Across the breakfast table Mr. Hardwick looked anxiously at his daughter. The wild-rose color that usually flooded her cheeks had faded a trifle since last night, and her eyes were less bright. Most of the time the curator’s mind browsed among relics of the past, but his perceptions were amazingly keen where his daughter was concerned.
“Mr. Shei gave us quite a shock last night,” he remarked.
Helen kept her eyes down while she poured his coffee and added two and a half lumps of sugar and the usual portion of cream. Then she stirred it for him, knowing he would be quite apt to forget to do so himself. Despite the half dozen titles bestowed upon him by universities and learned societies, she felt he needed looking after.
“Don’t forget that you have a lecture engagement this afternoon,” she admonished as she passed the cup across the table.
Mr. Hardwick nodded and sipped. “It is a most extraordinary case. The murder of that poor woman—assuming that it was a case of murder—seemed wholly unprovoked. I gathered from the conversation among the officers that no motive was in evidence. It looks like a wanton, despicable crime.”
Helen crumbled a piece of toast. “Professor Warburton is coming to see you at three this afternoon.”
“I have a memorandum of the appointment on my desk.” Mr. Hardwick smiled faintly. “Our minds seem to be pulling in opposite directions this morning. This Mr. Shei interests me. He appears to be a remarkable criminal. His audacity and the originality of his methods are unparalleled. I don’t know that I ever encountered anything quite so mystifying as the circumstances surrounding the murder last night. How the murderer went in and out without being seen is beyond understanding, and the subsequent removal of the body was the most amazing part of it all. There seems to be neither method nor reason in that. One thing appears certain. Mr. Shei could not have accomplished what he did unless he had been aided by accomplices. What do you think, my dear?”
Helen’s head was lowered over her coffee cup. The captive sunlight in her hair gleamed and flashed.
“Your extra pair of glasses are at the optician’s,” she reminded him. “Don’t forget to stop for it.”
Mr. Hardwick looked at her helplessly; then carefully, and from force of habit, he folded his napkin.
“I wonder whether the police will ever learn Mr. Shei’s identity,” he murmured musingly. “So far the scoundrel has contrived to mystify them completely, but some day his egotism and love of self-glorification are apt to cause his undoing. In the meantime, however, he is likely to do a great deal of mischief. The fellow’s effrontery is colossal, and his fearlessness and brains render him most dangerous. In some respects he bears a very close resemblance to that other notorious rogue, now reported to be in retirement.”
Helen drew a quick breath. She bent her head a little lower over her cup. Her right index finger traced a design on the tablecloth.
“Another cup of coffee, dad?” was her only reply.
Mr. Hardwick appeared not to have heard. “You know who I mean. The man they used to call The Gray Phantom. For several years he was regarded as one of the cleverest and most dangerous criminals the world has ever known.”
Slowly Helen raised her head. Her eyes, as they met her father’s, were steady and bright.
“That was because the world didn’t understand him,” she said with emphasis. “The Gray Phantom wasn’t really a criminal. He was only a—a sort of human dynamo whose energy happened to be turned in the wrong direction.”
“Isn’t that a distinction without a difference? A Robin Hood is an enemy of society despite the glamour with which he surrounds himself. However,” and Mr. Hardwick’s face softened quickly, “I am deeply in The Gray Phantom’s debt. He saved your life twice, and but for him I would now be a lonely and heartbroken old man.”
Helen nodded eagerly. “And the Assyrian collection, dad. You spent most of your life gathering it, and you were almost overcome with grief when it was stolen. The Gray Phantom risked his life and liberty in order to recover it and restore it to you. He wouldn’t have done that if he had been just an ordinary criminal.”
“True,” admitted Mr. Hardwick. “I shall be under obligations to The Gray Phantom as long as I live. The man has a number of excellent qualities, whatever may be said of his past. On the whole, it is not surprising that you have taken an interest in him.”
Helen’s eyes were lowered again.
There was a mingling of tenderness and worry in Mr. Hardwick’s face as he looked at her. “I know just how you feel,” he said softly. “A man who is trying to live down a dark past always exerts a strong romantic appeal on a woman of your impressionable age. I don’t know why it is, unless it pleases her to think he is doing it for her sake. It makes me think of your play, ‘The Master of His Soul.’ All last night, until the interruption came, I was wondering whether yourMariuswas not The Gray Phantom.”
Helen sat rigidly still for a moment. Then her lips began to twitch. She flashed her father a smile.
“Sometimes, daddy dear, you show a wonderful understanding of things that have nothing to do with Assyriology.”
“I was right, then.” His face sobered. “I hope you realize that, despite The Gray Phantom’s admirable qualities, there is a gulf between him and you. But you are just as level-headed as was your mother, and I have no fear that the impulses of your heart will get the better of your judgment. We were discussing Mr. Shei. There seems to be a striking similarity between his methods and those of The Gray Phantom, except that the latter was never known to stoop to murder.” He paused for a moment and studied her averted face. “You puzzled me last night, dear. You will admit that your conduct was—er, peculiar.”
“It’s getting late, dad,” murmured Helen, a bit confusedly glancing at her wrist watch. “You should have been at your office half an hour ago. And this is the first time I’ve known you to take an interest in a murder case.”
“Once during the evening you gripped my hand and tried to point out something to me,” pursued Mr. Hardwick, heedless of her remark. “You spoke incoherently, and I had not the faintest idea what it was about. Then, a minute or so before the tragedy, you left the box and hurried away. Still later, while the officer was questioning you, I felt you were concealing something.”
Helen, her fingers tightening about a fork handle, shook her head. “I answered every question he put to me.”
“I know, dear. Yet you withheld a secret of some kind from him.”
“Not exactly. I—I merely refrained from telling him something that—that I might have told.”
“Something you had heard or seen?”
