HELEN EQUIVOCATES
Across the breakfast table Mr. Hardwick looked anxiously at his
daughter. The wild-rose color that usually flooded her cheeks had
faded a trifle since last night, and her eyes were less bright. Most
of the time the curator's mind browsed among relics of the past, but
his perceptions were amazingly keen where his daughter was concerned.
"Mr. Shei gave us quite a shock last night," he remarked.
Helen kept her eyes down while she poured his coffee and added two and
a half lumps of sugar and the usual portion of cream. Then she stirred
it for him, knowing he would be quite apt to forget to do so himself.
Despite the half dozen titles bestowed upon him by universities and
learned societies, she felt he needed looking after.
"Don't forget that you have a lecture engagement this afternoon," she
admonished as she passed the cup across the table.
Mr. Hardwick nodded and sipped. "It is a most extraordinary case. The
murder of that poor woman--assuming that it was a case of murder--seemed
wholly unprovoked. I gathered from the conversation among the officers
that no motive was in evidence. It looks like a wanton, despicable
crime."
Helen crumbled a piece of toast. "Professor Warburton is coming to see
you at three this afternoon."
"I have a memorandum of the appointment on my desk." Mr. Hardwick
smiled faintly. "Our minds seem to be pulling in opposite directions
this morning. This Mr. Shei interests me. He appears to be a
remarkable criminal. His audacity and the originality of his methods
are unparalleled. I don't know that I ever encountered anything quite
so mystifying as the circumstances surrounding the murder last night.
How the murderer went in and out without being seen is beyond
understanding, and the subsequent removal of the body was the most
amazing part of it all. There seems to be neither method nor reason in
that. One thing appears certain. Mr. Shei could not have accomplished
what he did unless he had been aided by accomplices. What do you
think, my dear?"
Helen's head was lowered over her coffee cup. The captive sunlight in
her hair gleamed and flashed.
"Your extra pair of glasses are at the optician's," she reminded him.
"Don't forget to stop for it."
Mr. Hardwick looked at her helplessly; then carefully, and from force
of habit, he folded his napkin.
"I wonder whether the police will ever learn Mr. Shei's identity," he
murmured musingly. "So far the scoundrel has contrived to mystify them
completely, but some day his egotism and love of self-glorification
are apt to cause his undoing. In the meantime, however, he is likely
to do a great deal of mischief. The fellow's effrontery is colossal,
and his fearlessness and brains render him most dangerous. In some
respects he bears a very close resemblance to that other notorious
rogue, now reported to be in retirement."
Helen drew a quick breath. She bent her head a little lower over her
cup. Her right index finger traced a design on the tablecloth.
"Another cup of coffee, dad?" was her only reply.
Mr. Hardwick appeared not to have heard. "You know who I mean. The man
they used to call The Gray Phantom. For several years he was regarded
as one of the cleverest and most dangerous criminals the world has
ever known."
Slowly Helen raised her head. Her eyes, as they met her father's, were
steady and bright.
"That was because the world didn't understand him," she said with
emphasis. "The Gray Phantom wasn't really a criminal. He was only a--a
sort of human dynamo whose energy happened to be turned in the wrong
direction."
"Isn't that a distinction without a difference? A Robin Hood is an
enemy of society despite the glamour with which he surrounds himself.
However," and Mr. Hardwick's face softened quickly, "I am deeply in
The Gray Phantom's debt. He saved your life twice, and but for him I
would now be a lonely and heartbroken old man."
Helen nodded eagerly. "And the Assyrian collection, dad. You spent
most of your life gathering it, and you were almost overcome with
grief when it was stolen. The Gray Phantom risked his life and liberty
in order to recover it and restore it to you. He wouldn't have done
that if he had been just an ordinary criminal."
"True," admitted Mr. Hardwick. "I shall be under obligations to The
Gray Phantom as long as I live. The man has a number of excellent
qualities, whatever may be said of his past. On the whole, it is not
surprising that you have taken an interest in him."
Helen's eyes were lowered again.
There was a mingling of tenderness and worry in Mr. Hardwick's face as
he looked at her. "I know just how you feel," he said softly. "A man
who is trying to live down a dark past always exerts a strong romantic
appeal on a woman of your impressionable age. I don't know why it is,
unless it pleases her to think he is doing it for her sake. It makes
me think of your play, 'The Master of His Soul.' All last night, until
the interruption came, I was wondering whether your _Marius_ was not
The Gray Phantom."
Helen sat rigidly still for a moment. Then her lips began to twitch.
She flashed her father a smile.
"Sometimes, daddy dear, you show a wonderful understanding of things
that have nothing to do with Assyriology."
