TRAPPED
"Hello--hello!" shouted Culligore into the mouthpiece. From head to
foot he was tingling with suspense. It was one of the rare occasions
within recent years when he felt the thrill of excitement.
A hoarse and rasping voice responded, but at first he could make out
no words. The person at the other end seemed to speak with great
difficulty and was evidently on the verge of hysterics.
"Speak a little louder, can't you?" urged the lieutenant. "Who are
you?"
A jumble of split words and syllables sounded distantly in his ear.
Now and then, between efforts to speak clearly, came a titter and a
giggle that awoke a startling suspicion in Culligore's mind.
"Tell me who you are," he said in loud tones.
A short, cracked laugh came over the wire. It was followed by a groan,
as if the speaker were despairing over his inability to make himself
understood. Then he tried again. "Fair--Fairspeckle."
"Oh!" Culligore's teeth clicked out the exclamation. He nodded at the
instrument, as if the name just spoken had confirmed a suspicion in
his mind. "Where are you, Mr. Fairspeckle?"
"I can't--can't tell you," came gropingly over the wire.
"Haven't you any idea?"
"None. I'm locked in a--a room, and I am--dying! For God's sake get me
out!"
"Listen, Mr. Fairspeckle," said Culligore tensely. "You're somewhere
in the Thelma Theater, and I am going to find you. It may take some
little time, but don't worry. It won't be very long."
A groan of relief mingled with pent-up suspense sounded in Culligore's
ear, and then he slammed the receiver back on the hook. His eyes were
twinkling and there was a new eagerness in his face. He jumped up from
the chair and took a step toward the door. Then he drew back, and in
the next moment his face had resumed its habitual sluggish expression
and there was nothing in his manner to indicate that anything out of
the ordinary had happened.
The door opened and in walked Vincent Starr. The theatrical manager,
faultlessly attired in evening dress, topcoat, and silk hat, shrank
back at sight of the man standing beside the desk. Then, recognizing
the lieutenant, he instantly gathered himself.
"You startled me, Culligore," he explained with an apologetic laugh.
"So many strange things have happened in this place that I am
naturally a little nervous. I often come here late at night to read or
write, according to my mood, but of late I approach the place in fear
and trembling." He eyed the detective inquiringly. "I wonder what
brings you to my private office at such an hour."
"Hope you don't mind my snooping," said Culligore genially. "I have
been looking around a bit. There were a couple of things I wanted to
get straightened out in my mind. As you say yourself, there have been
a lot of strange doings in this place, and I've got a sneaking
suspicion that Mr. Shei is back of them all."
Starr doffed his hat and ran his fingers through his long, glossy
hair. The discoloration of his nose had diminished greatly, but his
face was still pale and drawn.
"That's precisely my idea," he said nervously. "I shall never feel
safe until that scoundrel is behind iron bars. Unless he has a private
grievance against me, I am at a loss to understand why he can't keep
away from my theater. By the way, did you obtain any light on the
things that were puzzling you?"
"Not much," said Culligore disgustedly, with a furtive glance at the
telephone. "I searched every square inch of the place without finding
what I was after."
"Yes?" Starr seemed politely curious. "I infer, then, that you had a
definite object in view, that you were not just searching at random."
"Oh, no." Culligore looked about him as if not quite at ease. "I
suppose we're alone?"
"Not another soul in the building. You can speak as freely as you
like."
"Then I'll tell you exactly what I think. The way Mr. Shei's men have
been sneaking in and out of this place is mighty suggestive. Just why
they should be turning your place into a rendezvous is something I
don't understand, but that's exactly what they seem to be doing. They
were right on the job the night you opened your new play. They gave
Virginia Darrow a shot of poison just at the psychological moment,
before she could spill what she knew. Then they sneaked the body away
right under our eyes, and we have not yet discovered how they managed
it. Only the other day, somebody took a shot at either you or The Gray
Phantom. All this looks mighty queer."
