The Gray Phantom Part 8

The question came back to him again as he closed his Paxton and got up to light the reading lamp. For months he had felt that the links connecting him with the past were snapping. The Gray Phantom had emerged from retirement only once, and then he had ventured forth in a good cause. In a little while, perhaps, he would be dead and almost forgotten. The gray orchid, if Vanardy should ever succeed in bringing it out, would be the living symbol of whatever had been good in his other self. The thought more than once had appealed to his imagination and the whimsical strain in his nature.

He turned toward the window, but he had taken only a few steps when he stopped and looked dreamily into s.p.a.ce. Memories thronged his mind and a face appeared out of nowhere--a woman's face. For months it had haunted him in his idle moments, inspiring him with vague and exhilarant emotions. He saw it now, softly radiant among the shadows, an enchanting embodiment of the bloom and freshness of youth that pursued him with the persistence of a delicate scent or the strain of an all-but-forgotten song.

"Helen!" he murmured.

The vision grew a little clearer. Now he could almost see her figure, slim and straight and moving with the easy swing and grace of a young antelope. Echoes of her voice came to him, clear and unaffected and vibrant with joyous vivacity, each melodious note touching an harmonious chord within him. He remembered that her face had given him a curious impression of youthful buoyancy mingling with the soberness of maturity. Her quick intuition, coupled with a strain of subtlety in her nature and a trace of precocious sophistication that was both puzzling and enchanting, had seemed to bridge the years that lay between them. The vitalic sheen and the subtle aroma of her hair had given him a foolish desire to see what sun and wind would do to it if she were to loosen it and romp in his garden.

He sighed musingly. Months had pa.s.sed since he had last seen her. For a brief, unforgettable moment he had held her hand, and the contact had given him a gentle, all-pervading thrill and filled him with strange and tender emotions. Her eyes, warm and frank, but with a touch of shyness lurking in their depths, as if she were still a little afraid of him, had inspired him with a tingling ecstasy such as The Gray Phantom in his wildest triumphs had never experienced. Twice he had written her since then, once to apprise her of his removal from Azurecrest and once to inquire concerning her well-being, but he had neither expected nor received an answer. He had not forgotten that in the eyes of the world he was still an outlaw, a hunted thing.

Again he sighed. The vision was fading, and little of it remained with him save a misty picture of loveliness. The moon was rising over the tree tops, throwing a white sheen over the landscape and the narrow wedge of water visible between the birches and hemlocks. The old house, purchased by Vanardy in a dilapidated condition and with difficulty rendered habitable, was silent but for the creeping whispers of the wind. For a time the solitary figure at the window stood lost in thoughts. His deep-gray eyes, rather too narrow for perfect symmetry, which had been known to stab and sting like rapiers, were not soft and luminous. Small wrinkles radiated from the outer corners, but the eyes themselves were animated by the slow twinkling gleam that characterizes the individual who sifts all the ups and downs of life through a sieve of whimsical imagination. The sensitive nostrils and the full arch of the lips denoted a penchant for distilling the maximum of thrills and emotions from the magic of existence. Here and there his face was lined and scarred, and even in repose there was a tension about the lean, tall figure that made one think of a c.o.c.ked trigger.

A knock sounded, and he turned quickly. Through the door waddled a fat man with a woe-begone expression and a multiple chin. He groaned and puffed as if the task of carrying his elephantine body through life was not a light burden. The newcomer was Clifford Wade, once The Gray Phantom's chief lieutenant and now the major-domo of his little household.

"Wade," observed The Phantom, eyeing the fat man with disapproval, "you are getting soft. This easy and carefree existence is demoralizing you completely."

The other placed a stack of newspapers and a few letters on the table, then slumped into a chair and gazed ruefully down at the protruding curvature of his stomach.

"I know, boss. I piled on two more pounds last week. Pretty soon I won't be able to go for the mail any more. If you'd only say the word, I'd round up the old gang, and we'd turn a few more tricks like the ones we used to pull in the good old days. I'd work off this fat in no time."

The Phantom shook his head. "No, Wade. You will have to try some other form of fat reducer. I am through with the old life for good. It was exciting while it lasted, but the novelty has worn off. It was only a sort of emotional eruption, anyhow."

Wade scowled, then delivered himself of a startling exclamation: "Hang the women!"

The Phantom raised his brows in surprise. "What's your grievance against the fair s.e.x, Wade? Hanging is pretty serious business, you know. What atrocious crime have the women perpetrated against you to deserve such cruel punishment? You don't look like a man suffering the pangs of unrequited love. Your heart is intact, I hope?"

"Oh, my heart's all right," Wade complained. "It's yours that I'm worrying about. Lately I haven't been able to dope you out at all, boss. If I didn't know you as well as I do, I'd say you've gone plumb dippy. There was a time not so long ago when you went in for big game--real he-man stuff. There were a lot of men on the police force who used to have a funny feeling around the solar plexus whenever The Gray Phantom's name was spoken. You cut some fancy didos in those days, boss. Now--now you're poking seeds into the ground and talking of reforming." Wade made a gesture of great disgust.

"Granted," said The Phantom, smiling, "but is that any reason for exterminating the feminine s.e.x?"

"You bet it is. The trouble with you is that you've got too much girl on the brain, boss. You were all right until that pretty little skirt with the big baby eyes happened along."

"Oh, you mean Miss Hardwick?" There was an odd tension in The Phantom's tones.

