CITY OF FEAR
                                by Maxwell Grant

      As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," October 15, 1940.

     In this carnival of crime and mystery, it was The Shadow who played the
role of barker!


     CHAPTER I

     WORD TO THE SHADOW

     THE man in the dark suit was nervous. He drove slowly through the main
business district of Western City. When he approached the block where the
Prairie Savings Bank was located, his tension increased.
     It was night, but the Prairie Savings Bank was open for business. On
Tuesday nights the bank didn't close until 9 p.m., for the convenience of
depositors. People were streaming in and out.
     The man in the dark suit lowered his face over the wheel. His appearance
made an odd contrast with his furtive behavior. He looked well-dressed and
prosperous. He had gray hair and a clipped gray mustache. He looked like a man
who occupied an important position in the affairs of Western City, a man who
would have plenty of friends and acquaintances.
     Perhaps that was why he was so careful to screen his face as he drove
along through the lighted streets.
     He parked, finally, a block away from the Prairie Savings Bank. He walked
back, carrying a leather suitcase which he had taken from the rear of his car.
The weight of the suitcase put no strain on his arm. Either it contained
something extremely light, or the bag was empty.
     Suddenly, the man with the gray mustache halted. A man and a woman were
walking toward him. He ignored their smile of recognition. Turning abruptly, he
vanished into a dark doorway that gave access to a cheap walk-up apartment.
     The couple who had seen him were mystified.
     "Wasn't that Martin Black?" the woman said.
     "It certainly was," her husband replied. "What an odd way for him to
behave! It makes me a little angry. It was a direct snub!"
     "I don't think so," his wife said. "He seemed frightened. I don't believe
he wanted us to see him. I wonder what he's up to?"
     Her husband laughed. He forgot his momentary anger.
     "Martin Black? Don't be silly, my dear. He's one of the town's leading
citizens! A pillar of the church!"
     He continued in an amused tone as they walked onward.
     "Probably he's hunting up more stamps for his collection. He's a nut on
the subject. Perhaps he's located somebody in town with a rare stamp - and he's
afraid that everybody he passes will guess what he's up to and rush to outbid
him before he can buy the stamp for himself."
     The couple forgot about the whole trivial episode.
     But there was nothing trivial about the expression on Martin Black's face,
as he emerged presently from the dark hallway where he had secreted himself. His
eyes burned with a hard triumphant gleam. He walked toward the savings bank.
     But he didn't go all the way. At the corner, he turned quickly up the side
street. Carrying his light suitcase, he continued around the block, making
almost a complete circuit.
     There was a side door to the savings bank, on the far street. It was a
dingy-looking door, with neither number nor name on it. But it was heavily
locked, and built of metal.
     Martin Black knew exactly what lay behind that door. It gave entrance to
the private office of Howard Nixon, president of the Prairie Savings Bank.
     Black rang the push-bell two or three times. It looked like a prearranged
signal. Nixon himself opened the door and admitted his visitor.
     "Good evening, Martin. Come in! I've been expecting you."
     The door closed and was locked. An inner door that connected with the bank
proper was also locked. Nixon stared curiously at his caller.
     They were old friends, and he could speak frankly.
     "What in the world is the reason for all this silly secrecy, Martin? I've
been puzzled ever since you telephoned me. I'll be perfectly glad to protect
any valuables you may wish to leave in my personal vault, but, frankly, your
caution seems ridiculous."
     He took the suitcase which Black handled him. Its lightness surprised him.
     "What the devil? The thing is empty!"
     "Not empty," Black said. His smile was taut.
     "What's in it?"
     "Stamps."
     Nixon swore. Black's zeal to protect a stamp collection annoyed him. He
was well aware of the investment broker's fanatic ideas on the subject. But
after all, stamps were only a hobby.
     "People are after them," Black insisted harshly. "Crooks! You know what
collectors are. They'd be perfectly willing to hire thugs to -"
     "You'll go crazy, Martin, if you're not careful," Nixon murmured. "All
right, I'll lock them in my private vault. No one will know they're here. Let's
have a look at them."
     Black gave him the key to the suitcase. Nixon laid the bag flat on his
desk. Black moved slightly backward. There was sweat on his forehead.
     Nixon leaned forward, as he raised the suitcase lid. There were no stamps
in the case. There was nothing in it!
     "Why, this thing is empty, Martin!"


     THOSE were the last words that Nixon ever uttered. Martin Black had risen
to his toes, his hand lifted. He was gripping the thing he had slid slyly out
from beneath his coat. It was a short bar of steel.
     He brought the bludgeon down with all his strength on the skull of his
victim.
     It was a terrific blow. Nixon fell across the desk and slid inertly to the
floor. The whole back of his skull had been crushed in.
     The man who had slain the bank president stood still for nearly sixty
seconds, getting a grip on his nerves. Then Black chuckled. It was a harsh,
callous sound. He knelt quietly, and his gloved hands made a quick search of
Howard Nixon's pockets.
     He found a bunch of keys, and selected what he thought was the right one.
Black placed it in a hole in a steel panel at the rear of the private office.
The panel swung open.
     A vault door was disclosed. The combination dial made Black's smile deepen
sardonically. From his own pocket, he took a slip of paper. In two minutes the
vault was opened by the murderer's gloved hands.
     From the vault, Martin Black took a rich hoard of bonds. None of them were
registered. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for police to trace them.
Black packed them neatly in his bag.
     Black tiptoed to the private door that gave access to the bank proper. It
was locked, as he well knew, but he wanted to make sure.
     He had asked Nixon over the telephone to lock that door before he arrived.
He also warned Nixon not to mention his name or his intended visit. Nixon was
the soul of honor. He could depend that the warning had been scrupulously
obeyed.
     He stared sneeringly down at his dead victim.
     "You poor fool!"
     Then he let himself quietly out to the side street. No one saw him leave.
Hugging the shadows, Black made his way back around the block to the avenue
where he had parked his car. The suitcase was heavy, now. It strained at his
left shoulder. He kept his gloved right hand in his pocket.
     There were two cars at the curb. The one Black had come in, and another
one not far away. Martin Black had ignition keys for each. Without anyone
noticing, he started the engines in both cars.
     Obviously, he was not taking any chances. He got into his own car and
placed the bag of loot on the floor near his feet.
     Then he hesitated. It was almost as if he had lost his nerve at the end of
a perfect crime. Twice he started to drive into traffic; twice he changed his
mind.
     Finally, he uttered a curt grunt and started his car. He picked a bad
time. A bus was rumbling along the street in the opposite direction. It was
traveling fast and hogging most of the street. Black swung too wide on his
turnout.
     There was a shrill squeaking of brakes, a shout of alarm from pedestrians
on both sidewalks - then the two vehicles collided.
     It was a sideswipe accident. The heavier bus threw the car slithering
across the street against the curb. A tire exploded with a bang. The car
toppled sideways. Black was thrown out the door, to the pavement. The leather
bag fell with him.
     People ran to his aid. But before anyone could get within a dozen feet of
him, Black was on his feet, snarling. A gun leaped from his coat pocket.
     "Keep away, damn you," he shouted, "or I'll shoot to kill!"
     He was recognized. A voice cried out in shrill wonder.
     "Mr. Black! What in the name of heaven -"
     Black's gun flamed. A bullet whizzed over the man's head. There were
shouts of horror. The crowd retreated.
     Black's free hand grabbed for his suitcase. The jar of the collision had
forced open the lid of the bag. Some of its contents had scattered on the
sidewalk.
     People who were nearest saw the spilled bonds which Black was convulsively
scooping back into his suitcase. They realized that something was badly wrong.
     Black's face looked insane, as he backed toward the second car at the
curb, whose engine was softly purring. His face was twisted with rage.
     "Don't try to stop me, or I swear I'll -"
     His gun flamed. He fired over the heads of the crowd, driving them back in
terror. Men yelled. Women fainted. It gave Black a chance to leap into his
second car and put the idling engine into gear.
     The car shot away with a rasp of power. It whizzed past the stalled bus
and roared down the avenue. In a moment, it skidded around a corner and
vanished into darkness.


     ON the sidewalk lay a couple of the bonds which the thief had dropped in
his mad flight.
     The confusion was terrific. The halted bus blocked traffic. The crowd
surged into the street in a ferment of excitement. By the time a policeman
arrived, the thief had made a clean getaway.
     A dozen voices shouted at the cop, as he fought his way to a telephone.
     "It was Martin Black!"
     "He's gone insane!"
     "He must have held up the Prairie Savings Bank!"
     "He just made a getaway!"
     The cop looked as if he were going crazy himself, but he grabbed the phone
and sent in his amazing report to Western City police headquarters. Presently,
the din of police and ambulance bells filled the street.
     A police inspector raced down the block. He darted into the savings bank,
with a squad of bluecoats at his heels. He found plenty of confusion - and more
mystery. The people in the bank denied that there had been any holdup!
     "Mr. Black wasn't in here at all tonight," the grizzled special officer
said. "If he had come in, I'd have recognized him. Besides, there's been no
theft."
     "Where's Mr. Nixon?"
     "In his private office."
     "Get him. I want a check-up. Those bonds came from somewhere!"
     There was a rush of feet, then a scared employee returned.
     "Mr. Nixon's private office is locked. He doesn't answer."
     "Break down his door, men!" the inspector snarled at his squad.
     It was easier said than done. But finally the door fell inward and the
police boiled into the room.
     They recoiled in horror from the bleeding corpse. A quick glance showed
that Nixon's private vault had been opened and that over a million dollars'
worth of negotiable bonds had been stolen.
     A pall of horror settled on everyone in the bank. It was inconceivable;
mad! Martin Black had brutally murdered one of his best friends and committed a
gigantic robbery.
     A police net was promptly thrown around Western City, to head off the
fugitive. There were only half a dozen roads that Black could take.
     All of them were blocked by swiftly-moving police cars. The net result was
zero. Martin Black had vanished into thin air!
     Neither of the two cars he had used belonged to him. A check-up of the
license numbers showed that both had been rented. Two dealers from different
parts of town identified Martin Black's photograph as the renter.
     As a last resort, the police went to Black's home to search it. The door
was opened by - Martin Black!


     BLACK was calm, smiling, self-possessed. He denied any knowledge of the
murder of Nixon and the theft of the bonds. He said he had just returned from a
trip into the country, on private business of his own. He refused to discuss
where he had gone or what he had done.
     He was promptly arrested and jailed. From the jail, Black telephoned his
personal attorney, Henry Stuart.
     Stuart was not at home. But he was located presently, at a town about
three hundred miles away, where he had gone to inspect some mining property for
a client. He expressed unbelieving horror over the phone. He agreed to catch the
first train back.
     Stuart arrived shortly before midnight, and went at once to the jail. He
had a long, private interview with the prisoner. When they emerged from the
conference, Henry Stuart looked alarmed. But he kept his uneasiness from his
client.
     They were more than merely client and lawyer. They belonged to a circle of
friends in which men like Roger Dodd and Peter Corcoran and the dead Howard
Nixon were prominent.
     Dodd was Western City's wealthiest contractor. Corcoran was its most
influential politician. Stuart himself was wealthy, and a close friend of
Black's. It seemed inconceivable that a man from that station in life could
commit so callous a crime.
     But Martin Black's private explanation to his lawyer was fantastic. He
declared that he had gone to visit a man at a farmhouse. He described the man
and the farmhouse.
     Police hurried out in fast cars to check the alibi. They didn't find the
man. They didn't even find the farmhouse. The spot where Martin Black said he
had gone was an open field!
     "I think I'd better have Dr. Altman examine him," Stuart told the police
chief, in a worried tone.
     Dr. Altman's examination made matters even more confused. He reported that
Black was laboring under extreme excitement. But there was no indication of
insanity.
     The prisoner was indicted by the grand jury. He merely sealed his lips
tighter. The car in which he had fled from the bank was found abandoned near
the outskirts of Western City. No trace of the stolen bonds could be found.
     Alice Gunther, the pretty niece of the prisoner, was no more successful
than Stuart in making her uncle talk. He just sneered at her. She spoke wildly
to a newspaper friend of hers about her belief in her uncle's innocence.
     "If only The Shadow were here," she moaned. "The Shadow is the only person
on earth who can clear my uncle! I'm going to try to send word to The Shadow.
I'm going to beg him to help!"
     The reporter printed the story in his paper. Wild rumors began to grow.


     CHAPTER II

     THE GOLD HAND

     LAMONT CRANSTON sat in the cocktail lounge of the Cobalt Club. He had a
late-afternoon copy of the Daily Classic in his hand. A highball stood
conveniently at his elbow.
     There was news in the Daily Classic that interested Cranston. The paper
contained a complete account of the sensational bank theft and murder that had
rocked Western City to its foundations.
     The story had been telegraphed to the Classic by its ace correspondent,
Clyde Burke. Burke had been sent by plane to Western City to cover the
developments of the case.
     Cranston's interest, however, was not in the story of the crime, which had
taken place a couple of days earlier. He had turned to another page. A smaller
headline chronicled news of an entirely different character. The headline read:

                              ARRIVAL OF THE SHADOW
                                    RUMORED
                                    _______

                         Unknown Foe of Crime Reported in
                         Western City to Investigate Bank
                             Murder and Clear Black

     Behind Cranston's spread newspaper sibilant laughter sounded faintly. His
eyes glowed briefly with a piercing flame. Lamont Cranston was well aware that
The Shadow was at this precise moment seated in the Cobalt Club in New York,
sipping a highball.
     Lamont Cranston was The Shadow!
     Nobody realized Cranston's dangerous secret. Least of all Inspector Joe
Cardona, of the New York police, who had promised to drop in at the club for a
sociable chat with Cranston on his way downtown to headquarters.
     Joe Cardona would have chuckled, had anyone suggested that this
millionaire clubman, friend of the police commissioner, was in reality the
black-robed avenger of crime, who had on so many occasions helped Joe to nab
supercriminals too smart to be caught by ordinary police methods.
     The Shadow absolved Clyde Burke from any part in that queer newspaper
rumor. Clyde Burke was not a man who printed false facts. Besides, there was
another reason why Burke would never disclose news of this sort.
     Clyde Burke was one of The Shadow's agents.
     Cranston finished his drink and rose quietly. He left the cocktail lounge
and rode in the elevator to his suite upstairs.
     Having bolted his door and drawn the shades, Cranston picked up his
telephone. He called a number that was not listed in any directory. A crisp
voice replied.
     "Burbank speaking."
     Burbank was The Shadow's contact man. He was always on duty, day or night.
The voice that spoke to Burbank bore no resemblance to Cranston's.
     "Orders for Clyde Burke at Western City!"
     The Shadow's voice issued the orders. There was a pause, then:
     "Orders for Harry Vincent!"
     When The Shadow had finished, Burbank said: "Orders acknowledged."
     "Repeat!"
     Burbank obeyed. There would be no mistake. The words The Shadow had just
uttered would be transmitted to Clyde Burke at the Palace Hotel in Western
City, and to Harry Vincent at the Hotel Metrolite in New York. Vincent was
another of The Shadow's agents, the oldest of them all in point of service.