"I was right, then." His face sobered. "I hope you realize that,
despite The Gray Phantom's admirable qualities, there is a gulf
between him and you. But you are just as level-headed as was your
mother, and I have no fear that the impulses of your heart will get
the better of your judgment. We were discussing Mr. Shei. There seems
to be a striking similarity between his methods and those of The Gray
Phantom, except that the latter was never known to stoop to murder."
He paused for a moment and studied her averted face. "You puzzled me
last night, dear. You will admit that your conduct was--er, peculiar."
"It's getting late, dad," murmured Helen, a bit confusedly glancing at
her wrist watch. "You should have been at your office half an hour
ago. And this is the first time I've known you to take an interest in
a murder case."
"Once during the evening you gripped my hand and tried to point out
something to me," pursued Mr. Hardwick, heedless of her remark. "You
spoke incoherently, and I had not the faintest idea what it was about.
Then, a minute or so before the tragedy, you left the box and hurried
away. Still later, while the officer was questioning you, I felt you
were concealing something."
Helen, her fingers tightening about a fork handle, shook her head. "I
answered every question he put to me."
"I know, dear. Yet you withheld a secret of some kind from him."
"Not exactly. I--I merely refrained from telling him something
that--that I might have told."
"Something you had heard or seen?"
She hesitated for an instant. "If I had told all I had seen and heard,
I wouldn't have been telling half of what I knew."
Mr. Hardwick leaned back against the chair and pondered this cryptic
statement. He seemed puzzled rather than hurt by his daughter's
evasive answers. Suddenly she looked up, saw the troubled expression
in his face, and impulsively pushed back her chair and ran up behind
him.
"Please don't ask me any more questions, dad." She put her arms around
his neck and tilted her face to his. "It is true I held something
back, but at the time I didn't know why. I merely felt that it
wouldn't do to tell. This morning, after lying awake most of the
night, I knew I had done the right thing." She gave a little laugh.
"Isn't it just like a woman to act first and look into her reasons
afterward?"
"I--well, I suppose so. And what were your reasons?"
"Would you be hurt if I told you I would rather not explain them just
now?"
"No; I trust you. Experience has taught me that I can depend upon you
in spite of your mysterious little ways and madcap pranks. There is
one thing I wish you would tell me, though." He stopped, fumbling for
words. "Was your reticence last night prompted by a wish to shield
someone?"
"No," was her prompt reply, and her eyes gazed frankly into his. "What
put such a thought into your head?"
"I scarcely know. You'll think I am an old fool, but it occurred to me
that perhaps you had discovered something that led you to think that
Mr. Shei and The Gray Phantom are identical."
"And you thought I was protecting The Gray Phantom? What an idea! But
you were wrong, dad--absolutely wrong."
"Then I am glad." Mr. Hardwick rose and put his arm around her waist.
"My goodness! Almost ten o'clock, and I have been sitting here
gossiping like an old woman. You have taken a load off my mind, dear
child. I was really worried."
She laughed, whisked a few crumbs from his coat, straightened his tie,
and kissed him.
"And I hope," added Mr. Hardwick banteringly, "that Uranus won't lead
you into any more foolhardy adventures."
Again she laughed, but her face sobered the moment he turned away and
left the room. A wiser, maturer expression settled over the wide-set
eyes and the vivid lips. It seemed as though her talk with her father
had left a disquieting impression in her mind. She moved absently
about the room, setting things in order here and there, but the
far-away gleam in her eyes told that her mind was scarcely aware of
what her hands were doing. Presently she stopped before the open
window and looked out. A building was going up across the street, and
the groaning of derricks and screaming of steam whistles jarred
discordantly in the back of her mind. Near the curb a group of
laborers were mixing concrete, and a powdery substance was drifting in
the air.
She came out of her abstraction with a little start. Her eyes were on
the window sill, and she spelled out the characters she had written in
the thin layer of dust.
"G-r-a-y P-h-a-n-t-o-m," she mumbled, puzzled and somewhat annoyed
with herself. The faint pencilings in the dust seemed all the stranger
because she had not been thinking of The Gray Phantom. Instead, her
mind had been occupied by Mr. Shei and what the morning newspapers had
said about the tragedy in the Thelma Theater. The accounts she had
read had been largely speculation and conjecture. The dying woman's
strange laughter and her mysterious allusion to Mr. Shei had afforded
material for columns of vivid and imaginative description. The medical
examiner had reluctantly admitted that Miss Darrow's death might have
been caused by a poison administered hypodermically, but he had added
that the symptoms were strange to him, and that he knew of no drug
producing just such effects. A number of toxicologists had been
interviewed, but they had declared that the few facts at hand were not
sufficient to enable them to form an opinion, and the disappearance of
the body rendered it doubtful whether the cause of death would ever be
learned definitely.
