Miss Dale excused herself and entered an adjoining room, and he was left alone for a few minutes. He strained his ears and listened. From faint sounds coming through the closed door he imagined she was at the telephone. The cold gleam in her eyes as he had helped her from the car was still haunting him, and he wondered what she had meant when she promised that from Helen’s own lips should he learn the nature of her predicament.
The frigid, insinuating smile was still on her lips when she returned to the room in which she had left him.
“Your curiosity shall be gratified in a few moments,” she announced, seating herself and regarding him with a cold, impersonal gaze. There was an air of quiet self-reliance and efficiency about her that enabled him to understand how she could be a valuable assistant to Mr. Shei. Neither spoke, and presently the silence was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone in the other room.
“Answer, please,” she said lightly, the faintest trace of malignant satisfaction in her tones. “I think Miss Hardwick is on the wire.”
Puzzled and tormented by vague suspicions, The Phantom passed to the telephone. The woman followed a short distance behind.
“Hello,” he said tensely.
He started violently as he recognized the answering voice. He would have known it among a million voices despite the hysterical catch and the staccato accents that tended to disguise it. It spoke a few jumbled and disconnected phrases, then broke into a stream of loud and wild laughing in which he detected the same note of maniacal glee that had characterized the ghastly laughter of W. Rufus Fairspeckle.
[CHAPTER XIV—THE ELUSIVE MR. SHEI]
Spasmodically The Gray Phantom pressed the receiver closer to his ear. The laughter at the other end of the wire rose to a shrill crescendo, then ended abruptly in a harsh and discordant twang.
“Helen!” shouted The Phantom.