Starr hung up the receiver just as the little box disappeared into Culligore’s vest pocket.
“I don’t understand it,” said the manager frettingly. “Someone was speaking. It was a man’s voice, but I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. It is very mysterious.” He smiled faintly. “It’s beginning to look as though I was mistaken and there was someone else in the building besides you and me.”
“It certainly looks queer,” admitted Culligore. “I searched everywhere, but we might as well go over the ground again.”
Starr acquiesced readily, and Culligore saw to it that the manager preceded him out of the room. He noticed with gratification that the other’s fingers closed firmly around the knob as he opened the door, and he knew that Starr was too preoccupied to take heed of the faint smear left on his hand from contact with the greased metal. He chuckled inwardly as he followed the manager down the stairs and through the offices in front of the building. After a brief and somewhat perfunctory search, they entered the auditorium.
“Shall I switch on the lights?” whispered Starr, walking beside the detective.
“I wouldn’t. If there’s a prowler around the place, we don’t want to warn him. My electric flash will do.”
For a time they conducted the search in silence, the detective cautiously darting the electric gleam over floor and walls and into dark corners. Finally he paused before a niche in the wall and pointed to an aperture behind the marble shelf that spanned the opening.
“Do you know,” he whispered, “that the other day, while I was talking with The Gray Phantom, I had a funny feeling someone was hiding back there and listening to our conversation? Who do you suppose it could have been?”
There was no response. Culligore had been peering into the recess behind the marble ledge. Now he looked up quickly, but Starr was gone—and the twitching of the detective’s lips signified that the manager’s sudden disappearance did not surprise him greatly. In an instant he was amazingly alert. Jerking his electric flash hither and thither, he moved quickly back and forth within the narrow space where he had last seen the manager, sweeping the surrounding objects with his electric gleam and examining the surfaces of chairs, pillars, walls, and decorative articles.
Presently he brought up in front of one of the larger pillars supporting the balcony. He had previously noticed its huge dimensions, and now he gauged them again with a quickly calculating eye. It was there The Gray Phantom had stood when the mysterious shot was fired the other day, and Helen Hardwick had been leaning against the same pillar when the curious individual with the repulsive features glided past her.