The Gray Phantom's Return

by Herman Landon

The gleam of his flash leaped over the grimy bricks, and presently he detected a narrow fissure in the wall. It extended in a quadrangular course and was barely wide enough to admit a match or a nail. Inserting one of the sharp-nosed tools from his metal case, he pried outward, and a narrow portion of the wall swung open. He saw now that the little fissures constituted the boundaries of a door. It was composed of bricks threaded on iron rods and resembling in color and general appearance those in the surrounding wall, and it was so deftly concealed that only a careful search would reveal its existence. Evidently it had stood open when the Phantom crawled out of the tunnel, which explained why he had not noticed it. He suspected that the thoughtful anthropologist, not caring to have too many outsiders discover the tunnel, had closed it while the officers were searching the front of the house.

The Phantom waited for a few minutes while a little of the dank air in the cellar found its way into the passage. He did not relish the task ahead of him, but he was determined to settle a point on which the doctor had been singularly evasive. The problem he had set out to solve would be simplified to a great extent, and he would save himself needless efforts and loss of valuable time by ascertaining whether the bedchamber of the late Sylvanus Gage could be entered by way of the tunnel.

Having buttoned his coat tightly and made certain that his instrument case was within easy reach, he inserted head and shoulders in the opening and began the weary crawl toward the other end. His progress was painfully slow, and the smell of the moist earth gave him a sense of oppression which he found hard to shake off. The air, dank and insufficient, was almost stifling, and the walls of the narrow passage, bruising his body at each twist and turn, seemed to exude a sepulchral atmosphere that insinuated itself into body and mind.

At length he reached the point where the tunnel slanted upward into the wall, and here his progress became even more difficult. Time and again he slipped, and he could maintain a footing only by bracing the tips of his shoes against rough spots along the sides. He was puffing from exertion when finally he struck a solid obstruction which told him he had reached the end of the passage.

Finding a precarious foothold, he took out his flash and closely scrutinized his surroundings. On two sides were walls of brick, while directly in front of him was the flank of the window frame. He pushed against the latter with all his strength, but it presented a firm and solid resistance to his efforts. Next he went over it inch by inch, looking for a hidden lever or spring, but the most careful search revealed nothing that suggested a means of operating the mechanism. Finally he took out one of his tools and, inserting it in the tiny rift between the wall and the edge of the frame, began to pry steadily. After several minutes of constant effort he gave up the task as hopeless.

He leaned back against the wall and bent the full force of his wits to the task of finding a way through the obstruction. Evidently there was none. He had tapped every inch of the surface and looked everywhere for a concealed knob or wire by which the mechanism might be operated. A larger and heavier tool than the instrument in his metal case would have been of no avail, for in those narrow quarters he could not have obtained leverage. His search, though thorough and infinitely painstaking, had netted nothing.

The conclusion was clear. The revolving door could not be operated from the outside; hence the murderer of Sylvanus Gage could not have entered the room through the tunnel. Again the Phantom’s mind reverted to the inevitable deduction that no one but Officer Pinto could have committed the crime.

His lungs, which had been straining for air for the last quarter of an hour, felt as though they were on the point of bursting, and he was about to release his foothold and start back through the tunnel when a faint tapping sound caught his ears. He could not tell how long it had been going on, for until now his whole attention had been focused on the problem before him. For all he knew it might just have begun, or it might have started long before he entered the tunnel.

He pressed his ear against the side of the frame and listened. The sounds, quick and sharp, were coming in rapid succession, and at first he wondered whether someone was trying to attract his attention. Then he noticed that the sounds skipped and jumped, as if the tapping covered a considerable area, and his next surmise was that the person on the other side was making a systematic search for something.

“For what?” he wondered; and in the next moment the answer flashed through his mind. He remembered how, while he was imprisoned in the bedroom, momentarily expecting the police to force the door and pounce upon him, he had looked to the window as the only possible means of escape, and how finally he had discovered the nail that proved his salvation. Evidently the person on the other side was now doing the very thing the Phantom himself had been doing a few hours ago.