The Phantom scarcely breathed. He stood utterly still while the doctor came down the remaining steps and halted at the foot of the stairs. The pistol, pointed at Helen with a steadiness that bespoke a deadly aim, inspired him with a sense of awe a thousand times greater than if it had been leveled at himself.

The girl’s hand was still on his sleeve, and, without looking directly at her, he knew that she was facing the menacing pistol without flinching. Her slight touch on his arm gave him a feeling of tenderness and strength. Already his wits were at work. In his hip pocket was the weapon he had taken from Granger, but he could not reach for it without jeopardizing the girl’s life.

“Cruel trick you played on Granger,” observed the doctor, standing a dozen feet away. “I don’t know how you managed it, but you seem to have a special talent for such performances. Fortunately one of my men happened to enter the room in which you left the poor fellow, and he saw how things were. Well, Phantom, one thing is sure, you have played your last trick.”

The Phantom maintained his attitude of immobility, but Bimble’s words had given him an inward twinge. As far as he could see, the doctor had appraised the situation with accuracy. The windows, with their shutters and iron bars, seemed impregnable. The murky walls and the low ceiling gave forth an impression of solidity that accentuated his sense of bafflement. The way to the stairs was barred by Bimble with his pistol, and the rooms and corridors above were swarming with the Duke’s men. And meanwhile the Phantom dared not bend a muscle, for fear of causing Helen Hardwick’s death.

“You will admit that you are very neatly cornered?” taunted the doctor.

“It would seem so,” admitted the Phantom dryly, “but I have been cornered many times before. There’s nothing very original in the situation.”

“No, nothing except that you wriggled out of the others, while this one will hold you till I am through with you. Don’t you think it would be the part of wisdom to submit and tell me what I want to know?”

“Never!” declared the Phantom with emphasis.

“Wouldn’t it be better?” whispered Helen. “He’ll kill us both unless we do.”

“It’s his intention to kill us, anyway,” the Phantom whispered back. “The only reason he hasn’t killed us already is that he hopes to persuade us to give him the information he wants. Afraid?”

“Not for myself. But you——”

“Then step behind my back as quickly as you can.”

The girl looked up at him with an expression of uncertainty.

“Hurry!” whispered the Phantom. “It’s our only chance.”

She hesitated a moment longer; then, with the swift motion of a startled doe, she darted aside and stood at his back. The blue steel of the pistol barrel flickered for an instant as the doctor transferred his aim to the Phantom. Evidently the sudden movement had disconcerted Bimble.

“A fairly clever maneuver,” he acknowledged, “but you have gained nothing by it.”

“I am satisfied,” declared the Phantom, his spirits rising again. “You can’t reach Miss Hardwick with a bullet without first perforating me, and you have no intention of killing me until you have learned what you want to know. Eh, Bimble?”

The doctor’s lips twisted into an ugly sneer. “We shall see,” he muttered irately. “You are a clever man, Phantom, but your cleverness can’t help you now.”

He plucked a small metallic instrument from his vest pocket and brought it to his lips. Three short, shrill whistles pierced the silence. With a gratified grin on his lips the doctor restored the little metal tube to his pocket. The third blast had no sooner sounded than a tumult of discordant noises came from above. Bimble looked gloatingly at the Phantom as the sounds drew nearer. A man ran down the stairs, quickly followed by a second and a third. Others kept arriving, in groups of three or more, until the Phantom had counted twenty-four.

Like a great human fan, the crowd spread out in a triangle along the walls and about the foot of the stairs. As each man took his place in the line, the Phantom gave him a quick appraising glance. In their faces he read low cunning, brutish instincts, and stolid obedience to orders, but the keener wit and subtler intellect which the Phantom had always demanded of his men were lacking.

He read each face as if it were an open page, and finally his gaze rested on Doctor Bimble. The anthropologist was a craftier man by far than his subalterns, but at a glance the Phantom’s keen eye picked out the weak spot in his moral fiber. Already a plan was forming in his mind. All he was waiting for was a favorable combination of circumstances that would enable him to act.

The pistol in the doctor’s hand was still pointing straight at the Phantom’s chest. Bimble’s expression was a repulsive mixture of cruelty and smug satisfaction.

