"I suppose," Slade went on in melancholy tones, "that she told you the usual story of mistreatment and persecution?"

"She seemed very excited." Helen weighed her words with care. "I don't remember all she told me, but she said something of a fever that was gradually killing her, and she seemed very anxious to get away from this place."

"Yes, the fever is one of her hallucinations. She imagines that she is suffering from a strange disease. And not only that but she thinks everybody around her afflicted with the same mysterious malady. The idea is firmly rooted in her mind that the disease has been deliberately communicated to her by enemies. No doubt she told you of a queer kind of laughter that is supposed to be one of the symptoms of the strange ailment."

"She not only mentioned it, but she gave me a demonstration. It sounded a bit--creepy."

"I can readily believe it. It must have been very unpleasant for you.

I take it that she told the story convincingly enough to make an impression on you, or you would not have started to run away with her."

He smiled as he spoke, and all at once Helen saw the reason for her instinctive dislike of him. The smile was of the lips only. There was no responsive gleam in his eyes. And his eyes, she now perceived, were hard and dispa.s.sionate as bits of porcelain.

"She frightened me, and I didn't know what to think," she guardedly admitted. "I suppose I followed her on the impulse of the moment. I do most things on impulse, you see."

"That's the privilege of youth." He laughed, but his eyes were as glossy and expressionless as fish scales and seemed to veto his vocal merriment. "Luckily you wouldn't have got further than the gate, even if Caesar hadn't intervened. It would be very embarra.s.sing if Miss Neville should escape from us some night and expose her condition to the world. There is slight danger of that, though. I have taken all necessary precautions. However, your meeting Miss Neville here and noticing the state she is in, makes the situation rather awkward. I should dislike to have the matter get into the newspapers. I have been frank with you, hoping you would see the delicacy of the situation from my point of view."

"I never gossip about people's misfortunes," declared Helen with emphasis.

"Thank you. I know I can depend on you, Miss Hardwick. I hope Caesar didn't frighten you. By the way," and suddenly he seemed to remember something, "my secretary told me you were inquiring for Mr. Vanardy."

Helen started slightly. For an hour she had been wondering why she had seen nothing of The Gray Phantom and why her request to see him had been met with evasions and cross-questioning.

Slade regarded her with polite curiosity. "I have seen your name in the newspapers, Miss Hardwick. You wrote the play that Vincent Starr produced at his theater. Only a little while ago I was reading of the peculiar tragedy that interrupted the first performance last night. I wonder whether your visit here has anything to do with that occurrence."

It was a strange question, Helen thought. "I--I would rather talk over my errand with Mr. Vanardy in person," she stammered. She was chilled and confused by his steady gaze. "Isn't he here?"

Slade's lips twitched. "You know, of course, that Mr. Vanardy is the genial rascal who used to be known as The Gray Phantom. You needn't answer; I see that you do. It strikes me as rather odd that a young lady of your evident refinement and culture should be a.s.sociated with a man of that type. Pardon my impertinence. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Vanardy is not here. He left Azurecrest some time ago."

"What?" Helen half rose from the chair. With a great exertion of will power she steadied herself. "Mr. Vanardy not here? Then where is he?"

"That I don't know. I purchased Azurecrest from him through a broker.

I never had any dealings with the man himself. In fact, at the time I bought the place I didn't know that it had been occupied by The Gray Phantom. You see, I had been looking for a secluded spot where Miss Neville could live quietly and without fear of unwelcome intrusions.

Azurecrest seemed to answer the requirements, and so I bought it."

Helen stared at him, unable to disguise her bewilderment. Slade's statement amazed and shocked her. She had not been in correspondence with The Gray Phantom, but at their last meeting he had told her to communicate with him at Azurecrest if she should ever need him. She thought it strange that he had not sent her word of his removal.

Slade was sauntering leisurely back and forth across the floor. Now and then, as he looked at her, his eyes gave her a chill. She made a strong effort to gather her thoughts and master her feelings.

