“How is your guest, Peng Yuen?” was the Phantom’s first question after entering the shop on Pell Street.
The Chinaman’s eyes widened. “The guest? Ah, yes, I remember. I think the gentleman is well.”
“Has he telephoned anyone, or sent out any messages?”
“No; he has remained in his room all the time. He asked me this morning for something to read, and I gave him a translation of ‘Chin-Kong-Ching.’”
“Good. I have come to have a talk with him.”
“Very well.” The slight figure, arrayed in loose-fitting, straw-colored garments, stepped to the wall with the softly gliding gait characteristic of his race. He pressed a button, and the Phantom passed through an opening which instantly closed behind him.
Granger, lying on a couch, looked up drowsily. The little room had neither windows nor visible door. Air was wafted in through a mysterious recess in a corner of the ceiling, and a shaded lamp shed a greenish light over the scene. The walls were covered with yellow satin embroidered with quotations from Chinese philosophers. On a table standing near the couch were the remnants of a breakfast.
“Fairly comfortable, I see.” The Phantom sat down. His glance, though seemingly casual, was taking in every detail of the reporter’s appearance, “How are you feeling?”
“Rotten!” Granger rubbed his eyes and scowled disgustedly. “I asked the chink for something to drink, and he brought me a mess that tasted like vinegar and molasses. Then I dropped a hint that I would like some reading matter, and he handed me a book that put me to sleep before I had turned the first page. Say, how much longer are you going to sport my clothes and wear my name?”
“No longer than I have to. Your name suits me well enough, but our tastes in clothes differ.”
Granger grinned. He was comfortably stretched out on his back and his eyes were lazily studying the arabesques in the ceiling.
“Anyhow, my clothes are harmless. That’s more than can be said for my name. On the square, I am surprised to see you this morning.”
“Why so?”
There was a twinkle in the reporter’s eyes as he turned them on the Phantom. “Because you went in for a lot of trouble when you annexed my identity. I was pickled last night, and you took my breath away when you yanked off the mustache. Till then I hadn’t had the faintest idea that my abductor was the Gray Phantom. If I hadn’t been so flabbergasted I might have given you a friendly tip.”
“A tip?”
“To the effect that Tommie Granger was a marked man. I’ll tell you something interesting if you promise not to fall out of the chair. I am a member of the Duke’s gang.”
The Phantom’s brows went up. For several hours he had been aware of Granger’s membership in the criminal organization, but the glib admission surprised him. He had intended to pull the Duke’s communication out of his pocket with a dramatic gesture and startle a confession out of the reporter and he was wholly unprepared for the latter’s frank and voluntary avowal.
“Surprised you, didn’t it?” Granger chuckled as if mildly amused. “I can hardly get used to the idea myself. Membership in that gang of cutthroats and grafters is nothing to be proud of, exactly. I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for the Gray Phantom, but the Duke’s different. He’s smooth and artful enough, but he’s made of coarser stuff.”
“Yet you are a member of his organization?”
“Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? Well, since I have told you the beginning, I’ll have to tell you the rest. The cause of it all dates back to my birth. I came into the world with the face I’m wearing to-day, though it’s undergone a process of beautification in the intervening years. You see, my face is the mainspring that has determined most of my actions in recent years—some of the more important ones, anyhow. I wouldn’t be a newspaper man to-day if I had been born with a different face.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Let me tell you how it came about. On seven different occasions, and in as many different places, I have been mistaken for the Gray Phantom and put in durance vile. The clippings in my scrapbook tell all about it. I was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the first time it happened, and after I had satisfied the police dunderheads as to my identity, the editor of one of the local papers asked me to write up my impressions while in jail and tell how it felt to be mistaken for a celebrity like the Gray Phantom. I did, and that gave me a taste for newspaper work. The editor gave me a job on the spot and I’ve——”
“But what has all this to do with your membership in the Duke’s gang?” interrupted the Phantom impatiently.
“Everything. I’ve been plugging away at the newspaper game ever since I got my start in Cheyenne. I never stayed long in a place, for I have something of a roving disposition and like change of scenery now and then. My face got me in bad almost wherever I went. I had no sooner struck a new town than some ambitious dick thought he saw a chance to get famous by pinching the Gray Phantom. Of course, that always meant a stretch in the lock-up—anything from two days to a week. I used to lie awake nights imagining that I was in reality the Gray Phantom and dreaming of great criminal exploits. That got me interested in crime and criminals, and I began making a study of the subject.
“Finally, I drifted into New York and landed on the Sphere. One night while prowling about the Chatham Square section I dropped into a Turkish coffee house. It was a low joint, a hangout for thugs and thieves. While sipping my coffee I made a study of the different types around me. One fellow interested me in particular. He was an evil-looking cuss, but there was something about him that fascinated me. He looked something like a Stevensonian pirate, and he had a great scar over his left eye. Presently I began to notice that he was looking my way now and then, and finally I motioned to him to come and sit beside me. We talked in whispers, like everybody else in the joint, and by and by he asked me if I was not the Gray Phantom.
“He seemed disappointed when I told him I was only the Phantom’s double. We talked on for a while, and the next night we met again in the same place. The fellow piqued my curiosity, and I tried to draw him out whenever I had a chance. I knew he would shut up like a clam if I told him my profession, so I let him think I was a crook, though I didn’t go into details. We met night after night, and each time we were more confidential. I could tell he had something on his mind that he didn’t know just how to put into words, and of course, I did my best to lead him on. He approached the subject by slow and easy stages, dropping a cautious hint now and then. Finally, when he had convinced himself that I was to be trusted, he told me he belonged to a big criminal band and asked me if I would like to join.”
“So that’s how you happened to become a member of the Duke’s organization?” observed the Phantom.
