since the murder, so it was thought probable that the fugitive was still in the country, and it was confidently declared by police officials that the dragnet would gather him in before long.
The accounts in the various papers were substantially similar, but again the Phantom detected a faintly dissenting note in the Sphere’s article. It was so slight as to be scarcely discernible, but to the Phantom it signified a lurking doubt in the writer’s mind, and a suggestion that the Sphere’s reporter sensed a weak link in the chain of evidence.
“I’ll have a talk with the fellow,” he decided. “I might ask him to take dinner with me this evening. He may prove interesting.”
He finished his coffee and lighted a long, thin cigar, then passed to the window and watched the procession below. After his long and monotonous seclusion at Sea-Glimpse the life of the city acted as a gentle electric stimulant on his nerves. He glowed and tingled with sensations that had lain dormant during long months of tedium, and the strongest and raciest of these was a feeling of ever present danger.
The Gray Phantom did not deceive himself. His present adventure was by far the most hazardous of his career. On the one hand he was threatened by the nimble-witted man hunters of the police department, and on the other by the henchmen of the Duke. His only hope of safety lay in his subtler intelligence, which had seldom failed him in moments of danger, and the temporary protection afforded by his beard.
Luckily, the only photograph of him in existence, the one the newspapers had displayed on their front pages the morning after the murder, showed him smooth shaven. The beard, giving him a maturer and somewhat more professional appearance, afforded a thin and yet fairly satisfactory disguise, but it would be of scant use if by the slightest misstep or careless move he should attract suspicion to himself. In such an event, certain records filed away in the archives of the police would quickly establish his identity as the Gray Phantom. Nevertheless, he was pleased that the descriptions carried by the newspapers had made no mention of a beard.
There was a measure of safety, too, in the sheer audacity with which he was proceeding. The man hunters might look everywhere else, but they would scarcely expect to find their quarry living sumptuously at a first-class hotel. His free and easy mode of conduct, unmarked by the slightest effort at concealment, afforded a protection which he could not have found in the shabbiest hovel and under the most elaborate disguise.
Yet, despite all the safeguards his brain could invent, the situation was perilous enough to give the Gray Phantom all the excitement his nature craved. His pulses throbbed, and there was a keen sparkle in his eyes as he left the hotel and went out on the streets. The very air seemed charged with a quality that held him in a state of piquant suspense. The policemen appeared more alert than usual, and now and then snatches of conversation reached his ears from little groups at street corners and in doorways who were avidly discussing the Gage murder and the chances of the Gray Phantom being caught. At each subway entrance and elevated stairway loitered a seemingly slothful and impassive character whom his trained eye easily identified as a detective.
Chuckling softly in his beard, the Phantom walked on. No one seemed to suspect that the striking and faultlessly garbed figure that sauntered down the streets with such a carefree and easy stride, looking for all the world like a leisurely gentleman out for his morning constitutional, might be the object of one of the most thorough and far-reaching man hunts ever undertaken by the police. Occasionally he paused to inspect a window display, incidentally listening to a discussion in which his name was frequently mentioned. The East Houston Street murder, which under ordinary circumstances would have attracted but passing notice, had become a tremendous sensation because of the Gray Phantom’s supposed connection with it.
Gradually he veered off the crowded thoroughfares and entered into a maze of crooked, narrow, and squalid streets where housewives and children with dirt-streaked faces viewed his imposing figure with frank curiosity. After a glance at a corner sign he turned east, quickening his pace a little and scanning the numbers over the doorways as he proceeded. One of the buildings, a murky brick front with a funeral wreath hanging on the door and a tobacconist’s sign lettered across the ground-floor window, he regarded with more than casual interest.
“Sylvanus Gage, Dealer in Pipes, Tobacco, and Cigars,” he read in passing; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he pursued his eastward course, a thoughtful pucker between his eyes. He was trying to outline a course of procedure, a matter to which hitherto he had given scant attention, for the Phantom was the veriest tyro in the science of criminal investigation. It occurred to him that one of his first steps should be an inspection of the scene of the murder.
A few blocks farther east he turned into a once famous restaurant and ordered luncheon. He dallied over the dishes, smoked a cigar while he drank his coffee, and it was after three o’clock when he left the place and headed in the direction of the tobacco store. This time he paused in front of the establishment, looked through the window, and finding the interior deserted, resolutely rang the bell. Some time passed before the side door was opened by a flat-chested woman with sharp features and unkempt gray hair.
“What do you want?” she demanded sulkily, regarding the caller with oddly piercing eyes. “Can’t you see the store’s closed?”
The Phantom lifted his hat and smiled urbanely. “Sorry to intrude,” he murmured. “You are Mrs. Trippe, I believe?”
“Well, suppose I am?”
“The late Mr. Gage’s housekeeper?”
“What’s that to you?”
“I am Mr. Adair, of Boston,” explained the Phantom, unruffled by her churlish demeanor. He and the woman had met once or twice during his stormy interviews with Gage, but he felt sure she did not recognize him. “You may have heard of me as an amateur investigator of crime,” he went on easily. “I have established a modest reputation in that line. This morning I happened to read an account of Mr. Gage’s tragic death, and some of the circumstances impressed me as interesting. Could I trouble you to show me the room in which the crime was committed?”
His hand was in the act of extracting a bank note from his pocket, but he checked it in time, a sixth sense warning him that Mrs. Trippe might resent an attempt to grease her palm.