She hesitated for an instant. “If I had told all I had seen and heard, I wouldn’t have been telling half of what I knew.”
Mr. Hardwick leaned back against the chair and pondered this cryptic statement. He seemed puzzled rather than hurt by his daughter’s evasive answers. Suddenly she looked up, saw the troubled expression in his face, and impulsively pushed back her chair and ran up behind him.
“Please don’t ask me any more questions, dad.” She put her arms around his neck and tilted her face to his. “It is true I held something back, but at the time I didn’t know why. I merely felt that it wouldn’t do to tell. This morning, after lying awake most of the night, I knew I had done the right thing.” She gave a little laugh. “Isn’t it just like a woman to act first and look into her reasons afterward?”
“I—well, I suppose so. And what were your reasons?”
“Would you be hurt if I told you I would rather not explain them just now?”
“No; I trust you. Experience has taught me that I can depend upon you in spite of your mysterious little ways and madcap pranks. There is one thing I wish you would tell me, though.” He stopped, fumbling for words. “Was your reticence last night prompted by a wish to shield someone?”
“No,” was her prompt reply, and her eyes gazed frankly into his. “What put such a thought into your head?”
“I scarcely know. You’ll think I am an old fool, but it occurred to me that perhaps you had discovered something that led you to think that Mr. Shei and The Gray Phantom are identical.”
“And you thought I was protecting The Gray Phantom? What an idea! But you were wrong, dad—absolutely wrong.”
“Then I am glad.” Mr. Hardwick rose and put his arm around her waist. “My goodness! Almost ten o’clock, and I have been sitting here gossiping like an old woman. You have taken a load off my mind, dear child. I was really worried.”
She laughed, whisked a few crumbs from his coat, straightened his tie, and kissed him.
“And I hope,” added Mr. Hardwick banteringly, “that Uranus won’t lead you into any more foolhardy adventures.”
Again she laughed, but her face sobered the moment he turned away and left the room. A wiser, maturer expression settled over the wide-set eyes and the vivid lips. It seemed as though her talk with her father had left a disquieting impression in her mind. She moved absently about the room, setting things in order here and there, but the far-away gleam in her eyes told that her mind was scarcely aware of what her hands were doing. Presently she stopped before the open window and looked out. A building was going up across the street, and the groaning of derricks and screaming of steam whistles jarred discordantly in the back of her mind. Near the curb a group of laborers were mixing concrete, and a powdery substance was drifting in the air.
She came out of her abstraction with a little start. Her eyes were on the window sill, and she spelled out the characters she had written in the thin layer of dust.
“G-r-a-y P-h-a-n-t-o-m,” she mumbled, puzzled and somewhat annoyed with herself. The faint pencilings in the dust seemed all the stranger because she had not been thinking of The Gray Phantom. Instead, her mind had been occupied by Mr. Shei and what the morning newspapers had said about the tragedy in the Thelma Theater. The accounts she had read had been largely speculation and conjecture. The dying woman’s strange laughter and her mysterious allusion to Mr. Shei had afforded material for columns of vivid and imaginative description. The medical examiner had reluctantly admitted that Miss Darrow’s death might have been caused by a poison administered hypodermically, but he had added that the symptoms were strange to him, and that he knew of no drug producing just such effects. A number of toxicologists had been interviewed, but they had declared that the few facts at hand were not sufficient to enable them to form an opinion, and the disappearance of the body rendered it doubtful whether the cause of death would ever be learned definitely.
Only one thing seemed beyond dispute and that was Mr. Shei’s complicity in the affair. The elusive and highly accomplished rogue already had a score of astounding crimes to his record, and the Thelma murder was hedged with all the mystery and baffling detail with which he loved to mask his exploits. Miss Darrow’s dying words were scarcely needed to turn the finger of suspicion in Mr. Shei’s direction. The absence of clews, the uncertainty in regard to the motive, the audacity that marked the crime itself as well as the subsequent snatching away of the body, all indicated a boldness and a finesse that left little doubt of Mr. Shei’s guilt. Even if his own hand had not executed the crime, it seemed practically certain that his mind had planned and conceived it.
But who was Mr. Shei? The whole train of surmises and theories pivoted on that question. Not much was known of him save that he had a passion for tantalizing the public and keeping the nerves of the men at headquarters on edge, and that his achievements had not been equaled in scope or brilliance of execution since The Gray Phantom’s retirement. He took a diabolical delight in flaunting his name before the world while keeping his person carefully out of the reach of the law’s long arm, and even the name was a challenge to the police and a teaser for the public imagination. Someone versed in dead languages had discovered that the word “shei” was the ancient equivalent of the modernx, the symbol of the unknown quantity, and it was generally agreed that the name fitted the elusive individual who bore it.
Yet the name meant nothing. It was only an abstraction, for it afforded no clew to its owner’s identity. The night before, while she sat beside her father in the Thelma Theater, a vagrant flash of intuition had come to Helen. She had seen the solution of the mystery in a swift, dazzling glimpse. The revelation had stunned and nearly blinded her, and thoughts had crowded upon her so thickly that she would have been quite unable to clothe them in words. The idea carried to her by that intuitive flash had seemed clear and unquestionable. It still seemed so, but her talk with her father had disturbed her a little and turned her thoughts in a new direction.
Again she looked down at the tracings in the dust. A smile, faint and wistful, reflected her softened mood, and a light of wonder and gentleness flooded her eyes. She reached out a hand to obliterate the telltale pencilings, but something restrained her. Besides, a freshly forming layer of dust was already blotting them out.
The telephone rang in the adjoining room, and she hurried away to answer.
“Miss Hardwick?” inquired a drawling voice which she instantly recognized. “Lieutenant Culligore speaking. I’m at the Thelma Theater. Wish you’d come over right away. I want to ask you a few questions.”