“To cut a long story short, that was the way it happened. I thought I could work the salamander stunt—play with fire without getting burned. The idea of getting on the inside of a big gang of crooks and studying its members at close quarters appealed to me. Aside from that, I saw a chance to turn up a big story for my paper, for it was my intention to get the goods on the gang and, eventually, hand it over to the police. But”—and a rueful smile wrinkled Granger’s face—“I soon discovered that one can’t play with fire without getting scorched.”
“That explains,” mumbled the Phantom thoughtfully, at the same time extending the communication handed him by the Duke’s messenger. “There’s a message worked into the design which is readable only under the lens. It’s a pleasant reminder of what happens to traitors.”
“Yes. I know. I received several such reminders before you came along and borrowed my clothes and name. I wasn’t really a traitor, though. I merely refused to obey certain orders they gave me.”
“You might have known that you would be expected to take part in the gang’s activities. You didn’t expect to be a member only in name?”
“Well, I thought I could stall for a while, till I got the dope I wanted. You see, I was hoping they wouldn’t ask me to do any of the rough stuff till I had been a member for a while. I soon discovered my mistake.”
“And so the big story will never materialize?”
“I’m afraid it won’t. My obituary is the only kind of story that’s likely to grow out of this adventure of mine. The Duke’s crew doesn’t stand for any nonsense. I’ve been told that members who don’t obey orders usually disappear under mysterious circumstances. I never got next to the inner circle of the gang. I suppose they didn’t trust me because I took a drink too many now and then. Anyhow, I didn’t get the stuff I was after. I was a sort of probationer, reporting to one of the big chief’s lieutenants, and I didn’t get as much as a glimpse of the inner sanctum.”
“Too bad, Granger.” The disappointment written on the reporter’s face seemed so ludicrous that the Phantom could not repress a smile. “Maybe it isn’t too late yet. By the way,” starting suddenly from his chair, “have you any idea where Helen Hardwick is?”
For a moment or two the reporter lay rigid on his back; then he jumped up and stared in dumfounded amazement at the Phantom.
“Why do you ask?” he inquired hoarsely, after a pause during which each man looked the other straight in the eye.
“Answer my question and I’ll tell you my reason for asking it.”
Granger swallowed hard. “Has anything happened to Miss Hardwick?”
“She has disappeared. Left her home two days ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Her father has asked the police to search for her.”
“Good Lord!” Granger groaned. “This is awful!”
The Phantom gripped his arm. “Tell me what you know,” he commanded. “Your looks show that you are not entirely ignorant of the matter.”
The reporter’s face twitched. “I can guess what’s happened to her,” he declared, speaking in thick accents, “but I haven’t the least idea where she is.”
“Well, what do you think has happened to her?”
“She’s been kid—kidnaped.” As if to steady his nerves, Granger picked up a cigarette and lighted it.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I”—Granger drew in a whiff of smoke—“because I know the Duke’s crowd wanted her abducted. They asked me to do it, and I balked. I couldn’t—well, it simply went against the grain to do a thing like that. It was my refusal to do as they told me that got me in bad with the gang.”
The Phantom’s blood was slowly receding from his face. For a moment he sat rigid, lips tightly compressed, as if stunned. “Why did the Duke’s crowd want Miss Hardwick kidnaped?”
“That I can’t tell you. The leaders simply issue orders; they never explain their motives. I haven’t the faintest idea what their reason for abducting Miss Hardwick could be.”
Silence fell between them. The Phantom’s steely gaze continued to search the other’s face. Though evidently shocked by the news of Miss Hardwick’s disappearance, the reporter did not once lower his eyes.
“They must have got somebody else to do it after I refused,” he muttered, slowly getting a grip on himself. “Wish I had a drink.”
The Phantom was hardly listening. His knitted brows told that his mind was struggling with a problem.
“Know an officer named Pinto?” he asked abruptly.
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
The Phantom gave a brief summary of his adventures since arriving in the city. Granger listened attentively, his eyes expressing a mingling of astonishment and admiration. They opened wide as the narrator described the scene in the storeroom and Pinto’s peculiar behavior, and he chuckled appreciatively at the account of the impostor’s visit to the Sphere office.
“That’s the Phantom all over!” he remarked when the story was finished. “It’s the nerviest thing I ever heard of. But what you have told me only puts a few extra kinks in the mystery.”
The Phantom nodded thoughtfully. “How well do you know Miss Hardwick?”
“Scarcely at all. I have never met her. She called me up at the Sphere office the day after the murder and asked me a lot of questions. I referred her to Doctor Bimble.”
“So she told me.”
“Bimble is a nut, but he has done several brilliant things along lines of criminology. I was busy the day Miss Hardwick called me up, and I got a little jolt when she told me her name. The thing was natural enough, of course, but it seemed a bit weird to be talking to the person I had been asked to kidnap. Well, I thought the easiest way to dispose of her was to suggest that she see Bimble.”
The Phantom looked puzzled. “You never saw Miss Hardwick, and you have talked with her only over the telephone,” he murmured. “That being the case, I wonder why Pinto asked me, while we were in the storeroom this morning, if I knew what had become of Miss Hardwick.”
“Rumor has it that a romantic attachment exists between Miss Hardwick and the Gray Phantom. Pinto must have heard something about it.”
“But at the time he put the question he had not the faintest idea that I was the Gray Phantom. He still thought I was Thomas Granger. It was my way of responding to the question that aroused his suspicions. Now, he must have had some reason for supposing that Thomas Granger knew something of what had happened to Miss Hardwick.”
Granger considered. “Miss Hardwick may have told him about consulting me. But I think it just as likely that Pinto was playing a bit of clever strategy—that he had already suspected your identity and sprung that question about Miss Hardwick in the hope that you would betray yourself.”
“Perhaps.” The reporter’s theory seemed so natural that the Phantom wondered why it had not occurred to him before. “If that was his purpose, the trick worked beautifully. Tell me, was it before or after the murder of Gage that the Duke’s men came to you with the kidnaping proposition?”
