CHAPTER X--IN THE TUNNEL
The Phantom waited for fifteen minutes, then he quietly opened the doorand looked down the hall. The lights were turned low and not a soundbroke the stillness. Apparently the anthropologist and the manservanthad retired. Stepping inside the room, he took from an inside pocket thelittle metal box he always carried, examined the snugly packed tools itcontained, and made sure that each was in good condition. Finally, heswitched off the light, noiselessly closed the door behind him, andtiptoed down the stairs.
Stealing down a corridor through the main part of the house, he reachedthe extension formed by the laboratory. He stopped at the door, tiltedhis ear to the keyhole, and listened carefully. It had occurred to himthat Doctor Bimble might be at work, and an encounter with his hostwould have proved embarrassing. His keen ears detected no sounds,however, and in another moment he had passed through the door and wasgroping his way across the floor of the laboratory.
Of a sudden he stopped. A faint sound seemed to come from the directionwhere the skeletons stood in their glass-framed cages. He strained hisears to catch a repetition, but none came. Evidently he had beenmistaken. He knew how sounds are magnified at night, and what he hadheard was probably nothing but the rattling of a windowpane or thecreaking of a board under his foot. He proceeded to the opposite wall,darting swift glances to left and right, as if half suspecting thatsomeone was lurking in the shadows. Again a door swung noiselessly onits hinges, and the Phantom glided down the stairs leading to thecellar. From his hip pocket he took a small electric flash and let itsbeam play over the floor while he looked for the entrance to the tunnel.
For a time he searched in vain, traversing the length of the murky brickwalls and carefully scanning each square foot of space without finding atrace of the opening. The mouth of the passage seemed to havedisappeared in the three or four hours that had passed since he emergedfrom the subterranean tube. He tried to locate it by tracing backwardthe course he had followed in reaching the stairs, but it proved adifficult task, for he had floundered about in total darkness, notdaring to use his flash for fear of attracting attention. He had a hazyimpression, however, that the opening was in a diagonal line with thefoot of the stairway.
The gleam of his flash leaped over the grimy bricks, and presently hedetected a narrow fissure in the wall. It extended in a quadrangularcourse and was barely wide enough to admit a match or a nail. Insertingone of the sharp-nosed tools from his metal case, he pried outward, anda narrow portion of the wall swung open. He saw now that the littlefissures constituted the boundaries of a door. It was composed of bricksthreaded on iron rods and resembling in color and general appearancethose in the surrounding wall, and it was so deftly concealed that onlya careful search would reveal its existence. Evidently it had stood openwhen the Phantom crawled out of the tunnel, which explained why he hadnot noticed it. He suspected that the thoughtful anthropologist, notcaring to have too many outsiders discover the tunnel, had closed itwhile the officers were searching the front of the house.
The Phantom waited for a few minutes while a little of the dank air inthe cellar found its way into the passage. He did not relish the taskahead of him, but he was determined to settle a point on which thedoctor had been singularly evasive. The problem he had set out to solvewould be simplified to a great extent, and he would save himselfneedless efforts and loss of valuable time by ascertaining whether thebedchamber of the late Sylvanus Gage could be entered by way of thetunnel.
Having buttoned his coat tightly and made certain that his instrumentcase was within easy reach, he inserted head and shoulders in theopening and began the weary crawl toward the other end. His progress waspainfully slow, and the smell of the moist earth gave him a sense ofoppression which he found hard to shake off. The air, dank andinsufficient, was almost stifling, and the walls of the narrow passage,bruising his body at each twist and turn, seemed to exude a sepulchralatmosphere that insinuated itself into body and mind.
At length he reached the point where the tunnel slanted upward into thewall, and here his progress became even more difficult. Time and againhe slipped, and he could maintain a footing only by bracing the tips ofhis shoes against rough spots along the sides. He was puffing fromexertion when finally he struck a solid obstruction which told him hehad reached the end of the passage.
Finding a precarious foothold, he took out his flash and closelyscrutinized his surroundings. On two sides were walls of brick, whiledirectly in front of him was the flank of the window frame. He pushedagainst the latter with all his strength, but it presented a firm andsolid resistance to his efforts. Next he went over it inch by inch,looking for a hidden lever or spring, but the most careful searchrevealed nothing that suggested a means of operating the mechanism.Finally he took out one of his tools and, inserting it in the tiny riftbetween the wall and the edge of the frame, began to pry steadily. Afterseveral minutes of constant effort he gave up the task as hopeless.