Only one thing seemed beyond dispute and that was Mr. Shei's
complicity in the affair. The elusive and highly accomplished rogue
already had a score of astounding crimes to his record, and the Thelma
murder was hedged with all the mystery and baffling detail with which
he loved to mask his exploits. Miss Darrow's dying words were scarcely
needed to turn the finger of suspicion in Mr. Shei's direction. The
absence of clews, the uncertainty in regard to the motive, the
audacity that marked the crime itself as well as the subsequent
snatching away of the body, all indicated a boldness and a finesse
that left little doubt of Mr. Shei's guilt. Even if his own hand had
not executed the crime, it seemed practically certain that his mind
had planned and conceived it.
But who was Mr. Shei? The whole train of surmises and theories pivoted
on that question. Not much was known of him save that he had a passion
for tantalizing the public and keeping the nerves of the men at
headquarters on edge, and that his achievements had not been equaled
in scope or brilliance of execution since The Gray Phantom's
retirement. He took a diabolical delight in flaunting his name before
the world while keeping his person carefully out of the reach of the
law's long arm, and even the name was a challenge to the police and a
teaser for the public imagination. Someone versed in dead languages
had discovered that the word "shei" was the ancient equivalent of the
modern _x_, the symbol of the unknown quantity, and it was generally
agreed that the name fitted the elusive individual who bore it.
Yet the name meant nothing. It was only an abstraction, for it
afforded no clew to its owner's identity. The night before, while she
sat beside her father in the Thelma Theater, a vagrant flash of
intuition had come to Helen. She had seen the solution of the mystery
in a swift, dazzling glimpse. The revelation had stunned and nearly
blinded her, and thoughts had crowded upon her so thickly that she
would have been quite unable to clothe them in words. The idea carried
to her by that intuitive flash had seemed clear and unquestionable. It
still seemed so, but her talk with her father had disturbed her a
little and turned her thoughts in a new direction.
Again she looked down at the tracings in the dust. A smile, faint and
wistful, reflected her softened mood, and a light of wonder and
gentleness flooded her eyes. She reached out a hand to obliterate the
telltale pencilings, but something restrained her. Besides, a freshly
forming layer of dust was already blotting them out.
The telephone rang in the adjoining room, and she hurried away to
answer.
"Miss Hardwick?" inquired a drawling voice which she instantly
recognized. "Lieutenant Culligore speaking. I'm at the Thelma Theater.
Wish you'd come over right away. I want to ask you a few questions."
Before she could reply, he hung up. Her face grew suddenly tense.
Culligore's brusqueness piqued her, though she knew it was
characteristic of the man, and she felt he had taken undue advantage
of her by giving her no chance for argument. She did not wish to see
him, yet she knew she could not escape him by merely ignoring his
request. Anyway, she reflected as she hastily dressed for the street,
it would be interesting to learn Culligore's theory of the murder.
A ride in the subway and a short walk brought her to the door of the
Thelma. On the wall, at each side of the entrance, were posters
stating that until further notice there would be no more performances
of "His Soul's Master." Helen viewed the announcement of the
withdrawal of her play without much regret. She had partly anticipated
it, and last night's occurrence had given her weightier things to
think of. As she passed through the foyer, a policeman nodded stolidly
and in a way that told her she was expected. She passed unhindered
into the auditorium.
At first she could see nothing. Every door was closed, and the vast
room was full of silence and vague shadows. Presently, as her eyes
grew accustomed to the dusk, she glanced toward the chair that had
been occupied by Miss Darrow. She looked quickly aside, and saw that
she was standing not far from the pillar that had supported her when
the creature with the loathsome face brushed past her. The scene,
which had seemed dim and immaterial while she was out in the sunlight
a few minutes ago, now recurred to her with disagreeable vividness. Of
a sudden the air about her felt heavy and oppressive.
A figure was moving up the aisle toward where she stood. The dawdling
gait and the slouchy attitude told her it was Culligore, and she
braced her nerves for an ordeal. In a few moments her quickly working
wits had found a way of handling the situation.
"Good-morning, lieutenant," she said pleasantly as he came up beside
her. "I suppose you are looking for clews. Any success?"
"Nope," he replied complainingly. "That's why I sent for you, Miss----"
"You have found no trace of the body?" she quickly cut in, anxious to
maintain the role of questioner.
Culligore shook his head. She felt his eyes on her face, though he did
not appear to be looking at her. Practicing a trick cultivated by his
profession, he was studying her without seeming to do so.
