The Phantom shook his head. “You deduce I am a murderer from the fact that I got here through a tunnel. Well, that may be very good feminine logic, but——”
“It is excellent logic, my friend,” interrupted a voice somewhere in the darkness; and in the same moment there came a click, and a bright electric light flooded the scene. The Phantom had a brief glimpse of a ludicrous little man with an oversized head, a round protuberance of stomach, and short, thin legs encased in tightly fitting trousers; then he turned to Helen Hardwick and gazed intently into her large, misty-bright eyes.
“Oh, they’re brown, I see,” he murmured. “I had a notion they were either blue or gray. Queer how one forgets.”
The girl looked as though utterly unable to understand his levity, for as such she evidently construed his remark. The thin-legged man stepped away from the door through which he had entered and approached them slowly, giving the Phantom a gravely appraising look over the rims of his glasses. The Phantom had eyes only for Helen Hardwick. He studied her closely, almost reverentially, noticing that her eyes, which upon his entrance had been steady and cool, were now strangely agitated, radiating a dread that seemed to dominate her entire being. The hand that clutched the pistol trembled a trifle, and there were signs of an extreme tension in the poise of the strong, slender figure, in the quivering nostrils, and in the pallor that suffused the smooth oval of her face.
“Remarkable!” murmured the spectacled individual, drawing a few steps closer to obtain a clearer view of the Phantom. “The young lady and myself are covering you with our pistols, and yet you exhibit no fear whatever. Most remarkable! May I feel your pulse, sir?”
The Phantom’s lips twitched at the corners as he looked at the speaker. The latter’s automatic, pointed at a somewhat indefinite part of the Phantom’s body, seemed ludicrously large in contrast with the slight stature of the man himself.
“My name, sir,” declared the little man with an air of vast importance, “is Doctor Tyson Bimble. You may have heard of me. I have written several treatises on the subject of criminal anthropology, and my professional services have occasionally been enlisted by the police. Not that such work interests me,” he added quickly. “The solution of crime mysteries and the capture of criminals are the pastimes of inferior minds. As a man of science, I am interested solely in the criminal himself, his mental and physical characteristics and the congenital traits that distinguish him. Again I ask you if I may feel your pulse.”
Smiling, the Phantom extended his hand. Admonishing Miss Hardwick to keep a steady aim, Doctor Bimble pocketed his own weapon and took out his watch.
“Perfectly normal,” he declared when the examination was finished. “At first I thought that at least a part of your superb coolness was simulated. It is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that at this very moment you are surrounded on all sides by the police. They have thrown a cordon around the block and every house is being systematically searched.”
The Phantom stiffened. His abrupt and unexpected meeting with Helen Hardwick had momentarily blunted his sense of caution, causing him to forget that he was still in imminent danger. He threw her a quick glance noticing a look of alarm in her face. He made a rapid appraisal of the situation. His flight through the tunnel could not have taken him more than twelve or fifteen yards from the rear of the Gage establishment, and he was almost certain that the passage had extended in a straight southerly direction. Consequently the place in which he now found himself must be one of the shed-like structures he had seen from the window of Gage’s bedroom.