Something, she did not know just what, told her that the occasion demanded a cool head and steady nerves.

A motor horn sounded in the distance. Evidently a car was winding its way up the hill. The thought gave her a vague sense of comfort. She sat up straight.

"I told the man who met me at the gate that I wished to see Mr.

Vanardy," she remarked. "Later I told Hawkes the same thing. Neither one intimated that Mr. Vanardy was no longer here. I was asked a lot of useless questions and asked to wait. Then--"

"My dear Miss Hardwick," smoothly interrupted Slade, "you must understand that the circ.u.mstances under which my half-sister and myself are living here make it necessary for me to be very cautious with regard to visitors. My servants have orders to subject all callers to careful inspection and cross-examination. For instance, how do I know that you are not a newspaper reporter looking for a sensation?"

Helen smiled; the suggestion seemed so absurd. Once more the blare of a horn sounded in the distance.

"And that reminds me," Slade went on in slightly altered tones, "that you have not yet explained your presence here. I asked you a moment ago whether it had anything to do with what happened at the Thelma Theater."

"So you did." Helen's smile, though tantalizing, was the kind with which one masks an inner turbulence.

"I am waiting for your answer." Slade seemed as suave and urbane as before, but his eye was a trifle frostier and his tone carried a peremptory note. Helen glanced at the window. A glare like that of a motor car's headlight was approaching the house.

"Your question is very peculiar," she replied with a haughtiness which she did not quite feel, "and I see no reason why I should answer it."

"No?" Slade had ceased his pacing of the floor, and Helen wondered whether it was by design or accident that he had stopped with his back to the door. "Perhaps the question will seem less peculiar if I word it differently. What did you mean when you told Hawkes that the business you wished to discuss with Vanardy had to do with Mr. Shei?"

Helen felt a tingle of suspense. There was a sneer on Slade's lips and his frigid eyes filled her with a vague dread. She tried to parry the question with banter, but the words would not come. She twisted in her chair, and suddenly, as the door behind Slade's back came open, her gaze grew rigid and a look of consternation filled her eyes. She gripped the arms of her chair and very slowly raised herself to her feet, all the while staring intently at the figure whose arrival had been heralded a few minutes ago by the headlight's glare.

The newcomer seemed startled at first, then he smiled. Slade stepped aside and bowed deferentially to the man in the doorway. Then he noticed Helen's transfigured face.

"You two seem to have met before," he remarked.

Helen advanced a step. She drew a long, trembling breath. A staggering realization flashed through her mind as she gazed rigidly into the newcomer's smiling face. It was the same realization that had come to her with such unnerving force in the Thelma Theater. It had grown hazy and vague during the intervening hours, and the quick succession of events had left her wondering. Now she knew that her first intuitive suspicion had been correct. Her mind seemed to reel and spin. She hardly knew that her lips were moving, but her voice, hoa.r.s.e and scarcely audible, was uttering a name:

"Mr. Shei!"

CHAPTER VI

THE PHANTOM ORCHID

Cuthbert Vanardy sat in his library at Sea Glimpse and tried hard to fix his mind on Paxton's _Botanical Dictionary_. Despite his best efforts it was a hopeless task. His thoughts would go gypsying, and every now and then the print would blur and fade or dissolve into fanciful images that had nothing to do with hybridization and cross-pollination of orchids.

A problem had been teasing Vanardy's imagination for months. He had struggled with it in idle moments, while resting from more ambitious experiments. Specimens from his gardens were shown each year at the horticultural expositions in New York and Boston, where they created much favorable comment among experts and caused endless speculation concerning the ident.i.ty of the anonymous exhibitor, who had private and excellent reasons for remaining unknown. The problem he was now working on, however, was merely a diversion from his more serious work.

He wanted to create a gray orchid. It was to be a particular shade of gray--a dim, mystic gray, like the color of the sky just before dawn or the hue of the sea in a light fog. The novelty of the idea appealed to him and the task was proving difficult enough to give him gentle stimulation. Furthermore, gray always had been his favorite color. And he had almost decided that the hybrid, when once evolved, should be known as The Phantom Orchid.