"That's who I mean. She's easy on the eyes and all that, but she's sure raised the devil with you. The old kind of life was good enough for you till she bobbed up. It was then you started all this mushy talk about going straight and changing your ways. I know because I've been watching you."

The Phantom was strangely silent. Twice he crossed the floor, then paused before the window and looked out into the shadowy landscape.

There was a pensive gleam in his eyes, as if Wade's speech had turned his thoughts into new channels. Suddenly he laughed, and the new expression that came into his face suggested that he had seen an all-revealing flash.

"I am much obliged to you for that bit of psychoa.n.a.lysis," he told the fat man. "You're right, Wade--absolutely right. I was a fool not to see it before."

"Not to see what?"

A faint smile flickered across The Phantom's face. "That Miss Hardwick has had a great deal to do with my determination to change my ways. I hadn't realized it until you spoke just now. I had been inclined to give myself all the credit. Thanks to your somewhat crude but accurate statement of the case, I can see now that all of it belongs to her."

Wade's round little eyes, imbedded in layers of flesh, stared uncomprehendingly at The Phantom. "I don't get you at all, boss."

"Then don't try. Your heart is in the right place, Wade, but you lack imagination and there are some things that you and I can't view from the same angle. Miss Hardwick's influence in my life is one of them.

Sorry to disappoint an old pal, but my determination to stay on the straight and narrow path is stronger than ever."

Wade made a wry face. "You'll suit yourself, of course, but it might interest you to know that another man is stealing your thunder while you're dancing to the piping of a skirt." He opened one of the newspapers he had placed on the table and pointed to a black-face caption. The Phantom, looking over his ma.s.sive shoulders, read:

MR. SHEI'S NAME ON DYING LIPS

His eyes narrowed gradually as he read the highly colored account of the tragedy in the Thelma Theater. There was a pucker of perplexity on his forehead when he finished.

"Wonder what Mr. Shei is up to this time," he mumbled, gazing thoughtfully at the floor. "I've been following the fellow's exploits for some time. This is a bit out of the ordinary--eh, Wade?"

"You said it, boss. And you can bet your sweet life he's getting ready for something big this time. Unless I'm a poor guesser, the affair at the Thelma last night was only the beginning. Mr. Shei's schemes run deep, and he never strikes a blow unless he's got an object in view.

There's something queer about the murder of that woman, boss."

The Phantom nodded. "Looks as though you were right, Wade. Mr. Shei is out after big game this time, and in all likelihood the Thelma affair is only the prelude. But I don't see how--"

"There's another queer thing about this Mr. Shei," interrupted the fat man. "Maybe you've noticed it. I don't know how many jobs he's pulled off, but every one of them has shown the slickest kind of workmans.h.i.+p.

What's more," and Wade's eyes peered cunningly into the other's face, "most of them look as though you'd had a hand in them yourself. That's what I meant when I said another man is stealing your thunder."

The Phantom started; then a thin smile parted his lips. "Yes, I have noticed it, Wade. I have studied Mr. Shei's methods as carefully as has been possible from the superficial and distorted newspaper accounts, and I have observed that he has done me the questionable honor of adopting some of the methods and stratagems I used to practice in the past. In a number of instances he has copied my technique so closely that I've often wondered whether I've been walking in my sleep or whether my old self has come back in a new form. It's been almost uncanny." He laughed musingly. "What do you make of it, Wade?"

"I think you'd better take another fling at the old game before this Mr. Shei gets a monopoly on it."

"I didn't mean that. How do you account for the similarity of methods?"

The fat man pondered. "Somebody has studied your tricks and put them into practice. Somebody that's been close enough to you to watch you in action. Maybe," and the glow of a sudden idea lighted up his face, "a member of our old crowd. Say, boss, wouldn't it be a joke on you if Mr. Shei should turn out to be a graduate of your own gang?"

"Worse than a joke," said The Phantom grimly. He paced the floor with quick, short steps, his hands clenched at his back. "I have given the mysterious Mr. Shei a great deal of thought in the past few months, and I fear you are right. His tactics so closely resemble mine that I suspect he learned them from me at firsthand. In the old days I often took a sort of foolish pride in teaching my methods to the more adaptable ones among the members of my organization. It pleased me to watch their development under my training. I didn't realize then what I was doing. Now----" He shrugged as if to dismiss a futile regret.

"Yes, it's quite likely that Mr. Shei is a former pupil of mine."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

The Phantom stopped abruptly, gazing at the fat man with a far-away gleam in his eye, as if they were miles apart.

"I thought The Gray Phantom was dead," he murmured. "It appears I have been mistaken. If Mr. Shei is a product of The Gray Phantom's brain, then my old self is still active. For every crime committed by Mr.

Shei, The Gray Phantom bears responsibility." He gave a dismal laugh.

"And I thought I had destroyed most of the links connecting me with the old times."

"Well," said Wade again, this time a little testily, "just what are you going to do about it?"

The Phantom did not answer immediately. He was staring absent-mindedly into s.p.a.ce. Presently he looked at his watch; then he nodded thoughtfully.

"Wish you would pack my grip, Wade."

The fat man started from the chair. "Not going away?"

"Yes; there's a train for New York a few minutes past midnight. In the morning, bright and early, I shall start a little campaign."

"Campaign?" Wade's eyes bulged. "What kind of campaign?"

"The biggest one of my life, I think. I am going out to lay The Gray Phantom's ghost. In plain words, I propose to go on the warpath against the mysterious Mr. Shei. I fancy it will be quite an exciting little tussle, Wade."