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?”
The Phantom was silent for a moment. Helen Hardwick seemed to be searching his soul with eyes that gave him a distressing impression of doubt, suspicion, and reproach.
“You’re mistaken.” He was addressing the doctor, but the effect of his words was intended for the girl. “I went to Gage’s house this afternoon, hoping to find some clew to the murderer.”
“Ah!” The doctor’s chuckle expressed amusement. “You were acting on the idea that it takes a crook to catch a crook, I suppose. Go on. Your ingenious explanations are diverting.”
“I found myself cornered,” continued the Phantom, stifling his resentment. “With the house surrounded and the police pounding on the door, I had only a few moments in which to find a way out. I used the tunnel, but I discovered the opening by merest accident.”
“Impossible—flatly impossible! Yes, I see your wrist is scratched, but that proves nothing. That opening, my dear sir, could never have been discovered by accident.”
“You seem to know something about it yourself,” remarked the Phantom pointedly.
“I do,” admitted the anthropologist, with a broad grin.
“And the tunnel runs into the cellar of your house.”
“So it does.” The doctor seemed not at all disturbed by Vanardy’s sharp gaze. “Years ago, when I was looking for an inconspicuous and out-of-the-way place in which to pursue my studies in quiet, I leased the house to which this laboratory forms an extension. I saw Gage now and then, and the man interested me. Even before we became confidential I had noticed phrenological manifestations that seemed to classify him as belonging to one of the types described by Lombroso. Step by step I became familiar with his history and mode of life. I learned that he was conducting an extensive traffic in stolen goods, and that he had a broad circle of acquaintances in the underworld. Gage proved useful, introducing me to criminals whom I wished to study at close range, and, in addition to that, the man himself interested me. I saw traits and peculiarities in him that were strangely contradictory. And so, when one day he confided to me that he was living in constant fear of the police, who were likely to raid his premises at any time and confiscate his valuables, I made a proposition to him.”
“You offered to help on the condition that he sign his body over to you for dissecting purposes,” guessed the Phantom.
“Exactly, my friend.” Bimble rubbed his hands in glee. “I offered to invent an avenue of escape that would be absolutely safe and proof against detection. Gage accepted, and I set to work fulfilling my part of the bargain. The result, if I may bestow compliments on myself, was a work of genius.”
The Phantom gazed in frank astonishment at the versatile anthropologist. “The police have a nasty name for that sort of thing,” he observed.
“The police and I are friends. I help them on occasions, when the spirit moves me and the case interests me. And a scientific man, my dear sir, cannot afford to have moral scruples. The ends of science justify all other things, even assisting a criminal to escape. Incidentally I derived a lot of entertainment out of the planning of the tunnel. In the first place, the window was purposely built so small that no one would consider it for a moment as a possible means of escape. Still less would any one think of looking for an exit hidden behind the frame of such a window. You noticed the nail, of course. A lot of psychology is centered around that nail.”
“So it’s a psychological nail, eh?” The Phantom looked at the scratch on his wrist.
“I knew, from my observations of the workings of the human mind, that not one person in ten million would give a second thought to that nail. Even if, by remote chance, someone should touch it, he would never suspect that it was a part of a mechanism. If, by a still remoter chance, he would investigate more closely, he would not know how to operate it. So, you see, there is not one chance in a billion that a stranger would find the tunnel. Do you blame me for doubting your statement that you found it by accident?”
The Phantom looked at Miss Hardwick. Doctor Bimble’s explanation seemed to have impressed her strongly. He did not wonder at this, for he knew there was logic in the anthropologist’s argument. Nothing but his firm belief that Gage had provided himself with an emergency exit of some sort had prompted the Phantom to give the nail a closer scrutiny.
Doctor Bimble gave him a mildly amused look.
“You agree with me—don’t you, Vanardy? I think my logic holds together. Only a person familiar with the tunnel could have committed the murder. Conversely, a person betraying a knowledge of the tunnel is a worthy object of suspicion.”
“Haven’t you forgotten something?” The Phantom suddenly called to mind his own theory of the crime. “One other person could have committed the murder without a knowledge of the tunnel.”
“Yes, I know,” said the doctor wearily. “You are thinking of Officer Pinto. The possibility that he might be the guilty one occurred to me as soon as I saw the newspaper account, but the probabilities of the case controverted that view. Officer Pinto is an honest, dull-witted, conscientious soul—nothing else. That kind of man doesn’t com——”
The jangling of a bell in front of the house interrupted him. There was a humorous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at the Phantom over the rims of his spectacles. Helen inhaled sharply.
