Chapter XXVI: The Phantom Hears a Scream

Rigid in every fiber, the Phantom stared at the circle of light, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. At first small as the head of a pin, it gradually unfolded and expanded, at the same time changing from white into a pale greenish hue that dissolved the surrounding darkness into translucent mist.

As it grew larger, the light wrapped itself around an object of strange appearance. It was gray as ashes and its shape gave forth a weird suggestion that it had once been a living thing. The pale, ghostly light that surrounded it like a nimbus gave it a monstrous character.

"A skull!" mumbled the Phantom. Under ordinary circumstances he could have looked upon it calmly, but the stillness and darkness, broken only by the pallid glow in the distance, gave the object a mystical touch that cast a spell over his senses.

His nerves had withstood physical fear in its most severe forms, but they quavered a little before this subtle and bewildering manifestation. His weakness nettled him and he closed his eyes and sought to banish the thing from his mind, but the vision as it lingered in his imagination was even more disturbing than the reality. Again he opened his eyes and looked fixedly to one side, determined not to let an inanimate thing of bone upset his nerves. A slight shiver ran through him as, among the shadows at the wall, he discerned a dim shape. He could barely distinguish its outlines, but again he received an impression of something that had once pulsed with life and was now hollow and dead. He peered sharply at the blurred shape standing grimly erect a few feet from his chair, and presently he saw what it was.

Then he laughed, but the laugh sounded a trifle forced. He had seen a similar object before, in one of the glass cages in Doctor Bimble's laboratory, but he had regarded it with no stronger feeling than mild curiosity. Now, in the stillness and gloom, the sight made him feel as if a dead hand had touched him. He turned his head toward the opposite wall, and there, etched dimly in the shadows, was another figure. A few feet away he glimpsed a third, and in the distance were a fourth and a fifth.

In the air there was a creeping chill, like a breath from a tomb. He felt no fear, but he experienced the acute depression that seizes even the strongest when standing in the presence of death, and his physical and mental distress was aggravated by his inability to move even an arm. The stifling air made him feel as though he were in a black and silent mausoleum, with dead things on all sides.

An unaccountable fascination caused him to look once more at the luminous circle. The greenish light seemed to have grown a trifle dimmer, but the waning of the glow only lent an added touch of hideousness to the object in the center of the nimbus. It fired his imagination, and he fancied that something loathsome was staring out at him through the black hollows where the eyes had been.

As the circular light faded, he thought it was drawing closer to where he sat. As if gently propelled by an invisible hand, the paling circle of light was creeping slowly nearer, moving steadily toward his chair.

He pulled at the ropes. Now the fringe of light was so faint that the skull was only a shapeless blur, but its dimness rendered its creeping approach all the more uncanny. In a little while, if it continued in its present course, it would touch his face. He wondered why his senses shrank from the encounter, for he knew that the contact could not harm him.

Finally the light died, leaving an intense, oppressive darkness. Though he could neither hear nor see, he was aware that the object was still creeping toward him and that in a few moments he would feel its chilling touch. There was something subtly enervating about its silent and stealthy advance, something that inspired him with a feeling he had never experienced when standing face to face with a foe of flesh and blood.

Then, without apparent cause, he sensed a change in the atmosphere. The oppression suddenly left him, and he knew instinctively that something had halted the advance of the dreaded thing. He drew a long, deep breath as he tried to account for the relief that had come so suddenly to him.

His thoughts were interrupted by the opening of a door at his back and the entrance of two men. He could not see them, but their footfalls told him that they were groping toward the point where he sat. Silently they fell to work and released him from the chair, but his arms and legs were still tied and he was as helpless as before. He wondered, as he was being carried from the room, what fresh ordeal awaited him.

The two men carried him across the hall and into another room, where he was placed in a chair. He was surprised to see the sunlight streaming in through the window, for the darkness from which he had just emerged had left an impression of impenetrable night on his mind.

"The big chief will be in directly," announced one of the men as they were leaving.

The Phantom felt a thrill of expectancy at the thought that at last he was to come face to face with the Duke's chief agent. Then he began to look about him. From where he sat, all that was to be seen through the window was the murky wall of a factory building. The room was small, and the only furniture was a table and three chairs. In vain he looked for something that might suggest a way of escape.

He turned quickly as a step sounded outside the door. It came open, and for several moments he stared at the man who entered. Then he laughed, a short, unnatural laugh that sounded hollow even to himself. The man who stood before him was Doctor Tyson Bimble.

