The Gray Phantom Part 15

He waited fifteen minutes longer, then adjusted his hat and collar and walked briskly across the street. With the air of one belonging on the premises he entered the hotel and, not thinking it safe to use the elevator, walked toward the stairway in the rear. A few drowsy loungers sat in chairs in the lobby, and the clerk was engaged with a late arrival, so no one noticed him. The long, heavily carpeted hallways were silent and deserted, for the Whipple was catering chiefly to the staid and respectable element that retires early and sleeps soundly.

The Phantom ascended three flights of stairs, then turned down the corridor toward Mr. Fairspeckle's apartment. Reaching the door, he stopped and listened, but no sound came from the interior. After a cautious glance behind him, he took from his pocket a compact case which he always carried when engaged in enterprises like the present, and from its silk-lined grooves extracted a small metallic tool. In a few moments the lock had yielded to his deft manipulation, and he stepped inside.

Again he stopped and listened. The hallway in which he stood was lighted only by a tiny electric bulb in the ceiling, and its glow was so faint that the surrounding objects were scarcely distinguishable.

At first he could not hear the slightest sound, and he was about to proceed when a curious impression caused him to draw in his steps.

Perhaps his imagination was deceiving him, but he thought someone was sobbing, and he had a distinct impression that the sounds were coming from the door at his left.

In an instant he had pressed his ear against the keyhole. Now he could heard the sounds quite clearly, but the soblike effect was gone, and instead they made him think of someone gasping and spluttering.

Mystified, he tried the lock and pushed the door open. The room was dark, and he ran his hand along the wall until he found the electric switch. As the light flashed on, a mutter of amazement fell from his lips.

On a bed at the farther end of the room, with hands and feet bound and a gag firmly adjusted to his mouth, lay Haiuto. The servant, a look of mute pleading in his bulging eyes, was tugging impotently at the ropes around his ankles and wrists.

"What's happened?" sharply inquired The Phantom, but renewed splutterings called his attention to the fact that the gag prevented Haiuto from speaking. He removed the cloth while repeating the question. Haiuto, breathing hard, licked the bruised portion of his mouth.

"Don't know," he finally managed to say. "I sleep. Then noise at door.

Before I can get up, somebody walk in. All is dark, like tomb of Iyeyasu. I get awful crack on head. Then sleep again. Don't know anything else."

With a moan Haiuto sank back against the pillow. A startling suspicion flashed through The Phantom's mind. Without troubling to release the servant's limbs, he ran from the room and opened a door at the farther end of the hall. He had thought it led into Fairspeckle's bedroom, but his sense of direction had become somewhat confused, and he found himself in the library instead. Faintly through the darkness he glimpsed the bright nickel tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the typewriter at which the ex-financier had been at work earlier in the day. He groped his way across the floor, turning in the direction where he thought Fairspeckle's bedroom was. A soft tinkle brought him to a dead stop.

The telephone was ringing! Acting on impulse, he fumbled about in the dark till he found the instrument, then lifted the receiver to his ear and spoke a low response into the transmitter. The answering voice sent a quiver through his being. He recognized it at once, for he had heard it before.

"Mr. Shei speaking," it was saying, and the cold, precise tones were edged with a taunt. "I perceive you have chosen to disregard the warning I gave you a few hours ago. Unless you abandon your plans at once, Miss Hardwick will die. That is absolutely final."

A faint click signified that the connection was broken. For a few moments The Phantom stood rigid, scarcely able to comprehend the import of the message. It had been spoken in tones so emphatic and sinister that he was left in no doubt regarding the speaker's sincerity. But how had the man at the other end of the wire learned that The Phantom was in Fairspeckle's apartment? The telephone call, coming a few minutes after The Phantom's arrival, had been so accurately timed as to indicate that he had been followed to the Whipple. Yet that did not seem quite possible, for he had been particularly alert against that very thing.

Finally he put the telephone down. He tried to stifle the new and poignant misgivings with which the voice had inspired him. He remembered the other message he had received from the person purporting to be Mr. Shei. He had been deceived then, unless his own and Culligore's deductions were all wrong, and he would not be so easily imposed upon again. Doubtless the second message, like the first, was only a clever hoax on Fairspeckle's part. Well, in a few moments he would probably know the truth.