Before she could reply, he hung up. Her face grew suddenly tense. Culligore’s brusqueness piqued her, though she knew it was characteristic of the man, and she felt he had taken undue advantage of her by giving her no chance for argument. She did not wish to see him, yet she knew she could not escape him by merely ignoring his request. Anyway, she reflected as she hastily dressed for the street, it would be interesting to learn Culligore’s theory of the murder.
A ride in the subway and a short walk brought her to the door of the Thelma. On the wall, at each side of the entrance, were posters stating that until further notice there would be no more performances of “His Soul’s Master.” Helen viewed the announcement of the withdrawal of her play without much regret. She had partly anticipated it, and last night’s occurrence had given her weightier things to think of. As she passed through the foyer, a policeman nodded stolidly and in a way that told her she was expected. She passed unhindered into the auditorium.
At first she could see nothing. Every door was closed, and the vast room was full of silence and vague shadows. Presently, as her eyes grew accustomed to the dusk, she glanced toward the chair that had been occupied by Miss Darrow. She looked quickly aside, and saw that she was standing not far from the pillar that had supported her when the creature with the loathsome face brushed past her. The scene, which had seemed dim and immaterial while she was out in the sunlight a few minutes ago, now recurred to her with disagreeable vividness. Of a sudden the air about her felt heavy and oppressive.
A figure was moving up the aisle toward where she stood. The dawdling gait and the slouchy attitude told her it was Culligore, and she braced her nerves for an ordeal. In a few moments her quickly working wits had found a way of handling the situation.
“Good-morning, lieutenant,” she said pleasantly as he came up beside her. “I suppose you are looking for clews. Any success?”
“Nope,” he replied complainingly. “That’s why I sent for you, Miss——”
“You have found no trace of the body?” she quickly cut in, anxious to maintain the rôle of questioner.
Culligore shook his head. She felt his eyes on her face, though he did not appear to be looking at her. Practicing a trick cultivated by his profession, he was studying her without seeming to do so.
“Don’t you think it strange that the murderer should go to all that risk and trouble to remove the body?” she went on.
“Murderer? There must have been three or four of them, at least. There was some mighty fast work done when the lights went out, and one man didn’t do it all. I’ve got a bump in the back of my head as big as a hen’s egg. Selfkin, the man from the district attorney’s office, is in bed with a fractured skull, and Starr looks as though somebody had hit him on the nose with a brick. One of the gang must have tampered with the switchboard back of the proscenium arch just before the others swooped down on us and carried away the body.”
“But what was the object? Wasn’t the murderer’s purpose accomplished with the killing of Miss Darrow?”
“Hard telling. One thing is sure. As long as the body is missing there can be no autopsy, and I’ll bet a pair of yellow socks that that’s exactly what they wanted. Not that I pretend to understand it all, but it seems reasonable that they didn’t care to have the exact cause of Miss Darrow’s death become known.”
Helen pondered this statement for a moment. “How about the motive for the murder?”
“We’re pretty much in the dark there, too,” admitted Culligore. “I don’t suppose, though, that it was just by accident that Miss Darrow happened to die a few minutes after she had sent Starr a note warning him that Mr. Shei was in the house.”
“Oh!” Helen gave a quick start. “You think she was killed because she had in some manner discovered Mr. Shei’s identity?”
“Maybe.” Culligore, with legs spread out and hands in trousers pockets, seemed engrossed in a study of Helen’s bright-trimmed hat. “My mind isn’t made up on that point. Mr. Shei’s schemes go pretty deep. Maybe you can tell me——”
Again Helen interrupted him. “Have you discovered how the murderers got in and out of the building?”
“They didn’t leave any tracks behind them, but there is a door in the rear of the basement that they might have used. It’s supposed to be locked, but I satisfied myself a while ago that the spring lock can be picked. That the body was carried out that way is as good a guess as any. But look here, Miss Hardwick,” and something that might have been a grin drifted across his face, “you’re pretty good at firing questions, but it’s my turn now.”
She stiffened, seeing she would have to assume defensive tactics. She sent him a quick glance, but his face, always inscrutable, was even more so in the dusk.
“I asked you to come here, hoping the surroundings would refresh your memory of what happened last night,” Culligore went on in his usual placid drawl. “You needn’t repeat what you said then. What I’m after is the things youdidn’tsay.”
“I don’t believe I understand.”
Culligore’s chuckle sounded like a snort, though she knew it was meant to be good-natured. “Oh, yes, you do. I didn’t do much talking last night, but I was watching you all the time. We’d met before, you know, and I could read you like an open book. I knew you were just as long on brains as on looks. Though you answered every question, you weren’t telling anything. All the while you were holding something back. Isn’t that true?”
She hesitated, having an uncomfortable feeling that Culligore was seeing through her and that any attempt at evasion would be useless.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“That’s a lot better, Miss Hardwick. You might begin by telling me where you were sitting when the disturbance began.”
“Why, I—I wasn’t sitting anywhere.”
“Standing up, then?”
“I wasn’t standing, either.”
“Oh, I see. You were lying down?”
“No, not even lying down.”
Culligore gave her a queer look. “If you weren’t sitting, standing, or lying, you must have hung suspended in the air. Was that it?”
Helen smiled engagingly. She had found time for deliberation while quibbling, and now her mind was made up. “I was so frightened I could neither stand up nor sit down. I was leaning against that pillar over there.” She pointed.
“How did you happen to leave your seat?”
Helen told him of the flitting shadow that had caused her to leave her father and run to the rear of the house.
“And what did you see while you were leaning against the pillar?” was Culligore’s next question.
Helen searched her mind for words vivid enough to recount her impressions during the terrible moments just before the drop of the curtain, but she felt her description was both hazy and fragmentary. Her picture of the face that had flashed past her in the dark was blurred and unreal, like one’s recollection of a dream.