Granger stared hard for an instant; then a glint of admiration appeared in his eyes. “Gray Phantom, you ought to have been a detective. That’s as neat a piece of mental acrobatics as I’ve seen in many a day. The proposal came to me a few days before Gage was murdered.”
“But the two plots might have been hatched simultaneously?”
“They might. I see what you are driving at. You think the two plots were related to a single object. Perhaps you are right.”
“Granger, you don’t think I murdered Gage?”
“No,” after a long pause; “but neither can I tell you who did. You, of course, are going on the presumption that Pinto is the culprit.”
The Phantom looked a trifle bewildered. The reporter had read his mind.
Granger chuckled. “I can see in which direction your mind is working. You think the bolted door and other circumstances prove that no one but Pinto could have committed the murder. You believe that after killing Gage he murdered the housekeeper in order to silence her. Pinto’s queer conduct, especially the stunt he pulled off in the storeroom this morning, is sufficient proof, to your way of thinking, and you base your entire case on the guess that Pinto is a member of the Duke’s gang.”
“Don’t you agree with me? I read between the lines of your stories in the Sphere that you did not share the generally accepted opinion.”
Granger looked up quickly. “The devil you did! I didn’t mean to air my private opinions. It must have been a subconscious process. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know whether I agree with you or not. I have an idea of my own on the subject, but it’s vague as yet. Maybe I’ll tell you later.”
The Phantom shrugged his shoulders. “The mystery of the murders doesn’t interest me particularly just at present. Granger, if you were in my position, how would you go about finding Miss Hardwick?”
The reporter considered for a long time. “My first step would be to get in touch with the Duke’s gang and try to ascertain where Miss Hardwick is being concealed. That’s a large order, and you will find it fairly exciting. The Duke, I’ve been told, hates you as he never hated anyone before, and he’s almost as dangerous behind prison bars as outside. He froths at the mouth whenever he mentions your name to the other prisoners. Your borrowed personality won’t give you a great deal of protection, for there are a lot of sharp-eyed men in the Duke’s crowd, and, besides, you’re in almost as great danger whether you appear as the Gray Phantom or as Tommie Granger.”
The Phantom waved his hand deprecatingly. “I have considered all that. The question is, how am I to get in contact with the gang.” He peered reflectively at the man on the couch; then an idea came to him. “How did the heads of the organization communicate with you? To whom did you report and from whom did you receive your orders?”
“From my acquaintance of the Turkish coffee house.”
“The piratical-looking fellow?”
Granger nodded.
“How can I find him?”
“The coffee joint is in Catharine Street, not far from East Broadway. You can easily locate it, and you will probably find your man there about ten or eleven at night. But hadn’t you better take me along?”
The Phantom shook his head emphatically. “You have just told me to what extremes you are willing to go in order to get a good story for your paper. The capture of the Gray Phantom would make an even bigger story than the one you were after. I can’t quite trust you, Granger. You love your liquor not wisely but too well, and you’re likely to give the show away. Besides, it wouldn’t do for us two to be seen together.”
“That’s so,” said Granger resignedly. “Well, anyhow, you might send me something for a bracer.”
The Phantom promised to try. He got up and rapped on the wall, eyeing Granger steadily as he stepped through the opening that appeared as if by magic. But the reporter, evidently realizing that any attempt to escape would be useless, made no move.
An opium lamp was sizzling in a corner of the room. At a table sat Peng Yuen, his face as impassive as granite. If he had overheard any part of the conversation he showed no sign of it.
“You need food and sleep,” he remarked tonelessly, pointing to the table, on which a meal was spread out.
The Phantom thanked him and sat down. He was famished and fagged out, and he could accomplish nothing until night came, so he gladly accepted the Chinaman’s hospitality. As he ate, Peng Yuen regarded him stolidly while he smoked his acrid pipe of li-un. He did not speak until the Phantom had finished his meal.
“‘The Book of the Unknown Philosopher,’” he remarked, without looking directly at his guest, “says that the overwise sometimes go far afield in search of truths that may be found at home.”
The Phantom looked up, bewildered. “I suppose there is a priceless gem of wisdom hidden somewhere in that sentence, but I don’t see how it can apply to me.”
The Chinaman gave a queer laugh, half chuckle and half grunt, and deep in the almond-shaped eyes lurked a faint, shrewd twinkle.
Dusk was falling as the Phantom, refreshed by Peng Yuen’s excellent cooking and several hours of sound sleep, left the shop in Pell Street and cautiously picked his way through the reek and noise of the Chinese quarter. He still felt a twinge of apprehension whenever he thought of Helen Hardwick, but his nerves were steady once more, and he had the springy step and the clear, alert eye of the man who feels sure of his ability to meet any emergency.
His fears were allayed somewhat by the comforting thought that Helen was as capable and keen-witted as she was reckless and audacious. She was what the Phantom termed a thoroughbred. She had nerve, spirit, and subtlety, and on several occasions she had evinced an amazing capacity for handling a difficult situation. Besides, she had a robust vitality and an athletic physique that in no wise marred her womanly charms.
The Phantom walked slowly, turning the complex situation over in his mind, for it was still too early to go to the coffee house in Catharine Street. At a corner news stand he bought an evening paper, glancing at the headlines as he walked along. The murder of the housekeeper was given glaring prominence because of the general belief that it had been perpetrated by the Gray Phantom. The motives ascribed to him were somewhat sketchy, but the police seemed convinced that he was bent on a campaign of terror, and there was anxious speculation as to where his bloodstained hand would appear next. In the meantime, the search was being continued at fever heat, and the detective bureau expected to make an important announcement within a few hours.
The Phantom smiled as he read. He had expected that the death of the housekeeper would be charged to him, and he had drawn fortitude from the firm belief that in a short time he would prove his innocence.
