Chapter X: In the Tunnel

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.