The Gray Phantom's Return

Patrolman Joshua Pinto, walking his beat at two o'clock in the morning, hummed a joyless tune as he turned off the Bowery and swung into East Houston Street. It was a wet night,...

Just then a youngish man with a slouching gait and a dead cigar between his teeth pushed through the little knot of spectators at the entrance and leveled a mildly inquisitive g...

Cuthbert Vanardy was conscious of a disquieting tension in the air. The long shadows cast by the trees that stood in clusters on the lawn of Sea-Glimpse impressed him as siniste...

The clerk, intuitively sensing that the new arrival was one accustomed to having his wishes complied with, glanced at his card index. "We have exactly what you want, Mr. Adair."

Coolly, though every nerve and muscle in his body were on the alert, the Phantom took a case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette. He stood face to face with a peril of a tan...

Dusk was falling, and the little room was almost dark. The sudden attack, all the more surprising because of Pinto's previous air of stolidity, had left the Phantom a trifle daz...

She was the last person the Gray Phantom had expected to see at that moment, and this was the last place where he would have dreamed of finding her. He stared into her face unti...

A vague misgiving assailed the Phantom as the door closed. The hiding place chosen for them by the genial Doctor Bimble seemed not quite adequate to the emergency. There had bee...

For a time the little group in the laboratory stood as if turned into inanimate shapes, their senses under the spell of the hoarse shouts in the street. The Phantom felt a curio...

The Phantom waited for fifteen minutes, then he quietly opened the door and looked down the hall. The lights were turned low and not a sound broke the stillness. Apparently the...

Only one thought stood out clearly in the Phantom's mind as he lay on his back in the tunnel breathing the suffocating fumes of the damp earth, and surrounded by a silence and a...

The Gray Phantom knew, even before he opened his eyes, that the speaker was Doctor Tyson Bimble. He was lying in bed, undressed, in the same room his host had assigned him the n...

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...

"Dam' my address! It's nobody'sh business. I live where I please--see? I'm drunk. I get drunk when--hic--whenever I feel like it. Know where to get the sh-stuff, too. Alwaysh ca...

The Phantom walked briskly, with an easy, carefree swagger, breathing freely for the first time since the beginning of the strange events that had attended his efforts to solve...

The room was in total darkness save for a tiny sliver of light filtering in through a crack between the packing cases stacked against the window. The prowler advanced gropingly...

In vain the Phantom spurred his wits to find a way out, but the thought that hurt him most was that he was helpless at a moment when Helen Hardwick might be in danger.

The Phantom feigned utter unconcern as he continued toward the corner. His acute senses had instantly registered the fact that he was an object of scrutiny. It vexed him not a l...

"Very well." The slight figure, arrayed in loose-fitting, straw-colored garments, stepped to the wall with the softly gliding gait characteristic of his race. He pressed a butto...

Dusk was falling as the Phantom, refreshed by Peng Yuen's excellent cooking and several hours of sound sleep, left the shop in Pell Street and cautiously picked his way through...

The detective's face was as dull and unimpassioned as a caricature carved out of wood. He stood pointing the pistol with a listless air, and his eyes were heavy and sluggish, as...

There was a humorous glint in Lieutenant Culligore's lazy, mouse-colored eyes as he noted the look of consternation that was slowly creeping into the Gray Phantom's face. He dre...

The Phantom strained his ears. Faint sounds of breathing came to him; then a board creaked ever so slightly under someone's weight. A watcher--or were there two?--was standing j...

Twelve or more pairs of eyes looked up as the Phantom walked into the coffee house. They gave the newcomer a long, stony stare, followed his brisk progress across the floor to a...

She looked as though her whole being had frozen into rigidity, and the glacial stare of her eyes sent a chill through the Phantom's veins. In a moment he was on the running boar...

Rigid in every fiber, the Phantom stared at the circle of light, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. At first small as the head of a pin, it gradually unfolded and exp...

"Miss Hardwick is a very plucky young woman," he murmured, "but evidently the spook chamber, as you so aptly termed it a little while ago, has proved too much for her nerves. Th...

The Phantom awoke with a start, vaguely conscious that he had been sleeping for several hours. Shortly after his interview with Doctor Bimble, he had been removed to a small dar...

With quick and nervous steps the Phantom walked back and forth within the narrow semicircle allowed him by the chain. The solution of the mystery had come to him in a flash of i...

With lips gaping, he lay rigidly still, staring into the Phantom's hard face. There was a look of great fear in his eyes, and for several moments he seemed incapable of motion....

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 st...

The reporter's flushed face and the bottle at his elbow showed that he had been drinking. As the Phantom's sharp command rang out, his nervous fingers dropped the revolver which...