“The police have come to search the house, I think,” Doctor Bimble murmured languidly. “My man Jerome—an estimable fellow, by the way—is already admitting them. In a few moments they will be coming this way. Of course, if I tell them that I have seen nothing of a fugitive, they will go away without making an extended search.”
Vanardy stiffened. His head went up and his eyes narrowed; then he glanced quizzically at the doctor. It seemed to him that Bimble had stressed the word if, as though a condition were implied.
“Well, Vanardy?” The anthropologist’s tone was light and playful. Sounds of distant footfalls reached their ears. The Phantom’s darting eyes rested for an instant on one of the skeletons, and in a twinkling he understood. He laughed shortly, for the idea impressed him as grotesquely humorous.
“I see,” he said quickly. “You’ll say the necessary word to the police if I agree to dedicate my earthly remains to your private hall of fame.”
“You grasp my meaning exactly. But the time is short and I sha’n’t press you for a definite promise. Only give me your word that you will consider the proposition.”
“Very well; I’ll consider it,” promised the Phantom. “But I warn you that I have no burning ambition to become a skeleton for some time yet.”
A pleased grin wrinkled the doctor’s face. The footfalls, mingling with gruff voices, were coming closer, signifying that the searchers were rapidly approaching the laboratory.
“This way, Vanardy.” The doctor beckoned the Phantom to follow as he started toward the door. Approaching footsteps caused him to draw back. A look of bewilderment came into his face.
“We have wasted too much time,” he said complainingly; then, as he looked about the room, his face brightened. “But this will do for a hiding place. Better come along, Miss Hardwick. It may save you embarrassing questions.”
He stepped hurriedly to one side of the room, opened a door and motioned them into a narrow closet. A moment later they heard a key turn in the lock.
A vague misgiving assailed the Phantom as the door closed. The hiding place chosen for them by the genial Doctor Bimble seemed not quite adequate to the emergency. There had been no time for argument, however, and nothing for the Phantom to do but follow instructions. The versatile anthropologist knew best, he had thought, and very likely the police would take Bimble’s word for it that nobody was concealed in the laboratory.
The closet was so dark that, but for a faint fragrance and the occasional scraping of a foot, he might have thought himself alone. From the other side of the door came subdued sounds, and he pictured the tubby little doctor protesting against the intrusion on his sacred privacy. Of Helen he could see nothing but the pallid glint of her face in the gloom, but her quick, nervous breathing told him that she was keyed up to a high tension. There was a medley of questions in his mind, but he found it hard to put them into words.
“Hel—Miss Hardwick,” he whispered.
“Yes?”.
“Logic is silly rot.”
A moment’s pause. “I don’t believe I understand.”
“According to the learned doctor’s logic, I am the murderer of Sylvanus Gage. He made out quite a convincing case, and I could see you were impressed. Yet, deep down in your heart, you know he was talking piffle. You don’t believe I killed Gage.”
She stood silent for a time. He pressed closer to the wall and fumbled for her hand. It was cold, and the pulsations at the wrist made him think of a frightened, fluttering bird.
“I wish I could believe you didn’t,” she murmured, freeing her hand.
“Thank you.” Her candor had given him a little thrill of faint and indefinable hope. “Would it surprise you very much if I told you that my only reason for leaving Sea-Glimpse was to convince you of my innocence?”
“Convince me?” She gave a low, incredulous laugh. “Why?”
“I’m not sure I can tell you that. From a practical point of view it was a foolish move, wasn’t it? By the way, you knew that the police were hunting high and low for me. You alone knew where I was to be found, and yet you didn’t tell. I wonder why.”
She meditated for a little; then, in a whisper: “I don’t know.”
He laughed softly. “It seems neither one of us is very practical. We don’t understand our own motives. Can you tell me what you are doing in this gallery of skeletons?”
“I am not sure, but I will try. The morning after the murder of Gage, I read the accounts in all the papers. I can’t tell you how I felt. It was as if a great illusion had been shattered. I remember how I cried one day when I fell and broke my first doll. My feelings after reading the papers were something like that, only more poignant.”
“I understand,” he murmured. “You had placed the Gray Phantom on a pedestal. When he fell and broke to bits, just like common clay, you were disappointed.”
“Yes, it was something like that. I had placed your better self on a pedestal. I didn’t want to believe it had fallen or that it was just common clay. I read the papers very carefully; hoping to find a weak point in the evidence against you, but it seemed complete and conclusive down to the tiniest detail. One of the articles puzzled me a little, though.”
“Oh—the Sphere’s! Yes, I noticed it, too.”
