The Gray Phantom Part 4

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 antic.i.p.ated it, and last night's occurrence had given her weightier things to think of. As she pa.s.sed through the foyer, a policeman nodded stolidly and in a way that told her she was expected. She pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 role 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 b.u.mp 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 ident.i.ty?"

"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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sume 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 you _didn't_ say."

"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 att.i.tude 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.