Читать книгу The Gray Phantom's Return - Herman Landon - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Dusk was falling, and the little room was almost dark. The sudden attack, all the more surprising because of Pinto’s previous air of stolidity, had left the Phantom a trifle dazed, but in a twinkling he realized the full seriousness of his dilemma. The door had no sooner slammed than he was on his feet, regaining his breath and flexing his muscles for action.

With a spring agile as a panther’s he threw himself against the door. Once it had succumbed to the superior weight of Patrolman Pinto’s body, but the Phantom’s leaner and nimbler figure was no match for its solid resistance. After thrice hurling himself against the obstruction, he saw that he was only wasting time and strength.

Hurriedly he switched on the light. From his pocket he took a box containing an assortment of small tools which on several occasions had stood him in good stead. In vain he tried to manipulate the lock, finding that it was too solidly imbedded in the wood. Next he tried the hinges, but the flaps were fastened on the other side of the door and therefore inaccessible. He cudgeled his wits, but to no avail; evidently the door was an impassable barrier. It seemed by far the most substantial part of the room, suggesting that Gage might have had it specially constructed as a protection against burglars.

He sprang to the window, then recalled that he had already ascertained that it was too narrow to permit him to crawl through. Another precaution of the wily Sylvanus Gage, he grimly reflected. His eyes, quick and crafty, darted over floor, ceiling, and walls, but nowhere could he see a sign of a movable panel or a hidden passage, and he remembered Mrs. Trippe’s statement that headquarters detectives had spent half a day searching for a secret exit. Though he worked his wits at furious speed, the situation baffled his ingenuity.

The Phantom perceived he was trapped. The amazing luck that had attended him in the past had made him reckless and indiscreet, and now it seemed to have deserted him like a fickle charmer. He supposed that Pinto, too shrewd to attempt to deal single-handed with such a slippery and dangerous adversary as the Gray Phantom, was already in communication with headquarters, summoning reënforcements. In a few minutes he would be hemmed in on all sides and pounced upon by overwhelming numbers of policemen, and in a little while the newspapers would shriek the sensation that at last the Gray Phantom had been captured.

It surprised him that he could view the end of his career with philosophical calm, unaffected by vain regrets. He had always suspected that some day an overbold play on his part would result in his undoing, and he had trained himself to look upon his ultimate defeat with the indifference of a cynic and fatalist, but he had never guessed that the crisis would come like this. He smiled faintly as it dawned on him that the disaster which now stared him in the face was the direct result of his determination to vindicate himself in the eyes of a woman. He had played for high stakes in the past, but Helen Hardwick’s faith in him was the highest of them all.

His smile faded as quickly as it had come. There was a sting in the realization that his boldest and biggest game was foredoomed to failure. Only a few more minutes of liberty remained, and after that all chance of exculpating himself would be gone. Officer Pinto, having become famous of a sudden as the Gray Phantom’s captor, would now, more than ever before, be beyond suspicion, and he could be depended upon to make the most of his advantage. The Phantom, whose hands had never been sullied by contact with blood, would be an object of horror and loathing as the perpetrator of a vile and sordid murder. Helen Hardwick, like all the rest, would shudder at mention of his name.

The dismal thoughts went like flashes through his mind. Only a few minutes had passed since the door slammed. The thought of Helen Hardwick caused a sudden stiffening of his figure and imbued him with a fierce desire for freedom. He refused to believe that his star had set and that this was the end. Many a time he had wriggled out of corners seemingly as tight and unescapable as the present one, chuckling at the discomfiture of the police and the bedevilment of his foes. Why could he not achieve another of the astounding feats that had made his name famous?

He spurred his wits to furious effort, repeatedly telling himself that somewhere there must be a way out. It was hard to believe that a man like Sylvanus Gage, living in constant danger of a surprise visit by the police, had not provided himself with an emergency exit. Despite the failure of the detectives to find it, there must be a concealed door or secret passage somewhere, though without doubt it was hidden in a way worthy of Gage’s foxlike cunning.