     LAMONT CRANSTON returned to the cocktail lounge. He found Inspector
Cardona waiting impatiently for him. It was unusual for Joe to be excited. But
his manner was grim, as he drew Cranston into a quiet corner.
     "You'll probably laugh, Mr. Cranston, but something very queer happened a
little while ago. A guy called me up, just before I left the Harlem precinct
station to meet you. He told me he had a tip that would clear up a big New York
murder."
     "What's so queer about that?"
     "He said he was The Shadow."
     Cranston stiffened, but he managed to keep his composure.
     "Nonsense, Joe! I don't believe there is any such person. It's probably a
gag."
     "Well, I can tell you there is. The Shadow's helped me too many times. But
that's not the point. Whoever it was, this guy was lying. It wasn't The Shadow
at all."
     "Are you sure?"
     "Certainly! This guy talked too much. The real Shadow never wastes a word.
I put a tracer on the wire and sent a squad car racing to the drugstore where he
phoned from - but the car got there too late. The clerk couldn't remember who
had used the booth."
     Cardona relaxed, after getting the thing off his chest.
     "Like you say, Mr. Cranston, it's probably a gag. I didn't consider it
important enough to interrupt our cocktail date."
     Cranston's chuckle sounded natural and amused.
     "Why not look into it, Joe? By jove, I'll go with you! I've been so bored,
I didn't know what to do. Wait here. My hat and coat are in my room."
     Alone in the privacy of his suite, the amiable smile wiped away from
Lamont Cranston's lips. He opened a wall panel near his desk and took out a
bulky brief case. After a swift examination, he closed the case. A sibilant
laugh escaped his lips.
     When he left his suite, he carried two automatics, though the bulge of the
weapons was not perceptible under the loose drape of his topcoat. He also took
the brief case.
     Cranston had his own car brought around from a nearby garage. The two
friends drove downtown to the address which had been given Cardona over the
phone. Cranston continued to make light of the entire affair.
     "The guy's final directions sounded silly," Cardona admitted.
     "What did he say?"
     "He said: 'Don't look for the hand of The Shadow. Look for the shadow of
the hand'!"
     Cranston made no comment. But presently, he changed his tactics with Joe.
Instead of making light of the affair, he began subtly to sell Cardona on the
idea that the appointment might be dangerous. He pretended to be frightened. He
did this with a particular plan in mind.
     The address was a cheap tenement in a dingy West Side neighborhood.
Cranston drove slowly past it.
     Suddenly Cardona uttered a low cry.
     "Look! The hand! Do you see it?"
     He was pointing to a dentist's sign over the doorway of a brick building
next to the tenement. The sign was a gilded hand. It pointed toward the
entrance of a dentist's suite in the brick building.
     But Cardona wasn't excited by the sign. Its shadow was what had made him
gasp. A brilliant light above the sign threw a shadow on the sidewalk. It was
the shadow of the hand!
     The extended finger of the projected shadow pointed toward the cellar
stairs of the tenement!
     "Don't stop!" Cardona whispered. "Keep driving!"
     His face was lowered, so that no one who might be watching could identify
him. At the corner, he ordered Cranston to drive around the block. They halted
outside a tenement in the rear of the suspected place.
     Cardona ordered Cranston to remain in the car. But Cranston demurred. He
insisted on accompanying Joe. His excuse was the brief case which he had
brought with him. He said it contained valuable legal papers. He was afraid to
remain alone in the car in such a tough neighborhood.
     Grudgingly, Cardona agreed.
     They hurried through a cellar, to the rear. They climbed a back fence in
the darkness and approached the other tenement. Cardona entered first.
     Standing in a far corner of the cellar was a motionless figure that drew a
gasp from Cardona.
     "The Shadow!"


     THEY could see the glimmer of a white face that seemed to swim in the air.
Above the face was a black slouch hat. Below it was the inky shape of a black
cloak. The figure neither moved nor uttered a sound as Cardona advanced slowly,
his police gun steady.
     Suddenly, Cardona cursed.
     "A stupid gag!" he growled. "A joke!"
     The thing was a dummy! What had seemed to be a glimmering face was a blank
circle of cardboard, propped cleverly between the slouch hat and the suspended
cloak.
     A murderous voice cut savagely through the darkness.
     "Get 'em up! Drop that gat!"
     There were two thugs behind Cranston and Cardona. Both thugs were masked.
Both had guns ready to spit flame. The thug who had snarled the warning spoke
again.
     "All right, Limpy!"
     There was a shuffling step from the front of the cellar. Another masked
thug moved into view, cutting off any escape to the front sidewalk.
     "Back into that corner, both of you! We're going to hand you a dose of
lead - and leave a gun propped near the sleeve of that dummy shadow! Nice, huh?
Give the boys from homicide something to puzzle about when they find the bodies!"
     Lamont Cranston began to plead for mercy in a terrified voice. But Cardona
had no intention of submitting. He had heard the thug in front called Limpy. He
had listened to his awkward shuffling step. That was the guy to take a chance
on!
     Joe whirled suddenly. His gun and Limpy's exploded at almost the same
instant. But Limpy's bad foot threw him off balance. The bullet from Joe's gun
thudded into his body and wrecked his aim. A slug whistled past Cardona's
ducking head.
     With a yell to Cranston, Joe flung himself flat. The cellar echoed with
vicious gunfire. Cardona had his hands full with the other two thugs. He had to
keep constantly on the move, to avoid a deadly reply to the telltale flame of
his muzzle. He crawled zigzag fashion, trying to retreat.
     Lamont Cranston wasn't any help. When Limpy fell, with a police bullet in
his stomach, Cranston uttered a high-pitched scream. He raced past the fallen
gunman. He crashed into a barrel in the darkness of the front-cellar
compartment. There was a thud from his falling body; then silence.
     Cardona had to fight it out alone now. He was in a suicidal spot. One of
the masked men had succeeded in outflanking the desperately crawling Cardona.
The other thug kept the rear exit closed off.
     Joe was under a vicious crossfire. A bullet sliced pain across his hip.
Another, from the opposite direction, nicked the lobe of his ear. Joe didn't
return the fire.
     There was a harmless click from his hot gun. He had emptied the weapon in
his frenzied effort to protect the escape of Lamont Cranston!
     There was a forward rush of feet. Joe tried to swing his clubbed gun. But
something struck him on the temple and toppled him, dazed, to the concrete
floor. A masked face leaned close above him. A hot muzzle pressed itself
against the flesh behind Cardona's ear.
     There was a crash of gunfire.
     But the bullet behind that crash didn't bore into the brain of Joe
Cardona. It struck the bent figure of the crouched murderer. It came from a
.45. It tunneled downward through the thug's chest and ripped out near the base
of the spine. It left a hole the size of a man's palm.
     A sibilant laugh made an eerie whisper in the darkness. The laughter came
from black nothingness. The laughter of The Shadow! It was a mocking sound, as
it whispered from a bewildering succession of spots in the darkness.
     The single remaining thug was unable to flee. Every time he darted toward
an exit, a slug drove him back.
     "Surrender - or die!" a stern voice cried.
     The thug made the wrong choice. He staked all on a frontal attack. He
rushed forward behind stuttering streaks of flame.
     The Shadow had intended to take him alive, but the battle was now life or
death. The Shadow had no choice. He killed his man barely in time to escape
death himself.
     Cardona staggered dizzily to his feet. He snatched up the thug's fallen
gun. He turned toward The Shadow - and found nothing. The Shadow had vanished!


     CARDONA backed into a corner. The silence was profound. Finally, Joe's
flashlight glowed. It disclosed nothing but the three dead men. Cardona hunted
for the missing Cranston. He found him in a limp huddle on the floor, where he
had run into an ash barrel in the dark.
     Lamont Cranston was trembling when Cardona revived him.
     "I must have been knocked out when I fell over the barrel," he murmured.
"Are you all right?"
     Cardona nodded grimly in the light of his torch. He told of the miraculous
appearance of The Shadow - the real Shadow. Cranston fumbled around the floor
and found his brief case.
     "Thank heaven, they didn't steal my legal papers," he said.
     There was a dim smile on his lips, that faded quickly. Cardona examined
the bodies of the three thugs. When the masks were removed, he uttered a cry.
     "Hey! What do you know? These guys are out-of-town hoods! I don't know
Limpy, but these other two have records. They come from west of the
Mississippi. The last report we had on them said they had run to cover in a
place called Western City!"
     Lamont Cranston didn't reply. He was silent, too, when the police arrived.
He answered a few routine questions. Then he went back to his car and drove
uptown to the Cobalt Club.
     In the quiet of his soundproof suite, Lamont Cranston reached grimly for
his telephone. The voice of Burbank replied.
     "Orders for Rutledge Mann," the voice of The Shadow intoned.
     Rutledge Mann was The Shadow's financial agent. He posed as an investment
broker. But his office was merely a front for his real job - the service of The
Shadow.
     Tersely The Shadow ordered Rutledge Mann to check all the big New York
hotels for any recent arrivals from Western City. The death of the three thugs
had ended a promising lead. But obviously those thugs had a criminal boss.
     The Shadow was still not sure whether the cellar attack was directed
against Joe Cardona or himself. Cardona's date with Cranston at the Cobalt Club
might or might not have been known. More investigation was necessary.
     Presently, the phone rang. Burbank forwarded the report of Rutledge Mann.
The only recent arrival from Western City was a man named Roger Dodd. Dodd was
a wealthy contractor. He was staying at the Gilton Hotel. His business was
apparently legitimate. He was in New York to raise funds for a new skyscraper
he was erecting in Western City.
     But The Shadow's laughter was ominous as he hung up the phone. He knew
that this Roger Dodd was a friend of the Martin Black who had been arrested for
an atrocious murder. Was the attack on Cranston a direct outcome of the rumor
that The Shadow had interested himself in the Western City crime?
     The Shadow decided to call on Mr. Dodd. His visit would be in the amiable
role of Lamont Cranston.


     CHAPTER III

     MR. ROGER DODD

     ROGER DODD proved to be a polite, well-dressed gentleman, and a genial
host.
     He welcomed Lamont Cranston to his suite at the Hotel Gilton with a warm
handclasp and a flattering greeting. Dodd seemed to be alone in the suite. At
any rate, there was no sign of a servant.
     "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cranston. I have often
wanted to meet you. We have something in common, you and I."
     "Really?" Cranston smiled at him.
     "Yes. Hunting."
     Cranston's interest quickened, but he concealed it. Dodd had emphasized
the word "hunting" slightly.
     "It must be quite a thrill to squeeze a trigger and bring down something
you've trailed a long time," Dodd continued suavely. "I refer, of course, to
your African exploits."
     "Oh, yes. I've done quite a bit of that. And you?"
     "Just in a small way. Nothing to match your skill. As a matter of fact, I
sometimes fail and the er... animal gets away."
     There was a slight hint of a rasp in his voice. But Cranston ignored it.
     Roger Dodd didn't look much like a contractor, he had pale-blue eyes in a
rather pallid face. He wore a closely-clipped brown beard and mustache. Had
Cranston not known his occupation in advance, he might have guessed Dodd to be
a prosperous society dentist, or perhaps a physician.
     The backs of the man's hands were not sunburned. Evidently when Dodd
erected skyscrapers, he supervised the job from the interior of a comfortable
office. He looked more like a student than a man of active affairs.
     "I'd enjoy talking hunting with you indefinitely," Cranston murmured.
"But, actually, I've come to talk business."
     "I don't understand."
     "Money, Mr. Dodd."
     "I still don't understand."
     "Your arrival in New York was reported to me by my financial agent. I
understand that you're erecting a skyscraper in Western City, and that the work
has been held up temporarily by lack of funds. You have a worth-while project
and an excellent business rating. I have plenty of idle funds. Hence my visit
to you tonight."
     "I see." Roger Dodd toyed with a pencil. His pale, well-kept hands looked
strong and muscular. "You mean you're interested in making a realty investment?"
     "Precisely. As you know, safe investments are not exactly plentiful these
days. I have confidence in you and in your integrity. I'd be willing to back
your building project with a well-secured loan."
     "Thank you," Dodd murmured. "I appreciate your confidence in me. But,
unfortunately -"
     His hand stopped toying with the pencil. Unconsciously, it tightened into
a fist.
     "My financial difficulty has already been taken care of. I've been down to
Wall Street. I have made a very satisfactory arrangement."
     He named a firm of private bankers. The name made Cranston's eyes gleam.
Unless Dodd was lying, his credentials must be very good, indeed. The banking
firm was one of the strictest and most conservative houses in the financial
district.
     "I'm sorry I made my proposition too late," Cranston said. "You come from
a progressive section of the country. A section in which I'd like to increase
my holdings. Western City must be an attractive town, from all I've heard."
     "It is, Mr. Cranston. It has a growing population, magnificent roads. You
ought really to see our straight four-lane highways. Speed, Mr. Cranston! And
brains, too! Yes, we have our share of brains in Western City."
     Cranston ignored the peculiar challenge in Dodd's tone. He changed the
subject with quiet skill. He referred to the bank holdup and the arrest of
Martin Black.
     "Odd affair, that. Do you think the crime will scare capital away from
Western City, as a result?"
     "Your own offer to invest there is the best answer," Dodd replied. "The
crime for which Martin Black was arrested was a horrible one. But I don't
anticipate any further trouble - unless it's fomented by outsiders."
     He didn't explain his last sentence, nor did Cranston ask him to. Cranston
stuck to the subject of Martin Black.
     "Do you think he's guilty?"
     "I think he committed the crime, but I don't think he's guilty."
     "That's a strange remark."
     "It's a strange crime. When I say that poor Martin is not guilty, I mean
that I think he's insane. There's no other reasonable explanation. As a friend
of his, I'm going to insist on having him examined by the best psychiatrist I
can find.
     "I believe it would be a grave miscarriage of justice for a man to go to
the electric chair for a deed that was so obviously done in a moment of
madness."