“I don’t see what you want to pester me for,” she muttered sullenly, fixing him with a look of obvious suspicion. “The police have almost worried the life out of me with their fool questions and carryings-on. The case is settled and there’s nothing more to investigate.”
“Sure of that, Mrs. Trippe?” He had detected a faint hesitancy in her speech and manner, and he was quick to take advantage of it. Incidentally he noticed that she had aged a great deal since he last saw her, and he doubted whether he should have recognized her if they had met by chance. “What about the murder’s manner of escape?” he added. “I understand that hasn’t been explained yet.”
“Well, he escaped, didn’t he? I don’t see that it makes any difference how he did it. The Gray Phantom always did things his own way. But,” after a few moments’ wavering, “you can come in and look around.”
Her abrupt acquiescence surprised him, and he guessed it was not wholly due to a desire to be obliging. He wondered, as he followed her through the store, whether her decision to admit him was not prompted by a wish to see what deductions he would make after inspecting the scene of the crime.
She opened the inner door, remarking that the damage wrought by Officer Pinto had been repaired a few hours after the murder and that the police department’s seal had been removed only a short while ago. The Phantom passed into the narrow chamber, only slightly altered in appearance since the time of his last visit. The realization that he was viewing the scene of a crime supposed to have been perpetrated by himself appealed strongly to his dramatic instinct, and the thought that at this moment the police were searching for him with a fine-toothed comb lent a touch of humor to the situation.
The woman stepped to the small window in the rear and raised the shade, then stationed herself at the door, peering at him out of wary, narrow-lidded eyes, as if intent on his slightest move. The Phantom glanced at the rickety desk at which Gage had sat while haggling over petty sums and figuring percentages to the fraction of a cent.
“I see one of the drawers has been forced open,” he remarked.
“Lieutenant Culligore did that,” explained the woman. “That was the drawer where Mr. Gage kept most of his valuables.”
“Including the Maltese cross,” the Phantom smilingly put in.
Mrs. Trippe nodded. “There’s a spring somewhere that opens and shuts it, but none of us could find it, and so Lieutenant Culligore had to break the drawer open.”
“Yet the cross was gone,” observed the Phantom, “and the drawer was intact when Lieutenant Culligore found it. That would seem to indicate that the murderer knew how to operate the spring.”
“Well, hasn’t the Phantom proved that he knows just about all there is to know?”
“I am sure the Phantom would feel highly complimented if he could hear you say that.” He smiled discreetly, realizing that here was another item of proof, for he was willing to wager that, though he had never seen Gage work the spring, he could have opened the drawer without laying violent hands upon it. He turned to the window, carefully examined the catch, then raised the lower half and endeavored to thrust his shoulders through the opening. The attempt satisfied him that even a smaller man than himself would have found it impossible to squeeze through.
That left only the door as a means of egress and ingress, and the door had been bolted on the inside when Officer Pinto arrived, which circumstance seemed to render it flatly impossible for the murderer to have escaped that way. He tried the lock and examined the stout bolt, then stepped through to the other side, closing the door behind him. A wrinkle of perplexity appeared above his eyes. Even the Phantom’s nimble wits could not devise a way of passing through the door and leaving it bolted on the inside. The feat did not seem feasible, and yet the murderer must have accomplished it. His face wore a frown as he reëntered the little chamber.
“Can’t figger it out, eh?” The housekeeper seemed to have read his mind. “Well, you needn’t try. The police did, and they had to give it up as a bad job. The Phantom has a cute little way with him, doing things so they can’t be explained.”
“And yet,” facing her squarely, “you don’t think the Phantom committed the murder?”
A scarcely perceptible shiver ran through her shrunken figure. “What else can I think?” she parried.
He shrugged his shoulders. The impression haunted him that she was not so sure of the Phantom’s guilt as she appeared. He ran his eyes over the floor, the walls, and the murky ceiling.
“And you needn’t try to find any hidden openings, either,” she told him, again reading his unspoken thoughts. “A bunch of headquarters detectives spent half a day tapping the walls and the ceiling and ripping up boards in the floor. The Phantom——”
The jangle of the bell at the outer door interrupted her, and she looked scowlingly toward the front of the store. “I guess that’s Officer Pinto,” she muttered. “He’s on night duty, but he’s been prowling around here most of the time since the murder, asking silly questions when he ought to be in bed.”
A hard, wary glitter appeared in the Phantom’s eyes as she left the room. In an instant he had scented danger.
CHAPTER V—DANGER
Coolly, though every nerve and muscle in his body were on the alert, the Phantom took a case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette. He stood face to face with a peril of a tangible and definite kind. The protecting beard was dependable only so long as he did not attract the attention of the police and invite a closer scrutiny. It would not for long deceive an officer whose training had made him habitually suspicious of appearances and who had been drilled in the art of seeing through disguises.
Voices came from the outer room, Mrs. Trippe’s surly tones clashing with the gruff accents of Officer Pinto. The Phantom felt a tingle of suspense. It was the kind of situation he would have thoroughly enjoyed but for the fact that in this instance he could not jeopardize his liberty without also endangering his purpose.
Footsteps approached, and presently a stocky figure, with the housekeeper hovering behind, stood framed in the doorway. The Phantom, smiling serenely, felt instant relief the moment he glanced at the heavy and somewhat reddish features, with the unimpressive jaw and the stolid look in the eyes. Pinto might be a faithful plodder and a dangerous adversary in a physical encounter, but it was plain that he possessed only ordinary intelligence.