“It read as though the writer were not quite sure that you were the guilty one. After thinking it over for a while I called up the Sphere and asked for the reporter who had written the article. They had some little trouble finding him, and when he finally came to the ’phone he acted as if he were not quite sober. I tried to question him about the case, but he gruffly told me he had nothing to tell aside from what he had put into his story. If I had a personal interest in the matter, he said, the best thing I could do was go and consult Doctor Bimble.”
“And you adopted the suggestion?”
“I had never heard of Doctor Bimble, but the reporter told me he was the cleverest investigator of criminal cases in town. He warned me that Doctor Bimble might refuse to help me, since he accepted nothing but cases of unusual interest, but the fact that the murdered man was a friend and neighbor might make a difference. Yesterday I called on the doctor, but at first he would talk of nothing but his skeletons. The murder didn’t seem to interest him in the least. He said the Phantom’s guilt was clear and that all that remained was to catch him. Then, when he saw how earnest I was, he told me about the tunnel.”
“The doctor is a queer duck,” murmured the Phantom musingly. “The ordinary man wouldn’t take strangers into his confidence about such things. The eccentricity of genius, I suppose.”
“The whole affair seemed to bore him immensely. He told me the man who killed Gage must have used the tunnel, since he could not have left the room any other way. He thought it possible the murderer was still hiding there, lying low until the excitement should die down, and if I didn’t have anything better to do I might watch for him at this end. As for himself, he said he wasn’t at all concerned in the apprehension and punishment of criminals, but he gave me his revolver and told me I might watch the door leading from the laboratory, since the murderer, if he were still in the tunnel, had to come out that way. I think my interest in the case amused the doctor. I suspected he was chuckling at me most of the time.
“I watched the door till late last night, all the time hoping that, if anyone came out of the tunnel, it would not be you. Shortly before midnight I persuaded the doctor to let his man take my place. You see, if the murderer proved to be anyone but you, I wanted him caught, because then your innocence would be established. Early this morning I went back to my post. When I heard steps on the stairs my heart stood still for a moment. As the door opened I felt like shrieking. And then——”
She broke off with a gasp. From above came the sounds of footsteps and doors slamming, indicating that the police were searching the upper part of the house.
“And when you saw me,” the Phantom put in, “you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was guilty. Well, I suppose it was good logic. What can I do or say to convince you that I didn’t kill Gage?”
“Nothing,” she said, a hysterical catch in her throat. Of a sudden she seemed cold and distant, as if realizing that in telling her story she had betrayed too much of her feelings. “I fear there is nothing more to be said.”
The Phantom drew a deep breath. “I don’t blame you,” he said gently. “There are several black chapters in my past. But some day I’ll prove to you that I had nothing to do with this murder. I admit that just now the evidence weighs heavily against me. It is true there was something of a feud between me and Gage once upon a time and——”
“And the threatening letter,” she interrupted. “Why did you send it if you didn’t mean to kill him?”
“It was a forgery. I never wrote it.”
“Handwriting experts say you did.”
“I know.” He remembered having read in the newspapers that three experts had compared the letter with samples of his handwriting on file in the bureau of criminal identification, and that two of them had declared that the Phantom had written it. “That only goes to show that it was an exceptionally clever forgery, and experts have been known to differ before.”
“But Gage told the officer that it was you who stabbed him.” She spoke as if determined to hear his explanation of the damning bits of evidence even though every word hurt her.
“True enough. But Gage didn’t see me. He had the threatening letter in mind when he said that.”
“Nothing but the Maltese cross was missing, and you had had a quarrel with Gage about that.”
“True, too.” The Phantom chuckled bitterly. “If I had committed the murder I should have taken pains to carry away a lot of other things for a blind.” She was silent for a few moments. Footsteps were coming down the stairs, and the Phantom knew that the searchers would soon be in the laboratory. Again he found her hand, but she quickly drew it away.
“You knew about the tunnel,” she reminded him, her shaky accents betraying the struggle going on within her.
“I swear that I found it by accident.”
He could not see her face, but he sensed that she doubted him and that the remnant of faith in her heart was unable to withstand the corroding effect of a growing suspicion. The footsteps were drawing closer, and now they could hear voices outside the door. He recognized the rasping accents of Doctor Bimble.
“I tell you, my dear sir, that the closet contains nothing but chemicals which I use in my laboratory work. Some of them are very valuable. That’s why I keep them under lock and key.”
Tensing every muscle as if preparing for an attack, the Phantom stepped in front of the girl. She made no protest as he took her pistol, which she had been holding all the time and which now hung limply from her fingers.