"It does," assented Starr. He took out a jewel-studded case and
lighted a cigarette. His pale, uneasy eyes did not leave the
detective's face for a moment. "What is your theory?"
Culligore looked musingly into space. "Mr. Shei is very clever, but he
is of flesh and blood, like the rest of us. There must be a simple and
natural explanation for all these strange doings. I'll bet my hat that
he has found a secret entrance to your place."
"Impossible," said Starr promptly. "This theater was built according
to my own directions and my own architects supervised every detail of
the construction."
"That may be, but I still stick to the idea of a secret entrance.
Don't you see, Mr. Starr, even if you didn't have such an entrance
made when you constructed your theater, Mr. Shei's men may have
drilled a hole through the wall or the floor somewhere? Nothing else
explains how they have been slipping in and out of the place."
"But why?" demanded Starr, and his fingers trembled as he took the
cigarette from his lips. "Why should they do such a thing?"
Culligore smiled faintly while his muddy little eyes scanned the
other's face.
"I think you can make a pretty fair guess," he said dryly.
Starr's face turned a shade paler. For an instant there was a look of
positive dread in his eyes, but it vanished quickly. A sad smile came
to his lips.
"I see I must be frank with you," he murmured, "much as I dislike to
discuss matters pertaining to my private life. Don't ask me to go into
details, for there are excellent reasons why I should not do so. In
plain words, I do not care to incriminate myself. I have not always
been what I am to-day. There was a time, quite a number of years ago,
when I led a very violent life and when the law and I were not on the
best of terms. I made enemies--a number of them--and it is possible that
they are pursuing me to-day. In fact I----"
He paused, and his narrowing gaze slanted to the floor. Culligore
repressed a start. In the intense silence of the moment he heard a
faint buzzing. Somewhere, in one of the offices on the ground floor, a
telephone was ringing, and he guessed that Fairspeckle had grown
impatient and was calling one of the other departments of the
intercommunicating system.
"In fact," Starr went on after a moment's pause, quickly controlling
his astonishment, "if I were to come face to face with Mr. Shei
to-day, I strongly suspect that I would recognize in him one of my old
enemies. Don't ask me to explain any further, Culligore. You will
appreciate the delicacy of the matter."
"I do, and you've said enough to explain the funny doings that have
been going on here. I want you to answer one question frankly. Have
you any idea who Mr. Shei is?"
"Have you?" was Starr's prompt rejoinder.
Culligore chuckled. "Maybe I have and maybe I haven't. I'm pretty sure
of one thing. Some people think The Gray Phantom is Mr. Shei, but
they're dead wrong."
Starr's lips twitched into a knowing smile. "I agree with you, there,
Culligore. Shall we go a step farther? With The Gray Phantom
eliminated, the range of available suspects narrows down to one man.
Am I right?"
"I think you are on the right track, Mr. Starr."
The theatrical manager, once more quite composed, seemed to find a
great deal of amusement in the speculative drift of the conversation.
"It is diverting to try to read other people's minds," he observed. "I
wonder how close I can come to an accurate reading of yours. A
detective's thoughts travel a devious route, but I will try to look at
the situation from your point of view, taking all the circumstances
into account. If you were to mention the name of the one remaining
suspect, I fancy it would be W. Rufus Fairspeckle."
Culligore stared as if dumfounded at the other's astuteness, but his
lips curled into the faintest grin as soon as Starr averted his gaze.
"You might as well admit that I was right," said the manager with a
smile of elation. "For once a mere layman has read your mind like an
open book. The next question is what has become of Fairspeckle. Do you
suppose----"
He broke off short. His glance darted involuntarily to the automatic
telephone on the desk. Its summons sounded clear and distinct in the
tense silence. Once more a tinge of gray crept into his face. With a
tightening of the lips he looked furtively at Culligore.
"Queer!" muttered the lieutenant, fingering the green cord attached to
the instrument and tracing it to the sound box. "Someone is calling on
the private wire. And you just told me that you and I were alone in
the building."
