“What do you think, Peng Yuen?” he inquired, turning from the cheval glass.
A look of admiration came into the Chinaman’s usually woodenlike face. Even the voice was Granger’s. The expression around the mouth and the eyes and the characteristic set of the shoulders were adroitly imitated, and already the Phantom had picked up several of the reporter’s mannerisms.
“It is good,” murmured Peng Yuen, putting the maximum of approval into the minimum of words.
The Phantom was beginning to show signs of restlessness. He glanced at his watch, then fixed the Chinaman with a penetrating look.
“Peng Yuen,” he said, “in the good old days there were hiding places on these premises where people could disappear.”
“It may be so.” The Chinaman’s face was expressionless. “I do not recollect.”
But even as he spoke, a touch of his fingers produced an opening in the wall. The Phantom motioned, and with a shrug of the shoulders the reporter stepped through the aperture. A moment later a sliding panel had shut him from view.
“The Phantom has disappeared,” mumbled the Chinaman. “Except when I bring him food and drink, I will forget that he exists. Going so soon, Mr. Granger?” The bogus journalist grinned as he gripped Peng Yuen’s thin, weazened hand. He squeezed it until the Chinaman winced, then hurried out into the dark, dripping night, turning his steps in the direction of the house on East Houston Street.
CHAPTER XV—A WARNING FROM THE DUKE
The Phantom walked briskly, with an easy, carefree swagger, breathing freely for the first time since the beginning of the strange events that had attended his efforts to solve the mystery of the Gage murder. In the rôle of an irresponsible journalist with a weakness for strong liquor he could feel reasonably secure, for the police had been so cruelly nagged and ridiculed that they would think twice before repeating their sad blunder.