Chapter IX: The Phantom Is Mystified

For a time the little group in the laboratory stood as if turned into inanimate shapes, their senses under the spell of the hoarse shouts in the street. The Phantom felt a curious churning in his head. The anthropologist was still smiling, but the smile was gradually growing thin and hard. Helen fixed the Phantom with a stony look.

"It appears a mistake of some kind has been made," muttered the doctor at length. "It was a fortunate one for you, my friends, for the officers were becoming quite insistent. Luckily the cries diverted their attention from the closet, and they went away apologizing after telephoning headquarters and verifying the report."

The Phantom, still feeling Helen's gaze on his face, pocketed the pistol he had been holding. The newsboys' cries had given him a jolt that left him a little dazed and caused his mind to turn to trivial things. He found himself admiring Helen's simple little hat and plain but tasteful dress, noticing that they seemed as much a part of her as her hair and her complexion. He saw that she tried to be brave despite a crushing disaster to her illusions, and somehow he felt sorry for her.

Doctor Bimble turned on him with a frown.

"Sir," he demanded, "are you the Gray Phantom or merely a clumsy impostor?"

The question seemed so ludicrous that the Phantom could only chuckle.

"It has long been my desire to meet the Gray Phantom," pursued the doctor, still scowling darkly. "I should dislike to think I have been imposed upon. But that can't be, unless"--with another suspicious look--"you are acting as a foil for the Phantom. Well, we shall see presently, I suppose. In the meantime, you may consider yourself at home under my roof."

Without knowing why, the Phantom hesitated before accepting the invitation. To take advantage of the doctor's hospitality was clearly the proper thing to do. In a little while the police would learn they had blundered, and then the man hunt would be resumed with redoubled vigor. To venture forth on the streets after that would be little short of madness. The Phantom, conquering his misgivings--which, after all, were nothing more than a vague doubt in regard to the doctor--murmured his appreciation.

Bimble's manservant, a lanky, thin-faced individual with a gloomy expression and wary eye, entered with a copy of the extras. The Phantom gave him a quick and keenly searching glance, and again he felt strangely bewildered. The man looked innocent enough, and it was nothing but an intangible something in his gait and his manner of carrying himself that caused the Phantom to look twice.

Doctor Bimble took the damp sheet, still redolent of ink, and read aloud the triple-leaded article under the scare head. During the perusal Helen regarded him with strange, expressionless eyes, while now and then the servant shot the Phantom a stealthy glance which the latter found hard to interpret.

Evidently the extra had been hurriedly prepared, for the article contained only a few pithy facts. It seemed that the Phantom, with an audacity and a recklessness characteristic of him, had for some unaccountable purpose visited the East Houston Street establishment in which the murder of Sylvanus Gage had been perpetrated. Wearing no other disguise than a black beard, which he had evidently grown since his last appearance in public, he had approached the housekeeper, introduced himself as Mr. Adair, of Boston, a criminal investigator, and requested to inspect the scene of the murder. The unsuspecting housekeeper had admitted him, little guessing that her visitor was one of the most celebrated criminals of the age.

The Gray Phantom had been in the room only a few minutes when Officer Joshua Pinto appeared on the scene. With laudable perspicacity the officer recognized the Phantom almost immediately, despite the disguising beard, and by clever maneuvering managed to lock him in the room, standing guard outside the door while the housekeeper telephoned headquarters. In a few moments an impenetrable cordon had been thrown around the house, and the capture of the Phantom seemed an absolute certainty. Yet, when the door was battered down, the astonished officers saw that the room was empty and that the notorious rogue had achieved another of his miraculous escapes.

Apparently, so the article stated, the Phantom had accomplished the impossible, but then the Phantom's entire career had been a series of incredible accomplishments. How he had managed to leave the room and elude the cordon of police would probably remain a mystery forever unless the criminal himself should divulge the secret. His capture, which had taken place while the police were making a systematic search of the houses in the block, had been due to one of the strange aberrations which seize even the astutest criminals. A brawl had occurred in a "blind pig" in Bleecker Street, and the commotion had attracted the attention of a passing sergeant. After sending in a hurry call for help the sergeant had raided the place, and among the prisoners taken was one who was almost instantly recognized as the Gray Phantom. The identification was rendered all the easier by the fact that he had removed his beard after making his sensational escape from the East Houston Street establishment. The belief was expressed that the prisoner would be induced to make a statement as soon as he had recovered from the effects of the raw whiskey he had consumed in the dive, presumably in celebration of his latest coup.