The buzzing continued. Starr stared helplessly at the instrument, but
out of the tail of an eye he was watching the expression on the
detective's face. Finally, with a jerk of the shoulders, he emerged
from his daze.
"I don't understand it," he murmured, "but we shall soon see what it
means."
He sat down and drew the instrument to him. His face took on a look of
determination, but there was also a baffling and inscrutable
expression that might have puzzled the detective. But Culligore's
thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. He looked as though he foresaw a
critical moment and realized that quick thinking and prompt action
were necessary. While Starr was speaking into the telephone, he looked
quickly about the room. From his vest pocket he took a small box and
removed the lid, exposing a reddish substance that looked like salve.
Rubbing a little of it onto his finger tips, he softly crossed the
room and quickly smeared a thin coating of the reddish material on the
doorknob.
Starr hung up the receiver just as the little box disappeared into
Culligore's vest pocket.
"I don't understand it," said the manager frettingly. "Someone was
speaking. It was a man's voice, but I couldn't make out what he was
trying to say. It is very mysterious." He smiled faintly. "It's
beginning to look as though I was mistaken and there was someone else
in the building besides you and me."
"It certainly looks queer," admitted Culligore. "I searched
everywhere, but we might as well go over the ground again."
Starr acquiesced readily, and Culligore saw to it that the manager
preceded him out of the room. He noticed with gratification that the
other's fingers closed firmly around the knob as he opened the door,
and he knew that Starr was too preoccupied to take heed of the faint
smear left on his hand from contact with the greased metal. He
chuckled inwardly as he followed the manager down the stairs and
through the offices in front of the building. After a brief and
somewhat perfunctory search, they entered the auditorium.
"Shall I switch on the lights?" whispered Starr, walking beside the
detective.
"I wouldn't. If there's a prowler around the place, we don't want to
warn him. My electric flash will do."
For a time they conducted the search in silence, the detective
cautiously darting the electric gleam over floor and walls and into
dark corners. Finally he paused before a niche in the wall and pointed
to an aperture behind the marble shelf that spanned the opening.
"Do you know," he whispered, "that the other day, while I was talking
with The Gray Phantom, I had a funny feeling someone was hiding back
there and listening to our conversation? Who do you suppose it could
have been?"
There was no response. Culligore had been peering into the recess
behind the marble ledge. Now he looked up quickly, but Starr was
gone--and the twitching of the detective's lips signified that the
manager's sudden disappearance did not surprise him greatly. In an
instant he was amazingly alert. Jerking his electric flash hither and
thither, he moved quickly back and forth within the narrow space where
he had last seen the manager, sweeping the surrounding objects with
his electric gleam and examining the surfaces of chairs, pillars,
walls, and decorative articles.
Presently he brought up in front of one of the larger pillars
supporting the balcony. He had previously noticed its huge dimensions,
and now he gauged them again with a quickly calculating eye. It was
there The Gray Phantom had stood when the mysterious shot was fired
the other day, and Helen Hardwick had been leaning against the same
pillar when the curious individual with the repulsive features glided
past her.
The electric gleam moved swiftly over the white surface of the post
with its ornate trimmings of dull gold. Again, as once or twice
before, he wondered whether there was any hidden significance in the
fact that The Gray Phantom had stood in this identical spot at the
moment the shot was fired. Was it possible that the skulking assailant
had feared that The Phantom was about to make an important discovery,
and was that why he had fired the shot? Culligore pondered the
question while scanning every square inch of the pillar.
Suddenly the electric gleam stopped at a point near the floor, and
Culligore could scarcely repress an exclamation of elation. His ruse
had succeeded, for on the white surface of the post was a faint
discoloration which signified that Starr's hand had recently touched
that particular point. There were no other marks, and this one was
only a few inches from the floor. Culligore's fingers ran quickly over
the surrounding space, and occasionally he pressed his thumb firmly
against the wood, but without discovering anything. His hand slid
downward to where the rich Persian carpet was neatly tucked around the
base of the post, and suddenly his exploring fingers touched a slight
knoblike projection. He pressed firmly, and he felt an exultant tingle
as there came a soft, whirring response. A panel in the post,
ingeniously hidden in the gold-lined grooves, was sliding back,
forming an aperture.