“I trust you are convinced that resistance is useless, my dear Phantom,” he declared in drawling tones. “There are more than twenty of us, as you see.”

“Excellent!” remarked the Phantom. “I am glad to see so many of you here.”

“Glad?” The doctor seemed a little dumfounded. “Why, pray?”

“Because having you all here in this room will make my task much easier.”

“Your task?”

The Phantom laughed easily. “You must surely know that it is my intention to hand you all over to the police?”

Bimble stared. Twice he opened his mouth, but no words came. The Phantom’s cool audacity seemed to have silenced his tongue.

“Are you crazy?” he asked at length.

“Never was saner in my life. It is my firm intention to turn every one of you over to the police. That’s why I am glad to see so many of you gathered in one room.”

He smiled as he spoke, but his heart was not in his smile. He was turning an audacious plan over in his mind, but he was not at all sure that he would have a chance to put it into execution. At his back he heard Helen’s quick, nervous intakes of breath, and he turned his head slightly.

“The Gray Phantom’s star has never yet set,” he whispered.

A low, quavering laugh was the girl’s response.

Bimble was still staring at him as if doubting his sanity. “You think you are going to turn us over to the police!” he exclaimed. “Ha, ha! Still in a jocular mood, I see. It won’t last long. For the last time I ask if you will accept my terms.”

The Phantom sent him a contemptuous glance. “One doesn’t make terms with sneaking hyenas like you,” he declared.

“Very well.” Bimble ran his eye over the triangle of faces, and his gaze fell on a stout, tough-limbed man with a reddish face.

“Wilkes,” he directed, “pull that devoted pair apart and carry the young lady to the room upstairs where the skeletons are. Be careful not to get in front of my pistol.”

The stout man stepped out of the line. A coarse grin wreathed his face as he approached the Phantom and the girl from the side.

“Get back!” whispered the Phantom to Helen. Slowly, step by step, the two moved backward until Helen stood against the wall. Then the Phantom, looking straight into the muzzle of Bimble’s pistol, reached back and wound his arms around the girl’s slender waist.

“Pull us apart if you can,” he told Wilkes as he interlocked his fingers behind Helen’s back.

The stout man stopped and scratched his head, as if confronting a problem too complex for his wits to solve. A look of diffidence crossed Bimble’s face as he noticed that the Phantom had once more balked him.

“Knock him down if you can’t part them any other way,” he commanded wrathfully. “Tap him on the head with something.”

Chuckling, Wilkes drew a long revolver from his pocket, gripping it tightly by the barrel as he cautiously approached the Phantom from the side. Helen gasped.

“Keep cool!” whispered the Phantom. “And whatever happens, stay right at my back.”

He watched Bimble’s pistol out of one eye, while with the other he followed Wilkes’ movements. For an instant, as Wilkes swung the heavy weapon over his shoulder, he tensed his muscles for action. Then, with a motion so swift that the eyes of the onlookers could scarcely register it, his arm darted out and gripped the other’s wrist just as the revolver was about to crash down on the Phantom’s head.

Once more his arm shot out and with a quick and powerful wrench he swung Wilkes directly in front of him, coiling the fingers of one hand around the man’s neck and windpipe. In almost the same instant he whipped out his pistol and, using the bulky figure of Wilkes as a shield, took aim and fired.

Bimble uttered a sharp yell of pain. The pistol dropped from his fingers, and he looked dazedly at his blood-spattered hand.

“Fairly good shot!” ejaculated the Phantom with a chuckle. At his back was Helen, trembling with excitement, and in front of him stood Wilkes, spluttering and gasping for breath as a result of the Phantom’s clutch at his throat.

The whole episode had been enacted within the space of a few seconds. The Phantom had acted so swiftly and taken them all so completely by surprise that on one had had time to interfere. Now, before the men huddled against the wall and in front of the stairs could gather their wits, a powerful shove sent Wilkes sprawling headlong to the floor, and in another moment the Phantom had seized Helen’s hand and made a rush for Bimble.

He snatched up the pistol the doctor had dropped as the bullet struck his wrist, and handed it to Helen.

“Shoot the first man who makes a move,” he directed, “and shoot to kill!”

