“This way, Vanardy.” The doctor beckoned the Phantom to follow as he started toward the door. Approaching footsteps caused him to draw back. A look of bewilderment came into his face.
“We have wasted too much time,” he said complainingly; then, as he looked about the room, his face brightened. “But this will do for a hiding place. Better come along, Miss Hardwick. It may save you embarrassing questions.”
He stepped hurriedly to one side of the room, opened a door and motioned them into a narrow closet. A moment later they heard a key turn in the lock.
CHAPTER VIII—LOGIC VERSUS HEART THROBS
A vague misgiving assailed the Phantom as the door closed. The hiding place chosen for them by the genial Doctor Bimble seemed not quite adequate to the emergency. There had been no time for argument, however, and nothing for the Phantom to do but follow instructions. The versatile anthropologist knew best, he had thought, and very likely the police would take Bimble’s word for it that nobody was concealed in the laboratory.
The closet was so dark that, but for a faint fragrance and the occasional scraping of a foot, he might have thought himself alone. From the other side of the door came subdued sounds, and he pictured the tubby little doctor protesting against the intrusion on his sacred privacy. Of Helen he could see nothing but the pallid glint of her face in the gloom, but her quick, nervous breathing told him that she was keyed up to a high tension. There was a medley of questions in his mind, but he found it hard to put them into words.
“Hel—Miss Hardwick,” he whispered.
“Yes?”.
“Logic is silly rot.”
A moment’s pause. “I don’t believe I understand.”