When she had done her best, Culligore walked back and forth for a time. Standing in an attitude of strained tensity, she wondered what his next question would be. Suddenly he stopped squarely in front of her, and again she had an uncomfortable feeling that his deceptively lazy eyes were reading her thoughts.
“What else?” he demanded quietly. “What you have told me so far is pretty good, but you’re still holding back the most important thing—the thing you didn’t want to tell about last night.”
“How—how do you know that?” she asked.
He gave another snortlike chuckle. “Common horse sense tells me. The reason you didn’t tell about the things you saw while leaning against the post was because you were afraid they would lead you on to a subject you didn’t want to discuss. You were afraid that if you got started you might get tangled up and wouldn’t be able to stop.”
Helen could only stare at him. He had stated the truth far more clearly than she herself could have done.
“What was it, Miss Hardwick? I think you had better tell.”
She stood silent, twisting her figure this way and that, and all the while wishing that he would take his eyes from her. Jumbled thoughts thronged her mind, and she felt her power of resistance slipping from her. Finally Culligore swung round on his heels, and a sigh of relief escaped her.
“The thing about you that puzzles me more than anything else is that your hair isn’t red,” he told her. “The rest I can savvy easily enough. I can even tell what it was you were holding back last night. Want me to?”
His tones were soft and teasing. She squirmed, torn between anxiety and despair. His face was expressionless, but she felt he was inwardly laughing at her.
“All right, then,” he said, taking her silence for assent. “You couldn’t have had more than one reason for keeping mum last night, and that reason was that you wanted to shield somebody. There is only one man on earth you could have wanted to shield, and that man is The Gray Phantom.”
“No!” she cried. “You’re mistaken! I wasn’t——”
“Easy now.” All at once his tone changed. “There’s such a thing as protesting too much, you know. I don’t take much stock in what I read in the Sunday papers, but there’s a lot of talk going the rounds about a romance between you and The Gray Phantom. Most of it is pipe dreams, I guess. Anyhow, it’s nobody’s business, and it makes no difference. All I’ll say is that if I was The Gray Phantom and had a girl like you fighting for me, I’d be willing to go through hell-fire for her every day in the week. You’re loyal clean through and——”
“But you’re wrong!” she interrupted emphatically. His words filled her with a great fear, but there was a kind of rough tenderness in his voice that warmed her.
“I knew you’d say that, but you have to hear me through. I take off my hat to The Gray Phantom. He always played the game according to the code, even when he cut those fancy didos that put gray hairs in almost every head on the force. I shouldn’t say it, but it goes just the same. The Phantom’s been lying low now for some time. Nobody seems to know where he is. He’s shown himself only twice, and each time he came out in a good cause. They say he’s going it straight, and it’s rumored that a certain young lady has had a lot to do with his turning over a new leaf.”
He paused, and for a moment his eyes rested on her averted face.
“It’s hard work for a leopard to change his spots. Some people say it can’t be done. The Phantom’s human, like the rest of us. Maybe he’s got tired of the straight and narrow path and gone back to his old tricks under a new name. Just for the sake of argument we’ll say he has. And I’ve got a hunch that last night you saw or heard something that made you think that Mr. Shei is The Gray Phantom.”
The assertion staggered her, though she had known all the time that he was leading up to it. Using almost the same words, her father had expressed the same idea at the breakfast table, and it was the similarity of the phrasing that startled her.
“No—no!” was all she could say.
“Then will you please tell me,” said Culligore, his tones both gentle and insistent, “why didn’t you come out with what you knew last night?”
She fell back a step, feeling suddenly weak as she realized that his question was unanswerable. A confusion of ideas churned and simmered in her mind. Her lips moved, but no words came.
“You’ve answered me,” declared Culligore. “You think Mr. Shei is The Phantom. Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong. What I wanted to know was what you thought. And let me tell you something.” A foolish grin, one of Lieutenant Culligore’s infrequent ones, wrinkled his face. “I hate my job less whenever I meet up with one of your kind.”
Helen did not hear what he said. She felt as if the swirl of thoughts and emotions within her had suddenly turned into a leaden lump. She glanced involuntarily at the chair in which Virginia Darrow had sat, and of a sudden she fancied she heard laughter—slow, tinkling laughter that sounded like a taunt flung in the face of an approaching specter. She knew the sounds existed only in her imagination, but with a low, long drawn-out cry she turned abruptly and fled toward the door, conscious only of a fierce desire for sunlight and air.
No one detained her. She ran across the street. An idea was slowly working its way out of the turmoil in her mind. She opened her bag and counted her scant supply of bills. Then she looked about her. Half a block down the street she saw the sign of a district messenger office. In a few moments she was inside, hastily scrawling a note which she had addressed to her father. A taxicab was passing as she stepped out on the street. She hailed the driver, and he drew in at the curb.
“Erie station—West Twenty-third Street,” she directed breathlessly.
As the cab started she slumped back against the cushions and gazed rigidly out the window. Despite the bright sunlight, things blurred before her eyes, and there was only one clear thought in her mind.
She was on her way to The Gray Phantom, for she alone knew where to find him.
It was growing dark when she reached the end of her journey, and the dusk made it easy for her to elude the little knot of idlers on the station platform. With frequent backward glances she hurried down a path that skirted the edge of a village nestling at the foot of a hill which was outlined against the horizon like a great funnel-shaped cloud. On its apex was Azurecrest, the hermitage of The Gray Phantom.
Helen found the motor driveway that circled its way upward in spiral fashion, for the hill was too steep to permit cars to reach the top by direct route. She had visited the place once before, in the course of one of the perilous adventures she and The Phantom had shared together. The residence, a sprawling structure of stone, tile and stucco, had been built by The Phantom shortly after his retirement, and she had marveled at the precautions he had taken to protect his privacy. The inhabitants of the village understood that the place was occupied by a wealthy and leisurely gentleman who was spending the remainder of his life in ease and solitude on the desolate hilltop. Though consumed with curiosity, they never ventured near Azurecrest, guessing accurately that they would not be welcomed. Occasionally they saw one of the servants, but the owner never permitted himself to be seen except by his most intimate associates.
