The Gray Phantom Part 12

"Do you mean that they are going to kill me?"

The woman clasped her hands across her chest and raised mournful eyes to the ceiling. "You mustn't ask questions, poor dear. You'll find out soon enough. Anyhow, there's a better world than this."

With this piece of doubtful consolation she gathered the dishes and, with another disconsolate sigh, walked out of the room. Helen tried to tell herself that the woman had merely been exercising her imagination and that her doleful hints had come out of thin air. The meal had refreshed her, and her spirits rose while she bathed her face in cold water and arranged her attire. Having finished, she viewed herself with satisfaction in the mirror. Her elastic health and strength had obliterated nearly every trace of her distressing night.

A knock sounded on the door, and Mr. Slade walked in. Helen instantly steeled herself for an ordeal. Slade, she had already guessed, was Mr.

Shei's right-hand man. He was smiling affably, but something told her that her life depended on the outcome of the interview.

"I trust you had a restful night, Miss Hardwick?" he suavely inquired after seating himself.

"I slept like a top," Helen a.s.sured him with a smile that belied her real emotion. "You see, I was all f.a.gged out when I retired. I have a faint recollection that I was a bit hysterical, too. I suppose it was on account of that affair at the Thelma Theater the other night. I received quite a shock."

"Naturally," a.s.sented Slade, regarding her with a mingling of admiration and doubt. "Yes, you seemed somewhat upset last night. You probably have no recollection of it, but you fainted completely away, and one of the maids put you to bed after the physician in attendance upon Miss Neville had administered a sedative. I don't suppose you remember any of that?"

"It's all news to me," declared Helen innocently. "I'm sorry to have been so much trouble."

Slade made a deprecatory gesture. He edged his chair a little closer to the small table at which Helen was seated. She felt his cold gaze searching her face, and to hide her confusion she began tracing figures in the dust that had acc.u.mulated on the surface of the table.

"Last night we were discussing The Gray Phantom," Slade remarked, and she started a trifle at the mention of the name. "I regret I can give you no inkling as to his whereabouts. I suppose you are very anxious to find him?"

"Rather."

"Isn't it strange that he did not give you his new address?"

"He may have written and the letter gone astray," suggested Helen. A flush had tinged the healthy tan of her cheeks the moment Slade introduced the subject of The Gray Phantom. Looking down at the table, she noticed confusedly that her hand had been influenced by the thoughts that were uppermost in her mind. In the thin layer of dust she had absently traced The Gray Phantom's initials. It was a habit of hers, cultivated since childhood, to sketch figures and designs on whatever surface was handy, and she had often told herself she must overcome it.

"Perhaps," was Slade's comment. He looked at her in a way that caused her to wonder whether he had noticed the pencilings in the dust, and she erased them with a quick sweep of her hand. "By the way," he went on, "our conversation last night was interrupted by a--a certain person. Remember?"

Helen knew that the critical moment had come. She made a pretense of searching her memory.

"I was very tired," she said, carefully choosing her words, "and I recall very little of what happened. I seem to remember, though, that a motor horn sounded while we were talking."

"Yes, and then?" Slade bent eagerly forward.

Helen's strained face indicated intense mental effort. "Then---- Isn't it odd that I don't seem able to remember a thing after that?"

"It is," admitted Slade, and there was a subtle change in the quality of his voice. "Perhaps I can refresh your memory. Suddenly a man's figure appeared in the doorway. You stared at him in a way signifying that you had seen him before. Then you spoke a name."

"A name?" echoed Helen. "What name?"

"A name that has been on a great many lips of late--Mr. Shei's."

"Isn't that strange?" murmured Helen. "I wonder what on earth made me mention that name. I suppose, though," she added quickly, "that it was because Mr. Shei's name had been in my mind off and on ever since that terrible occurrence in the Thelma Theater. Yes, that must be the reason."

"The _only_ reason, Miss Hardwick?"

"What other reason could there be?"

Slade smiled in a way that awoke Helen's dislike. "Well, it's conceivable that you were under the impression that the man in the doorway was Mr. Shei. That would not only have explained your excitement, but also give ample reason for uttering his name."

Helen opened her eyes wide. "But--but I don't even remember seeing the man," she protested artlessly, "so why should I suppose him to be Mr.

Shei?"

"The fact remains that you spoke Mr. Shei's name just before you fainted away. Let's get at the subject from a different angle, Miss Hardwick. Do you know who Mr. Shei is?"

Helen, having a curious feeling that her life was trembling in the balance, shook her head.

"You don't know his other name--the name by which he is known to the world at large?"

Again Helen made a negative gesture, and in the same instant she became aware that Slade's frosty gaze was following the movements of her right hand. Before she realized what was happening, he had left his chair and stepped up behind her, and now he was leaning over her shoulder and looking down at the table.