The electric gleam showed a look of keen elation on Culligore's face.
His discovery had taken only a minute or two of valuable time, for he
had moved fast since he noticed that Starr was gone. Yet, but for a
happy inspiration and the resultant reddish stain on the post, he
might have searched for days without finding the opening.
Now he squeezed his figure through the narrow aperture, at the same
time pocketing his electric flash and drawing his automatic. His feet
encountered the upper rungs of a ladder that pointed straight down. He
descended rapidly, making no sound. At the bottom was a narrow passage
extending in the direction of the street, and at its farther end he
saw a faint glow. He approached quickly, warned by a sixth sense that
he had no time to waste.
He came to a door. It stood open a crack, and through the narrow
opening he saw a strange scene. An elderly man, with a thin and
haggard face and sunken eyes that stared about him in an agonized way,
was lying on a cot. Starr, bending over the recumbent man, was winding
pieces of rope around his feet and hands and drawing them into tight
knots.
"There, Mr. Fairspeckle," he tauntingly declared when he had fastened
a gag around the other man's mouth, "I don't think you will work loose
a second time. Even if you should, you will find that the telephone is
out of order."
He laughed, turned away from the cot, and uttered a gasp as he looked
into the muzzle of Culligore's pistol. Every trace of color faded from
his face, but he gathered himself quickly.
"You are a most astounding person, Culligore," he remarked coolly. "I
wonder how you found your way down here. Not that it matters," he
added with a shrug, "but I am naturally curious. I won't press you for
the information, however. Any way I can be of service?"
"Yes, Mr. Shei," said Culligore, emphasizing each word and looking
straight into the other's eyes, "you can hold out your hands and not
make any fuss while I put the handcuffs on you."
Starr laughed derisively. "Sorry not to be able to oblige you, but I
have a distinct aversion to handcuffs. Won't you sit down and be
comfortable? An underground room like this has many advantages. In the
chests you see against the walls I occasionally store things that the
police and private detectives would give a great deal to be able to
lay their hands on. It is an excellent hiding place, and it serves
several other purposes besides."
"So I see," muttered Culligore with a glance at the man on the cot.
Fairspeckle's face bore a dazed look and he seemed to understand
nothing of what was being said, but his staring eyes held an
expression of terror.
"I would like to know," murmured Starr, fixing his pale eyes on the
lieutenant's inscrutable face, "how and when you learned that I was
Mr. Shei. I was under the impression that you suspected Fairspeckle."
"I meant you should be," said Culligore with a dry chuckle. "I knew
somebody was listening behind the marble ledge the day I had that talk
with The Gray Phantom upstairs, and I guessed it was either you or one
of your men. I pretended to believe that Fairspeckle was Mr. Shei, and
I encouraged The Phantom in thinking the same thing, but all the while
I was talking for the benefit of the fellow behind the marble slab. I
had a pretty good suspicion as to who Mr. Shei was, and I wanted to
throw him off his guard. Once a man gets careless it isn't hard to
catch him."
Starr grinned appreciatively. "I'll admit that you are far shrewder
than you look, Culligore, but I am not so sure that I have been guilty
of carelessness. That remains to be seen. What I am curious to know is
when you first began to suspect that I was Mr. Shei. You see, I have
nothing to fear from you, so I frankly admit the fact. But I would
like to know by what sort of reasoning you were led to suspect me."
"There wasn't any course of reasoning," said Culligore, maintaining a
steady grip on his pistol. "It was only a flash here and there. The
first flash came when I saw the note Virginia Darrow sent you the
night she died. I guessed then that she had learned in some way that
you were Mr. Shei, and she wanted to tease you with it. A little
later, when you were handed that bump on the nose, I didn't know
exactly what to think. Then it came to me that, if you really were Mr.
