Somewhere a clock was striking ten as the Phantom withdrew the bolt and, silent as a cat, stepped out into the hall. He leaned over the balustrade and looked down. From the rear came an occasional tinkle of glassware. Doctor Bimble, never dreaming that his guest was foolhardy enough to leave his secure retreat a second time, was evidently at work in his laboratory. Noiselessly the Phantom stole down the stairs, carefully testing each step before he intrusted his weight to it. The door opened without a sound, and he darted a quick glance up and down the street.

A fine drizzle was falling and the sidewalks glistened in the lights from the street lamps and windows. There was a thin sprinkling of pedestrians in the thoroughfare. Outside a pool room across the street stood a group of loafers, and a band of gospel workers was addressing an apathetic crowd on the nearest corner. The Phantom was about to step away from the door when he saw something that caused him to press close to the wall.

“Our friend Pinto,” he mused as a thickset figure jogged past. “Seems a bit distracted this evening. Wonder what’s up.”

The policeman passed on with only a perfunctory glance in the Phantom’s direction. There was something about his gait and the way he swung his baton which suggested that his mind was not quite at ease. The Phantom waited until he had turned the corner, then crept out of the doorway, assuming an easy, swinging gait as he struck the sidewalk and turned west.

The streets had their usual humdrum appearance, but beneath the calm on the surface he sensed a tension and an air of repressed activity. It might have been only imagination, but he thought people were regarding each other with covert suspicion, as if friends and neighbors were no longer to be trusted. The Phantom sauntering along as if he had not a care in the world, turned into the Bowery and proceeded toward the nearest station of the elevated railway. No taxicabs were in sight, but he would be comparatively safe once he was aboard a train.

He whistled a merry little tune, but he was uncomfortably aware that the cut and quality of his clothes were attracting attention in that squalid neighborhood. Now he was only a few paces from the elevated stairs. The space immediately in front of him was brightly illuminated by a corner light, and each forward step was taken at great risk. He advanced with an air of unconcern, glanced languidly at the papers and magazines spread out on the news stall, and in another moment he would have been starting up the stairs.

Just then he felt the sharp scrutiny of a pair of eyes. Their owner, he fancied, was stationed in the dark doorway of an abandoned corner saloon, only a few steps from the foot of the stairway, but he dared not look back or sideways. In a second he had rallied his wits to the emergency. To show the slightest nervousness or seem in a hurry would instantly provoke a sharp command to halt. He purchased a newspaper, glanced disdainfully at the headlines on the first page, and was chuckling over a cartoon on the sporting page as he leisurely began to ascend the stairs.

A loud rumbling told that a train was approaching. The Phantom pursued his unhurried pace, conscious that the owner of the prying eyes had stepped out of the doorway and was regarding him suspiciously. Suddenly, as he reached a turn in the stairs, a cry rang out:

“Stop!”

The Phantom looked down with an air of idle curiosity, as if it were unthinkable that the command could be meant for him, and climbed on. He had almost reached the top when a second and more insistent cry sounded.

“Hey, there! I mean you!”

The Phantom climbed the remaining steps, reaching the ticket window just as a train roared into the station. Three sharp taps sounded against the sidewalk below, followed by a shrill blast of a police whistle. The Phantom dropped his ticket in the chopper and stepped out on the platform. The train gates were open and a few passengers were getting aboard. For a moment he hesitated; then he hurried swiftly to the end of the deserted platform and leaped out on the narrow walk used by track workers.

The train rolled out of the station. The Phantom, lying flat, guessed that the agent at the next stop had already been notified to hold it for search, and it was this circumstance that had decided him against getting aboard. From the street rose a great hubbub. He began to crawl along the narrow span, screened from sight by a heavy beam. Each moment was precious now, for soon the police would learn that the Phantom was not on the train, and then they would guess that he was hiding somewhere on the platform or the track.

He had crawled the length of half a block when he stopped and looked down. The commotion at the corner had ceased, but as he glanced behind him he saw that several dark forms were moving rapidly across the platform, as if looking for someone. At the point where he lay the street was dimly lighted and almost deserted. Agilely he swung his body from the walk, clutched the beam with both hands until he could obtain a foothold along one of the heavy iron pillars that supported the structure, then slid quickly to the ground. Standing in the shadow of the pillar, he looked about him. Apparently he had not been seen, but in a few moments a dragnet would be thrown around the vicinity, and he would have to exercise the utmost speed and caution if he was to escape.

Quickly he dodged into a side street. On the corner was a patrol box, and, even as he glanced at it, the bulb at the top of the pole flashed into a green brilliance. He knew what the signal meant. A general alarm had been sent out, spreading the news that the Gray Phantom had been seen. He hurried on, but he had not reached far when a patrolman appeared around the opposite corner, forcing him to take refuge in a dark cellarway. Luckily the green light had already attracted the policeman’s attention, and he hurried past the point where the Phantom was hidden, and made for the box on the corner. While the bluecoat was receiving his instructions from the station house the Phantom crawled out of his retreat and, clinging close to the shadows along the walls, hastened in the other direction.

He was very cautious now. Once out of the immediate neighborhood, the greatest danger would be past, but for the present every step of the way bristled with perils. A taxicab hove into sight as he reached an intersection of streets, but the chauffeur showed no inclination to heed his signal. The Phantom placed himself directly in the path of the onrushing vehicle. It stopped with a grinding of brakes, accompanied with a medley of oaths.