“I don’t doubt your word,” answered a gruff voice outside, “but orders are to search everywhere and make a good job of it. Hate to trouble you, but it’s got to be done.”
The doctor, evidently sparring for time, insisted that he had been in his laboratory all day and that nobody could have slipped into the closet unnoticed by him; but the other was obdurate.
“Very well, then,” finally grumbled the anthropologist, “but I shall make complaint to Inspector Wadham. Jerome, where are my keys?” Despite the suspense under which he was laboring, the Phantom grinned. He strongly suspected that Bimble was working a ruse in order to gain time. Yet he wondered what the outcome was to be, for unless the keys were promptly produced the officers would undoubtedly force the door.
His next sensation was one of astonishment. A curious calm appeared to have fallen over the group outside, for moment after moment passed without a word being spoken. The Phantom wondered what it could mean. It seemed as though the speakers had been suddenly stricken dumb. After what seemed a long period of silence, somebody uttered an exclamation of astonishment, then a laugh sounded, and next footsteps moved away from the closet door. A minute or so passed, then someone fumbled with the lock, and presently the door was opened by Doctor Bimble. He was smiling blandly, but the Phantom thought he detected an uneasy gleam behind the spectacles.
“What’s happened?” he inquired, looking about him dazedly and noticing that the girl and himself were alone with the doctor.
The anthropologist waved a hand toward the front of the house. “Listen!”
From the streets came loud and raucous shouts, and a blank look crossed the Phantom’s face as he made out the words:
“Uxtra! Gray Phantom capchured! All ’bout the big pinch! Uxtra!”
For a time the little group in the laboratory stood as if turned into inanimate shapes, their senses under the spell of the hoarse shouts in the street. The Phantom felt a curious churning in his head. The anthropologist was still smiling, but the smile was gradually growing thin and hard. Helen fixed the Phantom with a stony look.
“It appears a mistake of some kind has been made,” muttered the doctor at length. “It was a fortunate one for you, my friends, for the officers were becoming quite insistent. Luckily the cries diverted their attention from the closet, and they went away apologizing after telephoning headquarters and verifying the report.”
The Phantom, still feeling Helen’s gaze on his face, pocketed the pistol he had been holding. The newsboys’ cries had given him a jolt that left him a little dazed and caused his mind to turn to trivial things. He found himself admiring Helen’s simple little hat and plain but tasteful dress, noticing that they seemed as much a part of her as her hair and her complexion. He saw that she tried to be brave despite a crushing disaster to her illusions, and somehow he felt sorry for her.
Doctor Bimble turned on him with a frown.
“Sir,” he demanded, “are you the Gray Phantom or merely a clumsy impostor?”
The question seemed so ludicrous that the Phantom could only chuckle.
“It has long been my desire to meet the Gray Phantom,” pursued the doctor, still scowling darkly. “I should dislike to think I have been imposed upon. But that can’t be, unless”—with another suspicious look—“you are acting as a foil for the Phantom. Well, we shall see presently, I suppose. In the meantime, you may consider yourself at home under my roof.”
Without knowing why, the Phantom hesitated before accepting the invitation. To take advantage of the doctor’s hospitality was clearly the proper thing to do. In a little while the police would learn they had blundered, and then the man hunt would be resumed with redoubled vigor. To venture forth on the streets after that would be little short of madness. The Phantom, conquering his misgivings—which, after all, were nothing more than a vague doubt in regard to the doctor—murmured his appreciation.
Bimble’s manservant, a lanky, thin-faced individual with a gloomy expression and wary eye, entered with a copy of the extras. The Phantom gave him a quick and keenly searching glance, and again he felt strangely bewildered. The man looked innocent enough, and it was nothing but an intangible something in his gait and his manner of carrying himself that caused the Phantom to look twice.
Doctor Bimble took the damp sheet, still redolent of ink, and read aloud the triple-leaded article under the scare head. During the perusal Helen regarded him with strange, expressionless eyes, while now and then the servant shot the Phantom a stealthy glance which the latter found hard to interpret.
Evidently the extra had been hurriedly prepared, for the article contained only a few pithy facts. It seemed that the Phantom, with an audacity and a recklessness characteristic of him, had for some unaccountable purpose visited the East Houston Street establishment in which the murder of Sylvanus Gage had been perpetrated. Wearing no other disguise than a black beard, which he had evidently grown since his last appearance in public, he had approached the housekeeper, introduced himself as Mr. Adair, of Boston, a criminal investigator, and requested to inspect the scene of the murder. The unsuspecting housekeeper had admitted him, little guessing that her visitor was one of the most celebrated criminals of the age.