He leaned back against the wall and bent the full force of his wits tothe task of finding a way through the obstruction. Evidently there wasnone. He had tapped every inch of the surface and looked everywhere fora concealed knob or wire by which the mechanism might be operated. Alarger and heavier tool than the instrument in his metal case would havebeen of no avail, for in those narrow quarters he could not haveobtained leverage. His search, though thorough and infinitelypainstaking, had netted nothing.
The conclusion was clear. The revolving door could not be operated fromthe outside; hence the murderer of Sylvanus Gage could not have enteredthe room through the tunnel. Again the Phantom's mind reverted to theinevitable deduction that no one but Officer Pinto could have committedthe crime.
His lungs, which had been straining for air for the last quarter of anhour, felt as though they were on the point of bursting, and he wasabout to release his foothold and start back through the tunnel when afaint tapping sound caught his ears. He could not tell how long it hadbeen going on, for until now his whole attention had been focused on theproblem before him. For all he knew it might just have begun, or itmight have started long before he entered the tunnel.
He pressed his ear against the side of the frame and listened. Thesounds, quick and sharp, were coming in rapid succession, and at firsthe wondered whether someone was trying to attract his attention. Then henoticed that the sounds skipped and jumped, as if the tapping covered aconsiderable area, and his next surmise was that the person on the otherside was making a systematic search for something.
"For what?" he wondered; and in the next moment the answer flashedthrough his mind. He remembered how, while he was imprisoned in thebedroom, momentarily expecting the police to force the door and pounceupon him, he had looked to the window as the only possible means ofescape, and how finally he had discovered the nail that proved hissalvation. Evidently the person on the other side was now doing the verything the Phantom himself had been doing a few hours ago.
But who could it be? As far as he knew, no one but Helen, Doctor Bimbleand himself was aware of the existence of the revolving door, and thetunnel. It did not seem likely that anyone should be searching at randomfor an opening. And who could be prowling about the Gage house at suchan hour? Again he put his ear to the frame. The tapping had ceased, butnow he heard another and different sound that caused him to quiver withexcitement. A slight metallic noise, like that produced by the contactof two objects of steel, told him that the person on the inside hadfound the nail.
In a twinkling he had forgotten his cramped position, the dank air andthe sickening smell of moist earth. All his senses were centered on thesounds coming from the other side, so slight that his keen ears couldscarcely detect them. Something told him that in a few minutes he wouldmake a discovery of tremendous importance in relation to the Gage murdermystery. Everything depended upon whether the person on the other sidewould give the nail the proper twist.
Minutes dragged by on leaden feet. The Phantom felt his heart poundchokingly against his ribs, its loud beats alm
ost drowning the slightmetallic sounds coming from the other side. After what seemed hours ofnerve-racking suspense, a sharp and sudden click caused him to startviolently, and he almost lost his insecure footing.
Then the window frame began to turn. A glare of light struck his eyes asthe opening wedge widened. With great, eager gulps he drank in the aircoming from the aperture. A minute passed, and then a face, strained andashen, was thrust into the opening.
It was Mrs. Trippe, the housekeeper. For an instant she stared into thePhantom's startled eyes.
"He's killing me!" she cried. "He's afraid I'll tell! He locked mein----"
She jerked her head to one side. Slight though she was, she almostfilled the narrow opening, and he could see only a small strip of theroom at her back. Suddenly a shiver coursed down her spine. A hand wasprojected beyond the wall, and he caught a glimpse of steel flashing inthe light. Then, in quick succession, came a scream and a thud, and thewoman slid from the window sill.
It had happened so quickly that the Phantom had not time to utter a wordor raise a hand. Now, before he could move a muscle, the window frameslammed shut. He heard a click, signifying that the frame was caught inthe steel clutches of the mechanism. He pressed his shoulders againstit, but to no avail, and he knew from his previous attempt that theeffort was useless. Filled with horror at what he had just seen, he sliddown the incline between the walls and began to work back toward thecellar.
Finally, after endless jerks and twistings, he reached the end of thetunnel--and there a fresh shock awaited him. His feet brought up againsta solid obstruction. Shove against it as he might, the little door wouldnot yield to his frenzied pressure. For a little he laid still on hisback, thinking. His mind was heavy and his thoughts flitted about incircles, but finally it came to him that while he was at the other endof the tunnel someone must have placed a heavy weight against the door.
He was trapped.
The Gray Phantom's Return Page 10