“Well, who’re you?” bluntly demanded the officer.
It was the housekeeper who answered. “He says he is Mr.——What did you say your name was?”
“Mr. Adair, of Boston,” replied the Phantom with an air of superb tranquillity, adding the explanation he had already invented for Mrs. Trippe’s benefit. “Hope I’m not intruding,” he concluded.
Pinto stepped inside, his eyes fixed on the Phantom’s face in a hard stare. Then, by slow degrees, the churlish expression left his features and a slightly contemptuous grin took its place.
“You’re welcome,” he declared. “Go as far as you like. I s’pose you’re trying to dope out how the Phantom got out of the room. Well, believe me, you’ll have to do some tall thinking.”
The Phantom chuckled affably. Evidently Pinto had classified him as one of the harmless cranks who flock in the wake of the police whenever a mysterious crime has taken place.
“I was just discussing the problem with Mrs. Trippe,” he announced easily. “It’s a fascinating riddle. I infer it has gripped you, too, since you come here in civilian clothes while not on duty.”
“Well, I’ve been kidding myself along, thinking maybe I would find the solution.” Pinto’s face bore a sheepish look. “There’s got to be a solution somewhere, you know, and——”
“And it would be a feather in your cap if you were the one who found it first,” put in the Phantom genially. “Perhaps it would mean promotion, too—who knows? But has it occurred to you that the murderer’s exit is no more mysterious than his entrance? If he accomplished a miracle getting out, he also accomplished a miracle getting in.”
“The Phantom’s strong for the miracle stuff, all right. But it’s possible Gage himself let the murderer in. Maybe he expected somebody to call. Anyhow, we know the villain got in somehow. What I’d like to know is how he got out.”
The Phantom’s eyes had been on the floor, near the point where, according to the newspaper articles he had read, Gage’s body must have been found. Of a sudden he looked up, and the gaze he surprised in Pinto’s slyly peering eyes sent a tingle of apprehension through his body. He wondered whether the patrolman was as obtuse as he seemed.
“I understand,” he said without a tremor in his voice, “that you found the room dark upon breaking in. Couldn’t the murderer have slipped out while you were looking for the light switch?”
“Huh!” The contemptuous snort came from Mrs. Trippe, who, with arms crossed over her chest, stood in the rear of the room. “How could he, I’d like to know, with me standing right outside the door and a crowd of rubbernecks at the main entrance?”
The Phantom seemed to ponder. The theory he had just suggested did not seem at all plausible, and his only purpose in mentioning it had been to turn Pinto’s thoughts in a new direction.
“I’d swear the rascal wasn’t in the room when I broke in,” declared the patrolman with emphasis.
“And he couldn’t have got out before,” remarked the Phantom, with a grin. At the same moment he felt Mrs. Trippe’s eyes on his face. She was gazing at him as if his last remark had made a profound impression upon her. He sensed a new and baffling quality in the situation, something that just eluded his mental grasp, and he began to wonder whether the housekeeper did not know or suspect something which she had not yet told.
“The Phantom’s a devil,” observed Pinto, again slanting a queer glance at the other man. “Nobody of flesh and bone could pull off a stunt like this. Maybe some day he’ll tell us how he did it. He’ll be roped in before long. Say,” with a forced laugh, “wouldn’t it be funny if he should get caught right here, in this room? They say a murderer always comes back to the scene of his crime.”
All the Phantom’s self-control was required to repress a start. Pinto’s remark, though uttered in bantering tones, was entirely too pointed to have been casual, and the gleam in his eyes testified that his suspicions were aroused.
“I think the Phantom’s talents have been grossly overestimated. When he is caught we shall probably find that he is quite an ordinary mortal. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Trippe?”
The woman started, then mumbled something unintelligible under her breath.
“Well, maybe,” said Pinto. “I’ve got a feeling in my elbow that says he’ll be caught before night, and then we’ll see. He may be an ordinary mortal, but I’ll be mighty interested to know how he got out of this room. Got any ideas on the subject, Mr. Adair?”
The Phantom’s frown masked the swift working of his mind. “Yes, but you will laugh when I tell you what they are. My frank opinion is that the Phantom had nothing whatever to do with this murder.”
Mrs. Trippe stared at the Phantom as if expecting an astounding revelation to fall from his lips.
Patrolman Pinto, too, seemed taken aback. A little of the color fled from his face, and for an instant his eyes held an uneasy gleam. In a moment, however, he had steadied himself, and a raucous chuckle voiced his opinion of the Phantom’s last statement.
“Say, you amateur dicks make me laugh. The Phantom had nothing to do with it, eh? Well, if he didn’t commit this murder, maybe you’ll tell us who did.”
The Phantom, quiveringly alert, strolled across the floor and back again. There was a bland smile on his lips and the amused twinkle in his eyes concealed the tension under which his mind was laboring.
“That’s asking a lot of an amateur detective, isn’t it?” he suavely inquired. “Maybe it will help you, however, to know how the situation looks to a lay-man. You say you are willing to swear that the murderer was not in the room when you broke in. It is almost equally certain, viewing the matter in the natural order of things, that he could not have left the room between the commission of the crime and your forcible entrance. Therefore——”
He broke off, feeling a violent rush of blood to the head. He had been talking against time, hoping to find a way of diverting Pinto’s suspicions from himself. Suddenly it struck him that his rambling discourse had led him straight to the solution of the mystery. The revelation flashed through his mind like a swift, blinding glare. To hide his agitation he lighted a cigarette. Through the spinning rings of smoke he saw the housekeeper’s ashen face, mouth gaping and eyes staring with fierce intensity.