The odd predicament in which Pinto had been found was described facetiously and at great length. The paper treated it as a mystery that might not be solved until the officer, who had been taken to a hospital suffering from a severe concussion of the brain, recovered consciousness. His partner in the droll situation had stubbornly refused to render any explanation, and was being held for investigation pending Pinto’s recovery. He had an unsavory record, according to the police, and was known in the underworld as “Dan the Dope.”
The Phantom was satisfied. From Dan the Dope he had nothing to fear, and Pinto, even if he were inclined to tell what he knew, would not be able to speak for some time. He was passably safe as far as the police were concerned, and a little extra caution and vigilance would checkmate the designs of the Duke’s henchman. As far as he was able to tell, neither side suspected that the Gray Phantom was masquerading as Thomas Granger.
He had still more than an hour to while away, and a hazy thought in the back of his mind guided his steps in the direction of Doctor Bimble’s house. Everything seemed to indicate that Helen had disappeared shortly after leaving the anthropologist’s laboratory, and he might be able to pick up some clew in the neighborhood that would help him to trace her movements. He looked about him cautiously as he walked along, surmising that the vicinity was being watched by spies of the Duke.
At the corner nearest the Bimble residence he turned into a cigar store and purchased a package of cigarettes. He loitered near the door while smoking one, amusing himself by studying the faces of the passers-by, and presently a tall, angular figure approached from the other end of the block. At a glimpse the Phantom had recognized the inscrutable features of Jerome, the anthropologist’s servant. The man walked hurriedly, looking straight ahead, and in a few moments he was out of sight.
A vagrant impulse told the Phantom to start in pursuit of him and see whither he was bound, but he realized that he had no reason for doing so. He had sensed something mysterious about Bimble and his servant, but his interest in them was little more than an idle curiosity. If he had any suspicions at all, they were of the intangible and intuitive sort and afforded him no basis for action.
After a few minutes another figure appeared down the block, and the Phantom pressed close to the wall at his back. Even at a distance he recognized the enormous head, the jutting stomach, and the absurdly thin legs of Doctor Bimble. With a beatific smile on his face, and looking neither to right nor left, the anthropologist walked past him, evidently bound in the same direction as his servant.
Again the Phantom felt an instinctive urge to follow. It struck him as rather queer that master and servant had not come out together, but then he told himself that the circumstance was probably meaningless and that his imagination was magnifying trifles. He crossed to the opposite side of the street and turned east, scanning the dark front of the Bimble house as he strolled along.
Coming directly opposite the residence, he paused in the doorway of a delicatessen store and looked across the street, scrutinizing the gloomy and unprepossessing dwelling with an interest for which he could not account. It seemed strange that Doctor Bimble should have chosen such an unattractive location, but he remembered that the scientist had said something about wishing to live in an out-of-the-way place where he would be safe against intrusions on his privacy and where he could conduct his researches in peace and quiet.
The house, flanked by a lodging house on one side and on the other by a three-story structure of residential appearance, whose boarded-up windows and doors hinted that it had stood vacant for some time, was dark from attic to basement. Presumably Doctor Bimble and his man were out for the evening. The house and its neighbors on each side held the Phantom’s gaze with a persistence that he could not understand. He sensed an incongruity of some kind, and for a while he tried in vain to analyze it. Finally, as he centered his attention on the building to the west, the one with the boarded windows and doors, it came to him. It seemed strange that a structure of that kind should be standing vacant in the midst of a housing famine, when even the least desirable dwellings commanded extravagant prices.
The Phantom laughed, a little disgusted with himself for allowing another meaningless trifle to perplex him. As likely as not the house was vacant for the simple and sufficient reason that it had been condemned by the building commissioner. His gaze wandered to the door of the Bimble residence, and a disturbing thought caused the chuckle to die in his throat.
Only the other day Helen Hardwick had walked out of that door, he remembered, and from that moment on her movements were veiled behind a curtain of mystery. Which way had she turned, what had happened to her, and where was she now? Had she been forcibly abducted as she stepped from the house, or had someone lured her into a trap?
There had been nothing about her disappearance in the newspaper the Phantom had just read, and he surmised that Mr. Hardwick had used what influence he had to keep the matter out of the press. The door across the street still held his gaze; and of a sudden, out of the jumble of his fears and perplexities, came another harassing thought.
What if Helen had never walked out of the door across the way? What if she should still be inside the house?
The Phantom’s eyes narrowed as the suspicion came to him. It was groundless, so far as he could see, and there was no reasoning behind it. It had come out of nowhere, like a stray figment of the imagination, yet it tormented him with an insistence that he could not shake off.
He walked to the end of the block, then crossed the street and moved up the side on which the Bimble house stood. There were a few pedestrians in the street, and to attempt to force the main door might prove unsafe. The basement entrance was dark, and in a moment, concealed by the shadows, he was at work on the lock. It yielded so easily to his deft manipulation that he could understand how the prowlers of whom Bimble had complained had managed to enter the house.
Pulling the door shut, he took out his electric flash, determined to settle his suspicions by making a systematic search of the house. He proceeded swiftly but with care, searching every nook and cranny and occasionally tapping the walls and floors to make sure there were no hollow spaces. He explored cellar and basement without finding anything of suggestive nature, then walked up the same stairway he had ascended after his first trip through the tunnel.
He was now in the laboratory, sweeping floor and walls with the electric torch. At first glance it looked exactly as it had when Helen met him at the head of the stairs with a leveled pistol, yet he sensed a difference almost at once. His eyes flitted over the long workbench with its collection of chemical apparatus, over the black-framed photographs and X-ray prints, and then he glanced at the tall cages along the wall, in which the skeletons stood, erect and grim as ghostly sentinels.
It was then his mind grasped the difference. On his first visit there had been at least a dozen skeletons in the room; now he counted only seven. The famous Raschenell, to whom Bimble had pointed with so much pride, was among the missing ones. He paused only for a moment to wonder what had become of the others, for Bimble and the servant might return at any time and interrupt his search, and he wished to be at the Turkish coffee house not later than half past ten.