The tang of late autumn was in the air, and Helen’s head cleared as she walked briskly up the zigzagging driveway. The railway journey had been long and tedious and punctuated by innumerable stops, and she had been too distracted to think clearly. Now she began to search her mind for a plan, but she soon saw that planning was impossible. Her trip to Azurecrest had been prompted by one of those sudden impulses that usually dictated her conduct, and she had been conscious of no other motive than to put an end to her fears and doubts. She had thought that a talk with The Gray Phantom would quickly end the suspense.
Reaching the gate in the picket fence that encircled the apex of the hill, she touched an electric button. While waiting she looked about her. The Susquehanna, like a cocoon thread, wound in and out among the hills and valleys in the distance. The moon, shining through a vapory gauze, splashed a misty sheen over bowlders and trees.
She heard a dog’s shrill bark, and a masculine figure came down the graveled walk toward the gate. As he drew nearer and the pale moonlight fell on him, she saw he was stocky and coarse-featured, and she guessed he was one of the sentinels that were always stationed about the place.
“What do you want?” he asked ungraciously as he reached the gate.
“I wish to see Mr. Vanardy,” she announced, using the name by which the occupant of Azurecrest had been known before he became The Gray Phantom.
She thought the man repressed a start, but she reflected that his evident surprise was natural enough, since visitors seldom came to Azurecrest.
“Mr. Vanardy, eh?” He drew an instrument from his pocket and flashed an electric gleam in her face. For a long moment he studied her in silence. “You mean The Gray Phantom?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated, still searching her face in the light of the electric flash. It was plain that the appearance of a feminine visitor at the gate of Azurecrest had aroused his suspicion.
“What do you want to see him about?” he demanded gruffly.
“Tell him Miss Hardwick wishes to see him. I think that will be sufficient.”
She drew herself up as she spoke and regarded him steadily. As if decided by her cool and level tones, the man lowered the light and turned away, and in a few moments he had been swallowed by the shadows cast by the tall trees. Helen controlled her impatience. She understood that The Gray Phantom was obliged to exercise care every moment of his life. Despite his new mode of existence, he was still an outlaw in the eyes of the police, and a number of outstanding charges made it necessary for him to observe every precaution.
Again the man emerged out of the shadows. This time he said nothing, but peered at her furtively as he opened the gate and motioned her to step through. He closed and locked the gate carefully, then walked ahead of her up the graveled walk. A great shaggy dog slouched at his heels and wagged its tail energetically, as if disturbed by the arrival of a visitor. Helen’s guide stopped under a portico and opened a door. A dim light shone on his face as he turned and told her to enter, and his expression gave her a twinge of misgiving. She tried in vain to analyze it, and the next moment the disturbing impression was gone.
“Wait,” he said, indicating a chair.
Helen felt relieved as soon as the door closed behind him. The room was large and pleasant, and the oak-paneled, cream-colored walls made an attractive background for the furniture and decorations. Each little detail suggested The Gray Phantom’s instinctive taste for beauty and proportion, and it suddenly occurred to her that this was the same room in which he had received her on her previous visit to Azurecrest.
Footfalls sounded in the hall, and all at once she grew confused. She wondered how she was to broach the subject that had been in her thoughts constantly since last night. She started to rise as the door opened, but in the next instant she sat back and swallowed an exclamation of surprise. She had expected to see The Gray Phantom, but the person who entered was a short, slightly humpbacked man of about fifty. He jerked his head toward her by way of a bow, and as he smiled she noticed that his mouth was crooked.
“My name is Hawkes,” he announced in soft, lisping accents. “I am the secretary. I understand you wish to see Mr. Vanardy. Have you an appointment with him?”
A faint touch of uneasiness mingled with Helen’s impatience. The Gray Phantom had never mentioned that he had a secretary, and she doubted whether he was in the habit of making appointments.
“I have no appointment,” she said, mastering her vexation and disquietude, “but I think Mr. Vanardy will see me if you mention my name.”
“Ah! Then you are a friend of his?”
“I have met him several times.”
“To be sure,” said the little man. He rubbed his hands, which seemed abnormally large for one of his sparse stature. “But, if you know anything at all about Mr. Vanardy, you must realize that he has to exercise caution, particularly in regard to the people he meets.”
Helen rose, a faint flush of indignation in her cheeks. The next moment she sat down again, for she realized that Hawkes’ argument was reasonable. The Gray Phantom’s existence was precarious enough to warrant every conceivable precaution.
“I know Mr. Vanardy will see me if you tell him who I am,” she declared, looking straight into the little man’s eyes.
“Quite likely. But I have orders, and I dare not disregard them. Be good enough to answer one or two questions. To begin with, what is the nature of your business with Mr. Vanardy?”
Helen’s patience was almost exhausted, but her sense of humor came to her rescue. Her lips began to twitch.
“Tell Mr. Vanardy,” she said, “that the subject I wish to discuss with him has to do with a certain Mr. Shei.”
The little man’s eyes opened wide. She fancied his hand shook a trifle as he made an annotation on the pad he carried.
“Quite so,” he murmured, quickly controlling himself. “You have come here on business connected with a certain Mr. Shei. Just one more question. Very few people know there is such a place as Azurecrest. How did you happen to find it?”
“Mr. Vanardy once gave me the directions. But you are exerting yourself needlessly, Hawkes. I am sure all that is necessary is to mention my name to Mr. Vanardy.”
“Perhaps so.” The humpback made another annotation on the pad, after which he put it in his pocket. “I’ll repeat to Mr. Vanardy what you have just told me.” He walked out of the room.
