“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.
“All right, then,” he said, taking her silence for assent. “You couldn’t have had more than one reason for keeping mum last night, and that reason was that you wanted to shield somebody. There is only one man on earth you could have wanted to shield, and that man is The Gray Phantom.”
“No!” she cried. “You’re mistaken! I wasn’t——”
“Easy now.” All at once his tone changed. “There’s such a thing as protesting too much, you know. I don’t take much stock in what I read in the Sunday papers, but there’s a lot of talk going the rounds about a romance between you and The Gray Phantom. Most of it is pipe dreams, I guess. Anyhow, it’s nobody’s business, and it makes no difference. All I’ll say is that if I was The Gray Phantom and had a girl like you fighting for me, I’d be willing to go through hell-fire for her every day in the week. You’re loyal clean through and——”
“But you’re wrong!” she interrupted emphatically. His words filled her with a great fear, but there was a kind of rough tenderness in his voice that warmed her.
“I knew you’d say that, but you have to hear me through. I take off my hat to The Gray Phantom. He always played the game according to the code, even when he cut those fancy didos that put gray hairs in almost every head on the force. I shouldn’t say it, but it goes just the same. The Phantom’s been lying low now for some time. Nobody seems to know where he is. He’s shown himself only twice, and each time he came out in a good cause. They say he’s going it straight, and it’s rumored that a certain young lady has had a lot to do with his turning over a new leaf.”
He paused, and for a moment his eyes rested on her averted face.