Helen looked into his cool, determined eyes, flashing with the ecstasy of combat. With a faint audacious smile on her lips, she drew herself up and handling the weapon with the sure touch of an expert, faced the staring and muttering crowd. For a few moments the men stood immobile, as if the swift succession of events had cast a numbing spell over their bodies and minds; then, with ominous grumblings and curses, a few of the more daring ones started forward.

In the meantime the Phantom had jabbed his pistol against Bimble’s body with a force that brought a sickly groan from the doctor’s lips. He glanced aside out of the corner of an eye as a crack and a gleam of fire issued from Helen’s weapon. A bullet in the fleshy part of the hip had checked a furtive movement on the part of one of the gang, and instantly the others, impressed by the girl’s exhibition of marksmanship, fell back.

The Phantom nodded approvingly. His glittering eyes and a smile on his lips gave no hint of what he felt.

“Let me warn you that Miss Hardwick is an expert,” he remarked coolly. “She once got a perfect bull’s-eye at six hundred yards.”

The men looked at the girl, then at their ashen-faced and quavering leader. The Phantom pushed the pistol a little harder against the doctor’s body.

“If anyone raises a hand against Miss Hardwick, you die instantly,” he declared sharply. “I could kill you with no more compunction than if I were killing a rat.”

The doctor gulped, and for the moment all his cunning seemed to have deserted him.

“Anyone who cares to fire a bullet at me is welcome to do so,” the Phantom went on, speaking in quick accents that sounded like the clinking of metal. “My index finger, you will notice, is on the trigger. The slightest pressure will send a chunk of lead into your vitals. If I die, the muscular contraction that always accompanies sudden and violent death would be very likely to snap the trigger. You get the idea, I hope?”

It was evident that Bimble did. His absurdly thin legs wabbled as if he were in the grip of a great terror and the spasmodic twitching of his fingers indicated that this was a situation against which his habitual craftiness was helpless.

Helen stood at the Phantom’s side, sweeping the crowd with cool, alert eyes, and holding the pistol in readiness for instant action. Her slim figure was erect, and there was a proud tilt to her head, as if the contagion of the Phantom’s fighting spirit had gripped her. Again there were surly mutterings among the men, but with rare exceptions they were of the type that is impotent without a leader to urge them on.

Not a word came from Bimble’s lips, but there was a look in his eye which told that the tentacles of his mind were reaching for a solution of the difficulty. The Phantom, keeping one eye on the doctor and the other on the crowd, detected a stealthy movement in the rear of the group. Someone had dropped to his knees and was crawling toward a huge box.

Instantly the Phantom saw the meaning of the stealthy movement. For a moment, as the crawling figure appeared around the edge of the group, he turned his pistol from the doctor, took a quick aim, pressed the trigger, and again thrust the muzzle of his weapon against Bimble’s diaphragm.

A cry told that the bullet had found its mark. As the smoke drifted toward the ceiling, the man rose to his feet with a look of distress in his face, caressing a portion of his arm as he slunk away toward the rear. A few of the others, who had sought to take advantage of the Phantom’s temporary abstraction, fell back to their places.

The Phantom drew a long breath as he realized how narrowly Helen and himself had escaped disaster. They had the advantage for the present, but the slightest faltering might easily reverse the situation and release the pent-up savagery of their foes.

“Bimble,” he remarked, “it would be extremely unfortunate for you if any of your men should get reckless. I see some of them are impatient. If anything happens to Miss Hardwick or me, you will be a dead man. Hadn’t you better tell your friends to throw down their guns?”

The doctor glanced uneasily at his men. His looks told plainly that the Phantom had read him accurately, that there was nothing he valued quite so highly as he did his life, and that his swagger and bland assurance would wilt the moment he faced a personal danger. There was venom in his eyes, and his pale, distorted features bespoke impotent rage.

“Drop your guns,” he commanded after another despairing look about the basement.

The men regarded him diffidently and did not move. Their faces showed that they were torn between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and an ingrained habit of obedience.

“You’re first.” The Phantom pointed a finger at a tall, barrel-chested man at the end of the line. “Step forward and empty your pockets.”