     THE sneer in Dodd's tone was pronounced. He hated Martin Black! He hated
him so much that it was impossible for him to hide it beneath those
softly-spoken words. But Lamont Cranston was apparently more interested in a
highball he was sipping.
     "I suppose that Martin Black must have many good friends like yourself,
eh?"
     "Not many. I should say not more than three or four people could call
themselves his intimate friends. But what we lack in numbers, we make up in
influence - if you'll pardon my boast."
     "He's a friend of the new governor, I've heard."
     "Better than that. He's a friend of the man who made the governor's
election possible. I refer to Peter Corcoran, who is the most powerful
politician in our State. Then there's Henry Stuart, the lawyer who's defending
Black.
     "Stuart thought enough of poor Martin to travel more than two hundred
miles in order to return to Western City the night that Black was arrested.
Finally, there's myself."
     His teeth showed a wolfish smile:
     "No, I wouldn't worry about Martin Black, if I were you. I can assure you
he'll be well taken care of."
     He rose to his feet, and Cranston took the hint. But as he moved to the
door, his eyes flicked sideways. He noticed that Roger Dodd's hat and coat were
lying on a living-room chair in a dark corner of the room.
     It was an odd way for a man as neatly dressed as Dodd to treat so
expensive a garment. Dodd looked more like a man whose first thought on
arriving home would be to place his coat carefully on a hanger.
     Cranston suspected that this oversight was not mere chance. He took leave
of his host and went down the corridor to the elevator. There were two shafts
there, side by side. Cranston pressed the button on the left.
     He waited until the indicator light glowed. Then he raced noiselessly to
the end of the corridor and opened a fire door. He crouched out of sight, his
eyes at the crack.
     The elevator door opened. The operator glanced out. He saw no one and
slammed the door. The car descended.
     The moment the elevator door clanged shut, there was a click from another
direction. Roger Dodd appeared in hat and coat. He raced down the corridor to
the twin shafts. He thought that Cranston was innocently descending in the car
on the left. His finger jammed against the other button.
     In a moment, Dodd himself was on the way down. Cranston's hunch had been
right. The sleek Mr. Dodd intended to trail his millionaire guest and see where
he went!
     Cranston had no objection. He had timed his departure perfectly. By the
time Dodd arrived at the lobby exit, the distinguished-looking car of Lamont
Cranston would be pulling away from the curb. The first cab in line was one
piloted by a hackie named Moe Shrevnitz.
     Moe was an agent of The Shadow. The Shadow had given Moe enough money to
bribe his way without difficulty to the head of the hack line. Moe and the
agent in Cranston's own car would make sure that the elegant Mr. Dodd had
plenty of opportunity for a long chase around New York.
     The coast was now clear for The Shadow.


     WHEN he emerged from the stairway behind the fire door, a grim change had
taken place in Cranston's appearance. A black slouch hat shaded his forehead. A
black cloak covered him from chin to foot. Gloves of the same color shielded his
hands.
     All that was visible, as he glided noiselessly toward Dodd's suite, was
the gleam of his eyes and the jut of his strongly beaked nose.
     The Shadow was taking the offensive!
     It was child's play for him to open the simple hotel lock with a shining
instrument of chrome steel. He didn't harm the lock. He merely opened it with a
slightly louder click than the usual key sound.
     Rapidly, he searched Dodd's apartment. In the living room, he drew a
blank. In the study, he found nothing to implicate Dodd in anything remotely
criminal. The bedroom was just a normal bedroom.
     The Shadow penetrated farther into the suite. He came to another room,
that looked like an extra study. Its desk, however, was empty. So were the
bookshelves. There was nothing else in the room, except a large closet. The
Shadow opened it.
     Instantly, he found himself in a fierce struggle that taxed every muscle
in his body. A masked man had flung himself forward the moment The Shadow
opened the closet door.
     The man had a gun in his hand, but he didn't fire it. He struck savagely
at The Shadow's head. Had the blow landed, it would have crushed The Shadow's
skull. Even at the awkward angle it struck, it was hard enough to daze The
Shadow and drop him to his knees momentarily.
     The hat had fallen from The Shadow's head. The masked man leaned over and
tried to rip away the upper edge of the concealing cloak from The Shadow's
face. In his eagerness to clutch at the cloak, he missed a second easy chance
to shoot his victim.
     He was more interested in disclosing The Shadow's hidden identity, than in
killing him!
     However, the thug should have known better than to let his momentary
advantage slip. The Shadow had recovered from the daze of the gun blow. He went
into grim action. But he fought as silently as his foeman.
     It was the thug who fired the first shot.
     It made a terrific roar. The Shadow batted the weapon aside just before it
spurted flame. The two foes bounced apart. The thug had lost his nerve with the
crashing echoes of that shot. He had all he wanted of The Shadow. He backed
toward the open window, his gun blasting scarlet as he retreated.
     Quickly, The Shadow threw himself aside on the floor. His own gun added to
the din. But no bullet struck the masked man. The Shadow wanted to take this man
alive.
     He waited until the killer was crouched on the sill, before he leaped to
his feet. He leaped when he heard a harmless click from the thug's hot weapon.
The gun was empty!
     The Shadow's leap and the killer's outward swing came almost
simultaneously. There was a stone balcony in an angle of the building wall. It
was more than five feet from where the masked killer crouched. He launched
himself through the air as The Shadow grabbed at his legs.
     The Shadow's clutch missed. The man made the desperate leap successfully.
But his lingers slipped on the curved stone of the balcony ledge. He had turned
his head at the last moment, fearful that The Shadow's reaching hand would grab
him. That single miscalculation cost him his life.
     He fell through empty air with a terrible shriek.
     His scream was echoed by cries of horror from other windows. The noise of
the shooting had brought hotel guests, staring across the enclosed court toward
Dodd's apartment. They saw the failing body of the doomed thug dwindle to a mere
dot. There was a sickening sound, like someone hitting a carpet with a club.
Then silence.
     The Shadow stood riveted at the window from whence the man had fallen.
     A dozen pairs of eyes saw the black-cloaked figure. The screams of the
witnesses redoubled. A man vanished back into his room, pawed swiftly into the
drawer of a bureau, then leaped out with a small nickel-plated revolver. He
sent a hail of bullets chipping at the stone of the sill opposite.
     "The Shadow!"
     Voices raised the cry. These misguided witnesses thought The Shadow was a
cold-blooded killer. They were ready to swear they had seen him push a man to a
horrible death thirty stories below. Some were already telephoning frantically.
The hotel was in an uproar.


     THE SHADOW fled from Dodd's apartment. He ran to the fire stairs, where he
had left his leather brief case. When he emerged again he was carrying the case
in a neatly-gloved hand. But the gloves weren't black. Nor were they worn by
The Shadow.
     Lamont Cranston waited for the arrival of the elevator, which he perceived
was shooting swiftly up the shaft. He crouched against the corridor wall on the
opposite side from the suite of Roger Dodd.
     The door of the elevator clanged open. Two men sprang out. One was the
house detective. The other was the operator. Neither of them had eyes for
anything but Dodd's door. They ran toward it and the house dick pounded on the
panel with his gun.
     "Open up in there, or I'll shoot!" There was a sudden clang from the
elevator behind their backs. Its door had slammed shut. By the time the
startled house dick and the operator had turned, the elevator was already on
the way down.
     There was nothing in the empty corridor to indicate the identity of the
man who had so neatly outwitted his pursuers.
     The house dick raced back to the double shaft. He shoved his finger on the
button of the second door. Long before he leaped into a car and descended,
Cranston had reached the second floor.
     It was a mezzanine level that surrounded the lobby itself. There were
plenty of people there, but all of them were leaning over the mezzanine
railing. They were attracted by the boiling confusion down in the open lobby.
     Lamont Cranston walked quietly to a marble staircase. He descended from
the mezzanine to an arcade lined with exclusive shops. He left by the arcade's
rear entrance.
     There were taxis outside, but Lamont Cranston ignored them. He mingled
with the crowd on the sidewalk and melted discreetly down a subway entrance. It
was seldom that Cranston patronized the subway, but this time an anonymous ride
uptown to the Cobalt Club seemed both necessary and practical.
     When he reached his suite, Lamont Cranston lay down on a couch and closed
his eyes. He seemed to be fast asleep. But behind those closed eyes The
Shadow's clever brain was deep in thought. The thoughts revolved around the
personality of Roger Dodd.
     It was a long time before Cranston stirred. He could hear newsboys
shrieking extras out in the street. He descended and bought a paper. It was
filled with an account of the outrage at the Gilton Hotel.
     Roger Dodd had returned from what he described as a "short ride to see the
sights." The police had been unable to learn anything from him. He denied any
knowledge of the dead thug whose smashed body had been found in the hotel
courtyard.
     He was baffled, he said, by the appearance of The Shadow in his room and
The Shadow's murder of the thug. The thug was too badly smashed to be
identified.
     The newspapers speculated wildly on the cause of the whole affair. The
fact that Roger Dodd was from Western City and was a friend of Martin Black,
made for sensational journalism. The paper reviewed the Martin Black case and
capped it with a large headline: "IS THERE A CURSE ON WESTERN CITY?" The
implication was that prominent residents of that town were being pursued by a
fantastic doom.
     The Shadow smiled, as he noted that Roger Dodd had been released by the
New York police after routine questioning. Dodd announced he was leaving at
once to take a plane back to Western City.
     Lamont Cranston laid down the newspaper. He picked up his telephone and
called a railroad terminal. He inquired about Pullman reservations for the
following day.
     From his lips came the sound of harsh, sibilant laughter.


     CHAPTER IV

     THE SAND CLUE

     IT was dark when the sleek streamlined train pulled into the railroad
station at Western City.
     Not many people were visible on the platform. But a small group of
observers near the waiting room watched the train eagerly as it drew to a halt.
There were a half dozen of them. All were men.
     They made a concerted rush toward Lamont Cranston as he stepped from the
train. For a moment, he stiffened. Then he relaxed. He recognized the man who
was leading the chase. It was Clyde Burke.
     "Hello, Mr. Cranston!" Burke greeted. "We found out you were paying
Western City a visit and came out to interview you. Did you have a pleasant
journey?"
     Cranston smiled and nodded. The reporters from the local papers allowed
Clyde to do most of the talking. They were aware of Clyde's friendship with the
famous New York millionaire. What they were not aware of was the fact that Clyde
was one of The Shadow's most trusted agents.
     "I met one of your business leaders in New York," Cranston murmured. "He
was kind enough to invite me to come here and look over the investment
possibilities in your rapidly-growing city. I refer, of course, to Mr. Roger
Dodd. If all goes well, I expect to invest at least a million dollars in
various industrial holdings."
     Clyde kept the ball rolling on the topic of business. He didn't want any
of the newshawks to refer to the bank crime that had alarmed Western City
several days earlier. But it was impossible to keep the local reporters off the
subject.
     "Mr. Dodd is a close friend of Martin Black," one of the newshawks
suggested. "Has he spoken to you about the bank holdup and the murder of Howard
Nixon?"
     Cranston chuckled.
     "No. And if he had, it would have been a complete waste of time. Crime is
a subject on which I know absolutely nothing. I have no theories about Mr.
Black's guilt or innocence. I came here to renew my acquaintance with Roger
Dodd, and to make a few judicious investments."
     Clyde Burke ended the interview by closing his notebook and hurrying for a
telephone. The other reporters chased after him. Cranston was following his
porter toward the line of taxis, when he was again halted.
     Two well-dressed men accosted him. Both were smiling. Cranston recognized
one of them with a cry of well-simulated pleasure.
     "Why, Mr. Dodd! This is nice of you! I hardly expected to be greeted in
person."
     Dodd beamed.
     "Why not? I got your telegram this afternoon. The least I could do is to
meet you at the station."
     He introduced his companion. The man was Henry Stuart. He was the leading
lawyer of Western City and the man who was defending Martin Black.
     Stuart was of medium height and athletic appearance. He was probably the
same age as the bearded Dodd, Cranston guessed, but he looked younger. His
clean-shaven face was alert and friendly.
     Cranston seized on Stuart's presence to turn the conversation to the bank
crime. He mentioned his jovial reply to the reporters and chuckled. But Stuart
looked grave, as the three men climbed into Dodd's sedan.
     "A devilishly embarrassing case for me, Mr. Cranston. Black is one of my
best friends. I hate to admit it, but how can he be anything than guilty? As a
lawyer -"
     "Lawyers are too damned legal!" Dodd snapped. "I believe that poor Black
went out of his mind temporarily, the night that outrage took place. I still
think it's possible to save him."
     "I hope you're right," Stuart sighed.
     He grazed at Cranston.
     "I even hope the question of bail can be arranged soon. After all, the
entire murder charge against Black is circumstantial. No one saw him kill Nixon
in the president's locked private office at the bank. When Black fired his gun
at the crowd outside, he injured no one."
     Stuart looked troubled and unhappy. Much more so than the smiling Dodd.
     "Lets talk of more pleasant things," Dodd chuckled. "For instance, Mr.
Cranston's immediate plans... I insist, Cranston, that during your stay in town
you will live at my home."
     Cranston demurred. He had already made reservations at a leading hotel, he
declared.
     Dodd tried to insist. He went far beyond the normal protestations of a
friend, before he gave up. But Cranston stuck to his decision. In the end, Dodd
shrugged. He shook hands with Cranston in the hotel lobby, and so did Stuart.
The two promised to see him soon.
     They drove away, after promising to introduce Cranston to the leading
citizens of Western City, including the politically important Peter Corcoran.


     CRANSTON followed his luggage up to his suite. But as soon as he was
alone, his amiable smile faded.
     He stepped to his telephone and put in a long-distance call. He listened
briefly to the hum of the wire. Then:
     "Burbank speaking."
     "Report!" the voice of The Shadow rasped.
     Burbank's report concerned the activities of Harry Vincent in Western
City. There wasn't much to it. Harry had registered at a medium-priced hotel in
an unpretentious section of town. He was lying low, waiting to receive definite
instructions before he made a move.
     "The password is Richard Belton," Burbank said finally. "Vincent has been
instructed not to leave his room tonight until contact has been made."
     "Dismissed!" The Shadow said, and hung up.
     A moment later, he phoned again. This time, his voice was entirely
different from either The Shadow or Lamont Cranston. It sounded crisp and
nasal, the voice of a rather sporty gentleman.
     Cranston phoned Vincent's hotel. He gave his name as Richard Belton and
asked to be connected with Vincent's room. There was a short delay, then The
Shadow received an unpleasant shock. Vincent was not in the hotel.
     "I'm sorry," the clerk said, "but I'm positive he's not in. There is no
answer from his room. Just a moment... Yes, I was right. He left a few moments
ago with a friend of his."
     "Thank you," Cranston said.
     There was worry in his eyes when he hung up. The absence of Harry Vincent
had evil significance. Apparently, Harry had deliberately disobeyed the orders
of The Shadow. But such an idea was ridiculous. In all the years of his service
of The Shadow, Harry Vincent had never done such a thing.
     If Vincent had left the hotel with a "friend," he had gone unwillingly, in
spite of any appearance to the contrary. He had been kidnapped!
     To The Shadow, the answer seemed clear. An unknown criminal was copying
The Shadow's own methods. Cranston had located Roger Dodd easily enough in New
York, by canvassing the recent arrivals at the hotels. Evidently, someone in
Western City had used the same simple method to point a suspicious finger at
Vincent.
     Cranston was peeling off his clothes as he thought of the peril to Harry.
His new clothes matched the sporty quality of the voice he had used over the
phone as Richard Belton. The suit he now wore was of extreme cut, with a belted
back and a loud-checked pattern. His hair became jet-black and slightly
greasy-looking. A black mustache matched the wig.
     Cranston intended to pose as an advance agent for a traveling dance
orchestra. He left his hotel quickly, but not through the front lobby door. He
drove swiftly to Harry Vincent's shabbier hotel.
     The clerk there said that Vincent had not yet returned. He described the
visitor with whom Vincent had departed a short time earlier. The visitor was an
old man with stooped shoulders and white hair. He had gone up to Vincent's room
after talking over the house phone about a ring.
     "He was wearing the ring," the clerk said. "It certainly was a swell one,
too. It was a fire opal."
     The Shadow concealed his rage and alarm. He knew now how Harry had been
tricked. A fire opal was The Shadow's trade-mark. He used it to tip agents to
his presence when he used an unfamiliar disguise.
     The hotel clerk didn't notice that the dapper Richard Belton had turned a
ring on his own finger, so that the gem was inside his palm. The stone was a
girasol, a magnificent fire opal, the only one of its kind in the world.
     Harry had fallen for an imitation! The Shadow pretended only slight
disappointment at the absence of Vincent. For the benefit of any snoopers in
the lobby, he had described himself as the advance man for a famous dance
orchestra.
     He said the band was going to be booked for an engagement in Western City.
He repeated the name Richard Belton, and added that Harry was his assistant. He
promised to return the following day.
     After leaving the hotel, The Shadow walked only far enough to make sure
that he wasn't being tailed. Then he ducked back. He went up a side street and
located a dark alley that led to the hotel rear. The dapper figure of Richard
Belton melted into the alley.
     He never emerged into the rear courtyard.
     The figure that did emerge was barely visible. Cloaked in black, The
Shadow moved like a part of the darkness itself.