Helen could not tell why, but the silence that fell upon the room as the door closed impressed her uncomfortably. She did her best to muffle a faint inward whisper of warning, a premonition that something was wrong. Hawkes’ questions had left a train of disturbing thoughts in her mind.
She waited a few minutes, then got up and began to pace the floor in an effort to quell a rising nervousness. She glanced at the pictures on the walls, but they did not seem to be the same as those that had hung there on her last visit, and they failed to interest her.
Presently she stepped to the window and looked out. The trees were nodding drowsily in the gentle night wind. The mist rising from the lowlands on all sides of the hill gave her a curious sense of remoteness from the world.
Then she drew back a step suddenly. Someone was passing the window, and she caught a momentary glimpse of a face. For a second or two a pair of large and oddly piercing eyes were fixed on her. Then the figure vanished, but the vision left her white and shaken. A hoarse cry rose to her lips. Unless her imagination had deceived her, the face that had just passed the window was the same swarthy, loathsome face she had seen in the Thelma Theater scarcely twenty-four hours ago.
Seized with a great fear, she ran across the floor and opened the door. The face, with its squatty features and long black hair fluttering in the breeze, had crystallized all the vague misgivings she had felt since she entered the house. For the moment she was unable to think, but an unreasoning impulse to flee drove her swiftly down the long hall. She felt she must escape from Azurecrest at once.
She had nearly reached the end of the hall when she came to a dead stop. She stood rigid, listening. Somewhere a laugh sounded. The staccato accents seemed to fill the house with volumes of hideous sound. Each vibrant note conjured up a fearful picture before her eyes. She staggered back against the wall, stopping her ears to shut out a repetition of the sound, but the echoes of it lingered in her imagination. She knew the laugh well. It was the same kind of laugh that Virginia Darrow had taken with her into eternity.
Minutes passed, each dragging a train of monstrous fancies before Helen’s mental vision. The tips of her fingers shut out all sounds from her ears, but the laughter still dinned and echoed in her imagination. It reminded her of the haunting strains of glee that had come from Virginia Darrow’s dying lips. Somehow this laughter was different, but the difference was so subtle that she could but vaguely sense it. It was loud and delirious, in contrast to the gentle, dirgelike notes that had characterized the other.
She could stand the suspense no longer. Sped on by fear, she ran in the direction where she thought the door was. She brought up against a stairway instead. A noise caused her to lift her head. Down the stairs, lurching and sliding, came a woman. Her hair was wildly tousled and her clothing in disorder, and peal after peal of harsh laughter cut through the silence as she scurried down the steps.
Then she saw Helen, and she stopped as abruptly as if she had dashed against a material barrier. Clutching the railing with one hand, she wagged drunkenly from side to side. Her face was ashen, but her skin was clear and smooth as a young girl’s. The eyes, unnaturally wide and bright, stared down at Helen with fierce intensity. She had ceased laughing, but the lips were still agape, as if suddenly frozen into rigidity.
Helen forgot her fears as she saw the strange look in the woman’s face. She wondered whether it meant madness, terror, or intoxication. It seemed to be neither, but rather a blending of all three. Slowly, with the outspread fingers of one hand pressing against her breast, the woman came down the remaining steps. Her great eyes were still fixed on Helen, but the mad flame in their depths was gradually yielding to a look of sanity.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her voice was dry, and she spoke with little hissing sounds, as if each word were exhausting her breath.
Helen winced as the woman clutched her arm. Streaks of gray in the tumbled masses of her black hair clashed sharply with her youthfully rounded face, and Helen guessed that the contrast had been brought about by some terrifying experience.
“Do you know where you are?” the woman went on, tightening her grip on Helen’s arm.
“This is Azurecrest, isn’t it?” Helen’s words voiced an indefinite doubt that had been stirring faintly in the back of her mind since she saw the face at the window. “I came here to see the Gray—to see Mr. Vanardy.”
“Azurecrest?” The woman’s mind seemed to be slowly struggling out of a daze. “Yes—that’s what they call the place. But there is no Mr. Vanardy here. You have been deceived, just as I was. Those monsters! Do you know what will happen to you if you remain here?”
Helen shrugged as if to fight off a stupor that seemed to be gradually infolding body and mind.
“They’ll inject the fever into your veins,” the woman told her, without waiting for an answer. “The fever that always kills. Sometimes it kills quickly, but most the time very slowly, just as it is killing me. You will not feel much pain. You will laugh and sing and dream strange dreams. Those are always the symptoms. At first, before the fever reaches the last stage, you will laugh loud and hilariously—like this.” She threw back her head, and then came an outburst of screaming laughter that made Helen shudder. “That’s how it sounds at first. But later, when the fever has burned out your strength and destroyed your reason, the laughter will be low and soft and lilting. Then it sounds like this.” She gave a series of low, tinkling sounds that were like a requiem set to laughter.
Helen shivered. Just so had Virginia Darrow gone laughing to her death. The coincidence seemed rather weird. The stark realism of the imitation gripped her, and yet she wondered whether she were dreaming or whether the woman beside her were reveling in the fancies of a maniac.
The other stiffened suddenly. She seemed to recall something which her encounter with Helen had temporarily blotted from her mind. Placing two fingers across her lips, she cast a swift glance up the stairs. For a brief space she stood tense, listening.
“The woman who watches me went to sleep and I stole away from her,” she whispered. “We must try to get out before they begin looking for me. You must come, too. It won’t do for you to remain a moment longer. S-sh!”