He ran to the door and shot the bolt. The police would be forced to break their way in, and this would give him a few moments’ respite. Again, as several times before in the last few minutes, his eyes strayed to the window. Though he knew it was far too narrow to afford a means of escape, it kept attracting his gaze and tantalizing his imagination. Deciding to make a second attempt, he hastened across the floor, pushed up the lower sash, and edged his shoulder into the opening. Writhe and wriggle as he might, he could not squeeze through. Even a man of Gage’s scrawny build would have become wedged in the frame had he attempted it.

Outside the house a gong clanged, signaling the arrival of the police patrol. From the front came sharp commands and excited voices. Already, the Phantom guessed, a cordon was being thrown around the block, ensnaring him like a fish in a net. Precious moments passed, and still he was unable to take his eyes from the window. A vague and unaccountable instinct told him that his only hope of safety lay in that direction.

He raised the shade a little and looked out upon a court disfigured by ramshackle sheds and heaps of refuse. Several temporary hiding places awaited him out there, if he could only get through the window. Even an extra inch or two added to its width would enable him to wriggle out of the trap. But how——

The answer came to him with sudden, blinding force. Yet it was simple and obvious enough; in fact, the only reason he had not thought of it before was that his mind had been searching for something more intricate and remote. It had not occurred to him that the extra inch or two that he needed could be provided by the simple expedient of dislodging the window frame.

Already his fingers were tearing and tugging at the woodwork. He noticed that the casements were thick, so that the removal of the frame would give him considerable additional space, yet he had been at work only a few moments when he discovered that his plan was far more difficult of execution than he had expected. The frame, at first glance, ill-fitting and insecurely fastened, resisted all his efforts. His nails were torn and there were bleeding scratches on his fingers. He looked about him for something that he could use as a lever.

Someone was trying the lock, then came a loud pounding on the door.

“Open!” commanded a voice.

The Phantom, failing to find any implement that would serve his purpose, inserted his fingers beneath the sill and tugged with all his strength.

“Come and get me!” was the taunt he flung back over his shoulder. Then he pulled again, but the sill did not yield. He straightened his body and attacked the perpendicular frame to the right but again he encountered nothing but solid resistance.

“The game’s up, Phantom,” said the voice outside the door. “Might as well give in. If you don’t we’ll bust the door.”

The Phantom worked with frantic strength. His knuckles were bruised, his muscles ached, and sweat poured from his forehead.

“I’ll drill a hole through the first man who enters this room,” he cried loudly, hoping that the threat would cause the men outside to hesitate for a few moments longer before battering down the door. Then, placing his feet on the sill, he centered his efforts on the horizontal bar at the top.

A quick glance through the window revealed a broad-shouldered man in uniform standing with his back to a shed. Evidently the cordon was tightening. Even if he succeeded in getting through the window, he would have to fight his way through a human barrier. The outlook was almost hopeless, but he persisted with the tenacity that comes of despair. He sprang from the sill, turned the electric light switch, plunging the room into darkness and hiding his movements from the eyes of the man outside, then leaped back to his former position and tugged frenziedly at the horizontal piece.

Of a sudden his hand slipped and a metallic protuberance scratched his wrist. With habitual attention to detail, he wound his handkerchief around the injured surface, stopping the flow of blood. If by a miracle he should succeed in getting out, he did not care to leave behind any clews to his movements. Another sharp glance through the window satisfied him that the man at the shed was not looking in his direction. Then he ran his fingers along the horizontal frame, found the object that had wounded him, and discovered that it was a nail.

The hubbub outside the door had ceased momentarily. Suddenly there came a loud crash, as if a heavy body had dashed against the door. The Phantom, a suspicion awakening amid the jumble of his racing thoughts, fingered the nail, twisting it hither and thither. It occurred to him in a twinkling that it was an odd place for a nail, since it could serve no apparent purpose. In a calmer moment he would have thought nothing of it, but his mind was keyed to that tremendous pitch where minor details are magnified.

Another crash sounded, accompanied by an ominous squeaking of cracking timber. He bent the nail to one side, noticing that its resistance to pressure was elastic, differing from the inert feel of objects firmly imbedded in solid wood. An inspiration came to him out of the stress of the moment. He twisted the nail in various directions, at the same time tugging energetically at a corner of the frame.