“Well?” prompted Pinto. His voice was a trifle shaky.
The Phantom was himself again. “Well, as I was about to say, if the murderer was not in the room when you broke in, then the circumstances point straight to you, Mr. Pinto, as the murderer of Sylvanus Gage.”
For a time the room was utterly still. The policeman seemed torn between astonishment and a nervous fear. The housekeeper held her breath, her features twisted into a smile that rendered her expression ghastly.
“I knew it!” she cried. “I knew it all the time!”
“You must be crazy,” muttered Pinto, at last finding his voice.
“Not at all. But for the fact that you are an officer in good standing, you would have been suspected immediately. In the light of all the circumstances, it stands to reason that the man who broke through the door was the man who murdered Gage. No one else could have done it. Mrs. Trippe, do you remember how long Pinto was alone in the room after forcing his way in?”
The housekeeper seemed to search her memory. “It took him several moments to find the electric light switch,” she mumbled haltingly. “After that—well, he was in there for some time before he came out. Maybe two minutes, maybe five—I can’t be sure.”
“At any rate, long enough to drive a knife into Gage’s chest.” There was an exultant throb in the Phantom’s tones, the eagerness of the hunter who is tracking down his quarry. “Gage, we may assume, was awakened by the noise when the door crashed in, and sprang from his bed. You probably grappled in the dark. Then——”
Pinto interrupted with a harsh, strident laugh. “Some cock-and-bull story you’re handing us! If I killed Gage, then Mrs. Trippe here must have been in on the job. It was she who called me and told me to force the door.”
The Phantom waved his hand airily. “Because she had heard a mysterious noise. That noise may have been prearranged to give you a chance to knife Gage. I don’t pretend to understand all the minor details yet, but the essentials are clear as day. You must have committed the murder, for the simple reason that nobody else could have done it.”
“Yeh?” There was a vicious sneer in Pinto’s face. “Maybe you’ll tell me, then, why Gage thought the Phantom was the one who knifed him.”
“Because of the forged letter he had received the day before. Besides, Pinto, we don’t know that Gage thought anything of the kind. We have nothing but your word for it. You were the only witness to the declaration you say Gage made. A man who will commit a cowardly murder is also capable of telling a lie.”
Great bluish veins stood out on Pinto’s forehead. “You’re doing fine for an amateur dick,” he jeered. “All you’ve got to do now is to figger out a motive, and the case will be complete.”
“Motive? Ah, yes! The Duke has a habit of recruiting his men in queer places. Once he had an assistant district attorney on his staff; at another time an associate professor of philosophy with a penchant for forbidden things. Why shouldn’t he have a hard-working patrolman?”
Pinto’s figure squirmed beneath his gaze.
“Such a man would prove useful to the Duke, especially if he wanted to frame an enemy,” pursued the Phantom. “Nobody suspects a policeman. A man in uniform is beyond reproach. Even if the circumstances of a crime point straight to him as the perpetrator, it is always easier to suspect somebody else, particularly someone who has a criminal record. I guess you banked on that, Pinto.”
His tones bespoke a free and easy confidence, but he felt none of it. He believed that the murderer of Sylvanus Gage stood before him, but his only reason for thinking so was that, so far as appearances went, no one else could have committed the crime. He was poignantly aware that his theory would be laughed at and derided, and that he himself would be subjected to the hollow farce of a trial which must inevitably result in his conviction. Once in the clutches of the police, his chances of clearing himself would be extremely slender. “Well, Pinto, what about it?” His tones were clear and faintly taunting, giving no hint of the swift play of his wits. “Did you take the precaution of arranging an alibi?”
“No, I didn’t.” The policeman spoke defiantly. For an instant he fumbled about his pockets, as if searching for something. Evidently the object he wanted was not to be found about his civilian garb. “I didn’t have to fix up an alibi. Say, Mr. Adair——”
He paused for a moment and came a step closer to the Phantom.
“Say,” he went on, “while you’re telling us so much, maybe you’ll tell us how long the Gray Phantom has been wearing a beard.”
Momentarily startled by the verbal thrust, the Phantom was unprepared for the physical attack that instantly followed. He felt the sudden impact of the policeman’s ponderous body, precipitating him against the farther wall of the chamber. In a moment, with unexpected agility, the officer had seized Mrs. Trippe by the arm and hurried her from the room.
Then a door slammed and a key turned gratingly in the lock. The Gray Phantom was alone, a prisoner.
CHAPTER VI—THE WAY OUT
Dusk was falling, and the little room was almost dark. The sudden attack, all the more surprising because of Pinto’s previous air of stolidity, had left the Phantom a trifle dazed, but in a twinkling he realized the full seriousness of his dilemma. The door had no sooner slammed than he was on his feet, regaining his breath and flexing his muscles for action.
With a spring agile as a panther’s he threw himself against the door. Once it had succumbed to the superior weight of Patrolman Pinto’s body, but the Phantom’s leaner and nimbler figure was no match for its solid resistance. After thrice hurling himself against the obstruction, he saw that he was only wasting time and strength.