"So, you lied," he muttered in tones that sent a shiver through her body, at the same time pointing to the table.

Helen looked down. She gave a violent start. While she had been fencing verbally with Slade, her hand had betrayed her. In her preoccupation she had not realized that another couplet of initials had appeared in the dust. With a sensation of defeat and despair she stared down at the telltale characters--the first letters in Mr. Shei's other name.

CHAPTER X

A SHOT

At noon of the same day a scene equally tense, but of quite a different character, was being enacted in the library of W. Rufus Fairspeckle.

Dazedly The Gray Phantom set the telephone down. In tones too low for the older man to catch, he mumblingly repeated the startling message that had just come to him over the wire: "Mr. Shei speaking. If you value Miss Hardwick's life, I would advise you to abandon your present plans."

One by one, and in the order in which they had been spoken, the words trickled into his benumbed consciousness. He had heard Mr. Shei's voice over the wire. He had been mistaken, then, and the shrunken and wizened man seated before him with eyes staring and mouth agape could not be Mr. Shei. Even the evidence of the typewritten slips lying on the desk seemed to mean nothing against the fact that the notorious rogue had just communicated with him by telephone.

"What--what's the matter?" stammered Mr. Fairspeckle, who, not having the faintest inkling as to the nature of the message received by The Phantom, was at a loss to understand the latter's demeanor. "Anything wrong?"

The Phantom scarcely heard him. The significance of the last part of Mr. Shei's message came to him in a flash. In a twinkling his mind was functioning again. His eyes were threatening, like miniature thunder clouds. A new and dynamic impulse seemed to dominate his whole being.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the telephone directory and found a number. Then he fairly hurled himself at the telephone, frantically jigged the hook up and down, shouted a number into the transmitter, and waited breathlessly till the connection was established.

A woman's voice, evidently that of a servant, answered. Miss Hardwick was not in, she explained, and when pressed for further information admitted that she had not been seen since breakfast the previous day.

Mr. Hardwick, ill at ease because of his daughter's absence, was inst.i.tuting inquiries for her in various directions, and the servant did not know where he could be reached.

The Phantom's eyes blazed as he set the instrument down with a slam.

Mr. Fairspeckle, a flabbergasted look in his bulging eyes, seemed utterly at a loss to comprehend what was going on. For a moment The Phantom eyed him narrowly, then cast a bewildered glance at the typewritten slips, and finally turned abruptly on his heels and dashed from the room.

No one interrupted him. He suspected that Haiuto was lurking somewhere in the background, but he saw nothing of the sly-footed servant as he rushed from the apartment and, forgetting the existence of the elevator, scurried down three flights of stairs. The ferret-eyed individual whom he had seen from the window was still standing at the opposite curb, but he did not deign a single glance in The Phantom's direction. Block after block, spurred on by a medley of anguishing doubts and suspicions, The Phantom continued his heedless progress, conscious only of the one agonizing thought that something had happened to Helen Hardwick.

Presently he awoke to a realization of the futility and recklessness of his conduct. His fears for Helen Hardwick had blunted his wits and stultified his reason, making him forget his old-time caution and nimbleness of mind. To no purpose he was rushing blindly into a net of dangers. With a mutter of disgust at his childish impetuosity, he drew in his steps and turned into a convenient doorway. A glance up and down the street a.s.sured him that, thanks to luck alone, his headlong course seemed to have attracted no attention. He scanned the crowd on all sides, but there was no sign of either espionage or pursuit. He had vaguely expected to be followed by the keen-eyed watcher he had seen on the sidewalk outside the Whipple Hotel, but the man was nowhere in sight. For the present, at least, The Phantom was safe. Now he must think clearly and act coolly.

He could not rid himself of the suspicion that Helen's volatile nature and venturesome disposition had led her into some fearful predicament.

He knew she had an infinite capacity for handling difficult situations, but the knowledge gave him scant comfort. He revolved the problem of her disappearance in his mind. She had been missing for more than twenty-four hours. He sensed a dim significance in the fact that she had pa.s.sed out of sight the morning following the tragedy at the Thelma Theater, and of a sudden he asked himself whether there could be any possible connection between her disappearance and the death of Virginia Darrow.

Several circ.u.mstances lent plausibility to the theory. Chief among them was the mysterious warning The Phantom had received from Mr.

Shei, the man who was generally believed to have been implicated in Miss Darrow's death. The Phantom's mind was working swiftly now, leaping barriers and rushing straight to conclusions. It was Helen's play, he remembered, that had been produced on the night of the tragedy, and it was very probable that she had been present at the _premiere_ performance. Knowing her as he did, he thought it conceivable that she had come into possession of some vital facts bearing on the tragedy. Her inquisitive mind, though untainted by vulgar curiosity, was always dipping into mysteries of one sort or another, and it was possible that on this occasion her natural bent had led her into conflict with Mr. Shei.