The Phantom’s face turned a shade whiter. For a moment he was dazed by the realization that Helen was undergoing the same excruciating ordeal to which he himself had been subjected. The ghostly spectacle had caused even his strong nerves to writhe and he shuddered at thought of the effect it must have on her more delicate organism.
“I gave you a little taste of it just to enable you to appreciate Miss Hardwick’s predicament,” continued the doctor in matter-of-fact tones. “The arrangement is simplicity itself. My excellent Jerome fixed it up. The scenic effects are so simple that a child could have handled them. Yet you will admit, I think, that they serve their purpose. I once knew a person—not a weakling, either—who went mad under similar pressure. It is strange how——”
Another shriek, not so loud as the first, but long-drawn and hoarse, interrupted him. He paused for a moment, eyeing the Phantom with a level glance while the scream lasted, then fell to polishing his lenses.
“As I was about to remark,” he went on, “it is strange how darkness and a touch of the grewsome affect one’s mind. The soul seems to shrink from such things. The reason, I think, must be atavistic. The poor wretch I was telling you about, the one who lost his mind——”
“Stop it!” cried the Phantom. His voice was husky. “Get her out of that room before she goes mad!”
Doctor Bimble seemed suddenly interested. “Do I understand that you are willing to listen to reason? Are you ready to reconsider the suggestion I made a while ago and which you so grandiloquently rejected? In other words, are you willing to tell me where your treasures are hidden?”
“Yes—anything! I’ll do whatever you ask. Only stop that infernal hocus-pocus at once!”
“Oh, very well.” There was a smile of keen gratification on Bimble’s lips as he got up and left the room.
The Phantom, every limb shaking, stared at the door through which he had passed. Suddenly his blood-streaked eyes grew wide. He remembered something that was almost as terrifying as the shrieks he had just heard. His thoughts went back to the moment when he had awakened in the dark room, and he recalled the snatches of conversation he had overheard.
One of the two speakers, he was now almost certain, had been Doctor Bimble. The voice had sounded familiar, and he would probably have recognized it but for the dazed condition he was in. One of the doctor’s sentences had burned itself into the Phantom’s brain: