“Why, nowhere in particular. Just taking a walk. Changed my mind about going home. But don’t look at me as if I was a ghost. Makes me nervous. Great heavens, what’s this?”
He started at the grewsome heap on the floor as if he had just now chanced to cast eye upon it. Pinto made a heroic effort to steady himself. His quavering gaze moved reluctantly toward the motionless form lying a few feet from where he stood.
“That’s—that’s Mrs. Trippe,” he announced, twisting his head and working his Adam’s apple as if on the point of choking.
“So I see.” The Phantom stepped closer to the body, regarded it gravely for a few moments, then lifted his narrowing gaze to the policeman’s twitching face. “Where did it come from, Pinto?”
The officer was gradually gaining control of himself. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his perspiring forehead. “Awful sight—ain’t it, Granger? I thought I heard some kind of racket just as I was passing the house. I tried the doors, and the one at the side was unlocked. I thought it was queer, for I had made sure it was locked when I passed the other time, so I ran up the stairs and looked around. When I came in here and turned on the light, I found that thing lying there. It broke me all up. Fine scoop for your paper, Granger, if you grab it before the other reporters do.”
Smiling, the Phantom looked Pinto squarely in the eye. “Your story needs a little dressing up. It doesn’t hang together. Maybe you would have been able to think up a better one if your nerves hadn’t been on the jump. For one thing, Pinto, no cop goes into hysterics at sight of a dead body unless his conscience is giving him the jimjams. For another, you didn’t find the body where it is lying now. Unless I am very much mistaken, you dragged it out from behind those packing cases.”
He pointed to a corner of the room where several large boxes had been displaced. The shamefaced expression of a man caught in a clumsy lie mingled with the look of dread in Pinto’s countenance.
“What you driving at?” he demanded with a feeble show of bluster.
The Phantom’s mind worked quickly. In the last fifteen minutes his suspicions in regard to Pinto had become a certainty. The policeman’s conduct left not a shred of doubt as to his guilt, but the evidence the law would require was still lacking. Pinto would soon gather his wits and invent a more plausible explanation than the one he had just given, and on an issue of veracity between the Gray Phantom and an officer of the law, the latter would have all the advantages. The Phantom, swiftly appraising the situation, saw that his only hope lay in subtler tactics. Perhaps by adroitly working on the policeman’s evident pusillanimity he could induce him to make a clean breast of it.
“The game’s up, Pinto,” he said sternly. “You murdered Mrs. Trippe, just as you murdered Gage. Better come clean.”