It was merely a whim, of course--the vagary of a mind so active that it must be working even at play. For the matter of that, he often told himself that of late years his life had been little else than a succession of fancies and dim shades of reality. The gardens he had planted and the products that gained such flattering comment in the horticultural journals had been nothing but a tangible expression of a pa.s.sionate desire to blot out the past and efface that other self whom the outside world called The Gray Phantom.

In those other days he had gone, like a rollicking Robin Hood, from one stupendous adventure to another. Without thought of sordid gain, but merely to a.s.suage an inborn craving for excitement, he had dipped into a whirl of exploits that caused the public to gasp and hold its breath. The police, bedeviled and outwitted at every turn, had gritted their teeth and muttered anathemas even while admitting that The Gray Phantom always played the game fairly and that his victims, more often than not, were villains of a far blacker dye than he.

It had been a mad carousal, and for a time it had given The Phantom all the thrills his nature craved. Nearly always his left hand had tossed away what his right had plucked. Mysterious and untraceable contributions had poured in upon hospitals, orphan asylums, societies for the protection of animals, and other philanthropic organizations.

Widows, invalids, and paupers were befriended in a way that caused them to believe in a return of the day of miracles. Dreamers starving in garrets and inventors struggling to keep body and soul together were tided over many a trying crisis.

Through it all The Gray Phantom had maintained an elusiveness that confounded the keenest man hunters among the police and wrapped his ident.i.ty in a mysterious glamour. Simple-minded people wondered whether he were a being of flesh and blood, or a shade on earthly rampage. His one arrest, back in the early stages of his career, had settled their doubts once for all, but an astonishing escape a few days later caused them to wag their heads and speak in hushed tones of a rogue whose feats and juggleries bewildered them.

The Phantom laughed quietly at their perplexity. The performances that awed and puzzled them seemed simple enough to him. He was merely unleashing his imagination and giving free sway to his boundless energies of body and mind. In another age he might have been a sea-roving viking or a builder of ancient empires. At times, when one of his softer moods was upon him, he wondered why his restless spirit and the fires within him could not have found a different and more soul-satisfying outlet. Then his thoughts would go back to dimly remembered days, with their shadowy recollections of early orphanage and the peccadilloes of street urchins, and somehow he thought he understood.

But as time pa.s.sed his restless moods came back with increasing frequency, and little by little he lost taste for the life he was leading and the adventures that had made his sobriquet known from coast to coast. Then there came lapses between The Gray Phantom's exploits, and finally they ceased altogether. The world, not knowing with what lavish hand he had flung away his spoils, supposed he had collected his treasures and gone into hiding, and the police grimly predicted that he would reappear as soon as he had squandered his ill-gotten gains. No one guessed that The Phantom had built a hermitage on a desolate hilltop where, surrounded by a few of his art treasures and a small group of faithful followers, he was trying to reconstruct his life in peace.

"Azurecrest" was the name he had given his secluded retreat, and there he had tried to destroy the links that still chained him to the past and to blot out the tantalizing visions of other days. For a time he had almost succeeded; then a restlessness had come upon him for which the desolate hilltop afforded no relief, and he felt that his mountain retreat, with its collection of relics and reminders of bygone times, was too closely a.s.sociated with the things he wanted to forget.

Finally he had disposed of the place through a broker and purchased a narrow strip of land by the sea. He could not a.n.a.lyze the obscure motives and hidden impulse that had impelled him to seek seclusion at Sea Glimpse, a slender tongue of wooded land surrounded on three sides by jagged coast line and in the rear by forest and farm land. But while at work clearing the ground for his garden he had felt a grateful remoteness from things he wished to forget, and a measure of peace and satisfaction had come to him while he put his unpracticed hands to strange tasks or wandered among the trees and listened to the murmurs of the sea. He often wondered whether he would be content to spend his life in this secluded nook of the world where, safely hidden and secure from intrusion, he could devote himself to his hobby and his books.