“What—what do you want me to do?” he stammered.
The Phantom felt a thrill as he saw that the other was yielding. He had judged him correctly at first glance. Slade, despite his swaggers and blustering, was at heart a coward.
“In the first place, you are to instruct Doctor Tagala to administer the antidote to Miss Hardwick immediately. I will give you exactly sixty seconds. If you have not obeyed by that time, you will be a dead man.”
To emphasize the threat, The Phantom took out his watch. Slade turned a quavering glance on the scientist. He opened his lips to speak, but Doctor Tagala anticipated him.
“I dislike to interrupt such a dramatic scene,” he declared in drawling tones edged with a faint trace of sarcasm, “but it has proceeded far enough. You see, my dear Gray Phantom, that even if Mr. Slade should give me such absurd instructions as you request, I would refuse to comply with them. Furthermore, in order to save you needless waste of energy, let me inform you that the antidote is concealed in a place where I alone know where to find it. We are protected against every conceivable emergency.”
The Phantom felt a presentiment of defeat, but his face, tense and threatening, showed not the slightest sign of it. With a quick movement he turned the pistol from Slade and pointed the muzzle straight at Doctor Tagala’s head.
“All right, doctor,” he said crisply, “in that case let me warn you that I could kill you with just as little scruple as I could Slade.”
But the scientist only folded his arms and smiled. A look of patient amusement crossed his swarthy and evil face.
“That is an excellent example of what you Americans call bluff,” he drawled. “You can’t frighten me, for I know you have not the slightest intention to kill me. If you take my life, the antidote will never be found, and then the charming young lady will die. Mr. Shei anticipated just such a situation as this when he made me the sole custodian of the antidote.”
A trace of disappointment passed over The Phantom’s face; a sense of bafflement took hold of him as he realized that, thanks to Mr. Shei’s ingenious precautions, his first plan had failed disastrously. Still pointing the pistol, he backed slowly toward the door.