“If Pinto didn’t do it,” persisted the doctor suavely, “who do you suppose did?”
The Phantom could not tell why, but the question gave him a mental jolt. In the past few hours his concern for Helen had claimed all his thoughts, and before that he had been so firmly convinced of Pinto’s guilt that there had been no room in his mind for other suspicions. The possibility that someone other than the policeman might be involved had not occurred to him.
He looked up and found the doctor’s soft eyes searching his face with an odd intensity. Bimble seemed intent on ascertaining what deductions his prisoner would make from Pinto’s statement, and apparently this had been the only reason for his call.
“My question seems to have stumped you,” he observed.
The Phantom shrugged his shoulders. “With Pinto eliminated, I’m entirely at sea. In view of the bolted door and the size of the window, I don’t see how anyone else could have murdered Gage, unless——” He checked himself abruptly, and of a sudden he saw a great light. In the next instant a smile masked his agitation. “Unless,” he finished with a chuckle, “I did it myself.”
Bimble seemed satisfied. “Excellent logic, my friend,” he murmured as he stepped to the door. With his hand on the knob he turned and fixed his gaze on the Phantom’s face. “I shall pay you another visit as soon as I hear from my men.”
His tone carried a sinister emphasis, but the Phantom scarcely noticed it.
“With Pinto eliminated,” he said half aloud when the door had closed, “only one other person could have committed the murders. And I know that person!”
CHAPTER XXIX—THE PHANTOM’S VISITOR
With quick and nervous steps the Phantom walked back and forth within the narrow semicircle allowed him by the chain. The solution of the mystery had come to him in a flash of intuition, but his elation had been brief. It was now half past eleven, and after cudgeling his wits for hours, he found the problem of how to extricate himself and Helen from their predicament as insolvable as ever.