“They must have got somebody else to do it after I refused,” he muttered, slowly getting a grip on himself. “Wish I had a drink.”
The Phantom was hardly listening. His knitted brows told that his mind was struggling with a problem.
“Know an officer named Pinto?” he asked abruptly.
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
The Phantom gave a brief summary of his adventures since arriving in the city. Granger listened attentively, his eyes expressing a mingling of astonishment and admiration. They opened wide as the narrator described the scene in the storeroom and Pinto’s peculiar behavior, and he chuckled appreciatively at the account of the impostor’s visit to the Sphere office.
“That’s the Phantom all over!” he remarked when the story was finished. “It’s the nerviest thing I ever heard of. But what you have told me only puts a few extra kinks in the mystery.”
The Phantom nodded thoughtfully. “How well do you know Miss Hardwick?”
“Scarcely at all. I have never met her. She called me up at the Sphere office the day after the murder and asked me a lot of questions. I referred her to Doctor Bimble.”
“So she told me.”
“Bimble is a nut, but he has done several brilliant things along lines of criminology. I was busy the day Miss Hardwick called me up, and I got a little jolt when she told me her name. The thing was natural enough, of course, but it seemed a bit weird to be talking to the person I had been asked to kidnap. Well, I thought the easiest way to dispose of her was to suggest that she see Bimble.”