He would never have guessed that the anthropologist was the man through whom the Duke directed his criminal enterprises from his cell in prison, but on second thought the discovery was not so surprising. Since their first meeting he had suspected that anthropology was not Bimble's sole interest in life. He had felt that it was merely a cloak for other activities, though it had not occurred to him what these might be.

"You are pale," observed Bimble, looking at him through his thick lenses; "but I sha'n't trouble to feel your pulse this morning. I have no doubt it's normal."

The doctor, with his stiltlike legs and top-heavy head, seemed as ludicrous as ever, and his face wore the same beatific smile that had greeted the Phantom when they first met, but his eyes were a trifle stern, and there was an unfamiliar briskness about his movements.

The Phantom swallowed his emotions and braced his mind for a duel of wits with the doctor. Many a time in the past he had outmaneuvered men as crafty as his present adversary. For the present he tried not to think of Helen, for he would need a clear mind and steady nerves if he was to help her.

"Have you made any new scientific discoveries since I saw you last, doctor?" he inquired chattily.

Bimble's eyes twinkled. "No; but I dare say you have."

"I have discovered a new use for skeletons."

"New? You are mistaken, my excellent friend. The efficacy of skeletons and like objects as means of moral suasion has been understood for a long time. I believe the wicked old doges of Venice used similar methods when they wished to put their enemies into a receptive frame of mind and did not care to resort to physical torture. It is strange how all of us--even a strong man like yourself--stand in awe of objects associated with death and decay."

"It is," agreed the Phantom dryly. "But I don't quite get the idea. I admit the ghostly vaudeville you staged for my benefit was a bit creepy. I would rather face a regiment of smooth rascals like you than a grinning skeleton. But if you expected me to come out of that spook chamber a broken man you are doomed to disappointment."

"I didn't, as a matter of fact." The doctor smiled amusedly. "I am well aware that it takes something more than that to break a man like the Gray Phantom."

"Then what was the object?"

"You shall see presently. My friend, you have given me no end of trouble. Since the day you made your first unexpected appearance in my laboratory, I have done my best to save you from the police, but you seemed determined to rush blindly into their arms. I did not realize how stubborn and foolhardy you were till the morning when I entered your bedroom and found it empty. You knew the police were combing the town for you, and I had hoped that would keep you in."

"It was a shameless abuse of hospitality," confessed the Phantom. "But I take it you were not altogether unselfish in your desire to save me from arrest."

Bimble smiled as he ran his eyes up and down the Phantom's figure. "Borrowed feathers are not becoming to you," he observed critically. "These togs are atrocious. But the idea itself was excellent. I did not even guess that the Gray Phantom was masquerading as a newspaper reporter until the trick you played on Pinto and Dan the Dope gave me an inkling of the truth. Then, last evening, upon my return from a visit in the neighborhood, I found you and Lieutenant Culligore in the basement of my house. The few words I overheard were sufficient to verify my suspicions. I saw that Culligore had you cornered, and I guessed you would try to reach the tunnel. Then--But I think you know the rest."

"All except what happened to Culligore."

The doctor beamed. "Poor Culligore! He's really a much cleverer man than you would think--cleverer than yourself, in certain ways. An automatic equipped with a flash light and a silencer put a bullet into his leg while he was looking for you in the cellar. A most regrettable accident!" Bimble laughed softly. "The poor man is now under my professional care, and I fear he will not be out for some time."

"I can guess the nature of the professional attentions you are giving him. But why were you so anxious that I should not fall into the hands of the police?"

"Because I had certain plans in which you were concerned, and your premature arrest would have seriously interfered with them. Can't you guess what they were?"

"The Duke has a goose to pick with me, I believe. At any rate, I understand he is not very benevolently disposed toward me."

"You have been correctly advised. The Duke is a very thoroughgoing hater, as you will discover before we are through with you. Not only that, but he is an adept in the gentle art of mixing business and pleasure. He also knows how to bring down a flock of birds with a single stone. Take, for instance, the case of old Sylvanus Gage."

"Yes," murmured the Phantom, fixing the doctor with a keen gaze, "the Duke showed his genius there. He planned the murder very shrewdly so that the guilt would be fastened on me. It was an admirable way of getting revenge."

The doctor smiled. "True, but it wasn't so simple as all that. You are not giving the Duke half the credit he deserves. I told you that he always mixes business and pleasure. These walls are deaf, so there is no reason why I should not enlighten you. Gage had been for years a member of the Duke's organization. It was through him the band disposed of the proceeds from its activities. It was a risky business and he lived in constant danger. Hence the tunnel, which gave him a convenient avenue of escape in emergencies. The housekeeper, an estimable soul, knew that her employer was conducting some sort of illegitimate business, and she assisted him in it to a certain extent, which explains any symptoms of bad conscience she may have shown. I don't think, however, that she was aware of Gage's membership in the Duke's organization. Gage was a valuable man, but his insatiate greed led him astray. He double-crossed the band in financial transactions, and when called to task for his crooked work he threatened to cause trouble. To put it briefly, it was decided that he must be put out of the way."

