Chapter III: Blue or Gray?

Cuthbert Vanardy was conscious of a disquieting tension in the air. The long shadows cast by the trees that stood in clusters on the lawn of Sea-Glimpse impressed him as sinister harbingers of coming events. The wind had a raw edge, and it produced a dolorous melody as it went moaning over the landscape. Vanardy recognized the vague sense of depression and foreboding he experienced as he walked down the path that wound in and out among flower beds and parterres of shrubbery. He had noticed it often in the past, and always on the eve of some tragic event.

He could not understand, for of late his life had fallen into serene and humdrum lines, and there had been no hint of disturbing occurrences. His horticultural experiments had kept him well occupied, and he had derived a great deal of satisfaction from the favorable comments which the products of his gardens had created among experts at the horticultural expositions in New York and Boston, as well as from the speculations aroused concerning the identity of the anonymous exhibitor, who for private reasons preferred to remain unknown. Nothing of an exciting nature had happened in several months, and, but for his intangible misgivings, there was no sign of an interruption to his tranquil life.

On the veranda he stopped and looked back into the gathering dusk. The trees and shrubs, colored and distorted by his restless imagination, took on weird contours and seemed to assume life and motion. No doubt, he told himself, the premonitions he had felt of late were also the products of his fancy. They could be nothing else, for he had severed all the links connecting him with the old life. Time had quieted all the dreams and impulses of his former self. He smiled as it occurred to him that his highest ambition at the present moment was to produce a gray orchid.

It was only a whim, a diversion from more serious work, but the novelty of the experiment, as well as the difficulties in the way, appealed to him. By intricate cross-breeding he was gradually developing an orchid of a dim, mystic gray, his favorite color. When once evolved, the hybrid should be known as the Phantom Orchid. It would be the living symbol of whatever had been good in his other self, the Gray Phantom.

His thoughts went back to those other days when he had gone, like a swaggering Robin Hood, from one stupendous adventure to another. Even his bitterest enemies, and there had been many of them, had never accused the Gray Phantom of being actuated by considerations of sordid gain. The public had gasped and the police muttered maledictions as he gratified his thirst for thrills and excitement, always playing the game in strict accord with his code and invariably planning his exploits so that his victims were villains of a far blacker dye than he. Always his left hand had tossed away what his right hand had plucked. Hospitals, orphan asylums and other philanthropic organizations became the recipients of donations that were never traced to their source. Princely and mysterious gifts poured into garrets and hovels in a way that caused simple-minded people to believe in a return of the day of miracles.

The Gray Phantom, through it all, maintained an elusiveness that completely baffled the police and clothed his identity in a glamorous haze. So astounding were his performances that there were those who asked themselves whether he was not practicing black magic. Once, in the early days of his career, he fell into the clutches of the police, satisfying the superstitious ones that he was really a being of flesh and blood, but an amazing escape a few days later revived the gossip of a rogue who was in collusion with evil spirits. The Phantom was greatly amused, and spurred his energies to even more dizzying flights, but there were times when a softer mood came upon him, and then he wondered why his restless spirit could not have found a different outlet. Perhaps the reason was to be found in the remote and dimly remembered past when, friendless and homeless, he had derived his philosophy of life from thieving urchins and night-prowling gangsters.

The years passed, and the Gray Phantom's adventures made his sobriquet known from coast to coast, but gradually the life he was leading began to pall on him. His exploits no longer gave him the thrills he craved, and he began to search, at first blindly and haltingly, for a more satisfying way of unleashing his boundless energies. There came long lapses between his adventures, and finally it began to be rumored that the Gray Phantom had gone into retirement with his accumulated treasures, for no one guessed that he had flung away his spoils as fast as he garnered them in. Nobody understood the true reason for the change that had come over him, and the Phantom least of all.

He often wondered at the obscure impulses that had impelled him to seek seclusion at Sea-Glimpse, a narrow stretch of wooded land surrounded on three sides by jagged coast line and in the rear by forest and farm land. He could not understand them, except that his new mode of life gave him a sense of pleasing remoteness from things he wished to forget, and at times he thought he would be content to spend the rest of his days in this secluded nook, secure from intrusion and free to devote himself to his hobby and his books.

But to-night a vague unrest was upon him. He peered into the shadows, constantly growing longer and darker, and it seemed as if the ghostly figures of his past were reaching out for him. Perhaps, there was still a forgotten link or two that bound him to the old life. He shrugged, as if to banish disquieting thoughts, and entered the house. Stepping into the library, he lighted his reading lamp and took a work on horticulture from the shelf. There was a problem in connection with the gray orchid that he had not yet been able to work out satisfactorily. He sat down and opened the book, but the print danced and blurred beneath his eyes. A woman's face appeared out of nowhere, the same face that had haunted him in idle moments for months. His mental picture was dim and fragmentary, and he could not distinctly remember even the color of the hair or whether the eyes were blue or gray, but the vision pursued him with the persistence of a haunting scent or a strain from an old familiar song.