He inspected room after room, but without result, finally mounting to the attic and making the same thorough investigation there. He had found nothing whatever to reward him for his efforts. He came to the conclusion that his suspicions had been entirely unfounded, for if they had had any basis in fact his investigation would have uncovered some clew or hint pointing in that direction. One thing had been accomplished, however, was his reflection as he walked down the stairs. He had eliminated Doctor Bimble from the range of his suspicions and would waste no more time and effort trying to explain the eccentricities of a scientist.
Deciding to leave the way he had entered, he crossed the laboratory and moved toward the stairs. With his hand on the doorknob, he looked back and once more let his electric torch play over the floor and walls. Again, without exactly knowing why, he counted the cages, vaguely feeling that there was a hidden significance in the depletion of the grisly company.
Finally, he extinguished his flash and resolutely turned away. Again he was berating himself for bothering his mind over trivial things. Doubtless Doctor Bimble had a sound and simple reason for removing a number of the skeletons. As he walked down the basement stairs he resolved to banish the anthropologist and his collection from his thoughts.
An odd sense of apprehension took hold of him as he reached the bottom step. He looked about him sharply; the darkness was so thick that he could see nothing. He pricked up his ears and listened, but he could detect no sound except those coming from the street. Yet he had a feeling that he was not alone, that another being was lurking somewhere in the darkness. It was a familiar sensation and he had learned to heed its warning, for he had experienced it before in moments of danger.
He stepped down on the floor, at the same instant reaching for the pistol he had taken from Dan the Dope. Before he could draw the weapon a voice spoke sharply:
“Stay right where you are, friend!”
Then a click sounded, followed by a blaze of light. He turned quickly in the direction whence the voice had come. He saw the glint of a pistol barrel pointed toward him with a steady hand, and behind the pistol stood Lieutenant Culligore.
The detective’s face was as dull and unimpassioned as a caricature carved out of wood. He stood pointing the pistol with a listless air, and his eyes were heavy and sluggish, as if he were not fully awake. He lowered the weapon almost as soon as he saw the Phantom’s face, but did not put it out of sight.
“Oh, it’s you, Granger.” He spoke in a drawl, and there might have been the faintest trace of disappointment in his tones. “I thought it might be someone else.”
“The Gray Phantom, for instance?”
“Well, maybe. There’s no reason, though, why the Phantom should be prowling around here, is there?”
“Apparently not.” The Phantom advanced leisurely and looked sharply at the speaker’s stolid face. The question had been spoken in a tone faintly suggestive of an underlying meaning. “It seems both of us are taking advantage of the absence of Doctor Bimble and Jerome to do a little investigating on the quiet.”
Culligore yawned ostentatiously. “The doc ought to have new locks put on his doors. It’s too easy for people to get in.”
“He is a simple and unsuspecting soul. But tell me, lieutenant, how it happens that the Phantom’s trail leads into Doctor Bimble’s basement.”
“Does it?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you would be here unless it did. Your object in coming here wasn’t to interview the skeletons upstairs, was it?”
Culligore laughed softly. “I might put the same question to you.”
“Then we’re on an even footing. And, since we don’t seem to get anywhere, we might as well drop the subject of our mutual presence here. Each of us can take it for granted that the other has a tip which he wants to keep to himself. Seen anything of the Gray Phantom lately?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s the idea of the ‘exactly’? You either have seen him or you haven’t seen him. Which is it?”
“Neither the one nor the other,” said Culligore mysteriously. “With a man like the Phantom you can never be sure. Even when you think you see him, he isn’t always there. Say that was a queer case you tipped me off on this morning.”
“It was. Simple enough, though, as far as the murder of the housekeeper is concerned. Apparently there’s not the slightest doubt that the Phantom did it.”
“Think so?”
The two words, spoken in low and casual tones, caused the Phantom to raise his brows. “Don’t you?”
Culligore tilted his head to one side and squinted vacantly into space. “Things aren’t always what they seem,” he drawlingly observed. “I’ve been seesawing up and down ever since I was turned loose on this case. One hour I feel dead sure the Phantom did it; the next I don’t know what to think.”
“All the facts seem to point to the Phantom’s guilt.”
“That’s just the trouble.” Culligore scowled a little. “There’s such a thing as having too many facts. If the evidence wasn’t so perfect I’d be more sure of my ground. As it is, I wouldn’t bet more than a pair of Bowery spats on the Phantom’s guilt. I’m not sure he killed either Gage or the housekeeper.”
The Phantom eyed him intently, trying to read his mind.
“I see,” he murmured. “You don’t want to believe the Phantom has fallen so low as to——”
“You’re talking rot!” snorted the lieutenant, as if touched on a sensitive spot. “What I want to believe makes no difference. If I could lay my hands on the Phantom this minute, I’d put the links on him so quick it would take his breath away. Even if he didn’t kill Gage and Mrs. Trippe, there are one or two other things we can send him up for.”
“I suppose so,” said the Phantom thoughtfully. “Much as you would hate to pinch him, you can’t let sentiment interfere with duty.”
“Sentiment be damned!” grumbled the lieutenant, reddening a trifle as he saw the knowing grin on the Phantom’s face. “I never was long on that kind of stuff. By the way, what’s your opinion of the case, Granger?”
“I haven’t any.” The Phantom wondered what was going on in the back of Culligore’s mind. He knew the dull features were a mask and that the lieutenant, practicing a trick cultivated by members of his profession, was studying his face every moment without appearing to do so. “You seem to be holding something back,” he added.
“Think so?” Culligore uttered a flat, toneless chuckle. “Aren’t you holding something back yourself? What’s the use trying to hog it all for your paper?”
“Didn’t I tip you off on the doings in the Gage house this morning?”