"Don't you think it strange that the murderer should go to all that
risk and trouble to remove the body?" she went on.
"Murderer? There must have been three or four of them, at least. There
was some mighty fast work done when the lights went out, and one man
didn't do it all. I've got a bump in the back of my head as big as a
hen's egg. Selfkin, the man from the district attorney's office, is in
bed with a fractured skull, and Starr looks as though somebody had hit
him on the nose with a brick. One of the gang must have tampered with
the switchboard back of the proscenium arch just before the others
swooped down on us and carried away the body."
"But what was the object? Wasn't the murderer's purpose accomplished
with the killing of Miss Darrow?"
"Hard telling. One thing is sure. As long as the body is missing there
can be no autopsy, and I'll bet a pair of yellow socks that that's
exactly what they wanted. Not that I pretend to understand it all, but
it seems reasonable that they didn't care to have the exact cause of
Miss Darrow's death become known."
Helen pondered this statement for a moment. "How about the motive for
the murder?"
"We're pretty much in the dark there, too," admitted Culligore. "I
don't suppose, though, that it was just by accident that Miss Darrow
happened to die a few minutes after she had sent Starr a note warning
him that Mr. Shei was in the house."
"Oh!" Helen gave a quick start. "You think she was killed because she
had in some manner discovered Mr. Shei's identity?"
"Maybe." Culligore, with legs spread out and hands in trousers
pockets, seemed engrossed in a study of Helen's bright-trimmed hat.
"My mind isn't made up on that point. Mr. Shei's schemes go pretty
deep. Maybe you can tell me----"
Again Helen interrupted him. "Have you discovered how the murderers
got in and out of the building?"
"They didn't leave any tracks behind them, but there is a door in the
rear of the basement that they might have used. It's supposed to be
locked, but I satisfied myself a while ago that the spring lock can be
picked. That the body was carried out that way is as good a guess as
any. But look here, Miss Hardwick," and something that might have been
a grin drifted across his face, "you're pretty good at firing
questions, but it's my turn now."
She stiffened, seeing she would have to assume defensive tactics. She
sent him a quick glance, but his face, always inscrutable, was even
more so in the dusk.
"I asked you to come here, hoping the surroundings would refresh your
memory of what happened last night," Culligore went on in his usual
placid drawl. "You needn't repeat what you said then. What I'm after
is the things you _didn't_ say."
"I don't believe I understand."
Culligore's chuckle sounded like a snort, though she knew it was meant
to be good-natured. "Oh, yes, you do. I didn't do much talking last
night, but I was watching you all the time. We'd met before, you know,
and I could read you like an open book. I knew you were just as long
on brains as on looks. Though you answered every question, you weren't
telling anything. All the while you were holding something back. Isn't
that true?"
She hesitated, having an uncomfortable feeling that Culligore was
seeing through her and that any attempt at evasion would be useless.
"What do you want to know?" she asked.
"That's a lot better, Miss Hardwick. You might begin by telling me
where you were sitting when the disturbance began."
"Why, I--I wasn't sitting anywhere."
"Standing up, then?"
"I wasn't standing, either."
"Oh, I see. You were lying down?"
"No, not even lying down."
Culligore gave her a queer look. "If you weren't sitting, standing, or
lying, you must have hung suspended in the air. Was that it?"
Helen smiled engagingly. She had found time for deliberation while
quibbling, and now her mind was made up. "I was so frightened I could
neither stand up nor sit down. I was leaning against that pillar over
there." She pointed.
"How did you happen to leave your seat?"
Helen told him of the flitting shadow that had caused her to leave her
father and run to the rear of the house.
"And what did you see while you were leaning against the pillar?" was
Culligore's next question.
Helen searched her mind for words vivid enough to recount her
impressions during the terrible moments just before the drop of the
curtain, but she felt her description was both hazy and fragmentary.
Her picture of the face that had flashed past her in the dark was
blurred and unreal, like one's recollection of a dream.
When she had done her best, Culligore walked back and forth for a
time. Standing in an attitude of strained tensity, she wondered what
his next question would be. Suddenly he stopped squarely in front of
her, and again she had an uncomfortable feeling that his deceptively
lazy eyes were reading her thoughts.
"What else?" he demanded quietly. "What you have told me so far is
pretty good, but you're still holding back the most important
thing--the thing you didn't want to tell about last night."
"How--how do you know that?" she asked.
He gave another snortlike chuckle. "Common horse sense tells me. The
reason you didn't tell about the things you saw while leaning against
the post was because you were afraid they would lead you on to a
subject you didn't want to discuss. You were afraid that if you got
started you might get tangled up and wouldn't be able to stop."