His fears and doubts were only partly quieted when he stepped softly from the room. Time and again there flashed through his mind a suspicion that something was wrong with the theory Culligore had implanted in his mind, but his thoughts in this direction were hazy.

The binding and gagging of Haiuto was a disquieting and perplexing circ.u.mstance that did not seem to fit into the woof of the lieutenant's ideas in regard to Fairspeckle.

The Phantom pa.s.sed through another door, then stopped short and stared in astonishment at the scene that met his eyes.

He was in Mr. Fairspeckle's bedroom. A single electric light, the one he had seen while standing on the sidewalk opposite the hotel, glowed softly in a wall fixture. In a morris chair in the middle of the room, with the folds of a dressing gown hanging loosely over his bony frame, sat W. Rufus Fairspeckle. He sat so still that, if his eyes had been closed, The Phantom would have suspected that he was either asleep or dead. He was bound and gagged in the same manner as Haiuto had been, but it struck The Phantom as vaguely significant that his right arm was bared to the elbow.

As he stepped closer, he became oddly impressed by the strange expression in the old man's eyes. They looked straight ahead in a fixed, unseeing way, and there was a gleam of merriment in their dim depths that clashed sharply with the pallor on the shrunken cheeks. It seemed as though Fairspeckle's soul was indulging in fancies of which his physical self was unaware, and the whole effect impressed The Phantom as uncanny.

He leaned forward and examined the exposed arm. Just below the muscles of the elbow, and directly over one of the smaller veins, was a puncture and a congealed drop of blood. The puncture was so small that it might have been inflicted with a needle p.r.i.c.k. In a roundabout way The Phantom's mind went back to the scene in the Thelma Theater as it had been pictured in the newspapers, and with an inward start he remembered that just such a puncture had been found on the right arm of Virginia Darrow.

Though as yet he could not grasp the meaning of it, the coincidence acted as an electric shock on his nerves. He tore away the gag from the old man's lips and vigorously shook his arm.

"What's the matter?" he inquired.

The red eyelids quivered a little. The look of hilarity flickering in the depths of the orbs grew a trifle more p.r.o.nounced. It was almost grewsome, but The Phantom's sense of perplexity was stronger than his repugnance.

"Can't you speak?" he asked sharply. "What is the meaning of this?"

Fairspeckle's chest heaved feebly. The motion was accompanied by a plucking movement of the fingers. The hands and feet strained impotently against the fettering cords. Then the lips fluttered, exposing a row of uneven teeth, and in the next instant a shiver ran down The Phantom's spine.

Through the fluttering lips came a laugh such as he had never before heard. It sounded hollow and cracked and as unreal as if produced by a mechanical contrivance. The Phantom had an uncanny sensation that the dead, if they were capable of producing sounds, might laugh just like that. Then he remembered the vivid descriptions he had read of the mocking laughter that had come from Virginia Darrow's dying lips, and a hazy suspicion entered his mind. He took a jack-knife from his pocket and swiftly slashed the cords around Fairspeckle's arms and legs.

Although released from his bonds, the man in the chair scarcely moved.

The feet sc.r.a.ped gently against the floor, and the arms fell limply to his sides. Weird s.n.a.t.c.hes of laughter were still trickling through his lips, but the expression of insane merriment in his eyes was slowly yielding to a look of returning reason.

The Phantom looked helplessly about him, and suddenly his eyes fell on a sheet of paper lying at the old man's feet. Mechanically he picked it up and glanced at the typewritten lines. From the smudged and indistinct type he was vaguely aware that he was gazing at a carbon copy. A word here and there attracted his attention, and presently he was reading the communication from the beginning. It read:

Dear Friend: The poison which has been injected into your veins to-night has been accurately adjusted to produce death within seven days. You will have lucid intervals, but you will be gradually growing weaker and weaker. Consult as many high-priced specialists as you wish, and if they can help you, you are to be congratulated.

There is only one antidote, and that is the secret of a confederate of mine. It will be supplied you for a consideration. The exact terms will be communicated to you in a few days. By that time you will probably have been convinced that your life is absolutely in my hands.