"I see." The Phantom smiled, but his eyes were hard. "The Duke avenged himself on two persons with one stroke. He not only removed Gage, but arranged matters so that suspicion for the crime would fall on me."

"Exactly. You are now beginning to appreciate the Duke's many-sided talents. Of course, his main object was to repay you for the merciless joke you played on him when you put him and most of his gang behind bars. Where to find you was a poser. It was known that you had taken your treasures and gone into hiding somewhere, but no one seemed to have the faintest inkling of your whereabouts. Knowing your sensitiveness about such matters, the Duke guessed that the murder of Gage, with the circumstances pointing to you as its perpetrator, would smoke you out."

"It was a good guess. I had to come out and clear myself, and that gave the Duke his chance. Now that you have me where you want me, what do you propose to do with me? Am I to be handed over to the police, or have you engaged passage for me on the Stygian ferry?"

The question seemed to amuse the doctor. "If we meant to hand you over to the police we would scarcely have gone to such great lengths to save you from arrest. What is to be done with you eventually hasn't been decided as yet. The Duke's orders are to dispose of you in whichever way will hurt you the most and give him the ultimate degree of revenge. There is a question involved in that. You are not the kind of man that fears death."

"Thanks."

Bimble's deceptively mild eyes regarded him carefully. "I think there are certain other things that would hurt you far more. For instance--But we will drop that phase of the subject for the present and get down to the more practical side. As I told you, the Duke always mixes business and pleasure, which in this case means a judicious blend of revenge and profit."

The Phantom's brows went up. A tinge of greed and craftiness had dimmed the habitual look of serenity in the doctor's eyes. He was looking down at his scrupulously polished shoes while playing with his watch chain.

"How?" asked the Phantom. The uncertainty as to his own fate did not trouble him in the least, but all his will power was needed to maintain a semblance of coolness whenever he thought of Helen.

"You put in many very busy years at the pleasant occupation of annexing other people's property," murmured the doctor. "The magnitude of your enterprises has been the talk of the whole continent. There must be a good many millions stored away in that retreat of yours."

The Phantom smiled. Imaginative newspaper writers had pictured the Gray Phantom living like an East Indian potentate in some snug retreat, surrounded by countless treasures and a splendor that would have offered a gorgeous Arabian Nights' setting. The fable, eagerly swallowed by the public, seemed wildly grotesque in comparison with the truth.

"You're forgetting something, doctor. I never had the Duke's keen eye for business. I was not a crook for the sake of the loot, but for the excitement I found in the game, and I usually gave the stuff away after I had had the fun of taking it. I haven't much that would interest the Duke."

The doctor's lips curled in a way that indicated strong skepticism. "You will let me be the judge as to that, my friend. All I ask of you is that you tell me explicitly and veraciously where this collection of yours may be found."

The Phantom drew himself up as far as the ropes permitted. The smile was still on his lips, but in the depths of his eyes lurked a hard glitter. "What if I refuse?"

"Why, man, you can't refuse! You are in no position to do anything but surrender to my wishes."

"Wrong, doctor." He gave a low, metallic laugh. "You ought to know that the Gray Phantom never surrenders. Threats and bullying can't move me an inch. That's absolutely final."

The doctor seemed not at all disconcerted. "I expected you to say that. You are stubborn as a mule, but fortunately I have means of persuasion at my disposal. If I can't bend you, I will break you."

He rose abruptly and left the room. There had been something in his tones that lingered in the Phantom's ears after he had gone. He was back in a few moments, and once more his face was wreathed in smiles. Without a word he sat down, crossed his thin legs, and lighted a cigarette, then smoked in silence while the Phantom scanned his face for a clew to the mysterious errand that had taken him out of the room.

Minutes passed, and still the doctor smiled and smoked. From time to time he raised his tranquil eyes and glanced at the door as if expecting somebody, and all the while there was an air of pleasurable anticipation about him.

Suddenly the Phantom stiffened. For a moment he sat rigid, listening, then jerked forward in the chair, straining fiercely at the ropes.

Somewhere in the building a woman had screamed. The shriek, sharp and explosive, as if inspired by a terror long restrained, dinned with hideous significance against the Phantom's ears. His heart stood still for a moment.

The voice that had uttered that mad, unforgettable cry was Helen Hardwick's.