"Rot!" ejaculated the doctor, throwing the paper down with a gesture of disgust. "A fool would know that a man of the Gray Phantom's temperament, whatever other folly he might commit, would not get intoxicated at a critical moment like this. This proves--But what's become of Miss Hardwick?"

The Phantom looked up with a start. The girl was gone. Evidently she had taken advantage of the other's absorption in the newspaper article to slip out unnoticed. Jerome, a crestfallen look on his long face, hastily left the laboratory, returning in a few moments with the report that Miss Hardwick was nowhere in sight. The Phantom imagined that there was an expression of sharp reproach in the doctor's eyes as they rested on the servant, but the impression was fleeting.

"The young lady has probably gone home," ventured the anthropologist. "She must have been tired, and in a measure her task was accomplished. The question is, can you rely on her not to communicate what she knows to the police?"

The Phantom looked a trifle doubtful. He had perceived that the impulses of her heart had been swamped by logic. It was possible she had gone away hating him, firmly convinced he was a murderer, and in that event her sense of duty might easily overcome everything else.

"Frankly, I don't know," he declared. "At any rate, I am about as safe here as anywhere for the present. I should like a bath, if I may presume on your hospitality."

"By all means. And as soon as you have rested a bit we shall dine. Dear me, it is almost nine o'clock! Jerome!"

He instructed the servant, and the Phantom followed the silent and soft-footed man to the bathroom. As he splashed about in the tub, he tried to forget the bitter ache which Helen's words had left in his heart. Her frigid attitude and her abrupt going away had merely strengthened his determination to convince her of his innocence. He saw that he must act quickly and take advantage of the comparative security which he could enjoy until the police discovered that they had arrested the wrong man.

His mind was at work on a plan while he hurried into his clothes, which Jerome had brushed and pressed while he was in the tub. A question that troubled him greatly was how far he could safely take Bimble into his confidence. The sharp-witted anthropologist, with his keen insight into human nature, would prove a valuable ally, but the Phantom felt a great deal of mystification in his presence. There was something about the man which his senses could not quite grasp. Likely as not, it was only the scientific temperament, which gave him an appearance of secretiveness and dissimulation, but of this the Phantom could not be sure.

The dinner, which he ate in the doctor's company, was excellent, and Jerome served them in a faultless manner, proving that the anthropologist's devotion to his science had not blunted his taste for physical comforts. The host discoursed learnedly and brilliantly on Lucchini's theory in regard to the responsibility of the criminal, and it was not until the servant had withdrawn and they had reached their coffee and cigars that he mentioned the subject on the Phantom's mind.

The dining room, furnished with an approach to elegance that one would scarcely have expected to find on such a shabby street, was lighted by a heavily shaded electrolier. The lights and shadows playing across Bimble's face as he gesticulated with his head gave him an added touch of mystery and accentuated the general air of inscrutability that hovered about his person. He broached the subject of Gage's death while lighting his cigar.

"Come now, Vanardy, let us be confidential. It was you who murdered Gage. Why deny it?"

Smiling faintly, the Phantom shook his head.

Bimble regarded him curiously. "The only thing about the crime that interests me is your denial. But I think I understand. In some criminals there is an aesthetic sense which revolts against the vulgar and sordid. Having, on the impulse of the moment, committed a sordid crime, your aesthetic sense reasserts itself, and you want to forget the ugly affair as quickly as possible. Am I right?"

The Phantom laughed. "You clothe the thing in such attractive phrasing that I almost wish I could plead guilty. But I didn't kill Gage, and that's all there is to it."

"You still insist that Pinto did?"

"Until two or three hours ago I was firmly convinced of it."

"Ah! Now we are getting down to facts. Until two or three hours ago you were certain Pinto was the murderer. Why?"

"Because at the time I felt sure that no one else could have committed the crime. The mysterious circumstances could be explained in no other way than on the assumption that Pinto was the perpetrator."

