Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned at random in the hall. A low, drawling chuckle, uttered in a voice he recognized as Starr’s, drew his attention to one of the doors near the end of the corridor. He approached cautiously and looked in.
What he saw assured him that he had arrived in time. He took in the scene with a single glance. A powerful man, one of those he had fought in the hall below, was seated on the edge of the cot, holding Helen’s weakly resisting hand in his huge paws. In the center of the room, with a smile of gratification on his lips, stood Vincent Starr, and The Phantom saw that he was transferring the contents of the bottle to the syringe. Evidently it was a slow and tedious task.
The Phantom waited until Starr had finished. He flexed his muscles, then lunged forward. Before either of the two men could move, the handle of his pistol crashed down on the head of the individual seated on the cot. With a queer, fragmentary squeal, he slid from his seat and lay prone on the floor. In an instant The Phantom had whirled on Starr, who seemed completely taken back by the sudden interruption, and jerked the syringe and the empty bottle from his hands. Then, with all the strength he could muster, he crashed his fist into Starr’s jaw and sent him spinning to the floor. Thrusting the empty bottle into his pocket and gingerly handling the syringe, he fled from the room.
Despite his pain and weakness, he smiled as he sped on. Once more The Gray Phantom’s quick mind and elastic energies were about to reverse a seemingly hopeless situation. But the danger was not yet past, and the hardest task was still to come. Starr, only partly stunned, would soon recover his wits, and then, with a hue and a cry, the pursuit would start. The thought made The Phantom quicken his pace as he ran toward the entrance of the hidden chamber.
A din and clamor sounded in the distance as he reached the point where a sliding panel in the wall afforded egress to the spiral stairway. Quickly closing the opening behind him, he ran down the steps. The pursuers, he knew, would never be able to locate the entrance, and for the present he was safe. He stepped inside the room and switched on the light, then placed his automatic, the syringe, and the empty bottle on the table.
Doctor Tagala was lying on the bed, just as The Phantom had left him. As the light went on, he gave a hoarse gasp of amazement and tried desperately to rise.
“Didn’t expect to see me so soon again—eh, doctor?” The Phantom removed his coat and proceeded to clean and bandage his wound as well as he could. “You tricked me very neatly, I’ll admit, but the ruse didn’t quite succeed. Even if it had, don’t you realize that you would have been left here to starve to death?”
The doctor continued to stare at The Phantom, who rather enjoyed his stupefaction. He glanced at the bed from time to time while he took several articles from a cupboard and dressed his wound. When he had finished, Tagala began to strain uneasily at the cords fettering his hands and feet.
“Useless exertion, doctor,” advised The Phantom. He walked to the bed and regarded the physician with a frown. Then he quickly took the syringe from the table and placed a knee on Tagala’s chest. Tagala squirmed and heaved, but to no avail. With his left hand The Phantom took one of the scientist’s arms and pressed it firmly downward.
“Steady now, doctor. This is only a dose of your own medicine, you know. You seemed quite proud of it when you told me how you discovered it.” The Phantom took the syringe in his right hand, between thumb and third finger, and pricked the doctor’s flesh with the needlelike point. “I’m a rank amateur at this, but I’ll try to manage. I believe the proper way is to inject the stuff into a vein, but that’s a ticklish job, and I won’t attempt it. This method is a little slower, but just as effective.”