     A GLANCE showed The Shadow that the rear of the paved court was a blank
brick wall. Above his head was the slanting line of fire-escape ladders at the
back of the hotel. The bottom of the lowest ladder was not too high to reach by
an upward leap.
     The Shadow crouched for the effort.
     He was standing thus when he heard the thud of racing feet behind him. He
didn't turn to ward off the blackjack blow he knew was coming. With a quick
heave, he launched himself upward and caught the iron rung of the dangling
ladder.
     His unseen assailant struck at empty air. The force of the murderous blow
sent the thug staggering forward off balance. The Shadow let go his hold on the
ladder rung. He dropped on the shoulders of his foe.
     The shock sent both men sprawling to the pavement of the courtyard. A
desperate battle began. A silent one, too. The thug wanted to make no noise
that would draw attention. He tried viciously to club The Shadow's skull with
the iron bar he still gripped.
     The Shadow fought fiercely. He knew that Vincent was in desperate peril.
The Shadow had to find a clue to his kidnapped agent's whereabouts - and find
it without loss of time!
     When he rose panting to his feet, the thug lay unconscious. A search of
his pockets revealed nothing. The face of the killer was one not known to The
Shadow. Evidently, he was a local mobster.
     The Shadow bound his victim hand and foot with strong cords that appeared
from beneath the black cloak. The cords were tied in a rather peculiar fashion.
They joined the unconscious man's wrists and his bent knees. The cord also was
wound tightly about the thug's throat.
     It was an underworld device to keep a prisoner from attempting to free
himself when he regained consciousness. Any struggle with those cleverly looped
bonds would strangle the man to death.
     The Shadow gagged his limp prisoner. He hid him from sight behind a pile
of empty barrels that stood in a dark corner of the court. Then he leaped
upward once more to the dangling lower ladder of the fire escape.
     He knew where Vincent's room was. Burbank's report had imparted that vital
information. The Shadow ascended the fire escape, ducking swiftly past rear
rooms that were occupied. His black cloak helped his invisibility. He bided his
time until the occupants of the lower rooms had their backs to the rear windows,
before he flitted past the lighted panes.
     His girasol cut through the pane of Harry's top-floor window. An instant
later, The Shadow had the window open and was inside. He drew the shade over
the hole in the glass.
     Harry, of course, was gone. The empty room showed evidence of only a brief
struggle. A small vase had been smashed on the floor. The rug was slightly
rumpled.
     In one corner was a small metal object. It had been trampled flat. Near it
was something that looked like a tiny ball of yellowish dirt. When The Shadow
touched it, the ball crumpled.
     He examined the metal case first.
     It told him how Vincent had been forced to walk out. He had been drugged!
The thing that had been trampled underfoot during the quick struggle of the
kidnapper and his victim was a metal holder for a hypodermic needle!
     The Shadow next turned his attention to the small bit of yellowish dirt.
     He discovered it wasn't dirt. It was building sand. It had evidently
fallen from the shoe of the "old man" during the struggle with Harry Vincent.
The stuff had evidently been lodged in one of the tiny holes of a rubber heel.
It had dropped out unnoticed.
     To The Shadow, the sand clue meant that the kidnaper had come from some
new building under construction. Into The Shadow's mind flashed a picture of
the sleek Roger Dodd. Dodd was erecting a new skyscraper in Western City.
     It was queer that each time Cranston met Dodd, an attempt against The
Shadow followed instantly. It had happened in New York. It had happened now in
Western City.


     THE SHADOW descended swiftly to where he had left the captured thug. He
wanted to question him, to make sure of his deduction concerning Dodd.
     But the thug was no longer a helpless prisoner behind the row of empty
barrels in the dark courtyard. Someone had slashed his bonds and released him.
     There was no sign of either the prisoner or his rescuer.
     The Shadow wasted a few seconds in a search of the dark pavement. He was
rewarded by finding another clue, that made his eyes gleam. It was a torn piece
of a business card, muddy with the print of a foot. There were tiny grains of
building sand mixed with the mud.
     The card was an advertisement for a bar-and-grill called the Peacock. The
address of the place had vanished with the torn part of the card.
     A moment later, The Shadow had vanished into the black alley that
connected with the side street. He was there for more than ten minutes. Then a
figure emerged on the sidewalk.
     But not The Shadow. Nor was it the sporty gentleman who had described
himself as Richard Belton. This time, the well-dressed figure of Lamont
Cranston appeared. He walked to the front of the hotel and stopped at a parked
taxicab.
     He got in and asked to be taken to the Peacock. The driver nodded silently.
     "Are you sure you know where it is?" Cranston murmured. "I'm in a hurry."
     "Sure," the driver grinned. "There's only one Peacock in town. Can't miss
it! It's on the corner near that new skyscraper-construction job. Some
building! I guess you've heard of it, eh? Stranger here, aren't you?"
     Cranston nodded. He tipped the hackie in advance and asked for speed. He
knew exactly where Harry Vincent had been taken - but could he get there in
time? The driver did his best, but halfway to the goal his engine suddenly
coughed and quit. The cabby looked at his gas gauge and swore. The tank was
empty.
     "That's funny. I filled it up only a little while ago."
     He jumped out and looked at the tank. This time, his swearing really
sounded terrific. The tank had been punctured by a sharp instrument. The gas
had dripped out without being noticed.
     Too late, Cranston remembered a sharp-eyed newsboy who had stared at him
while he was talking to the hackie before he entered the cab. The newsboy had
crossed the street behind the taxi.
     He could easily have punctured the tank on orders from someone who wanted
to delay the movements of a new arrival in Western City whose presence in town
might mean trouble for a supercriminal.
     Cranston had no time to debate mentally. He paid off his cabby and raced
toward a nearby avenue to hunt another cab. He had a hard time finding one. The
minutes flitted swiftly by.


     HARRY VINCENT'S face was pale. Except for the flickering light from a
charcoal fire in a metal brazier, he was in darkness. The fire made feeble
gleams on Harry's pale face, and on three others.
     Two of the men were armed. They looked like thugs. One was the crook who
had been released from The Shadow's trap in the hotel alley.
     The third figure at whom Harry glared was - The Shadow!
     But Harry had discovered the deception. The fake Shadow talked too much.
He had apparently rescued Harry from the clutches of the "old man." He had
taken him to this wind-swept upper floor of an unfinished skyscraper in order
to question him.
     But his questions betrayed the cloaked criminal. He was ignorant of too
many facts about Harry that he should have known.
     "If you're The Shadow," Harry snapped, "you know all about who I am and
why I'm here in Western City. Why did you kidnap me? Where's the building
watchman? Why is he missing? This is Roger Dodd's new skyscraper project - and
I believe that you're Roger Dodd!"
     "Too bad - for you!" the cloaked figure snarled. "Make him talk, boys!"
     Harry struggled. But a hand was clapped over his mouth. He was bound too
tightly to resist. A red-hot bar was drawn out of the charcoal fire in the
brazier. It sizzled against the flesh of Harry's chest.
     "Talk!" the man in black snarled. "Who is The Shadow? Is he Lamont
Cranston? Or is Cranston just what he seems - a damn fool, with too much money
and no knowledge about crime?"
     Harry tried to scream, but the hand over his mouth choked off his cries.
Agony from the hot iron made his body quiver.
     The iron was replaced in the fire. Again, it sizzled against the flesh
exposed by Harry's opened shirt.
     His voice sounded thick when the hand lifted from his mouth.
     "Don't! I'll talk!"
     The thugs stepped back. Harry tried to burst his bonds in vain. He
staggered and fell. A thug kicked him in the ribs. The second thug picked up
the red-hot bar.
     "Who is The Shadow?" the cloaked figure growled.
     "Why not ask me?" replied a calm voice from the darkness.
     The fake Shadow whirled. Eyes like twin flames were staring at him from
the windy darkness high above the street.
     The Shadow's criminal double was facing - The Shadow!


     CHAPTER V

     DEATH IN THE AIR

     THERE was a yell of rage. Criminals whirled to meet this deadly challenge
from the darkness behind them. Hands fell away from the captive Harry Vincent.
Harry's eyes were glazed with agony. He tried to take a blind, staggering step
toward his deliverer.
     Then his corded ankles tripped him. He fell forward, striking his head
against the rough flooring.
     Harry fainted.
     The red-hot steel bar that had been used to torture Vincent was flung
through the air by the thug who had been holding it. It whizzed straight at The
Shadow's face. He ducked to the flooring and rolled behind a steel girder.
     Bullets began to roar at The Shadow's improvised shield.
     It was three against one. Two gunmen and a black-cloaked figure were
grimly stalking The Shadow, each of them with twin guns that spit death.
     The crooks separated. They closed in on the steel girder from different
directions. They found The Shadow gone!
     Laughter mocked them from the other side of the building's cluttered
flooring.
     Again the thugs took the offensive, advancing swiftly under cover of
beams, overturned wheelbarrows and mortar vats. They had the advantage of
numbers. They were satisfied that the odds in this deadly gunfight high above
the level of the dark streets of Western City were in their favor.
     The Shadow was satisfied, too!
     He had drawn the killers away from the spot where Harry Vincent lay
unconscious. The Shadow was afraid that a thug, noticing the limp figure of
their tortured victim, might bend swiftly and send a slug crashing through the
helpless Vincent's forehead.
     But now, the hail of gunfire was out of range of the spot where Harry lay.
     The Shadow tried to wing one of his foes. He didn't want to kill any of
them, particularly the criminal who had robed himself in the spurious disguise
of The Shadow himself.
     But the master criminal was no longer visible. He had taken advantage of
the tide of battle, to make a discreet retreat. The darkness had favored him.
So had the fusillade of bullets from the guns of his two thugs.
     The Shadow had his hands full with those two gunmen. They advanced with
sure-footed caution, taking advantage of every bit of cover. Their actions
indicated that they were trained ironworkers, used to leaping dizzy gulfs high
above the ground level. And they were well supplied with ammunition.
     Step by step, The Shadow was forced to fall back. He was driven to the
very edge of the structure. He teetered on a beam that had been only partly
anchored. It swayed sideways under his weight. For an instant, it looked as if
The Shadow were going to plunge downward to the street.
     The sight drove all caution from the minds of the two killers. They ran
recklessly out from cover, their guns flaming in an effort to blast The Shadow
from his suicidal perch.
     A bullet tugged the hat from his head. Another jerked the sleeve of his
cloak. Then The Shadow was back on the steady floor boards, his propped gun
firing at the nearest of his foes.
     There was a yell as a heavy .45 slug tore through flesh and bone. The thug
pitched backward as if he had been kicked by a mule. The Shadow rose to the
attack. The sudden death of one of the killers had taken the courage out of his
remaining pal.
     He had seen The Shadow deliberately court suicide in order to lure his
enemies into bullet range. The courage of that act showed the thug the caliber
of the man he was trying to battle.
     He fled toward the interior of the cluttered floor.
     In the center was an open square. It was the shaft of the electric hoist
that lifted materials to the upper floors of the half-finished skyscraper.
Through the hole descended the greasy black cable of the hoist. The terrified
thug flung himself toward it.
     He heard The Shadow yell. The Shadow sensed the man's peril. But the thug
mistook that cry. To him, it sounded like the vindictive shout of a man whose
gun never missed.
     The thug was a trained ironworker. He flung himself at the cable. His body
slid through the black opening of the floor below.
     But the thing The Shadow had feared would happen, did! The cable was
thickly coated with grease. The man's leap had not been perfect. Terror had
thrown him a bit too wide of the rigid cable. His gloved hands caught at the
steel lifeline. But the swing of his body put a terrific strain on his slippery
hands.
     He was unable to check his descent. His twined legs flung themselves about
the cable an instant too late. The terrific speed of his slide burned through
the heavy gloves as if they were paper. For three stories, the doomed thug
managed to maintain his agonized hold; then he let go.
     His body hurtled downward through the empty well. A horrible faraway thump
was dimly audible.


