“Oh, you mean Miss Hardwick?” There was an odd tension in The Phantom’s tones.
“That’s who I mean. She’s easy on the eyes and all that, but she’s sure raised the devil with you. The old kind of life was good enough for you till she bobbed up. It was then you started all this mushy talk about going straight and changing your ways. I know because I’ve been watching you.”
The Phantom was strangely silent. Twice he crossed the floor, then paused before the window and looked out into the shadowy landscape. There was a pensive gleam in his eyes, as if Wade’s speech had turned his thoughts into new channels. Suddenly he laughed, and the new expression that came into his face suggested that he had seen an all-revealing flash.
“I am much obliged to you for that bit of psychoanalysis,” he told the fat man. “You’re right, Wade—absolutely right. I was a fool not to see it before.”
“Not to see what?”
A faint smile flickered across The Phantom’s face. “That Miss Hardwick has had a great deal to do with my determination to change my ways. I hadn’t realized it until you spoke just now. I had been inclined to give myself all the credit. Thanks to your somewhat crude but accurate statement of the case, I can see now that all of it belongs to her.”
Wade’s round little eyes, imbedded in layers of flesh, stared uncomprehendingly at The Phantom. “I don’t get you at all, boss.”
“Then don’t try. Your heart is in the right place, Wade, but you lack imagination and there are some things that you and I can’t view from the same angle. Miss Hardwick’s influence in my life is one of them. Sorry to disappoint an old pal, but my determination to stay on the straight and narrow path is stronger than ever.”
Wade made a wry face. “You’ll suit yourself, of course, but it might interest you to know that another man is stealing your thunder while you’re dancing to the piping of a skirt.” He opened one of the newspapers he had placed on the table and pointed to a black-face caption. The Phantom, looking over his massive shoulders, read:
MR. SHEI’S NAME ON DYING LIPS