The Gray Phantom had been in the room only a few minutes when Officer Joshua Pinto appeared on the scene. With laudable perspicacity the officer recognized the Phantom almost immediately, despite the disguising beard, and by clever maneuvering managed to lock him in the room, standing guard outside the door while the housekeeper telephoned headquarters. In a few moments an impenetrable cordon had been thrown around the house, and the capture of the Phantom seemed an absolute certainty. Yet, when the door was battered down, the astonished officers saw that the room was empty and that the notorious rogue had achieved another of his miraculous escapes.
Apparently, so the article stated, the Phantom had accomplished the impossible, but then the Phantom’s entire career had been a series of incredible accomplishments. How he had managed to leave the room and elude the cordon of police would probably remain a mystery forever unless the criminal himself should divulge the secret. His capture, which had taken place while the police were making a systematic search of the houses in the block, had been due to one of the strange aberrations which seize even the astutest criminals. A brawl had occurred in a “blind pig” in Bleecker Street, and the commotion had attracted the attention of a passing sergeant. After sending in a hurry call for help the sergeant had raided the place, and among the prisoners taken was one who was almost instantly recognized as the Gray Phantom. The identification was rendered all the easier by the fact that he had removed his beard after making his sensational escape from the East Houston Street establishment. The belief was expressed that the prisoner would be induced to make a statement as soon as he had recovered from the effects of the raw whiskey he had consumed in the dive, presumably in celebration of his latest coup.
“Rot!” ejaculated the doctor, throwing the paper down with a gesture of disgust. “A fool would know that a man of the Gray Phantom’s temperament, whatever other folly he might commit, would not get intoxicated at a critical moment like this. This proves—But what’s become of Miss Hardwick?”
The Phantom looked up with a start. The girl was gone. Evidently she had taken advantage of the other’s absorption in the newspaper article to slip out unnoticed. Jerome, a crestfallen look on his long face, hastily left the laboratory, returning in a few moments with the report that Miss Hardwick was nowhere in sight. The Phantom imagined that there was an expression of sharp reproach in the doctor’s eyes as they rested on the servant, but the impression was fleeting.
“The young lady has probably gone home,” ventured the anthropologist. “She must have been tired, and in a measure her task was accomplished. The question is, can you rely on her not to communicate what she knows to the police?”
The Phantom looked a trifle doubtful. He had perceived that the impulses of her heart had been swamped by logic. It was possible she had gone away hating him, firmly convinced he was a murderer, and in that event her sense of duty might easily overcome everything else.
“Frankly, I don’t know,” he declared. “At any rate, I am about as safe here as anywhere for the present. I should like a bath, if I may presume on your hospitality.”
“By all means. And as soon as you have rested a bit we shall dine. Dear me, it is almost nine o’clock! Jerome!”
He instructed the servant, and the Phantom followed the silent and soft-footed man to the bathroom. As he splashed about in the tub, he tried to forget the bitter ache which Helen’s words had left in his heart. Her frigid attitude and her abrupt going away had merely strengthened his determination to convince her of his innocence. He saw that he must act quickly and take advantage of the comparative security which he could enjoy until the police discovered that they had arrested the wrong man.
His mind was at work on a plan while he hurried into his clothes, which Jerome had brushed and pressed while he was in the tub. A question that troubled him greatly was how far he could safely take Bimble into his confidence. The sharp-witted anthropologist, with his keen insight into human nature, would prove a valuable ally, but the Phantom felt a great deal of mystification in his presence. There was something about the man which his senses could not quite grasp. Likely as not, it was only the scientific temperament, which gave him an appearance of secretiveness and dissimulation, but of this the Phantom could not be sure.
The dinner, which he ate in the doctor’s company, was excellent, and Jerome served them in a faultless manner, proving that the anthropologist’s devotion to his science had not blunted his taste for physical comforts. The host discoursed learnedly and brilliantly on Lucchini’s theory in regard to the responsibility of the criminal, and it was not until the servant had withdrawn and they had reached their coffee and cigars that he mentioned the subject on the Phantom’s mind.
The dining room, furnished with an approach to elegance that one would scarcely have expected to find on such a shabby street, was lighted by a heavily shaded electrolier. The lights and shadows playing across Bimble’s face as he gesticulated with his head gave him an added touch of mystery and accentuated the general air of inscrutability that hovered about his person. He broached the subject of Gage’s death while lighting his cigar.
“Come now, Vanardy, let us be confidential. It was you who murdered Gage. Why deny it?”