Helen could only stare at him. He had stated the truth far more
clearly than she herself could have done.
"What was it, Miss Hardwick? I think you had better tell."
She stood silent, twisting her figure this way and that, and all the
while wishing that he would take his eyes from her. Jumbled thoughts
thronged her mind, and she felt her power of resistance slipping from
her. Finally Culligore swung round on his heels, and a sigh of relief
escaped her.
"The thing about you that puzzles me more than anything else is that
your hair isn't red," he told her. "The rest I can savvy easily
enough. I can even tell what it was you were holding back last night.
Want me to?"
His tones were soft and teasing. She squirmed, torn between anxiety
and despair. His face was expressionless, but she felt he was inwardly
laughing at her.
"All right, then," he said, taking her silence for assent. "You
couldn't have had more than one reason for keeping mum last night, and
that reason was that you wanted to shield somebody. There is only one
man on earth you could have wanted to shield, and that man is The Gray
Phantom."
"No!" she cried. "You're mistaken! I wasn't----"
"Easy now." All at once his tone changed. "There's such a thing as
protesting too much, you know. I don't take much stock in what I read
in the Sunday papers, but there's a lot of talk going the rounds about
a romance between you and The Gray Phantom. Most of it is pipe dreams,
I guess. Anyhow, it's nobody's business, and it makes no difference.
All I'll say is that if I was The Gray Phantom and had a girl like you
fighting for me, I'd be willing to go through hell-fire for her every
day in the week. You're loyal clean through and----"
"But you're wrong!" she interrupted emphatically. His words filled her
with a great fear, but there was a kind of rough tenderness in his
voice that warmed her.
"I knew you'd say that, but you have to hear me through. I take off my
hat to The Gray Phantom. He always played the game according to the
code, even when he cut those fancy didos that put gray hairs in almost
every head on the force. I shouldn't say it, but it goes just the
same. The Phantom's been lying low now for some time. Nobody seems to
know where he is. He's shown himself only twice, and each time he came
out in a good cause. They say he's going it straight, and it's rumored
that a certain young lady has had a lot to do with his turning over a
new leaf."
He paused, and for a moment his eyes rested on her averted face.
"It's hard work for a leopard to change his spots. Some people say it
can't be done. The Phantom's human, like the rest of us. Maybe he's
got tired of the straight and narrow path and gone back to his old
tricks under a new name. Just for the sake of argument we'll say he
has. And I've got a hunch that last night you saw or heard something
that made you think that Mr. Shei is The Gray Phantom."
The assertion staggered her, though she had known all the time that he
was leading up to it. Using almost the same words, her father had
expressed the same idea at the breakfast table, and it was the
similarity of the phrasing that startled her.
"No--no!" was all she could say.
"Then will you please tell me," said Culligore, his tones both gentle
and insistent, "why didn't you come out with what you knew last
night?"
She fell back a step, feeling suddenly weak as she realized that his
question was unanswerable. A confusion of ideas churned and simmered
in her mind. Her lips moved, but no words came.
"You've answered me," declared Culligore. "You think Mr. Shei is The
Phantom. Maybe you're right, and maybe you're wrong. What I wanted to
know was what you thought. And let me tell you something." A foolish
grin, one of Lieutenant Culligore's infrequent ones, wrinkled his
face. "I hate my job less whenever I meet up with one of your kind."
Helen did not hear what he said. She felt as if the swirl of thoughts
and emotions within her had suddenly turned into a leaden lump. She
glanced involuntarily at the chair in which Virginia Darrow had sat,
and of a sudden she fancied she heard laughter--slow, tinkling laughter
that sounded like a taunt flung in the face of an approaching specter.
She knew the sounds existed only in her imagination, but with a low,
long drawn-out cry she turned abruptly and fled toward the door,
conscious only of a fierce desire for sunlight and air.
No one detained her. She ran across the street. An idea was slowly
working its way out of the turmoil in her mind. She opened her bag and
counted her scant supply of bills. Then she looked about her. Half a
block down the street she saw the sign of a district messenger office.
In a few moments she was inside, hastily scrawling a note which she
had addressed to her father. A taxicab was passing as she stepped out
on the street. She hailed the driver, and he drew in at the curb.
"Erie station--West Twenty-third Street," she directed breathlessly.
As the cab started she slumped back against the cushions and gazed
rigidly out the window. Despite the bright sunlight, things blurred
before her eyes, and there was only one clear thought in her mind.
She was on her way to The Gray Phantom, for she alone knew where to
find him.