     THE SHADOW rose to his feet. His face was grim, but there was no time to
think about the terrible end of the man who had fallen.
     Noise of gunfire in an empty building high above the street had already
attracted attention. The wind that swept coldly through the open upper floors
of the unfinished skyscraper brought the faint shouts of men and the shriller
sound of police whistles.
     An alarm had been telephoned in to Western City police headquarters.
Bluecoats were whizzing at a reckless speed to the scene.
     A moment later, The Shadow heard the sound he was listening for: the
shrill wail of a police siren.
     He was already bending over the body of the thug he had shot. A glance was
all The Shadow needed. The .45 at close range had worked havoc. The thug was
beyond all human aid. His lips were sealed forever.
     Again, The Shadow's need to save his own life had brought him smack up
against a blank wall of mystery. Both thugs were dead. The mysterious robed
criminal who had dared to don the disguise of The Shadow himself, had vanished
with sly skill at the very beginning of the fight.
     With the approaching sound of a police siren shrieking in his ears, The
Shadow raced back to where Harry Vincent lay.
     Harry was still unconscious. The Shadow bent to sling him over one
shoulder. As he did so, his sharp eyes noticed something beyond the range of
the brazier in which the coal fire still blazed. It was a black tarpaulin.
     There was something sinister about the shape of that covering. It hid
something that lay rigidly beneath. The Shadow could see the bent outline of a
twisted leg, the shape of a human arm.
     He flung the covering aside.
     A dead man lay underneath. One glance, and The Shadow knew who the corpse
was. The dead man was the missing watchman, whose absence had allowed the fake
Shadow and his two thugs to make so easy an entrance into the building with
their captive. The watchman's metal badge was still pinned on his lapel. He had
been shot to death with a single bullet.
     Beside the body lay the gun that had slain the watchman.
     The Shadow's breath hissed as he recognized that weapon. It was Harry
Vincent's gun! One shot had been fired from it.
     Instantly, the ugly perfection of the killer's plans became clear to The
Shadow. Crooks had not been content to torture Harry to death. They had pinned
the murder of the watchman on The Shadow's unconscious agent!
     The Shadow knew that the missing bullet from Vincent's gun was the one
which had tunneled through the body of the watchman. Harry, even if rescued,
was still a marked man. The police would arrest him at his hotel the moment
they examined the gun and recovered the slug. Vincent would be railroaded for a
murder he had never committed!
     The screech of the police siren was louder in The Shadow's ears. A car
from Western City headquarters had halted in the street below the towering
structure of the half-finished skyscraper. Cops were racing into the building
behind the beams of bright flashlights.
     They were beginning to climb the ladders that gave the only method of
access to the upper floors. The stairways had not yet been installed. The lift
was useless, because the engineer who operated it was home asleep and the
mechanism covered and locked.
     The delay gave The Shadow a grim opportunity.
     A knife appeared from his pocket. With the skill of a surgeon, he probed
with his blade, seeking the bullet that was imbedded in a bone near the spine
of the dead man.
     It was work that The Shadow hated to do; but it was necessary work. If the
rough surgery of The Shadow failed, it meant the death of Harry Vincent in the
electric chair for a murder he had not committed!
     The Shadow didn't recover the slug until the police were climbing the last
ladder. He had only time to drop the bloody chunk of metal in his pocket and
whirl. As he crouched above the ladder that led from below, he was outlined to
the cops who were racing up the rungs with drawn guns.
     They saw the black cloak and a bullet-perforated hat. They saw a white
face peering down at them, with eyes like flame and a nose beaked like an
eagle's. Yells echoed in the windy darkness.
     "The Shadow!"
     Bullets spat. The Shadow had to fling himself backward. But as he fell out
of range of the hail of police lead, he managed to give a vigorous shove to the
uprights of the ladder that projected above the hole in the unfinished flooring.
     The ladder swayed outward from its support. It crashed. The cops on the
rungs were flung headlong. While they sprawled on the floor below, The Shadow
raced to where Harry Vincent lay unconscious.
     In an instant, he had his inert agent slung over his shoulder like a sack
of meal. The Shadow had nowhere to retreat now except up!
     Up was where he went. Oblivious of the weight of the man he carried, he
ascended with noiseless skill. There was nothing above his head now but the
cold black sky, thickly powdered with stars. The only way down was the ladder
which The Shadow had used.
     The ladder was now blocked by police. It creaked with their weight as they
ascended cautiously, guns ready to blast flame.
     The Shadow's eyes swerved to the edge of the top floor. He did what looked
like a mad, suicidal thing. With his leather belt tied tightly around Vincent,
to help anchor the unconscious agent across his left shoulder, The Shadow ran
straight to the edge of nothingness.
     He poised himself to leap outward!
     But there was method in his madness, brains behind that seeming crazy
decision.
     A derrick was anchored at the edge of the topmost floor. It was used to
swing girders in line. A cable led downward. But unlike the cable of the
elevator hoist, this one was not a perpendicular line. It slanted inward two
stories below the dizzy chasm where The Shadow stood.
     He was able to reach it only by leaning desperately outward. He began to
fall. But the momentum of his tipping body brought both his hands to the
slanting cable. The tight leather belt kept Harry Vincent in place across The
Shadow's shoulder. The two began to slide.
     It took only a few horrible seconds. But The Shadow was bathed in cold
sweat when his feet hit the wooden brace to which the slanting cable was
attached on the floor below. His impetus threw him inward, not outward. He and
Harry fell to the rough flooring.
     Their bodies made quite a thump, but the noise was covered by the shouting
of the police on the top floor of the structure.
     They had emerged beneath the cold starlight of the open sky. Their guns
had jerked level, to spit death at The Shadow.
     They found only emptiness.
     It never occurred to them to look at the cable that slanted into the
building two floors below. The thought that a man might slide to safety by that
thin lifeline high above the pavement seemed incredible. Besides, there were
plenty of places on the top floor where a fugitive might hide.
     A cop guarded the hatchway at the top of the ladder. The others began to
poke grimly among the masses of material and metal that cluttered the top
floor. They moved warily, taking their time, expecting at any moment to hear
the roaring blast of a hidden gun.
     The Shadow utilized those precious moments to carry Vincent to the ground
floor of the building. More police were entering from the street. But they
didn't see the black wraith that melted toward the rear. The Shadow dropped
into a back courtyard filled with heaps of debris from construction work.
     As he did so, he ran almost headlong into a cop who was prowling around
the dump heap with a drawn gun.
     The sudden surprise of that grim encounter was all that saved The Shadow.
Encumbered with the weight of Harry Vincent, he should have fallen an easy prey
to the law. But the cop's frozen surprise was not shared by The Shadow.
     The butt of Vincent's recovered gun hit the cop before he could shout an
alarm. The cop toppled unconscious on a heap of discarded rubbish. The Shadow
hated to slug a policeman, but there was no other recourse.
     He melted in the darkness behind the building, and used his desperate
leeway of time to revive Vincent.
     Vincent's eyes opened. The gloved hand of The Shadow choked off his groan.
His voice hissed with grim authority into the ear of his dazed agent.
     That voice sobered Harry. He lay there quietly, listening attentively.
Then he said in a low whisper:
     "Orders understood."
     "Go!"
     Harry rose to his feet, disappeared in the direction of the rear street.
Then he hurried to the nearest avenue. It was one where a bus line carried
travelers from the outskirts of Western City, to the business district.
     All the excitement was behind Vincent now. The uproar in front of the
skyscraper had drawn an enormous crowd of spectators. Harry boarded the bus
without any trouble. His buttoned coat hid the burns on his chest.


     MEANWHILE, the black-cloaked figure of The Shadow had changed to the
dapper, well-dressed appearance of Lamont Cranston. Cranston made his way
around the block, being careful not to show himself until he mingled with the
running citizens who were hurrying to join the crowd in front of the skyscraper.
     Cranston pushed through the crowd until he was well in front. His
aristocratic bearing helped his progress. People muttered as he shoved, but no
one objected too violently. He stopped at a point where he could hear the
muttered talk of two policeman assigned to hold back the crowd.
     It was grimly-revealing talk.
     The police had found a black cloak and a slouch hat in the skyscraper.
     A clever criminal had not taken any chances, thought The Shadow. He had
planted his fake disguise where cops would find it.
     "The watchman was killed by The Shadow," one of the cops whispered to his
partner. "But the murder gun is missing. And it's even crazier than that. The
Shadow must have dug out the bullet that killed the watchman, before he fled.
They found evidences of a rough surgery job - and the murder slug is missing!"
     "That settles it," the other cop muttered. "That stuff about The Shadow
always helping the law is the bunk. He's a criminal! It's clear enough what
he's been after. He's been trying to ruin Roger Dodd."
     Lamont Cranston pricked up his ears. He listened intently.
     "The watchman's murder was a cover for an arson job," the cop continued.
"The basement is soaked with gasoline. The Shadow meant to burn the whole
building down!"
     "Why didn't he set it afire, then?"
     "Maybe The Shadow didn't have time."
     Cranston smiled as he retreated through the crowd. He had a different
theory than the cop. That gasoline had not been meant to be set afire. It was
merely another device to make Dodd look like an innocent victim.
     The only triumph for The Shadow was the rescue of Harry Vincent. He had
saved Vincent's life and ruined a plot to frame him for murder. But even this
triumph was really a defeat.
     Harry's usefulness in Western City was now ended. The supercriminal in the
black robe knew now that Vincent was an agent of The Shadow. That was why The
Shadow had whispered grim orders to Harry before he had dismissed him.
     Harry was obeying those orders at this very moment. He was to return to
his hotel and check out. Then take the first train eastward, to New York.
     The Shadow had started on the defensive. He still was on the defensive.
But his identity was still a secret.
     Lamont Cranston smiled. He thought of the sleek contractor, Roger Dodd.
Dodd controlled that skyscraper where Harry Vincent had so narrowly escaped
destruction. Was Roger Dodd, reputed friend of the arrested Martin Black,
behind this carnival of crime and mystery?
     The smile of The Shadow changed to grim, foreboding laughter.


     CHAPTER VI

     THE FAKE SHADOW

     THE eyes of the girl in the fur coat were swollen and puffy. She had been
weeping. She started to press the bell-button of her apartment door, then
suddenly remembered that her maid was not at home. She had given her the
evening off.
     She fumbled in her bag for the key, and let herself in.
     She was glad she had given Celeste the evening off. Celeste was a
warmhearted Frenchwoman, and had been in her employ a long time. Celeste would
be sympathetic. The girl in the fur coat couldn't bear that.
     She took off her coat and hung it in the closet. The mirror on the closet
door showed that the girl was very pretty. She had blue eyes and hair the color
of ripe corn. The gown she was wearing left her shoulders and arms bare. Her
skin was like cream.
     "Don't be such a little fool!" she whispered at her reflection in the
mirror. "You're doing the best you can. And weeping only makes you look silly!"
     She felt better after that. She went to her dressing table and began to
repair the ravages of her grief.
     The girl's name was Alice Gunther. She was the niece of the imprisoned
Martin Black. She was Black's only near relative.
     Alice had just returned from a late-afternoon visit with her uncle at the
Western City detention jail. Black had been curt and scornful. He told Alice to
stop bothering him. His laugh was nasty when she begged him to co-operate more
truthfully with Henry Stuart, his lawyer.
     "The devil with Stuart!" he sneered. "Lawyers can't help me! I've got to
depend on myself. I know exactly the nature of the mess I'm in - and I'm not
worried. Let people think I'm crazy. They'll think differently before this
thing is over!"
     His jeering laugh echoed as Alice, weeping, walked from the cell corridor.
     Alice Gunther shuddered as she recalled that cold mirth.
     The bell of her apartment rang presently. She went to the door and opened
it. A man was standing there, whom she recognized. He was tall, faultlessly
dressed, with alert eyes in a calm, bearded face.
     It was Roger Dodd.
     "Where's Celeste?" he asked quickly.
     "I gave my maid the evening off."
     "Good! That makes things more cozy. I've come to talk to you frankly about
your uncle."
     Alice's eyes filled anew with tears. "I don't want any sympathy," she said
forlornly.
     Roger Dodd patted her slim shoulder.
     "Sit down. Let's talk sense. I know that Martin Black is innocent. So do
you. The question is, who is responsible for the criminal mess he's now in?"
     "I've thought about it until I've nearly gone crazy!"
     Dodd looked her straight in the eyes. There was almost a hypnotic quality
in his gaze.
     "Have you heard of what happened at the new skyscraper I'm erecting here
in Western City?"
     The girl nodded. She knew what Dodd was going to say. The papers had been
full of wild charges against The Shadow.
     "I don't believe The Shadow is a criminal," Alice said. "I've read too
much about his activities on the side of the law, to think that he murdered
your construction watchman and killed two of your ironworkers. Besides, what
were ironworkers doing there at night?"
     "Heaven knows!" Dodd replied with a pious shrug. "But the testimony of the
police seems conclusive. The Shadow was seen. He escaped from under the very
noses of the police. His slouch hat and black cloak were found on the premises.
And the evidence proves that he had planned arson."
     "Why should The Shadow persecute you?"
     "I don't know. Why is Martin Black in jail on a charge of murder? I happen
to be one of Black's best friends. Isn't it queer that crime should now turn
toward me?"


     THERE was a pause. Roger Dodd deftly brought the name of Lamont Cranston
into the conversation. Cranston had made a visit to the jail where Martin Black
was confined. It was supposed to be an inspection visit on the part of the
prominent visitor to Western City.
     "What about it?" Alice asked.
     "Did it ever occur to you that Lamont Cranston might possibly be - The
Shadow?"
     Alice was shocked. She spoke scornfully, when she had regained her breath.
But Dodd continued smoothly.
     "Cranston claims he's here for financial investments. But he has made no
move to invest, as yet. And here's something else I've discovered. Lamont
Cranston was not at his hotel during the time those murders occurred on my
construction job!"
     "Be careful what you say about a man as important as Mr. Cranston," Alice
suggested. "You might lay yourself open to a slander suit."
     "I've mentioned this only to you," Dodd replied. He paused, then shrugged.
"Perhaps I'm unduly suspicious. Forget what I've just said. I've been under a
terrific strain. Cranston is probably as innocent as I am."
     He rose, presently, to take his departure. At the door of the apartment,
he paused. The bright, hypnotic look was back in his calm eyes.
     "I hope I haven't prejudiced you against Cranston?"
     "You haven't. Or The Shadow, either!"
     Roger Dodd smiled. The smile deepened on his bearded lips after the door
closed behind him.
     Alice Gunther tried to put the whole tangle of suspicion and crime out of
her mind. She went into her rear sitting room, with a popular novel. She had
been reading less than ten minutes, when she heard a faint swishing sound.
     Alice looked up. Her glance moved toward the windowpane. Someone had
tossed a handful of sand against the glass!
     With a beating heart, Alice lifted the window. It was pitch-dark outside.
Her apartment was on the second floor. Beyond her window was the slope of a
small extension roof. But there was no human being visible in the darkness.
     Alice started to close the window.
     "Wait!"
     A face loomed suddenly in the darkness of the shed roof. As Alice
recoiled, a figure robed in black stepped noiselessly into the room. A
black-gloved hand drew the shade.
     "The Shadow!" Alice gasped.
     Sibilant mirth echoed for a moment. Then The Shadow spoke.
     "Have no fear, Miss Gunther. I come to help you, not to commit crime, as
your friend Roger Dodd seems to suspect. I overheard everything Dodd said. Your
loyalty to me is evidence of your intelligence. I have come with advice, and
help."
     Had Harry Vincent or Clyde Burke been in that room, they would have leaped
without hesitation at the throat of the robed intruder. He was not The Shadow!
His voice was too harsh, too metallic. He talked too much. And his words were
too flowery.
     But Alice Gunther had no suspicion of the truth.
     The fake Shadow had carried a heavy leather bag with him into the room. He
pointed to it with a gloved finger.
     "In this bag is the proof of my interest in you and your unfortunate
uncle."
     He unlocked the bag. It was crammed with cash. He took out the packages of
currency and laid them on Alice's table.
     "What is this for?" Alice gasped.
     "It's the means of saving your uncle's life."
     "I don't understand."
     "Martin Black is the victim of a conspiracy," the fake Shadow intoned. "A
master criminal is at work. His intent is to have Martin Black convicted for
murder, to pay the penalty in the electric chair. Failing in that, he intends
to murder your uncle.
     "My plan is to have Black released quietly from jail. I want to send him
away from Western City, to a spot where he will be out of reach of a criminal
who is eager to have him dead!"
     It was a long-winded speech from a personage who never wasted a word,
particularly under circumstances like this. But the girl's face was radiant
with joy at the prospect of help from The Shadow.
     "I will do whatever you ask."
     "Excellent!"