“You did,” said Culligore dryly, “and I’m still wondering how you knew about them. Did you just walk in on a hunch and discover a dead woman, and a cop chained to an opium-eating runt, or did someone put you wise beforehand?”
The Phantom felt he was on dangerous ground. “It was only a hunch. We newspaper men have them, you know, and once in a while they pan out. But what do you make of it, Culligore? How do you explain the cop being handcuffed to Dan the Dope?”
“I don’t explain it. I suppose Pinto will tell us how it happened when he comes to.”
“Think there’s any connection between the handcuffed pair and the murder of the housekeeper?”
“How could there be? The medical examiner said the housekeeper must have been dead from twenty to thirty hours when the body was found. Besides, where do you find any connection between a murder on the one hand and a cop chained to a dope fiend on the other? To my way of thinking, the two cases are separate. The one of Pinto and Dan the Dope is all a riddle, and the only clear thing about it is that the Phantom had a hand in it.”
“The Phantom?”
“Yep. The Phantom was in on it. Surprised, eh? Well, there are some things we don’t tell the newspapers, and this was one of them. Just how the Phantom figured in the thing I can’t tell, but he was in the Gage house last night or early in the morning. Beats the dickens how that fellow can walk past our noses without getting caught.”
The Phantom stared. He did not think he had left any traces of his connection with the affair at the Gage house, and Culligore’s statement startled him for a moment.
“How do you know?” he asked, getting a grip on himself.
“Finger prints,” said the lieutenant. “This is on the q. t. I examined the handcuffs, and there were three sets of prints on them, showing that three different persons had handled them. There were only two or three marks of each set, but enough to identify them. One set was Dan the Dope’s, the other must have been Pinto’s, and the third was the Gray Phantom’s.”
The Phantom bit his lip, chiding himself for having been caught off his guard. He might have known that the smooth and shiny surface of the handcuffs would register finger prints, but he had been bodily and mentally exhausted at the time, and his habitual sense of caution had failed to assert itself.
“Wonder what the Phantom was up to,” he murmured, feeling a trifle uncomfortable beneath Culligore’s covert and incessant scrutiny.
“Hard telling. Lots of queer things happen in this world.” Culligore grinned while absently toying with the pistol. “For instance, this morning after I left you on the corner——”
“You had me shadowed,” interrupted the Phantom. “What was the idea, Culligore?”
“Just a hunch. My man trailed you to the Sphere office. Then, thinking you wouldn’t be out for a while, he went into a beanery for a bite and a cup of coffee. After coming out he hung around the entrance to the Sphere Building for a while longer, but you didn’t show up. Finally, he went inside and inquired for you. They told him you had left.”
Culligore paused for a moment. He was turning the pistol in his hand with a playful air. The Phantom felt a curious tension taking hold of his body.
“They told my man,” continued the lieutenant, speaking very softly, “that you didn’t write the story yourself, but told the facts to a reporter named Fessenden. As I understand it, they gave Fessenden a new desk not long ago. It’s a nice-looking piece of furniture, with a smooth, glossy finish. Maybe you noticed it?”
“No, not particularly,” said the Phantom, finding it a little hard to keep his voice steady. The rôle he was playing had claimed all his thoughts while he was in the Sphere office, and he had not noticed details.
“Too bad you didn’t.” Culligore was still speaking in low, purring accents. Gradually and without apparent intent, he turned the muzzle of the pistol until it pointed to the Phantom’s chest. “Well, I understand Fessenden was sitting at that nice, new desk while you told him the story, and you were sitting right beside him, with one of the corners of the desk toward you. Some people have a habit when nervous of drumming with their fingers on whatever object is before them. It’s a bad habit, Granger.”
The Phantom nodded. A thin smile played about his lips and his eyes glittered like tiny points of steel between half-closed lids.
“Very bad habit, Granger. Well, my man saw finger prints on the smooth and shiny surface of the desk, right where you had been sitting. He touched them up by sprinkling a little gray powder over them, after which they were photographed. It didn’t take very long to identify them. Steady now! This little toy of mine can be real ugly when it gets mad. What I want you to explain is how Tommie Granger’s fingers happened to leave the Gray Phantom’s finger prints on Fessenden’s desk.”
There was a humorous glint in Lieutenant Culligore’s lazy, mouse-colored eyes as he noted the look of consternation that was slowly creeping into the Gray Phantom’s face. He drew a step nearer, and now the menacing muzzle was less than six feet from its target. There was a touch of carelessness in his manner of handling the weapon, but his aim was sure and a slight pressure on the trigger would have meant death.
But the Phantom’s look of dismay was not due to fear. Many a time he had laughed in the face of dangers far more serious than the present one. The thing that appalled him was the realization that twice within a few hours he had committed a stupid blunder. The Gray Phantom, once the astutest and craftiest of rogues, had bungled like an amateur.
The thought was galling. Was it that his hand had lost its old-time finesse and his mind its keen edge, or had his mental stress and fagged nerves been the cause of his bungling? Again, perhaps he had been distracted by the haunting vision of a pair of troubled brown eyes.
He looked hard at Culligore. Some faces were like an open book to him, and this was one of them. The lieutenant was no man’s fool. Behind the mask of dullness and stolidity were shrewdness and quickness of wit, and he knew that the man before him would not permit private inclinations to swerve him from his duty. Culligore was as dangerous an adversary as he had ever faced. But there was still another quality behind the mask, and it was this that gave the Phantom his cue.
Quickly he looked about him. The way to the basement door was barred by the lieutenant, but the stairway leading to the laboratory was unobstructed. With an appearance of utmost unconcern the Phantom turned away and started to ascend the steps.
“Stop!” commanded Culligore, following the retreating man’s movements with his pistol. “I’ll pop you if you take another step.”
The Phantom stopped, turned, and grinned. “Oh, no, you won’t,” he drawled.
“Can’t you see that I’ve got you covered?”