The Phantom was in a state of high tension. He was exercising a mastery of mind over the situation, but all might yet be lost if the man should refuse to obey and set the others an example of resistance.

“Miss Hardwick,” he said quickly, realizing that each moment of delay might cost them their lives, “you will count five. If our friend at the end of the line has not emptied his pockets when you are through, shoot to kill.”

The girl signified with a slight nod that she understood. As she began to count, her pistol was pointing straight at the man the Phantom had indicated. The fellow’s sullen obstinacy yielded gradually to an over-powering respect for Helen’s marksmanship, of which he had already witnessed an exhibition. Just before she reached “five,” he lumbered forward and turned the lining of his pockets inside out. A knife, an automatic, and several other implements clattered to the floor.

“Now get back in the corner,” commanded the Phantom pointing. He thrilled at the thought that the crisis was past and the victory almost won.

The second man hesitated only for an instant before he followed the example of the first. After that the process of disarming the gang went on swiftly and without interruptions. Man after man stepped out of the line, emptied his pockets, and joined the others in the corner. When the last man had divested himself of his belongings there was a small pile of oddly assorted articles in the middle of the floor.

The Phantom felt a little dazed, now that the tremendous tension was over. At last he lowered the pistol and turned to the girl. Her face was pale and a little haggard but a smile of triumph hovered about her lips.

“You’re the grandest little woman I ever knew,” he declared feelingly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she confessed a little wearily. “I don’t think I could have stood it if you hadn’t been so close to me. I felt as though you were holding me under a spell all the time.”

The Phantom laughed. “Bimble, you have seen how one man, with the assistance of a plucky little woman, has vanquished a gang of twenty-five cutthroats and ruffians. The yellow streak in you made it fairly easy. I should like to see the Duke’s face when he hears about this.”

The doctor swallowed hard. His putty-hued face reflected the depths of mental agony.

“What—what are you going to do with us?” he inquired weakly.

“Precisely what I said I would do—hand you over to the police.”

“Not that!” The doctor looked as though he had received a blow. “Listen! Down below, in the cellar, are several million dollars’ worth of valuables. You can have it all if you will let us go.”

“You’re a rather poor sort, Bimble,” said the Phantom contemptuously. “There isn’t gold enough in the world to buy your freedom. To see you get your just deserts is worth more to me than all the millions the Duke and his gang ever stole.”

The doctor staggered back against the wall, utterly dejected. Of a sudden the Phantom’s expression of elation faded out and a worried look took its place. Where was Granger? The reporter had not been among those who had answered the doctor’s summons, and the Phantom had seen nothing of him since he left him chained to the wall in one of the upper rooms. Without doubt he had been released, for Bimble had said that a member of the gang had entered the room and found him shortly after the Phantom had started for the basement. His absence was somewhat disturbing, for the Phantom’s task would not be finished until Granger had been caught.

Admonishing Miss Hardwick to keep an eye on the gang, he walked toward the farther wall. In the corner was a door which he had not seen before. It was locked, but he guessed that it led to the cellar in which the doctor kept the gang’s treasures, and he noted that it was of hard and solid material and would resist almost any amount of pressure.

“Doctor,” he said, walking back to where Bimble stood, “I’ll trouble you for your bunch of keys.”

With an air of a broken and defeated man, Bimble complied, and the Phantom made sure that one of the keys fitted the lock on the door leading to the cellar. Keeping one eye on the gang, he gathered the weapons they had discarded and placed them on the cellar stairs. Then he carefully locked the door and put the keys in his pocket. Motioning Helen to precede him, he backed up the stairs, covering the huddled and dejected group with his pistol till he reached the top. Here was another door, almost as substantial as the one communicating with the cellar. They stepped through, and the Phantom closed it and turned a key in the lock.

“Our precious friends are trapped,” he remarked with a chuckle. “I’ll wager they won’t get out of that basement till the police drag them out. Now we must find Granger.”

Passing swiftly down the hall, they opened one door after another, glancing quickly into each room before proceeding to the next. Finally, on the floor above, they reached a door through which faint sounds came. For an instant the Phantom listened, then jerked the door open and entered. Taking in the scene at a glance, he drew his pistol.

“Hands up, Granger!” he commanded.