Bimble was still staring at him as if doubting his sanity. “You think you are going to turn us over to the police!” he exclaimed. “Ha, ha! Still in a jocular mood, I see. It won’t last long. For the last time I ask if you will accept my terms.”
The Phantom sent him a contemptuous glance. “One doesn’t make terms with sneaking hyenas like you,” he declared.
“Very well.” Bimble ran his eye over the triangle of faces, and his gaze fell on a stout, tough-limbed man with a reddish face.
“Wilkes,” he directed, “pull that devoted pair apart and carry the young lady to the room upstairs where the skeletons are. Be careful not to get in front of my pistol.”
The stout man stepped out of the line. A coarse grin wreathed his face as he approached the Phantom and the girl from the side.
“Get back!” whispered the Phantom to Helen. Slowly, step by step, the two moved backward until Helen stood against the wall. Then the Phantom, looking straight into the muzzle of Bimble’s pistol, reached back and wound his arms around the girl’s slender waist.
“Pull us apart if you can,” he told Wilkes as he interlocked his fingers behind Helen’s back.
The stout man stopped and scratched his head, as if confronting a problem too complex for his wits to solve. A look of diffidence crossed Bimble’s face as he noticed that the Phantom had once more balked him.
“Knock him down if you can’t part them any other way,” he commanded wrathfully. “Tap him on the head with something.”
Chuckling, Wilkes drew a long revolver from his pocket, gripping it tightly by the barrel as he cautiously approached the Phantom from the side. Helen gasped.