Chapter XXII: The Phantom Turns a Somersault

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.

His progress became more difficult as he reached the acclivity in which the passage terminated, for he had been moving crab fashion, having entered the tunnel feet first in order to be able to close the door behind him, and the width of the tube did not permit him to turn. Silent as a mole, he twisted his body upward, all his senses on the alert against the slightest hint of danger. Now his feet were almost at the window frame. As he had surmised, the opening was clear, and a few more twists would land him on the floor of the bedroom.

Cautiously he thrust a foot through the opening, but in a moment he drew it back. Then he lay rigid, listening, for something warned him of danger. The bedchamber was dark and there was not the faintest sound; yet he knew someone was lying in wait for him on the other side.