“Just a little while ago. I’ve acted the simpleton throughout the whole affair. I was so sure of Pinto’s guilt that it never occurred to me to suspect anyone else. The moment Pinto was eliminated, I knew you were the murderer. I saw then what I should have seen at once—that Gage was murdered by a man who looked so much like me that, when Gage saw the face of the scoundrel, he was sure it was the Gray Phantom. That’s why he told Pinto that I was the murderer.”
Granger drew in his breath and opened his mouth as if to shout for help, but the knee pressing against his chest strangled the cry.
“It was all very cleverly arranged,” the Phantom went on, “I suppose you were selected for the job because you happen to resemble me. The very entertaining story you told me at Peng Yuen’s was probably a skillful blending of truth and fiction. How you happened to join the Duke’s gang and how you carried out its orders under cover of your profession really make no difference. The only thing that matters is that you’re going to the chair for those two murders.”
The reporter, gathering his wits, gave a contemptuous laugh. “The chair, eh? Not just yet, I guess. Several things are likely to happen to you first.”
“That remains to be seen. You are fairly clever, Granger, but your cleverness won’t help you now. You hood-winked the police very neatly. They had the murderer once, but they felt so sure I was the man they wanted that they let you go as soon as you had satisfied them you were not the Gray Phantom. It was a fairly good joke. I perpetrated another good joke myself when I went to you and borrowed your identity, never guessing that you were the murderer. You took it all in good part, because you couldn’t do anything else, but all the while you were scheming to hand me over to the Duke’s crowd.”
“It was rich! You were so easily taken in that I had to laugh whenever you turned your back.”
“I admit it. The reason you took me in so easily was partly because you were a member of an honorable profession, and partly because of the note handed me by Dan the Dope, which seemed to prove that you were on bad terms with the Duke’s crowd. That appeared to confirm your story that you had joined the organization for the sole purpose of obtaining inside information. The details of your relations with the gang are not clear to me yet, but neither are they important. If you don’t mind, I’ll relieve you of this handy little implement.”
With a deft motion he reached into Granger’s pocket and extracted the reporter’s automatic. Then he removed the knee from the man’s chest and covered him with the weapon.
“The cutest trick of them all,” he continued with a grim chuckle, “was your crawling in here to-night through the window and pretending to have eluded the Duke’s sentinels. Of course, the sole object of your dramatic entrance was to inveigle me into revealing the whereabouts of the place where I live. I suppose the worthy doctor had begun to despair of his ability to worm the information out of me by the original plan. It threatened to take too long and entail too many risks, and so he thought he would try a short cut. You led up to the proposition very adroitly, but I saw through the ruse almost at once.”
Granger, having got a precarious grip on his nerves, laughed shakily. “You’re a first-class guesser—but guessing won’t get you out of this fix. It isn’t very likely you’ll ever see daylight again. As for the dear girl——”