     THE robed intruder explained his plan.
     The money he had brought with him represented the sum demanded by the
State for the release of Black on bail. Ordinarily, on a charge such as this,
bail would not have been accepted. But the actual murder charge against Black
was entirely circumstantial.
     No one had actually seen him kill Howard Nixon in the locked private
office of the Prairie Saving Bank. Moreover, the shots that Black had fired on
the street had injured no one. He had fired over the heads of the terrified
pedestrians.
     There was another reason why bail for Black would be accepted. He had
powerful friends, the fake Shadow explained. Roger Dodd had been moving heaven
and earth to intercede for Black. So had Henry Stuart, the lawyer. Most
important, Peter Corcoran, who was the most influential politician in the
State, had spoken privately to the governor.
     "Black can't raise the money himself," the black-cloaked intruder said,
solemnly. "His funds are now in the control of government agents, who are
investigating his financial affairs. That is why I have brought this cash. I've
drawn it in small amounts, through dummies I can trust. Take it. Use it -
tonight!"
     "But how?"
     With a smirking chuckle, he told her. A judge was waiting for Alice
Gunther in a spot where reporters could neither see nor overhear. The writ
would be signed, and honored instantly at the jail. Martin Black would be
spirited out a rear door. After that, his movements were up to him.
     "Or rather, up to you, my dear," the fake Shadow whispered. "Listen
carefully. These are your secret orders - to be repeated by you to Martin
Black. He has been told where to go when he leaves the jail. He'll telephone
you from there. Tell him this!"
     It was a mystifying order to the girl.
     The Shadow wanted Martin Black to go to a certain railroad station on the
outskirts of Western City. It was a place where through trains never stopped,
except on signal. Black was to signal a limited and board it. Once aboard the
train, Black was to walk through it, watching for the appearance of a friend.
     "He'll know his friend when he sees him," the black-robed visitor told
Alice, with a harsh laugh. "It's someone Martin Black can trust. This friend
will give him instructions where to leave the train and the exact house in
another city where he is to hide.
     "Absolute obedience on Black's part is necessary. Otherwise, I cannot
guarantee to save his life. A supercriminal will reach him - and destroy him!"
     Eagerly, the girl promised to obey. "One thing more: You will have an
important task to do yourself. For reasons which I don't care to explain, I am
interested tonight in the movements of Lamont Cranston."
     Alice gasped. "Surely you don't suspect him?"
     "Tonight, Mr. Dodd told you that Lamont Cranston might be The Shadow. That
statement is both false and silly. The Shadow is not a criminal. My mission here
tonight proves that. But there is grave danger that Lamont Cranston - who is not
The Shadow - may be working on the side of murder!"
     "It sounds hideous!" Alice cried. "I've spoken to him. He's been very
kind."
     "Hypocrisy!" the fake Shadow snarled. "Will you do as I say? Agree - or I
shall withdraw from the case!"
     "I agree," Alice Gunther murmured.
     "That is sensible," the intruder returned. "Invite Lamont Cranston to come
to see you, after you have arranged the matter of bail. Keep him here in your
apartment during the vital time when Martin Black is racing to a small wayside
station to board the limited."
     "Suppose Mr. Cranston refuses my invitation?"
     "Tell him you want to discuss the bank murder. Pretend you've thought of
some new idea that may be vital in proving your uncle's innocence. Cranston
will come. Arrange a charming tete-a-tete dinner. Remember - the life of Martin
Black may depend on your skill in keeping Cranston from learning of your uncle's
train journey!"
     The robed intruder closed his empty bag. He peered out, made certain that
all was clear outside. The shade was lifted softly and the window raised. The
black-robed figure vanished into the darkness behind the apartment building.


     ALICE GUNTHER'S head was in a whirl. The whole episode seemed like a crazy
nightmare. But the money The Shadow had left was in plain sight on her table.
She raced into her dressing room and brought out a traveling bag. She packed
the bundles of currency, and donned her hat and coat.
     Alice left the house, confident that she was unseen.
     But her movements were noted by a man trained for such emergencies. The
man was Clyde Burke. He had been watching Alice's apartment house from a
building across the street. He had a fast car parked in a convenient spot. By
the time Alice Gunther was in her own car, Clyde was on the job, tailing her.
     He knew how to keep a fugitive in sight without betraying his own
presence. Alice made the task easier. She was too eager to keep her appointment
with the bail judge, to think of pursuit.
     Clyde Burke was unable to learn what took place in the house where Alice
went. But he knew that her host was a prominent judge. He suspected a secret
bail arrangement. His suspicion was justified when the girl drove swiftly to
the Western City detention jail.
     Clyde dashed to a telephone and made a low-voiced call. He reported
everything he had learned. Then he took up a sheltered position, where he could
watch the rear door of the jail without himself being seen.
     He saw Martin Black emerge presently, muffled to the eyes. Black drove
away in a car that had been left parked at the curb. He went to a small frame
shack on the outskirts of Western City. This was the spot from which Black had
been ordered to telephone his niece.
     Clyde Burke waited patiently outside the shack.
     Meanwhile, a dark figure waited with equal patience outside the rear
window of Alice Gunther's apartment. Clyde's report had warned the real Shadow
of impending developments.
     The Shadow saw Alice Gunther return to her apartment and wait nervously
near her telephone.
     Presently, the bell rang. Alice grabbed the instrument. Eagerly, the girl
relayed instructions to her uncle about the train he was to take. She told him
about the unknown friend who would meet him aboard the limited.
     The Shadow heard every word Alice uttered. The moment she hung up, he
faded.
     He raced back by car to his suite at the hotel. The hotel was only a few
blocks away, but the trip gave ample time for The Shadow to slip out of his
black cloak and become again the dapper and innocent Lamont Cranston.
     As he hurried into the lobby, the clerk smiled and beckoned.
     "Oh, Mr. Cranston! A lady is on the telephone, inquiring for you. I was
about to tell her you were not at the hotel, when you came in. The lady's name
is Alice Gunther. Would you care to take the call?"
     "Certainly," Cranston smiled.
     Alice sounded sweet, but breathless. She invited Lamont Cranston to her
apartment. Even if Cranston hadn't known what was in the wind, her eagerness
would have put him on guard. Alice said that she wanted to discuss some new
ideas about her uncle's arrest. She was arranging a private dinner for two.
Would Mr. Cranston join her?
     "I'll be delighted," Cranston replied.
     There was flame in his eyes as he hung up.


     CHAPTER VII

     ABOARD THE LIMITED

     A CAR drove swiftly along a country road. Martin Black was behind the
wheel. He was in a fever of impatience.
     The road he was taking traversed a desolate, undeveloped section on the
outskirts of Western City. On one side were open fields. On the other were the
dark rails of a transcontinental railroad.
     Presently, Black saw his goal. It was a small wayside station. It
consisted of a tiny wooden waiting room and a platform alongside the local
tracks. The station was dark. There were no lights on the outside platform.
     The place was merely a flag station. It was a convenience for suburban
travelers commuting back and forth from Western City. But the last local train
had finished its evening run. There would be no more trains until the first
commuters appeared in the morning.
     This was where Martin Black intended to board the limited.
     His eagerness had made him arrive too early. Yet he found plenty to do.
Nervously, he ran along the platform to its end and pulled the mechanism that
set a stop signal. A red light glowed across the tracks of the main line.
     Black felt better when he saw the signal. He went into the waiting room
and searched it to make sure there was no one inside watching. He found only a
couple of empty wooden benches and a stove.
     Satisfied, Black went back to the platform. His glance kept alternating
between his watch and the dark stretch of track. He was certain he was not
being observed.
     Yet he was observed! Clyde Burke was crouched within the small waiting
room which Black had made sure was empty a few minutes earlier.
     There was no mystery to Clyde's smart maneuver. He had parked his trailing
car well out of sight of the station, had advanced the rest of the way on foot.
Hidden in a clump of weeds, he had noted Black's search of the waiting room.
The moment Black went out the front door to the platform, Clyde sneaked
noiselessly in through the back.
     He was not afraid of any further search. The time that elapsed before the
arrival of the limited was growing shorter.
     Presently, a vivid white headlight glowed far down the track. The rails
began to hum. The limited came roaring into view along the main line. Black was
afraid the train wouldn't stop. But the engineer had seen the signal. There was
a hissing of air brakes. The long train shuddered to a halt.
     A Pullman door opened. Black hurried across the rails to the center track
and scrambled up the steps. In a moment, he was past the conductor and into the
Pullman.
     Before the steps could be blocked by the closing door, a second figure
raced into view. It was Clyde Burke. He didn't emerge from the ramshackle
waiting room of the local station until Martin Black had vanished aboard the
train. But he made up for his delay by fast sprinting.
     In an instant, Clyde was aboard the train, panting with exertion.
     "Just about made it," the conductor grunted. "Why did you delay that way?"
     "I thought I could buy my ticket inside the station," Clyde mumbled. "But
the agent's window was closed. I want Pullman reservations. A single occupancy
section."
     "You'll have to see the Pullman conductor."
     Clyde nodded. But he didn't go into the car where the unsuspicious Black
had vanished. He crossed the platform and went into the Pullman ahead. He
hunted up the Pullman conductor and made arrangements for a complete upper and
lower.
     Clyde had no idea how long he'd be on the train. He didn't want his
movements restricted by having somebody sleeping in the upper berth. Hence his
choice of a single occupancy section.
     Having paid his fare to the first distant point that came into his mind,
he walked back through the train. Black was not in the Pullman into which Clyde
had seen him go. The Daily Classic reporter continued walking to the rear. He
reached the club car before he saw his man.


     BLACK was obviously looking for someone. He gave Clyde an eager glance,
that changed to disappointment. Clyde had interviewed Black only once at the
jail in Western City and his face hadn't registered on Black's memory. He had
no suspicion that Clyde had boarded the limited from the same spot he had.
     Presently, Martin Black began to walk forward through the train. It was
easy for Clyde to trail him, because other passengers were on the move. Some
were on their way to the club car, others to the diner.
     Black scanned each face that passed him.
     Not all of the Pullmans were standard sleepers. One or two of them were
compartment cars. Martin Black was halfway through the narrow aisle of one of
them, when he halted abruptly. A compartment door had opened. A man emerged.
     It was the bearded Roger Dodd!
     Luckily, Clyde had dropped back. Dodd was facing his way, but he couldn't
see him. Dodd gave Black a peculiar smile.
     "Hello, Martin! What are you doing on this train?"
     "I'm looking for a friend," Black muttered.
     "Really?"
     "Yes. I'd like to talk to you about it."
     "All right. Come on in."
     The compartment door closed. Clyde hurried noiselessly along the aisle. It
was impossible to hear what was going on, because of the roar of the train.
Besides, Clyde dared not linger outside. It was too risky.
     He tried the handle of the compartment on the right. The door was locked.
But he had better luck on the left. A quick jerk showed him that the
compartment was empty. Its occupant had probably been one of those people who
had passed him on their way to the dining car.
     Clyde locked the door on the inside. He was carrying a portable typewriter
in a traveling case. At least, that's what it looked like. But when Clyde opened
the case, an efficient listening device was disclosed.
     Heavy batteries took up most of the case's interior. There was something
that looked like a physician's stethoscope, except that it had ear-pieces that
clamped over Clyde's head.
     He placed the end of his "stethoscope" against the thin panel of the
adjoining compartment. A rubber suction device held the gadget firmly in place
against the panel. Within the circle of that rubber suction ring was a delicate
microphone. It caught up instantly the sound of voices in Roger Dodd's
compartment.
     Dodd sounded angry.
     "Are you seriously expecting me to believe this wild tale of yours?" he
rasped. "You sound insane! I never expected to meet you. I didn't even know you
had been released from jail."
     "I was told a friend would meet me," Black insisted. "You're the only
friend I've seen on this whole train. You are my friend, I hope?"
     "Of course!" Dodd sounded impatient.
     "Then what is the message? Where am I to go?"
     "To hell, as far as I know," Dodd growled.
     His anger was increasing. To the listening Clyde Burke, it was anger that
sounded forced and phony.
     "Now look here, Martin. I've told you I know nothing about this
hocus-pocus. Frankly, I don't want to be bothered. I've got troubles of my own.
So if you won't talk sense, I'll have to ask you to leave me in peace."
     "Why, damn you, how dare you talk to me like -"
     "I'll talk any way I please! There's a limit to everything, even
friendship. I've tried to help you ever since you were arrested. And what do I
get out of it? Nothing but trouble! I'm sick and tired of you! Now, get out!"
     Marlin Black's voice sounded stunned.
     "So that's the way it is, eh? Well, I can talk, too! To other people
besides you. To -"
     "You try any funny business, and I'll kill you!" Dodd growled.
     There were sounds of a brief scuffle. Clyde stiffened at his listening
post, half expecting to have his ears blasted by a pistol shot. But the
struggle ended almost as soon as it had begun.
     Dodd laughed huskily.
     "Sorry, Martin. I'm nervous. I didn't mean to insult you. Let's forget our
quarrel. I know nothing of any secret message for you. There must be someone
else on the train. Peter Corcoran, perhaps. Or Stuart, your lawyer. But it's
certainly not me!"
     "All right. Let it go at that. But remember this! If I don't find anyone
on this train I know. I'll be back to see you!"


     THE compartment door opened. Martin Black walked quietly away. After a few
moments of cautious waiting, Clyde emerged from his lurking place next door. He
carried his listening device in its typewriter-like case. He congratulated
himself that he had avoided discovery. But his optimism was not justified.
     Dodd's compartment door had opened on a slight crack. Watchful eyes noted
the man who had just emerged from the adjoining compartment. Dodd recognized
Clyde. His breath sucked in faintly, and he closed the door.
     Presently, he reappeared. He made his way through the swaying train.
     Clyde had gone into the Pullman washroom for a quick smoke. His nerves
were at an excited pitch, as a result of what he had just heard. He wanted to
digest the meaning of the strange interview between Black and the bearded Dodd.
     He sat down on a comfortable couch, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. He
didn't notice a hand slide quietly into view between the wall of the washroom
and the curtain that shrouded its doorway.
     Suddenly, the room lapsed into darkness!
     With a startled oath, Clyde sprang to his feet. The next instant, an
unseen figure sprang at him. Something struck Clyde on the head with terrific
force. He was knocked unconscious.
     The assailant tiptoed from his unconscious victim to the closed window of
the washroom. He tried to lift the window. It was stuck too tightly to be
moved. The man cursed softly. He wanted to get that window open and throw
Clyde's limp body out on the tracks.
     The train was thundering along at seventy miles an hour. Even if Clyde
didn't bounce under the wheels and get cut to bloody ribbons, the crash of that
impact to the roadbed at high speed would snap his spine and break every bone in
his body.
     Again, the killer strained at the window.
     But suddenly he straightened, listening. Along the corridor outside he
could hear slow, approaching footsteps. He recognized that shuffling pace. It
was the Pullman porter.
     The man who had struck down Clyde stepped back from the washroom window.
He stood silently alongside the wall at the left side of the thick doorway
curtains. He heard the porter halt outside, a mumble of astonishment on his
lips.
     "Washroom dark, huh? Wonder how come? Doggone light bulb musta burned out!"
     The porter flicked the left half of the curtain aside and entered. While
he was fumbling for the light switch, a noiseless figure vanished through the
far side of the dangling curtain.
     The escaping killer held his breath. His feet made no sound on the thick
corridor rug. Inside the washroom, the porter was still mumbling as he felt for
the switch.
     To the porter's surprise, the washroom lights came on brilliantly.
     The first thing he saw was Clyde's unconscious body. For a moment, the
porter was paralyzed with horror. He thought Clyde was dead. With a strangled
cry, he backed out into the corridor to yell for help.
     He saw a well-dressed, bearded gentleman walking quietly toward him.
     "What's the matter, porter?" Dodd asked softly. "Is anything wrong?"
     His low voice and capable appearance ended the porter's panic. Instead of
shouting an alarm, he whispered to Dodd what he had found. He led the way back
into the curtained washroom.