If misery loves company, I trust you will find consolation in the fact that six others are in precisely the same predicament as yourself.

Mr. Shei.

The sheet dropped from The Phantom's fingers. If what he had just read seemed grotesque and absurd, a glance at the man in the chair conferred a semblance of hideous reality upon it. Mr. Shei had struck the threatened blow, and he had struck sooner than expected.

Fairspeckle's laughter had ceased and a look of reason was coming into his waxen features. The expression of ribald mockery had left his eyes, and now they were fixed on The Phantom's face in a dull, suspicious stare. With a start The Phantom awoke to a realization of his predicament. If he were caught in Fairspeckle's apartment, the police and the public would be firmly convinced of what they already suspected--that Mr. Shei and The Phantom were one. Not even Culligore's keen mind and generous impulses would suffice to save him from arrest and imprisonment. And there was Helen--the thought gave him a spinal chill. Perhaps at this very moment she was confronted by some terrifying peril. And if he were arrested, then his last chance of helping her would be gone.

His mind made up, The Phantom ran to the telephone in the adjoining room. He called a number, and presently he was answered by an operator at police headquarters. His inquiry for Culligore elicited the information that the lieutenant was out and would probably not return until morning. The Phantom hesitated for a moment, then spoke hurriedly into the transmitter:

"This is important. Send a doctor and a couple of detectives at once to the Whipple Hotel, suite 36. You will find something very interesting. That's all."

With that he hung up, and a few moments later he had left the apartment and was briskly walking down the stairs.

CHAPTER XIII

A MESSAGE FROM MR. SHEI

The city, consuming the news of Mr. Shei's amazing coup along with its coffee and toast the following morning, reacted to the sensation much as a child might react to the sight of a fabled monster. The whole affair seemed monstrous, unbelievable--and yet the facts could not be reasoned away. Seven of the city's wealthiest men had been inoculated with a malady of such a mysterious nature that the most celebrated physicians in New York City had admitted they were unable to diagnose it.

An air of bafflement and suspense hung over the city. Mr. Shei's name was on every tongue, and the blow he had struck was discussed by groups that gathered on street corners, in cafes, and in public squares. Among the seven victims were several of the most important capitalists in the country, so the effect of Mr. Shei's astounding maneuver was an a.s.sault on the financial nerve center of the nation.

The name that, next to Mr. Shei's, was most often spoken in the street corner discussions, was that of The Gray Phantom. The spectacular nature of the coup, as well as the daring and resourcefulness exhibited by its perpetrator, seemed ample proof that The Gray Phantom had returned to his old ways under the _nom de guerre_ of Mr. Shei. No one else, it was argued, could have engineered an achievement of such magnitude without bungling and falling into the clutches of the police. Already wagers were being placed on The Phantom's ability to evade capture until he should have consummated his plans.

At ten o'clock, just as newsboys were raucously crying the latest extras, a taxicab stopped before a dingy establishment in a squalid and disreputable section of the lower East Side. The Gray Phantom alighted, hurriedly tossed the driver a bill, then disappeared in a bas.e.m.e.nt entrance. The door was opened by a surly-looking man wearing a soiled ap.r.o.n, and The Phantom took a seat at one of the tables in the rear. He looked nervously at his watch. Lieutenant Culligore, whom he had reached by telephone at police headquarters, had promised to meet him at ten sharp, and he had suggested Lefty Joe's place as a reasonably safe rendezvous.

The Phantom cast a slanting glance at the rough-looking customers scattered about the place, and just then the door opened and Culligore walked in and took a seat beside him.

"Any luck?" inquired the lieutenant, though the question seemed superfluous in view of The Phantom's dejected appearance.

"None. That's why I wanted a talk with you. How is Fairspeckle?"

The lieutenant, a little bleary-eyed and with a trace of diffidence in his manners, looked queerly at the questioner. "Why single out Fairspeckle? He's in the same boat with the six others. Neither better nor worse, though the doctors say his age and poor health will weigh against him."

"You still think that Fairspeckle is Mr. Shei?"