Silent as a wraith she stole down the hall. Helen, scarcely knowing what she was doing, followed dazedly. She did not know what to think, but there was an undertow of vague dread in her jumbled thoughts and emotions. What she had just heard sounded wildly fantastical, like the raving of a deranged mind. Yet she had a feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. The strange laughter and the face at the window appeared to give a background of reality to what the woman had said. They seemed to suggest, too, that there was a connecting link between Azurecrest and the tragedy in the Thelma Theater. It was this circumstance, bewildering and almost unbelievable, that clogged the functioning of Helen’s mind and rendered her willing to be led along by her guide.
The door was unlocked and they passed unhindered into the open. In a dull and indifferent fashion Helen thought it strange that the woman’s loud laughter had not already betrayed them, but then it occurred to her that perhaps such outbursts were common at Azurecrest. After what she had already seen and heard, nothing would have surprised her greatly. She wondered how her companion meant to overcome the obstacles of the locked gate and the high picket fence. Perhaps, in her beclouded state of mind and eagerness to escape, she was not even giving them a thought. Or perhaps——
Her guide stopped so abruptly that Helen, who had been following close behind, nearly ran into her. Out of the mist and shadows came a low, rumbling growl. A huge, black shape bounded toward them.
“The dog!” exclaimed the other. “I forgot—oh!”
The beast, rearing on hind legs, sprang at her throat and felled her. She lay prone on the ground, the dog crouching over her with jaws slavering and forefeet pawing her body. Helen stood motionless in her tracks. The dog’s eyes and teeth gleamed menacingly in the moonlight, and she knew that the slightest move would precipitate an attack upon her. Her mind, clearing rapidly under the stress of danger, was seeking a way out of the predicament when hurried footsteps came down the walk.
“Cæsar!” called a gruff voice.
The dog let go its hold as a man came running toward them. He stopped and gathered the fallen woman in his arms, and Helen recognized the individual who had met her at the gate on her arrival. With scarcely a glance in her direction, he turned and walked toward the house with his burden. Helen feeling the gleaming eyes of the beast on her face, dared not move. As she stood wondering what to do, a shadow fell across the graveled walk and a second man came toward her.
“Back to your kennel, Cæsar!” he commanded, and the dog obediently slunk away. “Excellent watchdog, but a bit ferocious when he is kept on half rations. Won’t you come inside, Miss—er, Hardwick? Hawkes told me about you. I am Mr. Slade. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
His manner and appearance were pleasant enough; yet Helen felt an impulse to run. The things she had seen and heard since coming to Azurecrest were highly mystifying, and they had left a number of questions and suspicions in her mind. She glanced quickly toward the picket fence, then in the direction whence Cæsar had disappeared. Something told her that a whistle would set the dog snapping and snarling at her heels if she should try to break away. She decided that her hope lay in diplomacy rather than flight.
As if he had read her thoughts, Slade touched her arm and escorted her to the house. She sensed that a trying ordeal was ahead of her, and she was already steeling her nerves for it. She had faced danger many times, and her buoyant nature always responded to the demands of a crisis with a quickening of wits and rising courage.
“I trust Miss Neville didn’t annoy you” murmured Slade apologetically as he opened the door and conducted her down the hall. “A very difficult case of paranoia. She gets quite violent at times, and she is subject to all sorts of hallucinations. To-night she broke away from her nurse and would no doubt have attempted to scale the fence if Cæsar hadn’t interrupted her.”
Helen walked beside him in silence. She had already wondered whether Miss Neville could be quite sane. Oddly enough, Slade’s words almost convinced her that the woman was of sound mind, though perhaps she was suffering from the effects of illness and shock. Helen had conceived an immediate and instinctive distrust of Slade, despite his smooth-flowing speech and suave manners.
He ushered her into the same room she had left so hurriedly upon hearing the laughter, and placed a chair for her. A look at his face in the electric light gave edge to her misgivings, but at first she could not tell what there was about him that repelled her. According to all standards, he should have attracted her and inspired confidence in her. His personality contained that blend of strength and gentleness which she had liked in men ever since her days of inconsequential hero worship. He had the strong jaw and high forehead that often go with aggressiveness and mental keenness, and he carried his tall figure with the easy grace of a man of the world. His presence would have been quite magnetic if only—— But Helen could not finish the thought. There was an unnamable something about him that eluded her mental grasp.
“Quite a sad case, that of Miss Neville,” he continued. “She was once a very brilliant woman, but her genius was consumed by its own fire, so to speak. I might as well tell you that she is my half-sister. For her own good and to avoid unpleasant notoriety, I am keeping her here under the care of a physician. Her friends believe that she is traveling abroad, and so far I have succeeded in keeping the true state of affairs secret. There is a possibility, though a very remote one, that she will recover.”
Helen made no comment. Though his eyes were lowered seemingly on the floor, she felt he was watching her and wondering whether she believed him. She thought it strange that he should have taken her into his confidence in regard to matters which one usually does not divulge to strangers. There were a number of questions on the tip of her tongue, but she thought it better to hold them back.
“I suppose,” Slade went on in melancholy tones, “that she told you the usual story of mistreatment and persecution?”
“She seemed very excited.” Helen weighed her words with care. “I don’t remember all she told me, but she said something of a fever that was gradually killing her, and she seemed very anxious to get away from this place.”
“Yes, the fever is one of her hallucinations. She imagines that she is suffering from a strange disease. And not only that but she thinks everybody around her afflicted with the same mysterious malady. The idea is firmly rooted in her mind that the disease has been deliberately communicated to her by enemies. No doubt she told you of a queer kind of laughter that is supposed to be one of the symptoms of the strange ailment.”
“She not only mentioned it, but she gave me a demonstration. It sounded a bit—creepy.”
“I can readily believe it. It must have been very unpleasant for you. I take it that she told the story convincingly enough to make an impression on you, or you would not have started to run away with her.”
He smiled as he spoke, and all at once Helen saw the reason for her instinctive dislike of him. The smile was of the lips only. There was no responsive gleam in his eyes. And his eyes, she now perceived, were hard and dispassionate as bits of porcelain.