Smiling faintly, the Phantom shook his head.
Bimble regarded him curiously. “The only thing about the crime that interests me is your denial. But I think I understand. In some criminals there is an æsthetic sense which revolts against the vulgar and sordid. Having, on the impulse of the moment, committed a sordid crime, your æsthetic sense reasserts itself, and you want to forget the ugly affair as quickly as possible. Am I right?”
The Phantom laughed. “You clothe the thing in such attractive phrasing that I almost wish I could plead guilty. But I didn’t kill Gage, and that’s all there is to it.”
“You still insist that Pinto did?”
“Until two or three hours ago I was firmly convinced of it.”
“Ah! Now we are getting down to facts. Until two or three hours ago you were certain Pinto was the murderer. Why?”
“Because at the time I felt sure that no one else could have committed the crime. The mysterious circumstances could be explained in no other way than on the assumption that Pinto was the perpetrator.”
“Exactly. Your logic was not at all bad. But I infer that within the last three hours you have changed your mind.”
“Not quite; I have merely modified my opinion. I am no longer positively certain that Pinto committed the murder.”
“Why?” A shrewd grin twisted the anthropologist’s lips. “What has caused you to modify your view—the tunnel?”
“Yes, the tunnel. The existence of the tunnel makes it possible for someone other than Pinto to have committed the murder. It suggests another hypothesis, in the light of which all the circumstances are explainable. Without the tunnel I should be morally certain of Pinto’s guilt; with it in existence I am no longer sure.”
“Bravo, my friend! You are doing very well for an amateur detective. Your idea is that the murderer entered Gage’s bedchamber by way of the tunnel and took his departure the same way. Do you know,” with a broad grin, “that I thoroughly agree with you? The only point of difference between us is the identity of the human mole.”
The Phantom’s face darkened a trifle. “I advanced the idea only as a hypothesis,” he declared a little testily, “and as yet I am not at all sure that it has any value. For instance, in order to reach Gage’s bedroom by way of the tunnel, the murderer had to go through your house and get down in the cellar.”
“Which could easily be done. Both Jerome and myself are sound sleepers and the house has no burglar protection.”
“But that isn’t all. After traversing the tunnel, the murderer had to enter the bedroom. In order to do so he had to work the mechanism which controls the revolving window frame. From the inside of the chamber it is worked by the nail. Can it be manipulated from the outside as well?”
“Dear me!” exclaimed the doctor, almost jumping out of the chair. “I never thought of that.”
The Phantom eyed him keenly, though he seemed wholly absorbed in contemplation of the salt shaker. The exclamation, he thought, had not sounded quite natural.
“You invented the contraption,” he pointed out. “Surely you ought to know whether the mechanism can be worked by a man approaching the room by way of the tunnel.”
“So I thought. An inventor ought to know the children of his brain.” He gave a forced chuckle, as if fencing for time in which to frame an answer. “The fact of the matter is that the contrivance was intended to be an emergency exit and nothing else. The spring by which the mechanism is operated can’t be reached by a man approaching the room by way of the tunnel. But that,” with a grin which wrinkled his whole face, “does not exclude the possibility of a man getting through by the use of force. For instance, the frame could be budged by prying.”
“Perhaps. As matters stand, the whole question hinges on whether the room can be entered from the tunnel. If it can’t, then it is certain that Pinto committed the murder. If it can, there is a possibility that someone else did it, though the preponderance of evidence still points in Pinto’s direction, for it is extremely unlikely that the murderer was aware of the existence of the tunnel. However——”
He checked himself, deciding to let the thought remain unspoken. The anthropologist, having recovered from his temporary embarrassment, gave a hearty laugh.
“You are incorrigible, my friend. You are willing to admit almost any theory but the plain and obvious one, which is that the Gray Phantom committed the murder. Reminds me of Pinel’s excellent treatise on the psychology of the criminal. But you must be tired. Please excuse me while I make a telephone call.”
The Phantom regarded him narrowly as he trundled from the room and closed the door behind him. The doctor intrigued and baffled him. He was almost certain that Bimble had been guilty of equivocation in regard to the tunnel and the revolving frame. On the other hand, this and other peculiarities might be due to an erratic temperament. His stubborn insistence on the Phantom’s guilt could be the result of mental laziness and a disinclination to exert himself over a case which did not interest him. Yet, after making all due allowances, the Phantom could not feel wholly at ease.
The doctor, smiling placidly and without a sign of guile in his face, interrupted his reflections.