Hurriedly he switched on the light. From his pocket he took a box containing an assortment of small tools which on several occasions had stood him in good stead. In vain he tried to manipulate the lock, finding that it was too solidly imbedded in the wood. Next he tried the hinges, but the flaps were fastened on the other side of the door and therefore inaccessible. He cudgeled his wits, but to no avail; evidently the door was an impassable barrier. It seemed by far the most substantial part of the room, suggesting that Gage might have had it specially constructed as a protection against burglars.
He sprang to the window, then recalled that he had already ascertained that it was too narrow to permit him to crawl through. Another precaution of the wily Sylvanus Gage, he grimly reflected. His eyes, quick and crafty, darted over floor, ceiling, and walls, but nowhere could he see a sign of a movable panel or a hidden passage, and he remembered Mrs. Trippe’s statement that headquarters detectives had spent half a day searching for a secret exit. Though he worked his wits at furious speed, the situation baffled his ingenuity.
The Phantom perceived he was trapped. The amazing luck that had attended him in the past had made him reckless and indiscreet, and now it seemed to have deserted him like a fickle charmer. He supposed that Pinto, too shrewd to attempt to deal single-handed with such a slippery and dangerous adversary as the Gray Phantom, was already in communication with headquarters, summoning reënforcements. In a few minutes he would be hemmed in on all sides and pounced upon by overwhelming numbers of policemen, and in a little while the newspapers would shriek the sensation that at last the Gray Phantom had been captured.
It surprised him that he could view the end of his career with philosophical calm, unaffected by vain regrets. He had always suspected that some day an overbold play on his part would result in his undoing, and he had trained himself to look upon his ultimate defeat with the indifference of a cynic and fatalist, but he had never guessed that the crisis would come like this. He smiled faintly as it dawned on him that the disaster which now stared him in the face was the direct result of his determination to vindicate himself in the eyes of a woman. He had played for high stakes in the past, but Helen Hardwick’s faith in him was the highest of them all.
His smile faded as quickly as it had come. There was a sting in the realization that his boldest and biggest game was foredoomed to failure. Only a few more minutes of liberty remained, and after that all chance of exculpating himself would be gone. Officer Pinto, having become famous of a sudden as the Gray Phantom’s captor, would now, more than ever before, be beyond suspicion, and he could be depended upon to make the most of his advantage. The Phantom, whose hands had never been sullied by contact with blood, would be an object of horror and loathing as the perpetrator of a vile and sordid murder. Helen Hardwick, like all the rest, would shudder at mention of his name.
The dismal thoughts went like flashes through his mind. Only a few minutes had passed since the door slammed. The thought of Helen Hardwick caused a sudden stiffening of his figure and imbued him with a fierce desire for freedom. He refused to believe that his star had set and that this was the end. Many a time he had wriggled out of corners seemingly as tight and unescapable as the present one, chuckling at the discomfiture of the police and the bedevilment of his foes. Why could he not achieve another of the astounding feats that had made his name famous?
He spurred his wits to furious effort, repeatedly telling himself that somewhere there must be a way out. It was hard to believe that a man like Sylvanus Gage, living in constant danger of a surprise visit by the police, had not provided himself with an emergency exit. Despite the failure of the detectives to find it, there must be a concealed door or secret passage somewhere, though without doubt it was hidden in a way worthy of Gage’s foxlike cunning.
He ran to the door and shot the bolt. The police would be forced to break their way in, and this would give him a few moments’ respite. Again, as several times before in the last few minutes, his eyes strayed to the window. Though he knew it was far too narrow to afford a means of escape, it kept attracting his gaze and tantalizing his imagination. Deciding to make a second attempt, he hastened across the floor, pushed up the lower sash, and edged his shoulder into the opening. Writhe and wriggle as he might, he could not squeeze through. Even a man of Gage’s scrawny build would have become wedged in the frame had he attempted it.
Outside the house a gong clanged, signaling the arrival of the police patrol. From the front came sharp commands and excited voices. Already, the Phantom guessed, a cordon was being thrown around the block, ensnaring him like a fish in a net. Precious moments passed, and still he was unable to take his eyes from the window. A vague and unaccountable instinct told him that his only hope of safety lay in that direction.
He raised the shade a little and looked out upon a court disfigured by ramshackle sheds and heaps of refuse. Several temporary hiding places awaited him out there, if he could only get through the window. Even an extra inch or two added to its width would enable him to wriggle out of the trap. But how——
The answer came to him with sudden, blinding force. Yet it was simple and obvious enough; in fact, the only reason he had not thought of it before was that his mind had been searching for something more intricate and remote. It had not occurred to him that the extra inch or two that he needed could be provided by the simple expedient of dislodging the window frame.
Already his fingers were tearing and tugging at the woodwork. He noticed that the casements were thick, so that the removal of the frame would give him considerable additional space, yet he had been at work only a few moments when he discovered that his plan was far more difficult of execution than he had expected. The frame, at first glance, ill-fitting and insecurely fastened, resisted all his efforts. His nails were torn and there were bleeding scratches on his fingers. He looked about him for something that he could use as a lever.
Someone was trying the lock, then came a loud pounding on the door.
“Open!” commanded a voice.
The Phantom, failing to find any implement that would serve his purpose, inserted his fingers beneath the sill and tugged with all his strength.
