He examined the mechanism of his automatic and made sure the cartridge chamber was loaded. He sensed a hint in the air that before long he might have occasion to use the weapon. He was in the act of returning it to his hip pocket when of a sudden he pricked up his ears. From somewhere in the apartment came a series of faint, clicking sounds. At first he tried in vain to identify them, but finally it came to him that someone was using a typewriter.
"Typewriter?" he mumbled. The word seemed to hold a hidden significance, but for a while his mind was unable to grasp it. He did not believe that either Mr. Fairspeckle or Haiuto had occasion to use such an instrument, yet he was almost certain that the sounds were coming from one of the adjoining rooms. The clicks were slow and irregular, he observed, indicating that the writer was unfamiliar with the machine and was having some difficulty picking out the characters on the keyboard.
He stole to the door and opened it a crack. The sounds became louder, and the writer's awkward groping for the keys was more noticeable now. For a moment The Phantom stood listening; then his figure grew suddenly tense. A thin smile hovered about his lips as he recalled that the announcements which Mr. Shei had distributed throughout the city had been written on a typewriter.
It might mean little or nothing, but there was a keen glitter in The Phantom's eyes. In itself the clicking of the machine signified scarcely anything, but in conjunction with other circumstances it was fairly suggestive. With noiseless tread The Phantom tiptoed in the direction whence the sounds were coming. Now and then he darted a quick glance about him, as if expecting a rear attack from the Japanese servant, but Haiuto was nowhere in sight. He traversed several rooms before he came to a dead stop in a doorway.
At a table near the window, with his back to The Phantom, sat Mr. Fairspeckle. He was hunched over a typewriter, laboriously poking at the keys with the index finger of each hand. Silently The Phantom approached until he stood directly at the older man's back. Mr. Fairspeckle, all his energies centered on his difficult task, noticed nothing. Leaning slightly forward, The Phantom cast a swift, comprehensive glance at the paper in the machine. Then his twinkling eyes looked downward. On the desk, at Mr. Fairspeckle's elbow, lay a little pile of papers. The topmost one was partly covered with typewriting, and the wording was precisely the same as that on the paper in the machine.