Helen Hardwick and he had shared several adventures and perils together. Only a few months had elapsed since he rescued her from the clutches of the mysterious "Mr. Shei," the leader of an arch-conspiracy which the Phantom had frustrated. About a year before that he had emerged from his retreat for long enough to restore to her father, curator of the Cosmopolitan Museum, a collection of Assyrian antiques that Hardwick had spent the best years of his life in gathering, and which had been stolen by a criminal organization headed by the Phantom's old-time enemy and rival, "The Duke." To Vanardy the achievement had meant little more than a pleasing diversion and an opportunity to humiliate a man whose personality and methods he abhorred, and Helen Hardwick's gratitude had made him feel that she was giving him the accolade of an undeserved knightship. She had come to Sea-Glimpse to thank him, and her parting glance and smile were still vivid in his recollection. He often glanced dreamily at the spot where she had stood when for an instant her hand lingered within his. With the blood pounding against his temples, he had exerted all his power of will to restrain himself from calling her back. There were times when he regretted having let her go like that, without hope of seeing her again, but in his soberer moments he saw the inevitableness of the outcome. In the eyes of the world he was still an outlaw, and too great a gulf separated the Gray Phantom and Helen Hardwick. The memory of her eyes, warm, frank and bright, would be with him always. He had her to thank for the finest emotions he had ever experienced, and he would try to be content with that.

She seemed little more than a dream to him now, and even the dream was fragmentary. Again he thought it strange that he could not remember the color of her eyes or hair, and that little remained with him save a misty and tantalizing vision of loveliness.

He closed the book and passed to the window. The moon had risen, bathing the narrow strip of water visible between the birches and hemlocks in a white mist. The house, which Vanardy had restored from the dilapidated condition in which he had found it, was silent save for an occasional creaking of old timbers. Clifford Wade, once his chief lieutenant and now the major-domo of his little household, had gone to the village for the mail. The Phantom stood lost in reflections, his deep gray eyes soft and luminous. On occasion they could sting and stab like points of steel, but in repose they were the eyes of a dreamer. The nostrils were full and sensitive, and the arch of the lips was partly obscured by a short-cropped beard that would have made him hard to recognize from his photograph in a revolving case at police headquarters.

He turned as a knock sounded on the door. A fat man stepped through the door, groaning and puffing as if the task of carrying his huge body through life were the bane of his existence. Wade, the ostensible owner of Sea-Glimpse--for its real master was seldom seen beyond the boundaries of the estate--placed a bundle of mail on the table, gave his master a long-suffering look, and withdrew.

With a listless air Vanardy glanced at the mail and began to unfold the newspapers. He ran his eyes over the headlines, and a caption, blacker and larger than the rest, caught his languid attention. He stared at it for moments, as if his brain were unable to absorb its meaning. Slowly and dazedly he mumbled the words:

DYING MAN ACCUSES THE GRAY PHANTOM

Presently his quickening eye was running down the column of type. It was a lurid and highly colored account of the murder of Sylvanus Gage, a crime said by the police to be one of the strangest on record. Headquarters detectives confessed themselves baffled by several of the circumstances, and especially by the fact that the murderer seemed to have accomplished the apparently impossible feat of making his escape through a door which had been found bolted on the inside when the police reached the scene.

The murder, it was stated, would probably have gone down in the annals of crime as an unsolved mystery but for the fact that the dying man had whispered the name of his assailant to Patrolman Pinto, who had been summoned to the scene by the housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Trippe, after the latter had been disturbed by a mysterious sound. The name mentioned by the victim was that of Cuthbert Vanardy, known internationally as the Gray Phantom and regarded by the police as one of the most ingenious criminals of modern times.

However, the account went on, the Gray Phantom's guilt would have been clearly established even without his victim's dying statement. It had been learned that for some years a feud had existed between the two men and that the Gray Phantom had threatened to take his enemy's life. The total absence of finger prints and other tangible clews strongly suggested that the deed could have been perpetrated only by a criminal in the Phantom's class. The perplexing features added further proof of the Phantom's guilt. Who else could have made his escape in such an inexplicable manner? Who but the Gray Phantom, who was known to be pursuing a criminal career for pleasure and excitement rather than for the profits he derived from it, would have left behind him a small fortune in perfect stones, taking nothing but a worthless curio?