     ROGER DODD took complete charge. He glanced at the unconscious victim and
said calmly:
     "He's not dead. He's merely stunned. Some one struck him."
     The porter soaked towels in cold water. Dodd used them as compresses at
Clyde's temples. Presently, Clyde revived.
     The blow that had knocked him out had been a hasty one, delivered in
darkness. Clyde's only injury was a cut on his scalp.
     "It must have been some one who saw me show my roll of bills when I paid
the conductor," Clyde said. He glanced at the bearded man. "Aren't you Roger
Dodd, of Western City?"
     Dodd didn't seem bothered.
     "Yes. Dodd is my name. And you're Clyde Burke, the newspaperman from New
York, aren't you?"
     Clyde nodded. He mentioned pointedly that he was investigating the Martin
Black case. But Dodd blandly ignored the hint. He kept quiet about the fact
that he knew Black was on the train.
     The two men separated. Clyde announced that he was going to hunt up the
conductor and report the attack. Actually, he wanted to get rid of Dodd, in
order to send a quick story of the events aboard the train to The Shadow.
     Clyde's method was simple. From a rack, he took a telegraph blank, wrote a
coded message. Around the message he folded a twenty-dollar bill. He weighted
the currency and the message with a piece of soap. Tight rubber bands held the
telegraph blank and the twenty-dollar bill securely to the improvised weight.
     Innocently, Clyde drifted to the enclosed platform space between two of
the Pullmans.
     He opened a side door. Clyde watched grimly, his face buffeted by a gale
of wind. Presently, a station whisked into view. It was a small one, but a
lighted window showed that a telegrapher was busy at his key.
     Clyde's arm swung and hurled the missile. He aimed the throw in advance of
the target. The noise of the speeding train covered the crash of glass, but
Clyde saw the window break. He caught a vanishing glimpse of the telegrapher's
lifting face, as the speed of the train whisked the station backward out of
sight.
     Closing the door, Clyde left the dark platform unobserved.
     Meanwhile, Roger Dodd was being recognized again. A man had bumped into
him in one of the rear cars, with a murmur of astonishment.
     "Hello, Dodd! I didn't know you were aboard."
     "I have some business in St. Louis. And you?"
     The man's face was both puzzled and annoyed.
     "I hardly know why I'm on this train! A friend of mine sent me an urgent
message. Told me to come to see him tonight. Very mysterious, and no
explanation. But I have an important business deal pending with him, and I
didn't dare to ignore the message. Perhaps my friend wants to close the deal."
     "Perhaps," Dodd agreed smoothly, and excused himself.
     The train roared onward. But presently its speed slackened. It came to an
unexpected halt. The conductor and a few trainmen opened doors and dropped to
the roadbed.
     They found that the track ahead was blocked with several small boulders.
The boulders had rolled down from a rain-weakened bluff above the tracks.
     It was a simple job to remove them. While the others were busy, one of the
trainmen climbed the bluff to make sure there were no loose rocks to endanger
following trains. He saw a stone fairly close to the edge of the bank. He bent
over the tall weeds to shove it back.
     A blackjack struck at him and crushed in his skull!


     THE man who had struck that murderous blow was dressed in the uniform of a
trainman. The moment he had killed his victim, he slid down the bank and
rejoined the others. While they were still busy, he crawled under the train to
the other side. A door was open. The fake trainman got aboard unseen.
     So did four other men who had hidden near the track. They were garbed
exactly like the killer.
     There was an express car behind the locomotive and tender. Its side doors
were sealed. The door that connected with the rest of the train was locked.
     Five minutes after the train had started again, following its brief delay,
the express car's rear door burst open. Five men piled into the car. All carried
guns.
     The two guards in the express car were paralyzed by the sudden attack.
They had no time to go for their weapons. One of them tried to temporize.
     "You're wasting your time, boys," he said. "There's nothing valuable here.
Just a few express parcels."
     "Yeah?" The leader of the mobsmen chuckled viciously. "You're a liar!
You've got a shipment of gold for the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. A
million-dollar's worth! We're taking it over. Every damned nickel's worth!"


     CHAPTER VIII

     HONOR AMONG THIEVES

     THE two guards were brave men. They were outnumbered, but the thought of
surrender never occurred to either of them. One of them dived across the car
toward a sawed-off rifle. The other whipped out a pistol from his holster.
     Both men died before they could pull a trigger. The reports of five
bullets made almost a single echo. The guard with the pistol slumped to his
knees and then pitched on his face. He was dead before he hit the floor.
     The other guard, though badly wounded, was still conscious. Flat on the
floor, he tried weakly to lift his rifle. A thug knocked the rifle barrel aside.
     The thug's grin was devilish. He jammed the muzzle of his pistol behind
the man's ear, sent a bullet crashing through his brain.
     "O.K.!" the mobsmen's leader said. "Mike! Joe! You two know what to do
with the engineer and fireman. Climb up forward in a hurry. Louie and Pete will
help you make the kill."
     He kept glancing anxiously at his watch. The holdup was evidently being
carried out on an accurate time basis.
     Four thugs vanished out the express car's front door to where the coal
tender made a formless blot in the darkness of the night. The man with the
watch waited. He expected no trouble from the engineer and fireman. Their dead
bodies would go hurtling into the whizzing darkness before they knew what was
happening.
     But time was vital!
     He began to curse as the minutes ticked by. But suddenly his face lifted
with a wolfish grin. He was listening to the deep-throated whistle of the
locomotive.
     The engineer seemed to be playing with the whistle cord. There were three
long blasts. Then three short ones. Then three more.
     The nine whistle blasts seemed to amuse the leader of the train robbers.
     "Nice!" he muttered.
     Not many of the Pullman passengers in the long train heard or paid any
attention to the whistle. Roger Dodd was one who did. His bearded face twisted
into a taut smile.
     It was Dodd's intention to leave the train. But he had purposely delayed
his departure until after the delay caused by the rocks on the tracks. He
wanted his presence aboard the train to be established after that brief stop to
clear the track!
     Dodd was again talking with the passenger who knew him, the man who had
boarded the train because of a mysterious message from a business associate in
a distant city. Dodd was friendly and talkative. That is, until he heard the
sound of the whistle. Then he yawned, glanced at his watch, and shook hands.
     He murmured something about glancing at a newspaper in the club car before
he turned in to get some sleep. He got rid of his friend with deft ease.
     To Dodd's relief, there was no sign of Martin Black in the club car. Nor
of Clyde Burke.
     Faced with the necessity of keeping an eye on two different suspects,
Clyde had made an error in judgment. He was in a Pullman up front, keeping a
watchful eye on Black.
     In the club car, Roger Dodd watched his chance. When no one was watching,
he slipped out the rear door to the observation platform.
     The locomotive had been hitting a speed of seventy miles an hour. But
following those whistle blasts, the speed of the train gradually slackened. It
was not doing more than forty when Dodd climbed the brass observation railing.
     The track behind the limited should have been empty. But it wasn't! A
gasoline car - the type used by section hands - was chugging along at almost
the same speed as the train. The moment Dodd's figure appeared, the gasoline
car closed up the gap.
     A thug stood crouched on the car, braced to stop the force of Dodd's leap.
     "Ready?" he yelled.
     "O.K.!" Dodd called back.
     Their voices were whipped away by the wind. Dodd jumped. For a moment, the
two clutching men staggered dangerously. But Dodd retained his balance.
     The gasoline car slackened its speed. The limited roared onward into the
night. Presently, the car came to a switch. The thug who had aided Dodd leaped
to the ground.
     He moved the hand switch and the car chugged away on a spur. It had joined
the main line from a similar spur miles backward in the darkness.
     Dodd was no longer on the gasoline car. With leaping haste, he crossed the
main line and vaulted a wire fence. On the other side was a well-paved highway.
It stretched straight and empty along the flat prairie land that paralleled the
tracks.
     There was no traffic in sight, because the road followed the railway and
went through no nearby big towns. Another factor in Dodd's strategy was the
fact that the terminals of this new motor highway were still under
construction. Only the middle section of the highway was open for traffic.
     The smooth concrete was like a billiard table. Roger Dodd raced across it
and dived into a thick growth of bushes.


     MEANWHILE, criminal activity had not been idle aboard the roaring train.
The locomotive had increased its speed. It was now in the hands of two
experienced crooks.
     The real engineer and firemen lay like bloody, sodden bundles in a
drainage ditch many miles back. Highjackers were ready for the climax in the
express car.
     They had forced open the safe where the gold was kept. The gold was in
bullion form, but it was easy enough to handle. Each bar was in an individual
jute sack, tagged and numbered by the government for identification.
     A transfer of gold ingots at a speed of seventy miles an hour seemed
incredible. But that was what the crooks were now ready for.
     One of them opened the express car's side door. The motor highway was
disclosed, like a wide black ribbon in the darkness. It paralleled the track.
     The road was empty.
     But a faint hum from the darkness far behind indicated that something
powerful was on the way. It was the steady hum of a motor. A racing car was
attempting the dangerous feat of overhauling the roaring train.
     Presently, the car became dimly visible. It was painted black. But it was
like no ordinary car ever seen in Western City. It looked like a cross between
a powerful pleasure vehicle and a bus. It was streamlined, except for something
that looked like a machine-gun turret in the low roof of the body.
     To draw swiftly alongside the express car, the automobile must have been
traveling at a clip that was close to two hundred miles an hour! It was
impossible to see who was at the wheel, but the driver handled his amazing
vehicle with superb skill.
     The vehicle's speed slackened. It matched its pace with the open door of
the express car.
     None of the passengers in the Pullmans was aware of what was happening.
Shades had been drawn on the windows. Berths had been made up for the night.
     The holdup was a criminal work of genius!
     It proceeded with smooth efficiency. From the turret in the streamlined
roof of the automobile a hinged lid lifted. It locked into upright position,
and two other hinged parts opened. The result was a three-sided scoop that left
only the front of the turret open.
     The yeggs in the express car aboard the train began picking up the jute
sacks that contained the gold. It wasn't too tough a weight to handle. Each
sack contained only one bar. The tied necks of the sacks afforded a strong grip.
     One by one, the sacks were tossed across ten feet of darkness to the
opened turret of the speeding automobile. Not one missed its target. Each
sacked bar struck the steel scoop, rebounded, and vanished downward into the
turret of the automobile.
     For days, every one of these thugs had practiced with missiles of similar
weight in the privacy of a country barn. They had tossed their trial missiles
into a hopper exactly similar to the one now opposite them - over a measured
distance equivalent to the gap between car and train.
     A burst of harsh laughter from the thugs was the signal that the last gold
bar had been successfully transferred.
     They didn't wait to see what became of the automobile. Their orders were
strict. The side door of the express car slid shut and was fixed with a
counterfeit seal. The crooks moved at once to the rear.
     Their next job was to uncouple the locomotive and express car from the
rest of the train.
     They did it while the train was still racing along at high speed. It
wasn't a simple job, but neither was it an impossible one. Tools had been
brought for the purpose. If the couplings refused to part by mechanical means,
explosives were ready to blow the link to the rest of the train to smithereens.
     One man crouched low and did the work, while two thugs braced his legs and
hips to keep him from plunging to death.
     There was a sudden jerk, a grinding noise - then the coupling parted.
     The locomotive and the express car increased their speed. The rest of the
train receded in the darkness.
     There could be no immediate pursuit of the highjackers by trainmen. Nor
would an alarm be spread, except after long delay. The breaking of the train
had been accomplished in a desolate stretch of prairie land. Houses were
sparse. Telephones were a luxury.


     ALONG the dark highway the speeding automobile kept pace easily with the
uncoupled locomotive and express car. The man at the wheel was the only person
in the automobile.
     He pulled a lever with his left hand and the steel scoops above the open
turret folded together into a single plate. The plate hinged downward and
covered the turret.
     The driver peered briefly toward the railroad tracks. A calm, bearded face
was disclosed. The driver was Roger Dodd! He tooted his horn as a signal that
all was well.
     The automobile had been hitting seventy miles an hour. But the burst of
speed that came from it now made its previous performance seem like nothing.
     In an instant, it had left the express car behind and was abreast of the
panting locomotive. It went faster and faster. Broad rubber tires, fat as the
balloon tires on an airplane's landing gear, gripped the concrete road. The
locomotive seemed to be sliding backward. And still the car drove faster!
     Far ahead, the smooth highway suddenly made a turn to the right. It
crossed the railroad tracks and continued on the other side.
     The driver of the incredibly fast motor car was aware of this. He headed
for the distant crossing with all the power in his machine. His speed rose to
one hundred miles, to one hundred and fifty - to two hundred!
     Then he cut his power. By the time he came to the crossing, he was still
traveling at a fast clip. But not too fast for the turn. He swung his wheel.
     Broad tires helped to ease the whistling strain. So did the heavy weight
of the black car's armored body. Before the onrushing locomotive could reach
the crossing, the car had cleared the tracks and was increasing its speed on
the left side of the right of way.
     Trees and bushes intervened between car and locomotive. The darkness and
the thick shrubbery hid Roger Dodd's further progress. The two thugs who were
piloting the locomotive didn't worry about that. They were still obeying Dodd's
orders.
     There remained only one last act in this perfect snatch of a million
dollars in gold: the escape of the five thugs to the armored automobile and the
division of the loot in a prearranged hiding spot.
     The leader of the thugs was again glancing at his watch. Suddenly, he
climbed to the coal car and fired three shots in the air. The crashing echoes
were heard by the crook at the throttle. He began to slow down the locomotive.
     It came to a grinding stop in the darkness. Just ahead of it loomed a
spidery shape of steel and wood. It was a railroad trestle that spanned a deep
gully. The trestle itself was of timber. The supports were steel. They stood
ten feet deep in a stream that flowed through the bottom of the gully.
     "O.K.!" the thug with the watch yelled to his pal at the throttle. "Take
it halfway across! Be sure that the locomotive and the express car are both on
the trestle before we scram!"
     The thug at the throttle knew his business. Five criminals dropped to the
catwalk in the middle of the trestle.
     That trestle was mined! As soon as the five men ran to safety, trestle and
locomotive and express car would be exploded into a ruin by a giant charge of
dynamite!
     The crook who had timed everything by his watch was the man selected to
set off the charge.
     But his hand never reached the electrical contact. Another hand did that.
The gloved hand of the crafty Roger Dodd!
     There was a terrific blaze of light. It seemed to dissolve locomotive and
express car and trestle into nothingness for an instant. Then came a stunning,
earth-shaking roar.
     Trestle girders gave way. Timbers shot skyward into a plume of greasy
smoke. The locomotive pitched into space, dragging the coal tender and the
express car after it. They hit the stream below with a tremendous splash.
     Roger Dodd watched the tangled ruin from a spot where the automobile
highway was in sight of the trestle gap. There was a greedy smirk on his
bearded face. His hand had set off the premature death blast. He alone would
share the loot!