“Come and get me!” was the taunt he flung back over his shoulder. Then he pulled again, but the sill did not yield. He straightened his body and attacked the perpendicular frame to the right but again he encountered nothing but solid resistance.
“The game’s up, Phantom,” said the voice outside the door. “Might as well give in. If you don’t we’ll bust the door.”
The Phantom worked with frantic strength. His knuckles were bruised, his muscles ached, and sweat poured from his forehead.
“I’ll drill a hole through the first man who enters this room,” he cried loudly, hoping that the threat would cause the men outside to hesitate for a few moments longer before battering down the door. Then, placing his feet on the sill, he centered his efforts on the horizontal bar at the top.
A quick glance through the window revealed a broad-shouldered man in uniform standing with his back to a shed. Evidently the cordon was tightening. Even if he succeeded in getting through the window, he would have to fight his way through a human barrier. The outlook was almost hopeless, but he persisted with the tenacity that comes of despair. He sprang from the sill, turned the electric light switch, plunging the room into darkness and hiding his movements from the eyes of the man outside, then leaped back to his former position and tugged frenziedly at the horizontal piece.
Of a sudden his hand slipped and a metallic protuberance scratched his wrist. With habitual attention to detail, he wound his handkerchief around the injured surface, stopping the flow of blood. If by a miracle he should succeed in getting out, he did not care to leave behind any clews to his movements. Another sharp glance through the window satisfied him that the man at the shed was not looking in his direction. Then he ran his fingers along the horizontal frame, found the object that had wounded him, and discovered that it was a nail.
The hubbub outside the door had ceased momentarily. Suddenly there came a loud crash, as if a heavy body had dashed against the door. The Phantom, a suspicion awakening amid the jumble of his racing thoughts, fingered the nail, twisting it hither and thither. It occurred to him in a twinkling that it was an odd place for a nail, since it could serve no apparent purpose. In a calmer moment he would have thought nothing of it, but his mind was keyed to that tremendous pitch where minor details are magnified.
Another crash sounded, accompanied by an ominous squeaking of cracking timber. He bent the nail to one side, noticing that its resistance to pressure was elastic, differing from the inert feel of objects firmly imbedded in solid wood. An inspiration came to him out of the stress of the moment. He twisted the nail in various directions, at the same time tugging energetically at a corner of the frame.
Once more a smashing force was hurled against the door, followed by a portentous, splintering crack. Quivering with suspense, his mind fixed with desperate intentness on a dim, tantalizing hope, the Phantom continued to bend and twist the nail at all possible angles. He knew that at any moment the door was likely to collapse, and then——
He uttered a hoarse cry of elation. Of a sudden, as he bent the nail in a new direction, it gave a quick rebound, and in the same instant the frame yielded to his steady pull, as if swinging on a hinge, revealing an opening in the side of the uncommonly massive wall. For a moment his discovery dazed him, then a terrific crash at the door caused him to pull himself together, and in a moment he had squeezed his figure into the aperture.
He drew a long breath and wiped the blinding, smarting perspiration from his face. Thanks to an accidental scratch on the wrist, he had discovered Sylvanus Gage’s emergency exit. And none too soon, for already, with a splitting crash, the door had collapsed under the repeated onslaughts of the men outside, and several shadowy forms were bursting headlong into the room.
The Phantom, wedged in the narrow opening, seized the side of the revolving frame and drew it to. A little click signified that a spring had caught it and was holding it in place. Excited voices, muffled by the intervening obstruction, reached his ears. He smiled as he pictured the consternation of the detectives upon discovering that once more the Gray Phantom had lived up to his name and achieved another of the amazing escapes that had made him feared and secretly admired by the keenest sleuths in the country.
He had no fear that the police would follow him, for his discovery of the secret exit had been partly accidental and partly due to the accelerated nimbleness of mind that comes to one laboring under tremendous pressure. To the police the nail on the top of the window frame would be nothing but a nail. It is the hunted, not the hunter, whose mind clutches at straws, and they would never guess that the nail was a lever in disguise. The Phantom, as he contemplated the ingenious arrangement, found his respect for the dead man’s inventiveness rising several notches.
From the other side of the wall came loud curses, mingling with dazed exclamations, baffled shouts and expressions of incredulity. With a laugh at the discomfiture of his pursuers, who but a few moments ago had thought him inextricably trapped, the Phantom moved a little farther into the opening. It appeared to be slanting slowly into the ground, and it was so narrow that each wriggling and writhing movement bruised some portion of his body. Inch by inch he worked his way downward, wondering whither the passage might lead. Now the voices in the room were almost beyond earshot, and he could hear nothing but a low, confused din.
Presently he felt solid ground at his feet, and at this point the passage turned in a horizontal direction. There was a slight current of dank air in the tunnel, suggesting that its opposite terminus might be a cellar or other subterranean compartment. Limbs aching, he moved forward, with slow twists and coilings of the body. He estimated that he had already covered half a dozen yards, and he wondered how much farther the passage might reach. One thing puzzled him as he writhed onward. Why had Gage not made use of the secret exit on the night of the murder? Was it, perhaps, because the murderer had come upon him so suddenly that he had not had time to reach the hidden opening?
He dismissed the question as too speculative. A few more twists and jerks, and he found himself in an open space where he could stand upright and move about freely. For a few moments he fumbled around in the inky darkness, finally encountering a stairway. He ascended as quietly as he could, taking pains that the squeakings of the decaying stairs should not disturb the occupants above. Reaching the top, he listened intently while his hand searched for a doorknob. Slowly and with infinite caution he pushed the door open. Again he stopped and listened. The room was dark and still, and he could distinguish no objects, yet his alert mind sensed a presence, and he felt a pair of sharp eyes gazing at him through the shadows.