“What d’ye mean?” demanded the chauffeur. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Double fare,” suggested the Phantom temptingly.

A sharp glance shot out from beneath the visor of the driver’s cap. “Where to?”

“South Ferry,” said the Phantom, though his actual destination was a good distance short of that point.

“All right,” with a shrewd glance at his fare. “Get in.”

He held the door open and the Phantom entered the cab. They had proceeded only a short distance, however, when the passenger pinned a bill to the cushion, cautiously stepped out on to the running board and hopped off in the middle of a dark block. He had not quite approved of the chauffeur’s looks.

Just ahead of him lay the wholesale section of Broadway, at that time of night as gloomy and lifeless a stretch of thoroughfare as can be found in all New York. The Phantom walked briskly to the corner and was turning south when he all but collided with a red-faced heavy-jowled policeman.

“Pardon,” he said lightly. Quickly he stuck a cigar between his lips, tugging at his mustache with one hand and exploring his vest pocket with the other. “By the way, officer, happen to have a match?”

The officer produced the desired article, and in return the Phantom proffered a cigar while he lighted his own. With a hearty “Thank you, sor,” the policeman put the weed in his pocket and trudged on, deciding he would smoke the affable stranger’s cigar when he went off duty. He didn’t, however. After straightening out certain tangles in his mind and arriving at certain conclusions, Officer McCloskey resolved to keep the cigar as a souvenir of the occasion when he accommodated the Gray Phantom with a match.

Chuckling at the happy circumstances that some policemen are more gullible than others, the Phantom hurried forward in the shadows of tall brick buildings. He thought he had left the zone of greatest danger behind him, but the utmost caution was still needed; the crucial test would not come until he reached his destination. As often before, he was relying for success and safety on the fact that he was doing the very thing a hunted man was least likely to do.

A hansom drawn by a scraggy nag came toward him and drew up at the curb on his signal. He fixed an appraising look on the driver, a despondent-looking individual in sadly dilapidated livery, whose sole concern in his prospective passenger seemed to have to do with the collecting of a generous fare.

“Drive me to the Sphere office,” directed the Phantom, satisfied with his inspection of the man on the box.

He climbed in, and a crack of the whip startled the nag into activity. The Phantom, tingling with a familiar sensation, leaned back against the cushion and watched long rows of somber buildings stream past. He was bent on a madcap adventure, and the details of his plan were still vague, but if the scheme succeeded he would have gained an important advantage. His task, besides being difficult and dangerous, was also somewhat strange to him. Many sensational ventures embellished his past, but he had never until now essayed a kidnaping, at least not under circumstances like these.

The vista brightened. A short distance ahead loomed the Municipal Building and the Woolworth Tower. Serenely the cab jogged into City Hall Park, carrying its passenger into a brightly lighted square that even at night stirred with activity and bristled with a thousand dangers. The hansom stopped, and the Phantom gazed a trifle dubiously at a tall building from which issued the clatter of linotype machines and the dull rumble of presses.

“Here we are, sir,” observed the jehu expectantly, speaking through the trap over the passenger’s head.

The Phantom did not move. The entrance of the Sphere building was brightly lighted and people were constantly passing in either direction. On the corner, keenly scanning the face of each passer-by, stood a lordly policeman. The Phantom counted his chances, knowing that much more than his personal freedom was at stake. The mustache, his sole disguise, seemed inadequate. He might be recognized by anyone in the passing throng who chanced to give him a second glance, and he would face another ticklish situation when he was inside the building.

“Didn’t you say the Sphere, sir?” inquired the driver.

The Phantom was about to reply when fate unexpectedly stepped in and solved his problem. A few vigorous expressions spoken in loud and boisterous tones drew his attention to the doorway. A gaudily garbed person who seemed to be in an advanced stage of inebriation was being propelled through the door by a stocky man with a reddish and determined face. As he caught a glimpse of the tipsy individual’s features, the Phantom started and wedged his figure into the farther corner of the hansom.

From his well-filled wallet he took a bill and thrust it through the trap. The jehu took it, stared for a moment at the numeral in the corner, which was imposing enough to corrupt stancher souls than his, then listened attentively to the instructions his fare was giving in low and hurried tones.

“I get you, sir,” was his comment. “Leave it to me.”

In the meantime the stout person had given the tipsy one a final departing shove, and now he stood aside, with thumbs crooked in the armpits of his vest, his face glowing with the consciousness of a job well performed. His victim picked himself up with great difficulty and looked about him with groggy eyes while loudly proclaiming how he would avenge the affront.

“Cab, sir?” invitingly inquired the jehu.

The inebriate one careened forward, blinked his eyes and, with head wagging limply from side to side, gave the hansom a slanting look. Evidently it met his approval, for he nodded and staggered closer. The driver jumped from the box and obligingly assisted his new fare to the seat. A moment later the cab was dashing away from the curb, followed by the amused glances of several spectators.

The tipsy passenger, sprawling lumpishly in his seat, rolled a little to one side as the conveyance turned a corner. To his amazement his head struck someone’s shoulder; then a firm, low voice spoke in his ear:

“Tommie Granger, you’re just the person I have been looking for.”