The house was very silent. No one had entered the room since Slade’s departure, and she had spent the intervening hours in a state of musing detachment. Her thoughts and fancies flitted about in circles, and she had a curious impression that only her mind was functioning and that her emotions were numb. The slanting rays of the sun glimmered pleasantly on the furniture and she wondered abstractedly whether she should ever see the sunlight of another day. She glanced down at her dress, trimmed with delicate touches of red, and the thought struck her that perhaps she was wearing it for the last time. It was odd, she mused, that the prospect held no terror for her, and that her only feeling was a sense of dull, aching void.
Voices in the hall outside started her out of her reverie. The Gray Phantom’s name, spoken in excited tones, sent an emotional quiver through her being and awoke her from her lethargy. Sensations, gentle and stimulating ones, stirred in the depths of her consciousness.
“The Gray Phantom,” she whispered, looking pensively at the door. He had inspired her with emotions that she had never been quite able to understand. At times they had terrified her by their strangeness and power, for she had felt as if they were rousing new impulses within her and sweeping her along toward an unknown destiny. His career, bright and swift as the flash of a meteor, had intrigued her imagination even while she felt awed and a little frightened at the stories she heard about him. Of late he had tried to throw off the shackles of the past and start a new life, and she had watched his efforts with a strange and bewildering sense of sponsorship.
The voices in the hall had ceased now, but the name that had been spoken was still echoing in her ears and vibrating against hidden cords in her consciousness. Of a sudden the prospect of death, which a few minutes before she had contemplated without fear, filled her with dread and poignant regrets. The mere mention of a name had inspired in her a vehement desire to live.
She tiptoed to the door. It did not surprise her that Slade had left it unlocked. The picket fence, the ferocious Cæsar, and the attendants made such a precaution unnecessary. She stepped out in the hall, then looked hesitantly about her, but she could see nothing of the men whose voices she had heard a few moments ago. At the end of the hall a door stood open, and she moved silently in that direction. Entering, she ran her eyes over long white benches on which were bottles, jars, and queer-looking apparatus. There was a reek of chemicals in the air, and she guessed it was a laboratory of some sort. It all seemed a little strange to her, but in the next moment her attention was engaged by voices coming through a partly open door at one side of the large room.
“Oh, it’s serious enough,” one of them was saying, and she instantly knew that the speaker was Slade. “The Gray Phantom is the only man alive who can queer Mr. Shei’s game.”
The words were spoken in a tone of reluctant respect that gave Helen a thrill. Coming from an enemy, it was a striking tribute to The Phantom’s genius and power.
“Ah, The Gray Phantom! I have heard the name. One of your fascinating master criminals, is he not?” The second man spoke with the exaggerated precision that characterizes the educated foreigner. “But why does The Gray Phantom interfere in the affairs of Mr. Shei?”
Slade chuckled grimly. “That’s hard to tell, Doctor Tagala. Perhaps for a number of reasons. Maybe he dislikes to see another man excel him at his own game. There’s such a thing as professional jealousy even among crooks, you know. All we know for certain is that he arrived in New York the day Mr. Shei’s notices were posted. One of our men saw him, and he was watched almost from the moment of his arrival. His actions indicated plainly that he had gone on the warpath against Mr. Shei. Confound the infernal meddler!”
“But Mr. Shei is a resourceful man,” observed Doctor Tagala. “He surely can devise some means whereby this impudent fellow may be restrained.”