“But you won’t shoot. It takes a particular kind of nerve to kill a defenseless man in cold blood, and you haven’t got it. Good-by.”
He took another step, but a short and peremptory “Halt!” brought him to a stop. There was something in the lieutenant’s tone that gave him pause. He turned and looked down.
“You’ve sized me up just about right,” admitted Culligore. “I can’t kill a man who hasn’t got a chance for his life. But if you move another step, you’ll get a slug of lead in your leg. If you think I’m bluffing, just try.”
The Phantom hesitated. The words and the tone left no room for doubt as to the speaker’s earnestness, and even a slight flesh wound would hamper the Phantom’s movements and frustrate his plans. He came down the few steps he had covered and stood on the basement floor.
“All right, Culligore. You win this time, but don’t think for a moment that I’ll let you carry this joke much further. I have very strenuous objections to being arrested at this particular time. Mind if I smoke a cigarette?”
“I do,” the lieutenant said dryly. “I have heard about your cute little ways, and I’m not taking any chances. You don’t play any of your tricks on me, Mr. Phantom.”
“You surely don’t think that I’ll permit you to drag me off to a cell?”
“How are you going to help yourself?”
“Why, man, it can’t be done! It’s been tried before, you know. And just now I am a very busy man and can’t afford to waste time. Besides, what charge do you propose to arrest me on? Not the murder of Gage and Mrs. Trippe?”
“There are other charges waiting for you in court. You’ve been having a gay time for a good many years, but this is the end of it. You’ve done some very fancy wriggling in the past, but you can’t wriggle out of this.”
“Perhaps not.” A great gloom seemed suddenly to fall over the Phantom. “It looks as though you had me, Culligore. A man can’t fight the whole New York police force single-handed. All you have to do is to blow your whistle and——”
“Whistle be hanged! I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of saying that it took a regiment to get you. I mean to arrest you alone, just to prove that you’re not as smart as some people think.”
The Phantom glowed inwardly. His adroit and subtle appeal to the lieutenant’s pride had produced the desired effect. Culligore felt so sure of his advantage that he would not summon help, and this was an important point in the Phantom’s favor. Yet he knew the situation was critical enough. On former occasions he had gambled recklessly with death, often winning through sheer fearlessness and audacity, but much more than his life was at stake now. He looked in vain for a loophole in the situation. All he could do for the present was to spar for time.
“I see,” he murmured. “The achievement of taking the Phantom single-handed would put a gorgeous feather in your cap. But look here, Culligore. Fame is a fine thing, but you can’t eat it, and it won’t buy clothes. Isn’t it just as important to find the murderer of Mrs. Trippe and Gage?”
“I’ll attend to that, too.” The lieutenant inserted a hand in his pocket and drew out a pair of handcuffs. “Out with your hands, Phantom.”
The Phantom promptly put his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “Why be in such a rush, Culligore? You know I can’t get away from you so long as you keep me covered. Let’s discuss things a bit. You don’t think I committed those murders?”
“Not exactly,” said the detective thoughtfully, the steel links dangling from his hand. “Whatever else you may be, I don’t think you’re a murderer.”
“And that shows that you have more gray matter than some of your colleagues.”
“Thanks,” dryly; “but you’d better save the compliments. I haven’t quite made up my mind about the murders yet. If you didn’t commit them, there are a lot of things that will have to be explained. The threatening letter, for instance.”
“Forged.”
“And Gage’s dying statement.”
“Pinto lied, or else Gage was mistaken.”
“Think so?” The lieutenant’s upper lip brushed the tip of his nose. “It’s a queer thing that nothing but the Maltese cross was taken.”
“That was only a detail of the frame-up. Listen, Culligore. Isn’t it your idea that the two murders were committed by one and the same person?”
“It looks that way, but——”
“Well, then, I happen to know who killed Mrs. Trippe, because I was there when it happened.”
Culligore stared; and the Phantom knew he had gained another point.
“There when it happened? You saw the murder committed?” The lieutenant seemed at once amazed and incredulous. “Just where were you? In the storeroom?”
“No; the murder was committed in Gage’s bedroom, and the body was afterward removed to the storeroom by the murderer.”
For a moment Culligore’s astonishment was so great that he almost forgot to maintain his aim. He gathered himself quickly, but his face bore a look of bewilderment.
“He moved the body, eh? I wonder why. If the job was done by a certain person I have in mind, I don’t see what object he could have in carrying the corpse from Gage’s bedroom to the storeroom. The natural thing would have been to leave the body on the spot. You’re not kidding me?”
“Absolutely not.” The Phantom grinned at Culligore’s perplexity. Evidently the lieutenant’s theories and calculations had been completely upset by what he had just heard. “Who is the certain person you had in mind, Culligore?”
“Never mind that. Let me get this straight. You were in Gage’s bedroom when Mrs. Trippe was murdered?”
“Not in the bedroom, but——” The Phantom checked himself on the point of explaining that he had witnessed the murder from his place of concealment in the narrow opening back of the window frame. In a flash it dawned upon him that he had another advantage over the detective. He had found the loophole in the situation for which his mind had been searching for the past ten minutes. Culligore, of course, was not aware of the existence of the tunnel. The stairs leading to the cellar were at the Phantom’s back. If he could elude the detective long enough to slip down the steps and crawl into the mouth of the tunnel, he would be temporarily safe. It was a slender chance, but he had no other.
“Where were you, then?” demanded Culligore.
“My secret.” The Phantom assumed a mysterious expression, meanwhile edging ever so slightly toward the stairs at his back. “I saw Mrs. Trippe and she saw me. She was in a terribly frightened condition, and she called out that someone was killing her. Then, of a sudden, a hand appeared, holding a knife. Before I could utter a word or move a muscle, the knife had done its work.”