These and other details Vanardy read with interest. He smiled as he reached the concluding paragraph, stating that a countrywide search for the murderer was in progress and that the police confidently expected to make an arrest within twenty-four hours. He glanced at the accompanying likeness of himself, made from a photograph taken in the early stages of his career.

"What drivel!" he exclaimed, tossing the paper aside. Then, one by one, he glanced through the other early editions of the New York evening newspapers. All featured the Gage murder on the first page, and all the accounts agreed in regard to essential details. In _The Evening Sphere's_ story of the crime, however, he detected a subtle difference. It presented the same array of damning facts, pointing straight to the inevitable conclusion of the Phantom's guilt, yet, between the lines, he sensed an elusive quality that differentiated it from the others. He read it again, more slowly this time; and here and there, in an oddly twisted sentence or an ambiguous phrase, he caught a hint that the writer of the _Sphere's_ article entertained a secret doubt of the Phantom's guilt.

The suggestion was so feeble, however, that a casual reader would scarcely have noticed it, and whatever doubts the writer may have felt were smothered under a mass of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. He threw the paper down with an air of disdain. Here, in this sheltered retreat, what the world thought of him was of no account. Serene in his seclusion, he could snap his fingers at its opinions and suspicions. He sat down at the piano, and a moment later his finely tapering fingers were flashing over the keys.

Suddenly, in the midst of one of his favorite arias, his hands began to falter. For a time he sat motionless, with lips tightening, gazing narrowly at the point where Helen Hardwick had stood at the moment when he held her hand. His face was grim and troubled, as if a disturbing thought had just occurred to him. He got up and with long strides passed to the desk, where he pressed a button.

"Wade," he crisply announced when the fat man reappeared, "I am going to New York in the morning."

Wade sat down, drawing a squeaky protest from an unoffending chair. "To New--New York?" he stammered.

"Exactly. Tell Dullah to pack my grip. I shall leave early, about the time you are getting your beauty sleep."

Wade blinked his little eyes. "But why, boss?"

"Here's the reason." Vanardy handed him one of the papers he had been perusing, watching with an amused smile the flabbergasted look that came into the fat man's face as he read. As he approached the end of the article, wheezy gasps and indignant mutters punctuated the reading.

"Rot!" he commented emphatically. "If I wasn't a fat man I'd lick the editor of this sheet within an inch of his life. Why, you always played the game according to the code, boss. You never killed a man in all your life."

"No, never."

"And you were right here at Sea-Glimpse at the time the murder was done."

"True enough. But I might have some difficulty proving it. Your own testimony wouldn't be particularly impressive. Besides, there's just enough of truth in the police theory to give color to the lies. It is true Gage and I quarreled, and I believe I once threatened to give the old skinflint a beating. It was a foolish wrangle, involving nothing but a cross made of imitation jade. I'd been wearing it attached to a chain around my neck as far back as I could remember. Who put it there I don't know. Perhaps----"

"Your mother--maybe," suggested Wade, slanting a searching gaze at Vanardy.

"I don't know, Wade. You may be right. I remember neither father nor mother. All I know is that the cross seemed to be the only connecting link between my present and the past I couldn't remember. I fought like mad when the street urchins and gangsters tried to take it away from me, and somehow, through thick and thin, I managed to cling to it. Then, one day about six years ago, I lost it. Probably the chain parted. Anyhow, in some mysterious manner the cross fell into Gage's possession. I went to Gage and demanded it. He must have seen how anxious I was to recover it, for he put a stiff price on it. I was willing to pay--would have paid almost anything--but each time I began to count out the money Gage doubled his price. So it went on for years, and I admit I sometimes felt like strangling the old miser. But I never threatened to kill him and I never wrote the letter mentioned in the papers."

"Somebody's been doing some tall lying," declared Wade irately. "If I wasn't so fat I'd make the fellow that wrote this article eat his own words. But you should worry, boss. They can't get away with it."

"I am not so sure, Wade. Seems to me they've made out a fairly complete case against the Gray Phantom. The motive is substantial enough. There are enough mysterious circumstances to suggest that only the Phantom could have committed the crime. The fact that the murderer stole a cheap trinket and left fifty thousand dollars' worth of real diamonds behind him is rather impressive. And you mustn't forget that a little evidence against the Gray Phantom will go a long way with a jury."

Wade, a picture of ponderous wrath, crumpled the newspaper in his huge fist. The fretful look in the small round eyes signified that his mind was grappling with a problem.

"The letter Gage got the day before the murder must have been forged," he ventured at last.

"Of course; but it may have been done skillfully enough to deceive all but the keenest eye. Handwriting experts have been known to disagree in matters of that kind."

The fat man reflected heavily. "Why didn't Gage beat it for the tall woods when he got the letter?"

