“Doesn’t he still think you are on his side?”
“He seems to have his suspicions,” answered the Phantom, carefully weighing his words, “but he is keeping them to himself. I tried my darndest to flimflam the information out of him, but it was no use. He’s about the smoothest article I ever came across.”
The doctor nodded curtly as he swung around and started to descend the stairs, the Phantom following.
“I’ll break him yet,” muttered Bimble vindictively. “In a few moments he’ll hear a tune that he won’t like. Miss Hardwick is going to make another trip to the spook chamber, as our mulish friend so aptly termed it. I guess he will come across with the information when he discovers that we mean business.”
They reached the floor below. As they passed a light in the hall, the Phantom saw a look of venomous determination in the doctor’s face, and he knew that a terrible ordeal would be in store for Helen if Bimble was permitted to have his way. The anthropologist opened a door, and the Phantom glanced into the room over his shoulder. About a dozen men, the expressions on their faces ranging all the way from low cunning to sullen brutality, sat at a long table playing cards.
“Jepson!” called the doctor, taking a bunch of keys from his pockets.
A tall, raw-boned individual with features suggestive of a gorilla’s rose from the table and approached them, with dragging gait.
“I want you and Granger to bring Miss Hardwick here immediately,” directed Bimble handing Jepson one of the keys.
The tall man nodded and slunk away. The Phantom, keeping in the shadows as much as possible, followed him down two flights of stairs. Here and there, at a turn in the halls or stairs, they encountered soft-footed, wary-eyed men who passed them in silence.
“The whole crowd seems to be about to-night,” observed the Phantom.