“I’ve just had my friend Inspector Wadhane on the wire,” he announced. “It has been decided to let the prisoner sleep off the effects of his debauch. He will not be questioned until along toward morning. So, my friend, you can sleep in peace. Shall I show you to your room?”
The Phantom, blinking his eyes drowsily, expressed a desire to retire at once. Doctor Bimble conducted him to a pleasant bedroom with two large windows facing the street, saw that everything was in order, and wished his guest a hearty good night. Even before he was out of the room the Phantom had started to remove his clothes.
Yet, no sooner had the door closed than he hurried back into the garments. Though only a few moments ago he had showed signs of great drowsiness, he was now fully awake, and his springy motions and the twinkle in his eyes hinted that sleep was farthest from his mind.
The Phantom waited for fifteen minutes, then he quietly opened the door and looked down the hall. The lights were turned low and not a sound broke the stillness. Apparently the anthropologist and the manservant had retired. Stepping inside the room, he took from an inside pocket the little metal box he always carried, examined the snugly packed tools it contained, and made sure that each was in good condition. Finally, he switched off the light, noiselessly closed the door behind him, and tiptoed down the stairs.
Stealing down a corridor through the main part of the house, he reached the extension formed by the laboratory. He stopped at the door, tilted his ear to the keyhole, and listened carefully. It had occurred to him that Doctor Bimble might be at work, and an encounter with his host would have proved embarrassing. His keen ears detected no sounds, however, and in another moment he had passed through the door and was groping his way across the floor of the laboratory.
Of a sudden he stopped. A faint sound seemed to come from the direction where the skeletons stood in their glass-framed cages. He strained his ears to catch a repetition, but none came. Evidently he had been mistaken. He knew how sounds are magnified at night, and what he had heard was probably nothing but the rattling of a windowpane or the creaking of a board under his foot. He proceeded to the opposite wall, darting swift glances to left and right, as if half suspecting that someone was lurking in the shadows. Again a door swung noiselessly on its hinges, and the Phantom glided down the stairs leading to the cellar. From his hip pocket he took a small electric flash and let its beam play over the floor while he looked for the entrance to the tunnel.
For a time he searched in vain, traversing the length of the murky brick walls and carefully scanning each square foot of space without finding a trace of the opening. The mouth of the passage seemed to have disappeared in the three or four hours that had passed since he emerged from the subterranean tube. He tried to locate it by tracing backward the course he had followed in reaching the stairs, but it proved a difficult task, for he had floundered about in total darkness, not daring to use his flash for fear of attracting attention. He had a hazy impression, however, that the opening was in a diagonal line with the foot of the stairway.
The gleam of his flash leaped over the grimy bricks, and presently he detected a narrow fissure in the wall. It extended in a quadrangular course and was barely wide enough to admit a match or a nail. Inserting one of the sharp-nosed tools from his metal case, he pried outward, and a narrow portion of the wall swung open. He saw now that the little fissures constituted the boundaries of a door. It was composed of bricks threaded on iron rods and resembling in color and general appearance those in the surrounding wall, and it was so deftly concealed that only a careful search would reveal its existence. Evidently it had stood open when the Phantom crawled out of the tunnel, which explained why he had not noticed it. He suspected that the thoughtful anthropologist, not caring to have too many outsiders discover the tunnel, had closed it while the officers were searching the front of the house.
The Phantom waited for a few minutes while a little of the dank air in the cellar found its way into the passage. He did not relish the task ahead of him, but he was determined to settle a point on which the doctor had been singularly evasive. The problem he had set out to solve would be simplified to a great extent, and he would save himself needless efforts and loss of valuable time by ascertaining whether the bedchamber of the late Sylvanus Gage could be entered by way of the tunnel.
Having buttoned his coat tightly and made certain that his instrument case was within easy reach, he inserted head and shoulders in the opening and began the weary crawl toward the other end. His progress was painfully slow, and the smell of the moist earth gave him a sense of oppression which he found hard to shake off. The air, dank and insufficient, was almost stifling, and the walls of the narrow passage, bruising his body at each twist and turn, seemed to exude a sepulchral atmosphere that insinuated itself into body and mind.
At length he reached the point where the tunnel slanted upward into the wall, and here his progress became even more difficult. Time and again he slipped, and he could maintain a footing only by bracing the tips of his shoes against rough spots along the sides. He was puffing from exertion when finally he struck a solid obstruction which told him he had reached the end of the passage.