Then, out of the gloom and silence came a voice:
“Don’t move!”
The words were a bit theatrical, but the voice caused him to start sharply. A few paces ahead of him he saw a blurry shape. His hand darted to his hip pocket; then he remembered that he had left his pistol in the grip at his hotel, for when he started out he had not expected that his enterprise would so soon take a critical turn.
“Hold up your hands,” commanded the voice, and again an odd quiver shot through the Phantom.
Nonchalantly he found his case and thrust a cigarette between his lips. Then he struck a match, advanced a few paces, gazed sharply ahead as the fluttering flame illuminated the scene, and came to a dead stop.
He was looking straight into the muzzle of a pistol, and directly behind the bluishly gleaming barrel he saw the face of Helen Hardwick.
CHAPTER VII—DOCTOR BIMBLE’S LABORATORY
She was the last person the Gray Phantom had expected to see at that moment, and this was the last place where he would have dreamed of finding her. He stared into her face until the flame of the match bit his fingers.
“You!” He dropped the stub and trampled it under his foot. She stood rigid in the shadows, and the wan glint of the pistol barrel told that she was still pointing the weapon at him. Her breath came fast, with little soblike gasps, as if she were trying to stifle a violent emotion.
“How did you get here?” she demanded, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
“By a tight squeeze,” he said lightly. “I must be a sight.”
“You came through the—tunnel?”
“I did as a matter of fact, though I don’t see how you guessed it.”
Staring at her through the dusk, the Phantom was conscious that his statement had exerted a profound effect upon her. She drew a long breath, and her figure, scarcely distinguishable in the gloom, seemed to shrink away from him.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, an odd throb in her voice. “Then you did it!”
“Did what?”
The Phantom shook his head. “You deduce I am a murderer from the fact that I got here through a tunnel. Well, that may be very good feminine logic, but——”
“It is excellent logic, my friend,” interrupted a voice somewhere in the darkness; and in the same moment there came a click, and a bright electric light flooded the scene. The Phantom had a brief glimpse of a ludicrous little man with an oversized head, a round protuberance of stomach, and short, thin legs encased in tightly fitting trousers; then he turned to Helen Hardwick and gazed intently into her large, misty-bright eyes.
“Oh, they’re brown, I see,” he murmured. “I had a notion they were either blue or gray. Queer how one forgets.”
The girl looked as though utterly unable to understand his levity, for as such she evidently construed his remark. The thin-legged man stepped away from the door through which he had entered and approached them slowly, giving the Phantom a gravely appraising look over the rims of his glasses. The Phantom had eyes only for Helen Hardwick. He studied her closely, almost reverentially, noticing that her eyes, which upon his entrance had been steady and cool, were now strangely agitated, radiating a dread that seemed to dominate her entire being. The hand that clutched the pistol trembled a trifle, and there were signs of an extreme tension in the poise of the strong, slender figure, in the quivering nostrils, and in the pallor that suffused the smooth oval of her face.
“Remarkable!” murmured the spectacled individual, drawing a few steps closer to obtain a clearer view of the Phantom. “The young lady and myself are covering you with our pistols, and yet you exhibit no fear whatever. Most remarkable! May I feel your pulse, sir?”
The Phantom’s lips twitched at the corners as he looked at the speaker. The latter’s automatic, pointed at a somewhat indefinite part of the Phantom’s body, seemed ludicrously large in contrast with the slight stature of the man himself.
“My name, sir,” declared the little man with an air of vast importance, “is Doctor Tyson Bimble. You may have heard of me. I have written several treatises on the subject of criminal anthropology, and my professional services have occasionally been enlisted by the police. Not that such work interests me,” he added quickly. “The solution of crime mysteries and the capture of criminals are the pastimes of inferior minds. As a man of science, I am interested solely in the criminal himself, his mental and physical characteristics and the congenital traits that distinguish him. Again I ask you if I may feel your pulse.”
Smiling, the Phantom extended his hand. Admonishing Miss Hardwick to keep a steady aim, Doctor Bimble pocketed his own weapon and took out his watch.
“Perfectly normal,” he declared when the examination was finished. “At first I thought that at least a part of your superb coolness was simulated. It is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that at this very moment you are surrounded on all sides by the police. They have thrown a cordon around the block and every house is being systematically searched.”
The Phantom stiffened. His abrupt and unexpected meeting with Helen Hardwick had momentarily blunted his sense of caution, causing him to forget that he was still in imminent danger. He threw her a quick glance noticing a look of alarm in her face. He made a rapid appraisal of the situation. His flight through the tunnel could not have taken him more than twelve or fifteen yards from the rear of the Gage establishment, and he was almost certain that the passage had extended in a straight southerly direction. Consequently the place in which he now found himself must be one of the shed-like structures he had seen from the window of Gage’s bedroom.
His eyes opened wide as he looked around. Whatever the place might look like from the outside, the interior certainly did not have the appearance of a shed. It was a strange setting, and it seemed all the stranger because he had found Helen Hardwick in it. At one end was a long bench covered with bottles, glass jars, tubes, and a queer-looking assortment of chemical apparatus. The walls were lined with rows of tall cabinets with glass doors, each containing a skeleton, and above these was a frieze of photographs and X-ray prints in black frames.