"Exactly. Your logic was not at all bad. But I infer that within the last three hours you have changed your mind."

"Not quite; I have merely modified my opinion. I am no longer positively certain that Pinto committed the murder."

"Why?" A shrewd grin twisted the anthropologist's lips. "What has caused you to modify your view--the tunnel?"

"Yes, the tunnel. The existence of the tunnel makes it possible for someone other than Pinto to have committed the murder. It suggests another hypothesis, in the light of which all the circumstances are explainable. Without the tunnel I should be morally certain of Pinto's guilt; with it in existence I am no longer sure."

"Bravo, my friend! You are doing very well for an amateur detective. Your idea is that the murderer entered Gage's bedchamber by way of the tunnel and took his departure the same way. Do you know," with a broad grin, "that I thoroughly agree with you? The only point of difference between us is the identity of the human mole."

The Phantom's face darkened a trifle. "I advanced the idea only as a hypothesis," he declared a little testily, "and as yet I am not at all sure that it has any value. For instance, in order to reach Gage's bedroom by way of the tunnel, the murderer had to go through your house and get down in the cellar."

"Which could easily be done. Both Jerome and myself are sound sleepers and the house has no burglar protection."

"But that isn't all. After traversing the tunnel, the murderer had to enter the bedroom. In order to do so he had to work the mechanism which controls the revolving window frame. From the inside of the chamber it is worked by the nail. Can it be manipulated from the outside as well?"

"Dear me!" exclaimed the doctor, almost jumping out of the chair. "I never thought of that."

The Phantom eyed him keenly, though he seemed wholly absorbed in contemplation of the salt shaker. The exclamation, he thought, had not sounded quite natural.

"You invented the contraption," he pointed out. "Surely you ought to know whether the mechanism can be worked by a man approaching the room by way of the tunnel."

"So I thought. An inventor ought to know the children of his brain." He gave a forced chuckle, as if fencing for time in which to frame an answer. "The fact of the matter is that the contrivance was intended to be an emergency exit and nothing else. The spring by which the mechanism is operated can't be reached by a man approaching the room by way of the tunnel. But that," with a grin which wrinkled his whole face, "does not exclude the possibility of a man getting through by the use of force. For instance, the frame could be budged by prying."

"Perhaps. As matters stand, the whole question hinges on whether the room can be entered from the tunnel. If it can't, then it is certain that Pinto committed the murder. If it can, there is a possibility that someone else did it, though the preponderance of evidence still points in Pinto's direction, for it is extremely unlikely that the murderer was aware of the existence of the tunnel. However----"

He checked himself, deciding to let the thought remain unspoken. The anthropologist, having recovered from his temporary embarrassment, gave a hearty laugh.

"You are incorrigible, my friend. You are willing to admit almost any theory but the plain and obvious one, which is that the Gray Phantom committed the murder. Reminds me of Pinel's excellent treatise on the psychology of the criminal. But you must be tired. Please excuse me while I make a telephone call."

The Phantom regarded him narrowly as he trundled from the room and closed the door behind him. The doctor intrigued and baffled him. He was almost certain that Bimble had been guilty of equivocation in regard to the tunnel and the revolving frame. On the other hand, this and other peculiarities might be due to an erratic temperament. His stubborn insistence on the Phantom's guilt could be the result of mental laziness and a disinclination to exert himself over a case which did not interest him. Yet, after making all due allowances, the Phantom could not feel wholly at ease.

The doctor, smiling placidly and without a sign of guile in his face, interrupted his reflections.

"I've just had my friend Inspector Wadhane on the wire," he announced. "It has been decided to let the prisoner sleep off the effects of his debauch. He will not be questioned until along toward morning. So, my friend, you can sleep in peace. Shall I show you to your room?"

The Phantom, blinking his eyes drowsily, expressed a desire to retire at once. Doctor Bimble conducted him to a pleasant bedroom with two large windows facing the street, saw that everything was in order, and wished his guest a hearty good night. Even before he was out of the room the Phantom had started to remove his clothes.

Yet, no sooner had the door closed than he hurried back into the garments. Though only a few moments ago he had showed signs of great drowsiness, he was now fully awake, and his springy motions and the twinkle in his eyes hinted that sleep was farthest from his mind.