The Phantom looked a trifle doubtful. He had perceived that the impulses of her heart had been swamped by logic. It was possible she had gone away hating him, firmly convinced he was a murderer, and in that event her sense of duty might easily overcome everything else.
“Frankly, I don’t know,” he declared. “At any rate, I am about as safe here as anywhere for the present. I should like a bath, if I may presume on your hospitality.”
“By all means. And as soon as you have rested a bit we shall dine. Dear me, it is almost nine o’clock! Jerome!”
He instructed the servant, and the Phantom followed the silent and soft-footed man to the bathroom. As he splashed about in the tub, he tried to forget the bitter ache which Helen’s words had left in his heart. Her frigid attitude and her abrupt going away had merely strengthened his determination to convince her of his innocence. He saw that he must act quickly and take advantage of the comparative security which he could enjoy until the police discovered that they had arrested the wrong man.
His mind was at work on a plan while he hurried into his clothes, which Jerome had brushed and pressed while he was in the tub. A question that troubled him greatly was how far he could safely take Bimble into his confidence. The sharp-witted anthropologist, with his keen insight into human nature, would prove a valuable ally, but the Phantom felt a great deal of mystification in his presence. There was something about the man which his senses could not quite grasp. Likely as not, it was only the scientific temperament, which gave him an appearance of secretiveness and dissimulation, but of this the Phantom could not be sure.
The dinner, which he ate in the doctor’s company, was excellent, and Jerome served them in a faultless manner, proving that the anthropologist’s devotion to his science had not blunted his taste for physical comforts. The host discoursed learnedly and brilliantly on Lucchini’s theory in regard to the responsibility of the criminal, and it was not until the servant had withdrawn and they had reached their coffee and cigars that he mentioned the subject on the Phantom’s mind.
The dining room, furnished with an approach to elegance that one would scarcely have expected to find on such a shabby street, was lighted by a heavily shaded electrolier. The lights and shadows playing across Bimble’s face as he gesticulated with his head gave him an added touch of mystery and accentuated the general air of inscrutability that hovered about his person. He broached the subject of Gage’s death while lighting his cigar.
“Come now, Vanardy, let us be confidential. It was you who murdered Gage. Why deny it?”
Smiling faintly, the Phantom shook his head.
Bimble regarded him curiously. “The only thing about the crime that interests me is your denial. But I think I understand. In some criminals there is an æsthetic sense which revolts against the vulgar and sordid. Having, on the impulse of the moment, committed a sordid crime, your æsthetic sense reasserts itself, and you want to forget the ugly affair as quickly as possible. Am I right?”