“She frightened me, and I didn’t know what to think,” she guardedly admitted. “I suppose I followed her on the impulse of the moment. I do most things on impulse, you see.”
“That’s the privilege of youth.” He laughed, but his eyes were as glossy and expressionless as fish scales and seemed to veto his vocal merriment. “Luckily you wouldn’t have got further than the gate, even if Cæsar hadn’t intervened. It would be very embarrassing if Miss Neville should escape from us some night and expose her condition to the world. There is slight danger of that, though. I have taken all necessary precautions. However, your meeting Miss Neville here and noticing the state she is in, makes the situation rather awkward. I should dislike to have the matter get into the newspapers. I have been frank with you, hoping you would see the delicacy of the situation from my point of view.”
“I never gossip about people’s misfortunes,” declared Helen with emphasis.
“Thank you. I know I can depend on you, Miss Hardwick. I hope Cæsar didn’t frighten you. By the way,” and suddenly he seemed to remember something, “my secretary told me you were inquiring for Mr. Vanardy.”
Helen started slightly. For an hour she had been wondering why she had seen nothing of The Gray Phantom and why her request to see him had been met with evasions and cross-questioning.
Slade regarded her with polite curiosity. “I have seen your name in the newspapers, Miss Hardwick. You wrote the play that Vincent Starr produced at his theater. Only a little while ago I was reading of the peculiar tragedy that interrupted the first performance last night. I wonder whether your visit here has anything to do with that occurrence.”
It was a strange question, Helen thought. “I—I would rather talk over my errand with Mr. Vanardy in person,” she stammered. She was chilled and confused by his steady gaze. “Isn’t he here?”
Slade’s lips twitched. “You know, of course, that Mr. Vanardy is the genial rascal who used to be known as The Gray Phantom. You needn’t answer; I see that you do. It strikes me as rather odd that a young lady of your evident refinement and culture should be associated with a man of that type. Pardon my impertinence. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Vanardy is not here. He left Azurecrest some time ago.”
“What?” Helen half rose from the chair. With a great exertion of will power she steadied herself. “Mr. Vanardy not here? Then where is he?”
“That I don’t know. I purchased Azurecrest from him through a broker. I never had any dealings with the man himself. In fact, at the time I bought the place I didn’t know that it had been occupied by The Gray Phantom. You see, I had been looking for a secluded spot where Miss Neville could live quietly and without fear of unwelcome intrusions. Azurecrest seemed to answer the requirements, and so I bought it.”
Helen stared at him, unable to disguise her bewilderment. Slade’s statement amazed and shocked her. She had not been in correspondence with The Gray Phantom, but at their last meeting he had told her to communicate with him at Azurecrest if she should ever need him. She thought it strange that he had not sent her word of his removal.
Slade was sauntering leisurely back and forth across the floor. Now and then, as he looked at her, his eyes gave her a chill. She made a strong effort to gather her thoughts and master her feelings. Something, she did not know just what, told her that the occasion demanded a cool head and steady nerves.
A motor horn sounded in the distance. Evidently a car was winding its way up the hill. The thought gave her a vague sense of comfort. She sat up straight.
“I told the man who met me at the gate that I wished to see Mr. Vanardy,” she remarked. “Later I told Hawkes the same thing. Neither one intimated that Mr. Vanardy was no longer here. I was asked a lot of useless questions and asked to wait. Then—”
“My dear Miss Hardwick,” smoothly interrupted Slade, “you must understand that the circumstances under which my half-sister and myself are living here make it necessary for me to be very cautious with regard to visitors. My servants have orders to subject all callers to careful inspection and cross-examination. For instance, how do I know that you are not a newspaper reporter looking for a sensation?”
Helen smiled; the suggestion seemed so absurd. Once more the blare of a horn sounded in the distance.
“And that reminds me,” Slade went on in slightly altered tones, “that you have not yet explained your presence here. I asked you a moment ago whether it had anything to do with what happened at the Thelma Theater.”
“So you did.” Helen’s smile, though tantalizing, was the kind with which one masks an inner turbulence.
“I am waiting for your answer.” Slade seemed as suave and urbane as before, but his eye was a trifle frostier and his tone carried a peremptory note. Helen glanced at the window. A glare like that of a motor car’s headlight was approaching the house.
“Your question is very peculiar,” she replied with a haughtiness which she did not quite feel, “and I see no reason why I should answer it.”
“No?” Slade had ceased his pacing of the floor, and Helen wondered whether it was by design or accident that he had stopped with his back to the door. “Perhaps the question will seem less peculiar if I word it differently. What did you mean when you told Hawkes that the business you wished to discuss with Vanardy had to do with Mr. Shei?”
Helen felt a tingle of suspense. There was a sneer on Slade’s lips and his frigid eyes filled her with a vague dread. She tried to parry the question with banter, but the words would not come. She twisted in her chair, and suddenly, as the door behind Slade’s back came open, her gaze grew rigid and a look of consternation filled her eyes. She gripped the arms of her chair and very slowly raised herself to her feet, all the while staring intently at the figure whose arrival had been heralded a few minutes ago by the headlight’s glare.
The newcomer seemed startled at first, then he smiled. Slade stepped aside and bowed deferentially to the man in the doorway. Then he noticed Helen’s transfigured face.
“You two seem to have met before,” he remarked.
Helen advanced a step. She drew a long, trembling breath. A staggering realization flashed through her mind as she gazed rigidly into the newcomer’s smiling face. It was the same realization that had come to her with such unnerving force in the Thelma Theater. It had grown hazy and vague during the intervening hours, and the quick succession of events had left her wondering. Now she knew that her first intuitive suspicion had been correct. Her mind seemed to reel and spin. She hardly knew that her lips were moving, but her voice, hoarse and scarcely audible, was uttering a name:
“Mr. Shei!”