Brain and vision now both seemed blurred. Jimmie Dale hung there. He was trying to fight his way out of some mental morass, wasn't he? The man was dead, and he was lying in a pool of blood miles away, and yet he was here, moving, yes, and speaking, just as though he were alive.
“Come on, now! Come across!” the man snapped at the bound figure in the chair. “You know what'll happen if you don't! You know me, don't you? You've seen me often enough around these parts.”
“Yes, I—I know you.” Max Linesthal was an old man; and it was perhaps only the cords that held him from collapsing in his chair, for his face was deathlike in its fear. “You—you're English Steve.”
“Bull's-eye!” snapped the man at the safe again. “Well, that ought to be enough to teach you what's good for your health. You get just one minute. Take your choice. If I have to blow the safe, I might as well set you up against it for the pad! Get me? Now then, what's the combination? Quick!” He reached out and gave a sudden, vicious wrench at the leg of the chair.
“I—I'll tell you,” the old man cried out hoarsely. “Wait! I—I'll tell you. It's twenty-eight and a half left, nineteen——”
Jimmie Dale was not listening. Was he really mad? Yes, perhaps; but whether the man was dead or not, he was robbing the safe. And he, Jimmie Dale, could do nothing! He was Smarlinghue. To interfere with any crook's work was to bring the enmity of the underworld down upon the offender. It was the law of the underworld. It would destroy Smarlinghue. Better that Linesthal should lose his jewels—a thousand times better. Smarlinghue was the one chance he, Jimmie Dale, had to find the Phantom, the one chance he had to stand between the woman that he loved and the death that threatened her. With the doors of the underworld once closed against Smarlinghue, there was no——
Slowly, as though the act were almost subconscious, his hand crept now toward his pocket, crept into it, snuggled around the butt of his automatic, and, snuggling, tightened suddenly in a fierce, convulsive grip. The safe was open now, and the man kneeling there had his back to Linesthal in the chair, his side face to the door. He was ransacking the interior of the safe. Books and papers were being flung on the floor. A diamond pendant glistened in the light. It was laid on the table beside the safe. There were other jewels. They began to make a glittering little heap. But it was curious, strangely curious that the heavy black moustache should suddenly have seemed to sag down at one side; strange that the man should be taking the time now to pause in his work to twirl at it like some sophisticated dandy! No—it was off! And now the man was carefully readjusting it.
Through Jimmie Dale's veins, as though some floodgates were suddenly rent asunder, his blood was racing now in a wild, mad, surging tide. Laroque! It was Gentleman Laroque, alias the Phantom! The master of impersonation! Yes, he understood now! There was no madness in his brain. He understood! It was hellish in its cunning—a devil's alibi. The Phantom, if he were not entirely playing a lone hand through lack of trust in his erstwhile tools and pawns, was at least playing the major rôle. A safe rôle! His alibi was a dead man!
Swift as lightning flashes Jimmie Dale's mind worked now. Yes, he understood. It was the Phantom, not the gang, who had murdered English Steve. It was the Phantom, not English Steve, who had taken that clipping from the paper, made that sketch, and placed them in the dead man's pocket. Max Linesthal would be robbed, and would swear that it was English Steve—the Phantom had but a moment gone taken care to make doubly sure of that point—then English Steve would be found murdered; the police would attribute the murder without an instant's hesitation to the gang who had boasted everywhere that they would take English Steve's life; and to the gang, too, having failed to find the jewels elsewhere, would be attributed, even as he, Jimmie Dale, had thought might be the case, the possession of the proceeds of the robbery from Max Linesthal's safe. That was why the robbery was being pulled here now in so open and bare-faced a manner, intentionally so, as part of the plan, an integral, vital part of the plan—to establish the alibi that English Steve could never now refute!
The room seemed to swim before Jimmie Dale's eyes—red. Smarlinghue! What did it matter now if Smarlinghue were seen, if Smarlinghue lived or died, so that this inhuman fiend found his end too at the same time! That was what Smarlinghue existed for—the final reckoning—the end. And it was here now. There was the man he had sought through days and nights of ceaseless, torturing effort. The Phantom! Primal, elemental, his soul itself seemed stripped of all else but a blind, savage——
What was that? The doorbell, wasn't it? The doorbell in two quick, short rings! Jimmie Dale, about to step forward into the other room, his automatic already flung forward, instinctively held motionless for an instant—and in that instant he saw the Phantom leap to his feet, and whirl to the electric-light switch just beside the safe. There was a click. The house was in utter blackness.
But Jimmie Dale was in action now. A signal, of course, those two rings! Why? From whom? But it didn't matter now. Nothing mattered save to come to grips with the Phantom in there. It was pitch black, but he knew what the other's next move would be as well as though the room were still alight.
With a bound, Jimmie Dale was through the doorway and into the room. The table—those jewels! They were what the Phantom had come here for—and signal or no signal, be its meaning what it might, the Phantom would not leave without them if he could help it.
Jimmie Dale brought up against the table with a crash. His hand swept swiftly across its top, and as he brushed the jewels to the floor, to safety, a hand, groping it seemed, touched his—and was instantly drawn away before he could grasp it.
A snarl came out of the darkness on the other side of the table. A cry of terror rang out from the old man lashed in the chair. And then a blinding flash, the roar of a revolver shot, as the Phantom fired—and missed.
And Jimmie Dale laughed now, laughed with the tongue flame of the shot still hot upon his cheek, and, hurling the table out of the way, he flung himself forward again. He could not see. He could only spring straight for the spot where the shot had come from. He could not fire in return—he might hit the old man in the chair.
His fingers closed, gripped at a sleeve, tightened, and his other hand, with clubbed automatic, swung upward in a fierce, short-arm jab. And his soul cried out in joy as he felt the blow go home.
There was a sharp cry of pain; then a sudden, furious wrench that tore the sleeve from Jimmie Dale's grasp—and then the sound, deadened now, almost lost in Max Linesthal's terrified cries, of a step racing across the floor.
Jimmie Dale's jaws clamped hard together. To use his flashlight was to offer himself as a target that would not be missed a second time. But the man was making for the door, of course. Jimmie Dale leaped back in the darkness across the room—too late! The door slammed. He heard it locked. He heard the footsteps racing down the little hallway toward the back entrance.
But if there was no time to unlock this one, there was still another door—the connecting door from this room into the next, and from there into the hall. His flashlight now! It gleamed as he wrenched it from his pocket and ran to the connecting door. Was this, too, locked! Strange, those scattered jewels on the floor; that uncouth creature in a nightgown lashed in a chair and screaming in fright! He wrenched again at the door. No, it was not locked; but it was badly warped, and it stuck. His shoulder, all his body weight, went against it. It gave now, almost bursting from its hinges.
Jimmie Dale lunged through. It had cost him time;