Once more a smashing force was hurled against the door, followed by a portentous, splintering crack. Quivering with suspense, his mind fixed with desperate intentness on a dim, tantalizing hope, the Phantom continued to bend and twist the nail at all possible angles. He knew that at any moment the door was likely to collapse, and then——

He uttered a hoarse cry of elation. Of a sudden, as he bent the nail in a new direction, it gave a quick rebound, and in the same instant the frame yielded to his steady pull, as if swinging on a hinge, revealing an opening in the side of the uncommonly massive wall. For a moment his discovery dazed him, then a terrific crash at the door caused him to pull himself together, and in a moment he had squeezed his figure into the aperture.

He drew a long breath and wiped the blinding, smarting perspiration from his face. Thanks to an accidental scratch on the wrist, he had discovered Sylvanus Gage’s emergency exit. And none too soon, for already, with a splitting crash, the door had collapsed under the repeated onslaughts of the men outside, and several shadowy forms were bursting headlong into the room.

The Phantom, wedged in the narrow opening, seized the side of the revolving frame and drew it to. A little click signified that a spring had caught it and was holding it in place. Excited voices, muffled by the intervening obstruction, reached his ears. He smiled as he pictured the consternation of the detectives upon discovering that once more the Gray Phantom had lived up to his name and achieved another of the amazing escapes that had made him feared and secretly admired by the keenest sleuths in the country.

He had no fear that the police would follow him, for his discovery of the secret exit had been partly accidental and partly due to the accelerated nimbleness of mind that comes to one laboring under tremendous pressure. To the police the nail on the top of the window frame would be nothing but a nail. It is the hunted, not the hunter, whose mind clutches at straws, and they would never guess that the nail was a lever in disguise. The Phantom, as he contemplated the ingenious arrangement, found his respect for the dead man’s inventiveness rising several notches.

From the other side of the wall came loud curses, mingling with dazed exclamations, baffled shouts and expressions of incredulity. With a laugh at the discomfiture of his pursuers, who but a few moments ago had thought him inextricably trapped, the Phantom moved a little farther into the opening. It appeared to be slanting slowly into the ground, and it was so narrow that each wriggling and writhing movement bruised some portion of his body. Inch by inch he worked his way downward, wondering whither the passage might lead. Now the voices in the room were almost beyond earshot, and he could hear nothing but a low, confused din.

Presently he felt solid ground at his feet, and at this point the passage turned in a horizontal direction. There was a slight current of dank air in the tunnel, suggesting that its opposite terminus might be a cellar or other subterranean compartment. Limbs aching, he moved forward, with slow twists and coilings of the body. He estimated that he had already covered half a dozen yards, and he wondered how much farther the passage might reach. One thing puzzled him as he writhed onward. Why had Gage not made use of the secret exit on the night of the murder? Was it, perhaps, because the murderer had come upon him so suddenly that he had not had time to reach the hidden opening?

He dismissed the question as too speculative. A few more twists and jerks, and he found himself in an open space where he could stand upright and move about freely. For a few moments he fumbled around in the inky darkness, finally encountering a stairway. He ascended as quietly as he could, taking pains that the squeakings of the decaying stairs should not disturb the occupants above. Reaching the top, he listened intently while his hand searched for a doorknob. Slowly and with infinite caution he pushed the door open. Again he stopped and listened. The room was dark and still, and he could distinguish no objects, yet his alert mind sensed a presence, and he felt a pair of sharp eyes gazing at him through the shadows.

Then, out of the gloom and silence came a voice:

“Don’t move!”

The words were a bit theatrical, but the voice caused him to start sharply. A few paces ahead of him he saw a blurry shape. His hand darted to his hip pocket; then he remembered that he had left his pistol in the grip at his hotel, for when he started out he had not expected that his enterprise would so soon take a critical turn.

“Hold up your hands,” commanded the voice, and again an odd quiver shot through the Phantom.

Nonchalantly he found his case and thrust a cigarette between his lips. Then he struck a match, advanced a few paces, gazed sharply ahead as the fluttering flame illuminated the scene, and came to a dead stop.

He was looking straight into the muzzle of a pistol, and directly behind the bluishly gleaming barrel he saw the face of Helen Hardwick.