The little man made as if inclined to resist, but thought better of it and obediently put his hands at his back. He uttered a feeble yawp as one of the links was clasped about his wrist. With the other in his hand, the Phantom led him from the room and turned toward the stairs. A dark, inert heap lay at the head of the stairway, with legs sprawling over the steps. It was Pinto.
“Sit down,” ordered the Phantom.
The puny man looked about him dazedly, then sat down on the top step, uttering a weak protest as he found himself handcuffed to the unconscious man.
The Phantom examined Pinto’s head. A large swelling at the back told that the little man had put far more force behind the blow than one would have thought it possible for such a dwarfish creature to exert. The pulse was weak and fluttering, and the eyes had a rigid and glassy look. The Phantom had known of similar cases in which the victims had remained unconscious for days, and many things might happen before Pinto’s mind and tongue were functioning again. Upon awakening and being told that he had been found handcuffed to a rat of the underworld, the policeman, already troubled by an evil conscience and wounded self-respect, would hardly invite the taunts and jeers of his fellow officers by going into exact details. At any rate, the Phantom felt he was playing his best card.
“Say, Granger,” whined the little man, “ain’t going to leave me like this, are you? Not after I got you out of the fix you were in?”
“It is a bit rough on you, I admit, but you will have to make the best of it. Your reasons for getting me out of the scrape weren’t entirely unselfish. I believe it was your intention to put me on the carpet before the big chief.”
The other jerked his head in the direction of the storeroom. “They’ll say I croaked that woman in there,” he muttered.
“Not a chance. Examination of the body will show that the murder was committed more than twenty-four hours ago. What they probably will think is that Pinto caught you in the act of robbery and that you assaulted him after he had handcuffed you to him. One guess will be about as good as another, though, and you will have to lie yourself out of the mess somehow. I wish you luck.”
He started down the stairs, but in the middle he stopped and looked back. What if Pinto should never recover consciousness? If he should die before the two murder mysteries were fully cleared up, the Phantom’s efforts to exculpate himself would encounter a serious hindrance. But nothing was to be gained by worrying over what might happen, he told himself, and just now he had something far more serious to think about. His fears concerning Helen overshadowed all other things.
He went out onto the street. The morning was far advanced and the sun was struggling through a curtain of scattering clouds. The glaring headlines of the morning papers spread out on the news stands at the corner told how the Phantom, after having been seen at an elevated railway station the night before, had once more slipped through the dragnet. After a brief glance at the introductory paragraphs, he crossed the street and entered the telephone booth in the rear of a drug store. There he consulted the directory and called the number of the Hardwick residence.