Shei, you would have yourself assaulted along with the others to turn
suspicion away from you. It was a clever move, Mr. Starr, but it
didn't fool me for long. Well, a number of other things happened that
strengthened my suspicion, but I wasn't really sure until I walked
into this room to-night."
Starr scowled a little. "You are a bit disappointing, Culligore. I had
hoped you would give me an example of fine-spun deductive reasoning of
the kind that always drips from the lips of story-book detectives.
Just one more thing before we close this pleasant interview. How do
you account for Mr. Fairspeckle?"
"Oh, that part was fairly easy. Fairspeckle is a queer sort, but he
never did any real harm. He's been troubled with insomnia, and when a
man can't sleep, he's likely to do any foolish thing, from writing
poetry on a park bench to murdering his mother-in-law. The deeper the
mystery, the simpler the explanation. That has been my experience, and
it has held true in Fairspeckle's case. I'm not dead sure of my facts,
but I can make a pretty close guess. The night Mr. Shei's notices were
posted, Fairspeckle had been roaming the town as he always did when he
couldn't sleep. He saw one of the notices in Times Square and, being
one of the seven richest men in town, he didn't like the idea a bit.
Then The Gray Phantom came strolling along, and Fairspeckle recognized
him. Like many others, he jumped at the conclusion that The Phantom
was Mr. Shei, and right away he began to study out a way of beating
Mr. Shei's game.
"By some hook or crook he got The Phantom into his apartment, and
there he tried to drug him. He had two objects in view. One of them
was to keep The Phantom under cover for a time so he wouldn't be able
to go on with his scheme, and the other was to get even with certain
enemies of his by throwing an almighty scare into them. While the real
Mr. Shei, as he supposed, was a prisoner in his apartment, he meant to
carry the scheme just a step or two farther--just far enough to put
fear into his old enemies. It just so happened that five of those
enemies were among the seven richest men in town. Well, Fairspeckle
got a typewriter and went to work and typed a new set of notices,
supplementing the ones that had already been posted. I hope he had a
good laugh while he was typing the seven names, for that's all the
good his scheme did him. A few hours later he was kidnaped. That was
another fairly clever move, Starr."
Starr seemed to enjoy the compliment. "Thanks, Culligore," he
murmured. "I knew you would appreciate that little touch. After
overhearing the conversation between you and The Phantom, in which I
thought you made it plain that both of you suspected Fairspeckle, I
saw a still more effective way to divert suspicion from myself. Since
you already suspected Fairspeckle, as I thought at the time, it
occurred to me to let the suspicion take firmer root by having
Fairspeckle disappear. A man who vanishes mysteriously is always an
object of suspicion."
Culligore nodded absently. Only half his mind had been on Starr's
speech. Now, still holding the automatic firmly leveled, he came a
step closer to the other man.
"I don't like to muss you up," he said softly, "so please put out your
hands and make no trouble."
Starr chuckled amusedly. "You are really surprisingly simple,
Culligore. Your pistol doesn't frighten me, for I know you won't use
it. And arresting me won't do you any good. If you put me in jail, the
antidote will never be found, and then seven of the biggest men in the
country will die. Don't you see, Culligore, that there isn't a thing
you can do?"
His tones were soft and teasing, and his words expressed the same idea
that Culligore himself had voiced in Inspector Stapleton's presence.
Slowly the lieutenant ran his eyes over the walls. The underground
chamber, and especially the steel chests stacked along the side, would
serve excellently as a hiding place. What more natural than the
antidote should be concealed in one of the chests? It seemed----
He got no farther in his reasoning. Too swiftly for Culligore to
interfere, Starr's hand moved to the wall at his side. A faint click
sounded, and then blackness fell. Culligore sprang forward, but
already a loud slam signified that the door had closed. He hurled
himself against it, but he might as well have been pitting his
strength against a brick wall.
"Trapped!" he muttered.