He wondered how Miss Hardwick happened to be in such strange surroundings. Her large, long-lashed eyes avoided him, and her right hand, cramped about the handle of the pistol, wavered a trifle. She had changed since their last meeting, he noticed. She had seemed half child and half woman then, a vivacious young creature with a mixture of reckless audacity, demure wistfulness and adorable shyness whose bewildering contradictions had enhanced a loveliness that had gone to the Phantom’s head like foaming wine. In the course of a few months she had acquired the subtle and indefinable something that differentiates girlhood from womanhood. Her face—he had liked to think of it as heart-shaped—had sobered a little, and the graceful lines of chin and throat seemed firmer. Faintly penciled shadows at the corners of her lips hinted that a touch of somberness had crept into her mood, but even such a trifling detail as a few wisps of loosened hair dangling sportively against her cheeks seemed to go a long way toward upsetting this effect.
Doctor Bimble’s thin and rasping voice startled the Phantom out of his reverie.
“My laboratory, sir,” he explained with a comprehensive wave of the hand. “What you see here is probably the most remarkable collection of its kind in the world. Each of these skeletons represents a distinct criminal type. Here, for instance are the bones of Raschenell, the famous apache. They are supposed to be buried in a cemetery in Paris, but a certain French official for whom I once did a favor was obliging. In my private rogues’ gallery you see photographs of some of the most notorious criminals the world has ever known, and these X-ray pictures illustrate various pathological conditions usually associated with criminal tendencies. Quite remarkable, you will admit.”
“Quite,” said the Phantom a little absently, as if his mind were occupied with more pressing matters than the bones of notorious malefactors.
“You may feel perfectly at ease, my friend.” The little doctor, noticing the Phantom’s abstraction, spoke soothingly. “I think I have already made it clear that the pursuit and capture of criminals don’t interest me. Without doubt we shall arrive at some amicable understanding that will insure your safety.”
“Understanding?” echoed the Phantom, having detected a slight but significant emphasis on the word.
“Yes; why not? You have interested me for some time, Mr.—ahem. Let me see—I believe your real name is Cuthbert Vanardy?”
The Phantom nodded.
“Making due allowance for the exaggerations of stupid newspaper writers, I have long recognized that you are a remarkable individual. Yes, remarkable. You do not belong to any of the types mentioned by Prichard, Pinel, and Lombroso, but you are a type of your own. Naturally you arouse my scientific curiosity. Nothing would please me more than to add you to my collection.”
The Phantom glanced at the grisly contents of the cabinets. A serio-comic grin wrinkled his face. “Aren’t you a bit hasty, doctor? I am not dead yet, you know.”
“True—quite true. But a man like you leads a precarious existence. If he doesn’t break his neck in some rash adventure the electric chair is always a menacing possibility. The chances are that I shall outlive you by a score of years. Promise that you will give the matter due consideration.”
The Phantom blinked his eyes. Doctor Bimble seemed amiable enough, yet the man was scarcely human. His whole being was wrapped up in his science and his entire world was composed of anthropological specimens and fine-spun theories.
“You wish me to make arrangements to have my body turned over to you after my death?”
“Precisely, Mr. Vanardy. That is what my friend and neighbor, Sylvanus Gage, did. An inferior personality, yet he had his points of interest. I am obliged to you for hastening his demise.”
A tremulous gasp sounded in the room. The Phantom turned, and his brow clouded as he noticed the expression of anguish that had crossed Helen’s face at the doctor’s words.
“You’re mistaken, Bimble,” he declared sharply; “I didn’t kill Gage. If I had done so, I should scarcely be here at the present moment.”
Doctor Bimble shrugged his shoulders. “The matter is of little consequence, my dear sir. Whether or not you killed Gage is not of the slightest interest to me. However,” with a significant glance at Vanardy’s mud-streaked clothing and begrimed features, “I am strongly of the opinion that you did. The only thing that perplexes me is that you are taking the trouble to deny it. Did I hear you say that you came here through the tunnel?”
“I did.” As he spoke the two words, the Phantom felt Helen’s eyes searching his face.
“Enough.” The anthropologist made a gesture expressive of finality. “Your admission that you came through the tunnel is an admission that you killed Gage. I perceive you do not follow me. Well, then, the circumstances of the crime prove conclusively that it was committed by someone who was aware of the existence of the tunnel. What the foolish newspapers refer to as astounding and miraculous is simplicity itself. The murderer entered Gage’s bedchamber by way of the underground passage and made his escape by the same route. Nothing could be simpler.”
The Phantom laughed mirthlessly. The doctor’s theory, though at first glance shallow and far-fetched, impressed him uncomfortably, instilling in his mind an idea that had not occurred to him until now. Helen, standing a few paces away, was regarding him intently.
“To-day, I infer, you returned to the scene of your crime,” continued the doctor, speaking in the dry tones of one developing a thesis. “Criminals often do, but why you, a superior type, should exhibit the same failing is beyond me. Some time in the near future I shall write a monograph on the subject, with particular reference to your individual case. However, the fact remains that you returned to the scene of your crime. I take it that by some blunder or careless move you betrayed your presence. At any rate, you found yourself trapped in Gage’s bedchamber. What more natural than that, for the second time within a week, you should use the tunnel as a means of escape?”