Finding a precarious foothold, he took out his flash and closely scrutinized his surroundings. On two sides were walls of brick, while directly in front of him was the flank of the window frame. He pushed against the latter with all his strength, but it presented a firm and solid resistance to his efforts. Next he went over it inch by inch, looking for a hidden lever or spring, but the most careful search revealed nothing that suggested a means of operating the mechanism. Finally he took out one of his tools and, inserting it in the tiny rift between the wall and the edge of the frame, began to pry steadily. After several minutes of constant effort he gave up the task as hopeless.
He leaned back against the wall and bent the full force of his wits to the task of finding a way through the obstruction. Evidently there was none. He had tapped every inch of the surface and looked everywhere for a concealed knob or wire by which the mechanism might be operated. A larger and heavier tool than the instrument in his metal case would have been of no avail, for in those narrow quarters he could not have obtained leverage. His search, though thorough and infinitely painstaking, had netted nothing.
The conclusion was clear. The revolving door could not be operated from the outside; hence the murderer of Sylvanus Gage could not have entered the room through the tunnel. Again the Phantom’s mind reverted to the inevitable deduction that no one but Officer Pinto could have committed the crime.
His lungs, which had been straining for air for the last quarter of an hour, felt as though they were on the point of bursting, and he was about to release his foothold and start back through the tunnel when a faint tapping sound caught his ears. He could not tell how long it had been going on, for until now his whole attention had been focused on the problem before him. For all he knew it might just have begun, or it might have started long before he entered the tunnel.
He pressed his ear against the side of the frame and listened. The sounds, quick and sharp, were coming in rapid succession, and at first he wondered whether someone was trying to attract his attention. Then he noticed that the sounds skipped and jumped, as if the tapping covered a considerable area, and his next surmise was that the person on the other side was making a systematic search for something.
“For what?” he wondered; and in the next moment the answer flashed through his mind. He remembered how, while he was imprisoned in the bedroom, momentarily expecting the police to force the door and pounce upon him, he had looked to the window as the only possible means of escape, and how finally he had discovered the nail that proved his salvation. Evidently the person on the other side was now doing the very thing the Phantom himself had been doing a few hours ago.
But who could it be? As far as he knew, no one but Helen, Doctor Bimble and himself was aware of the existence of the revolving door, and the tunnel. It did not seem likely that anyone should be searching at random for an opening. And who could be prowling about the Gage house at such an hour? Again he put his ear to the frame. The tapping had ceased, but now he heard another and different sound that caused him to quiver with excitement. A slight metallic noise, like that produced by the contact of two objects of steel, told him that the person on the inside had found the nail.
In a twinkling he had forgotten his cramped position, the dank air and the sickening smell of moist earth. All his senses were centered on the sounds coming from the other side, so slight that his keen ears could scarcely detect them. Something told him that in a few minutes he would make a discovery of tremendous importance in relation to the Gage murder mystery. Everything depended upon whether the person on the other side would give the nail the proper twist.
Minutes dragged by on leaden feet. The Phantom felt his heart pound chokingly against his ribs, its loud beats almost drowning the slight metallic sounds coming from the other side. After what seemed hours of nerve-racking suspense, a sharp and sudden click caused him to start violently, and he almost lost his insecure footing.
Then the window frame began to turn. A glare of light struck his eyes as the opening wedge widened. With great, eager gulps he drank in the air coming from the aperture. A minute passed, and then a face, strained and ashen, was thrust into the opening.
It was Mrs. Trippe, the housekeeper. For an instant she stared into the Phantom’s startled eyes.
“He’s killing me!” she cried. “He’s afraid I’ll tell! He locked me in——”
She jerked her head to one side. Slight though she was, she almost filled the narrow opening, and he could see only a small strip of the room at her back. Suddenly a shiver coursed down her spine. A hand was projected beyond the wall, and he caught a glimpse of steel flashing in the light. Then, in quick succession, came a scream and a thud, and the woman slid from the window sill.
It had happened so quickly that the Phantom had not time to utter a word or raise a hand. Now, before he could move a muscle, the window frame slammed shut. He heard a click, signifying that the frame was caught in the steel clutches of the mechanism. He pressed his shoulders against it, but to no avail, and he knew from his previous attempt that the effort was useless. Filled with horror at what he had just seen, he slid down the incline between the walls and began to work back toward the cellar.
Finally, after endless jerks and twistings, he reached the end of the tunnel—and there a fresh shock awaited him. His feet brought up against a solid obstruction. Shove against it as he might, the little door would not yield to his frenzied pressure. For a little he laid still on his back, thinking. His mind was heavy and his thoughts flitted about in circles, but finally it came to him that while he was at the other end of the tunnel someone must have placed a heavy weight against the door.
He was trapped.