The face was Helen Hardwick’s.
CHAPTER XXV—IN A CIRCLE OF LIGHT
She looked as though her whole being had frozen into rigidity, and the glacial stare of her eyes sent a chill through the Phantom’s veins. In a moment he was on the running board, wrenching the door open. He did not notice that the car gathered speed just as he tumbled in.
“Helen!” he cried, throwing himself into the seat beside her. “What’s the matter? What has happened? Can’t you speak?”
Her body swayed slightly with the motions of the car, but otherwise she did not stir. She sat erect and immobile, with her face turned stonily to the window, as if neither hearing nor seeing. He took one of her hands. It was cold, clammy, and limp. A groan broke from his lips.
Then, from a corner of the car, two shadows leaped upon him with a suddenness that dazed him. The pistol was still in his hand, but a stinging blow over the knuckles made him drop it to the floor. Helen Hardwick’s face, terribly still, held him under a spell while his arms were twisted behind him and his wrists secured with a stout cord that bit into his flesh. Not until his legs had also been manacled did a glimmering of the truth force itself through his numbed senses; but even then he could think of nothing but the woman at his side.
“Is she—dead?” he asked.
Someone laughed. “Oh, no! She will come out of it presently. We needed a decoy, and she refused to accommodate us, so we gave her a hypodermic injection. It worked fine.”
He braced his muscles as a vivid realization of what had happened flashed upon him, but the cords about his wrists and ankles held his limbs. Again he had walked into a trap, but for once he did not blame himself for his lack of caution. With eyes open he would have rushed into a thousand traps if Helen Hardwick was the bait. He glanced out of the window, noticing that the car was gliding swiftly through dark and deserted streets.
A hand reached out and pulled down the blind, cutting off the view. The car was making numerous turns, and he soon lost all sense of direction. The man’s explanation of Helen Hardwick’s condition had removed a crushing weight of horror from his mind, and once more his head was functioning clearly.