"Because the tall woods are full of ambushes. Likely as not the letter gave him a jolt at first. Then, upon giving it a sober second thought, he cooled down. His principal consideration was that the Gray Phantom had never been known to commit a murder, and that consequently the letter was either a joke or a bluff."

"But he told the cop it was the Gray Phantom that stabbed him."

"Naturally. A wound in the chest isn't conducive to clear thinking. We may assume that the murderer approached his victim by stealth and that Gage never saw the man who struck him down. Under the circumstances it was natural enough for him to suppose that, after all, the Gray Phantom had carried out his threat. What else was he to think?"

An ominous rumble sounded in Wade's expansive chest. "You've been framed, boss."

Vanardy nodded. "And it doesn't require a great deal of brilliance to figure out who engineered the frame-up. The Duke has the reputation of being a good hater."

The fat man seemed startled. "But the Duke's in stir," he argued. "You sent him there yourself."

"So I did." A pleased smile lighted Vanardy's features. "But two or three members of his gang were not present at the round-up, and I have received tips to the effect that they have been organizing a new crowd. I suppose the Duke has been communicating with them through underground channels and instructing them in regard to this frame-up. The Duke has sworn to get me, and undoubtedly this is his method of accomplishing his aim. He chose the mode of revenge which he thought would hurt me most."

"If I wasn't a fat man I would--" began Wade.

"Save your threats. The Duke is a crafty rascal, just as clever as he's vindictive. That kind of a man makes a bad enemy. The only way to queer his game is to track down the man who did the crime. That's why I am going to New York in the morning. The police will never find the culprit, for they are wasting their time and energies looking for the Gray Phantom. Therefore it's up to me."

A scowl deepened in Wade's rubicund face. "The world must be coming to an end when the Gray Phantom turns detective. It's the maddest, craziest thing you ever did yet, boss."

"It will be quite an adventure." Vanardy's eyes twinkled.

"It's too risky, boss. Why, every dick and harness bull and amateur sleuth on the American continent is on the lookout for you."

"Very likely."

"The police have enough on you to send you to the jug for a million years, even without the Sylvanus Gage job. And you can just bet the Duke's gang will have their eyes peeled, watching their chance to lead you into a trap."

"I suppose so."

The fat man sighed. He knew from long experience that his chief, once his mind was made up, was impervious to pleas and arguments.

"Why don't you just sit tight?" was his final attempt. "I don't see what you're worrying about. They'll never find you here. Nobody knows where to look for you. You're safe."

"Sure of that?" Vanardy smiled queerly. "There's one person who knows where to find me."

A look of startled comprehension came into Wade's face. "You mean the little queen who was so heart-broken because the Duke had stolen a lot of old Assyrian junk from her dad?"

"I mean Miss Helen Hardwick," declared Vanardy stiffly. "I was fortunate in being able to recover the collection from the Duke and restore it to Mr. Hardwick."

"She was sure easy on the eyes!" rhapsodized Wade, unrebuked. "But you let her slip away from you, after you'd stirred up most of the earth to dry her tears. I never got you on that deal boss. Why, if I hadn't been a fat man----" He sighed and rolled wistful eyes at the ceiling.

Vanardy scowled, then laughed.

"Chuck the sentiment, you old clod-hopping hippo. As far as I know, Miss Hardwick is the only living person, outside our own circle, who is aware of my whereabouts."

"Will she give you away?"

"It depends," murmured Vanardy. "If she believes me guilty of murder she may consider it her duty to inform the police, and she would be absolutely right in doing so. But that's neither here nor there. I'm starting for New York in a few hours to track down the murderer of Sylvanus Gage."

Admiration clashed with anxiety in Wade's face. "I get you, boss. You want to keep the Gray Phantom's record clean. You don't want any bloodstains on his name. You don't want the world to think that you've committed a murder."

An odd smile played about the Phantom's lips. "Wrong, Wade. It goes against the grain to have a foul murder linked to one's name, but it isn't that. I'm not lying awake nights worrying about the world's opinion. The only thing that troubles me is----" He broke off, and his eyes sought the spot where Helen Hardwick had stood.

"You needn't say it, boss." Wade's voice was a trifle thick as he struggled out of the chair and gripped the other's hand. "If I wasn't a fat man I'd tag right along, but I guess I'd only be in the way. Good luck--and give my regards to the little wren."

With slow, trundling strides he left the room. A moment later the door had closed behind him, and the Gray Phantom was alone. Once more, as he paced the floor, his eyes were soft and luminous. Suddenly he paused and bent a reverential look on the rug at his feet, as if he were standing in a hallowed spot.

"Blue or gray?" he mumbled.