Culligore muttered something under his breath. He scanned the Phantom’s face keenly, but what he saw evidently convinced him of the narrator’s truthfulness. A noise, scarcely louder than the falling of a pin, sounded at the head of the stairs. The Phantom’s sensitive ears detected it, but the lieutenant appeared to have heard nothing.
“Well, what happened after that?”
The Phantom waited for a moment before he answered. A draft faint as a breath told him that the door at the top of the stairs had been opened. He had a vague impression that somebody was looking down on them, and he wondered whether Doctor Bimble or Jerome had returned. Not the slightest flicker in his face showed that he had noticed anything.
“I didn’t see any more. The—the curtain fell a moment or two after the blow was struck.”
Culligore regarded him narrowly. Another faint sound came from the head of the stairs, and in the same instant the draft ceased, indicating that the door had closed. The lieutenant, his every faculty bent to the task of ferreting out the thoughts in the Phantom’s mind, had heard nothing. He seemed inclined to doubt and scoff, but a stronger instinct compelled him to give credence to the story he had just heard.
“And all you saw of the murderer was a hand and a knife?”
“That was all.”
“Do you remember the woman’s exact words?”
The Phantom searched his memory for a moment. “She said: ‘He’s killing me! He’s afraid I’ll tell! He locked me in——’ She never finished the last sentence, but she had said enough. Evidently, the murderer of Gage knew that the housekeeper was aware of his guilt, and imprisoned her in the bedroom so that she would not reveal what she knew. Later he returned with a knife in his hand, having decided it would be safer to kill her. The housekeeper must have had some warning of his arrival; perhaps she saw or heard him coming.”
Culligore looked as though he had a baffling problem on his mind. “Who do you suppose was the ‘he’ she referred to?”
“I think that’s fairly plain. She had previously made it known that she suspected Pinto of having murdered her employer.”
The lieutenant arched his brows and seemed to be revolving a new idea in his mind. “Just the same, we can’t be sure she meant Pinto, as long as she didn’t mention him by name. The fact that she suspected him once doesn’t really prove anything. Something may have happened in the meantime that caused her to change her opinion. The ‘he’ might have been an entirely different person—maybe somebody she’d never seen before and whose name she didn’t know.”
“Possible,” admitted the Phantom thoughtfully. Culligore had turned his thoughts into a new channel.
“Besides,” added Culligore quickly, “even if Pinto was the ‘he’ she had in mind, she might have been mistaken, just as you claim Gage was mistaken.”
The Phantom made another slight movement toward the cellar stairs. “I’m not at all sure Gage made the statement Pinto claims he made. My private opinion is that Pinto is a liar as well as a murderer. What the housekeeper said isn’t the only evidence I have against him. I hadn’t meant to tell what happened in the storeroom this morning; but since I was careless enough to leave my finger prints on the handcuffs, I might as well come out with it.”
Culligore’s mouth opened wider and wider as the Phantom related what had occurred in the storeroom during the early morning hours. When the story was finished, he seemed stunned, and the dazed look in his eyes told the Phantom his chance had come.
For an instant he flexed his muscles for action, then executed a swift and nimble somersault that landed him on his feet in the middle of the stairs. A spiteful crack told that Culligore had fired his pistol, but the Phantom was already at the bottom of the stairway. Then he dashed across the floor toward the point where the mouth of the tunnel was. He ran his fingers over the wall in search of the hidden door, the ingenious arrangement of which he had previously noticed.
Culligore, momentarily taken aback by the Phantom’s quick and unexpected move, was losing no time. Already he was scampering down the stairs in pursuit of the fugitive. The cellar was dark, save for the narrow shaft of light slanting down from the basement, and the Phantom heard him muttering to himself as he picked his way through the gloom.
After a few moments’ search the Phantom’s fingers found the tiny rift in the brick surface that marked the location of the door. Culligore, evidently hesitating to use his electric flash for fear of becoming a target for the Phantom’s pistol, was scudding hither and thither at the opposite end of the cellar. The Phantom crawled into the opening, feet foremost, and softly pulled the door to, then lay on his back, chuckling gently to himself as he pictured the lieutenant’s discomfiture.
He had no fear that Culligore would find his hiding place. The door was so carefully concealed that only a careful search would reveal its location, and the detective did not even suspect its existence. Yet the Phantom knew that he would not be safe for long. He could not remain in the tunnel indefinitely, and escape through the other end was impossible, for he had previously ascertained that the mechanism of the revolving window frame could not be manipulated from that side. All he had gained was time. He could only hope that his lucky star, which so far had never deserted him, would once more turn the situation in his favor.
His mind was working quickly while he listened to Culligore’s movements in the cellar. Doubtless the detective would soon summon assistance and have the building surrounded, and then, unless some chance and unforeseen development came to his rescue, the Phantom’s position would be critical indeed. Even if the searchers should not find his hiding place, he would eventually die from lack of air.
Suddenly his figure stiffened. He lay rigid, trying to account for the curious sensation that had just come to him. In a moment he knew what it was a faint current of air was stirring in the tunnel. At first he could not understand, for he was certain that both exits were closed, and the tube itself was air-tight. He worked deeper into the tunnel, trying to trace the mysterious current to its origin, and presently it came to him that, through some unaccountable circumstance, the other end must be open.
It was mystifying, but the stirring of air could be explained in no other way than that in some manner the revolving window frame had come open. He moved forward as rapidly as he could, hoping to gain the exit and get out of the zone of danger before the block was surrounded. By this time Culligore must have discovered that his quarry had in some inexplicable way escaped from the basement. Perhaps he was even now cursing himself for his vain-glorious boast that he would take the Gray Phantom single-handed and unaided.
The movement of air became more noticeable as the Phantom drew near the end of the passage. He proceeded more slowly now, moving forward by cautious twists and wrigglings, a few inches at a time, carefully calculating each motion so as to make no noise. There was something at once puzzling and ominous about the open exit, and he could not know what awaited him in the bedroom at the end of the tunnel.