     DODD watched to make sure that none of his criminal dupes escaped death.
Then, suddenly, the grin wiped from his bearded lips. He saw the figure of a
human being feebly clawing itself from the stream below.
     The figure moved with painful slowness. But the man was alive. He was
dragging himself up the slope of the ravine, to where Roger Dodd waited in his
car.
     It wasn't the car in which the gold had been highjacked. This was no
streamlined, turreted monster capable of two hundred miles an hour on a smooth
highway. It was a sedan of popular make.
     Dodd had made a quick change somewhere along the route he had taken, while
shielded by dense undergrowth and shaggy trees. The loot and the crime vehicle
were safely hidden in an underground garage known only to Roger Dodd.
     Bearded Dodd waited grimly for the arrival of the only surviving thug.
     The thug's face was smeared with blood. He had suffered a bad head injury.
He could barely talk. But there was murderous hate in the eyes that glared at
Roger Dodd.
     "You damned double-crossing rat! You tried to kill us... all of us... so
you could -"
     "Sure," Dodd grinned.
     His gun was level, but he didn't fire it. He watched the agonized efforts
of his dupe to lift a drooping weapon.
     The wounded thug collapsed before he could pull the trigger. Dodd laughed
viciously.
     "You're dying, my friend! Too bad! You made a nice try, but your share of
the gold is zero! You can carry that pleasant thought to hell with you! I'm
going to drive over to Newtown and register at their best hotel, until all this
fuss blows over. Then I'm going to wait for a nice dark night and do some more
fast driving.
     "When I'm through, a million dollars in gold will rest where I intended
all along - right next to a million's worth of bonds stolen from the Prairie
Savings Bank in Western City!"
     "You're not Dodd at all," the fainting thug got out. "You're Martin Black!"
     "Yell it while you're dying," Dodd sneered. "Tell it to the leaves in the
trees. Good-by! Give my regards to your pals, when you meet them in hell."
     He drove swiftly away. But the wounded thug didn't die! Hate kept him
alive. He managed to stagger to his feet. Newtown was a long way off, but he
didn't falter. Foot by foot, he covered the way. A mile passed. Another.
     Emerging from a leafy clearing to another road, he sprawled headlong. But
his collapse was not a real one. The thug was copying the vicious tactics of
his master. He had heard the sound of an approaching car.
     He waited with closed eyes and an arm doubled beneath him. The driver
stopped his car, leaped out and ran to help.
     Then the thug's glaring eyes opened. His hidden hand jerked into view. A
gun made a quick, snarling report in the darkness. The motorist fell to the
pavement, shot through the stomach.
     The thug stole the car. Staggering with weakness, he managed to get behind
the wheel and start the automobile. The killing of an innocent stranger didn't
bother him. All he could think of was the treacherous grin of the bearded Roger
Dodd.
     Newtown was the wounded mobbie's destination.


     CHAPTER IX

     A PERFECT CRIME

     LAMONT CRANSTON was having dinner with Alice Gunther in the privacy of her
apartment.
     Everything had been arranged by one of the best caterers in Western City.
The food was excellent. The wines were well chosen. The meal was served by a
maid provided by the caterer. When she was not serving, the maid remained
discreetly out of sight.
     Dessert had come and gone. Cranston held a match to Alice Gunther's
cigarette. He murmured something that made her flush with pleasure.
     "That's a nice compliment. You're a charming guest, Mr. Cranston."
     "It's easy to be charming to a hostess as beautiful as yourself," he
murmured.
     He was not indulging in flattery. Alice's beauty was breathtaking tonight.
She was wearing an evening gown that only a girl with a superb figure would have
dared. It left her shoulders and arms bare, emphasized the loveliness of her
slim, youthful body.
     She laughed, and toyed with her cigarette.
     Cranston noted that laugh. It was a shade too shrill to be natural. And
she was laughing too often.
     Alice Gunther was under a terrific mental strain. Cranston knew the
reason. Her dinner invitation was a part of a bold plan to make sure that
Lamont Cranston wasted time tonight.
     Cranston had kept the date in spite of his knowledge. He was depending on
Clyde Burke to find out what Martin Black was up to. He knew that Clyde had
followed Black aboard the limited.
     Clyde's message, hurled through the glass window of a telegrapher's office
in a wayside railroad station, had been delivered to Lamont Cranston.
     But the message only added to the mystery.
     Money had been secretly raised to bail out Martin Black. Political
pressure had been brought into play. There was no other explanation for the
quick acceptance of bail and the prompt release of Black. The source of that
bail money was still unknown to Cranston.
     He was unaware of the visit of the fake Shadow to Alice Gunther earlier in
the evening.
     But Clyde's message warned him that something dangerous was under way. The
message had been forwarded from Cranston's hotel to Alice's apartment. He read
it midway through the meal. He explained it was a tiresome business report, a
matter connected with his investments.
     "And now, it's your turn to talk," he told Alice, smilingly. "You said you
had some ideas that might explain the strange bank crime in which your uncle was
involved."
     Alice nodded. But what she said was disappointing. It was merely a rehash
of theories that had appeared in Western City newspapers. Her hesitant speech
confirmed Cranston's suspicion that her promise of new evidence had been bait
to attract him to her dinner table.
     "Do you mind if I turn on the radio?" Cranston said quietly. "Concert
music, played very low, makes a pleasant background. I won't tune it loud
enough to be disturbing."
     She nodded, and he turned on the machine. He had a grim purpose in so
doing, but it did not appear on his face. He returned to his chair. He seemed
to be listening to Alice's soft voice and the softer background of concert
music. Actually, he heard nothing.
     His brain was concentrating on the meaning of the message which Clyde
Burke had hurled from the speeding train.
     There was plenty to think about. Black was on that train. So was Roger
Dodd. Cranston was aware of the strange meeting between Dodd and Black. He knew
of Dodd's angry denial that he had secret instructions for Black. Cranston also
was aware of the attack on Clyde in the washroom of the Pullman.
     To Lamont Cranston, these facts spelled danger. Crime seemed to be in the
making. Clyde's presence on the train might not be enough to hinder criminal
events. Cranston expected something startling to happen.
     That was why he had tuned in the radio.


     PRESENTLY, Cranston realized that the music had abruptly stopped. The
sudden silence drew his attention to the loud-speaker. The silence endured only
a few seconds. Then the voice of an announcer spoke excitedly.
     "Attention, please! We're interrupting our regular program to broadcast an
important news flash!"
     Cranston darted to the radio, turned it up louder. The voice of the
announcer filled the room. His words were sensational.
     There had been a bad train wreck on the main line to St. Louis. A
locomotive and tender had plunged from a dynamited trestle that spanned a
lonely stream. An express car had gone over with the locomotive. But the rest
of the train was safe. Thieves had uncoupled the Pullman a short time before
the disaster had happened.
     "Thieves?" Alice Gunther gasped.
     Cranston said nothing.
     The announcer's report continued. There had been a gigantic robbery. A
million-dollar gold shipment, destined for the Federal Reserve Bank in St.
Louis, had vanished! The seals were still intact on the doors of the wrecked
express car, but the gold was not in the car.
     The express guards had been shot to death before the crash from the
trestle. The thieves had apparently all perished, too. Four bodies, hopelessly
mangled, had been discovered in the wreck.
     "The disaster happened at a point close to the city of Newtown," the
announced concluded. "Passengers from the uncoupled train had been brought
there for questioning. The bandits who robbed the train seemingly are the
victims of -"
     "No passengers hurt?" Alice gasped. "Thank God! My... my uncle is safe!"
     "Your uncle?" Cranston echoed in apparent wonder. "I thought he was still
in the custody of the police. Was he aboard that limited tonight?"
     "Yes. I... I can't explain. He -"
     "Get your hat and wrap," Cranston said curtly. "My car is outside. We've
got to drive quickly to Newtown. Your uncle may have been one of the four
killed."
     It was not a true statement. Cranston knew from the news report that Black
had suffered no injuries. His desire to get to the scene of the crime swiftly
was based entirely on his hope of picking up some clue that might explain the
extraordinary vanishing of a million-dollar gold shipment.
     Alice was too terrified by the news to think clearly. She obeyed
Cranston's order. In a few minutes, both were racing through the darkness in
Cranston's speedy little car.
     While he drove, Cranston forced the girl to divulge everything she knew
concerning her uncle's strange release from jail and his trip on the limited.
There was curt authority in Cranston's questions. Frightened, the girl told all
she knew.
     She told of the visit of "The Shadow" to her apartment soon after the
friendly call of Roger Dodd.
     "The Shadow wanted to save my uncle!" she gasped. "He raised the bail
money. He made the arrangements to free my uncle from jail. I trusted The
Shadow, because I can't believe that he's a criminal."
     "Your intuition is right," Cranston said. "The Shadow is not a criminal.
But you didn't see The Shadow tonight. You were victimized. That black-robed
figure who came through your rear window was an impostor!"
     Alice Gunther began to moan.
     Cranston chose the highway that paralleled the railroad. He wanted to have
a look at the dynamited trestle, and question the rescue posse. But there was
nothing to learn. Cranston's identity as a famous millionaire from New York
brought him respectful attention.
     Facts, however, were impossible to uncover. The four dead thugs were
crushed beyond all recognition. They were so mangled, that even the
establishment of fingerprints was out of the question.
     Cranston rejoined Alice Gunther in the car and continued to Newtown.


     THEY found a scene of confusion at Newtown police headquarters. That was
where the passengers from the uncoupled limited had been taken. They crowded
anterooms and foyers. Their voices were excited. Cranston located Clyde Burke.
He used Clyde to get him into an inner room where a half dozen passengers were
being questioned.
     One of them was Martin Black. Another was a Western City business man whom
Cranston had met casually during his stay in town. Black was bearing the brunt
of the chief of police's examination.
     "You've got a lot to explain, Black! How did you get out of jail tonight?
What were you doing on that train? Is this another of your stunts like the bank
robbery in Western City?"
     Black protested his innocence. He pointed out that he could have had
nothing to do with the thugs who had perished, he had been in the Pullman end
of the train the whole time. He was still there after the locomotive and the
express car had been uncoupled.
     "Somebody got that gold! Where is it?" the police chief snarled.
     "I don't know. The train stopped for five minutes because of some small
boulders on the track. Maybe it was done then."
     "Impossible!" a conductor said. "There wasn't time enough."
     Martin Black shuddered. All he could do was to repeat his wild tale about
how "The Shadow" had arranged bail for his release. He told of searching for a
friend, who was to give him further instructions. He mentioned his interview
with Roger Dodd.
     "Get Dodd," the police chief rasped to a cop. "Bring him in here."
     But there wasn't any Dodd among the excited passengers at police
headquarters.
     "That settles it! Dodd was the leader of that mob. He got the gold
somehow, then double-crossed his pals!"
     But the accusation didn't make sense. The business man who Cranston had
noticed earlier was protesting.
     "Dodd couldn't have done it. I talked to him in the club car. He was there
the whole time."
     "He left that train during the five minutes it halted for the removal of
stones from the track."
     "He didn't!" the business man said stubbornly. "I spoke to Mr. Dodd
shortly after the train got under way again. He was still aboard. And the train
was making seventy miles an hour!"
     "Then where in the devil did he vanish?"
     "I don't know."
     The reply made the police chief furious with rage. He faced a blank wall
of mystery.
     He tried to pierce that wall by questioning a subordinate who had just
returned from the dynamited railroad trestle. The report he received didn't
help a bit.
     The limited had halted only once. That halt had been not more than five
minutes. Trainmen had been out on the track. None had seen any thugs. But the
chief of police knew that thugs had boarded the train at this point.
     One of the train crew had been reported missing by the conductor. A
carload of detectives had raced back to the place where the boulders had halted
the train. On the top of a muddy cliff, they found the body of the missing
trainman, his skull smashed in.
     It was proof of how the highjackers had boarded the limited.
     But what had become of the gold? It hadn't been strewn along the right of
way. Detectives would have found traces of it. In the darkness, not all of
those gold bars could have been picked up by other crooks, hurriedly searching
for them.
     Moreover, the seals on the side doors of the express car were still intact
when the searching party reached the scene of the wreck. Where was the gold?
     It made the police chief's head hurt.
     His mind returned to the problem of the missing Roger Dodd. Dodd had not
left the train when the highjackers had boarded it. He had vanished later. The
testimony of a reputable witness proved that.
     But how in the name of heaven could a man leave a limited that was roaring
along steel rails at the speed of seventy miles an hour?


     THE ring of a telephone cut through the profane worry of Newtown's chief
of police. He grabbed the instrument. Then he stiffened. He waved a hand to
halt all talk in the room.
     The man on the wire was the clerk at Newtown's best hotel, the Hotel
Grand. He sounded hoarse with terror.
     "Help! Police! Get over here quick!"
     "What's the matter?"
     "Murder! A thug with a gun just forced his way into the hotel. He's
wounded! His face is covered with blood! The hotel dick tried to stop him and
he shot the dick down without mercy! He killed the elevator operator, too!"
     "Where is he? Did he get away?"
     "He's upstairs in the hotel. He demanded the room number of one of my
guests here. I... I had to hand him my master key. He went up in the elevator,
after he killed the operator."
     "Who's the guest this thug is after?"
     "He registered a little while ago. He went straight to his room. A tall
man with a bearded face. His name is Roger Dodd."
     "What?"
     The police chief slammed down the receiver and raced for his car. Cops
leaped into the car with him.
     Lamont Cranston motioned to Clyde Burke. The Daily Classic reporter flung
himself into Cranston's car. Cranston had moved close to the telephone the
moment the chief of police had picked it up. The shrill terror in the clerk's
voice at the Hotel Grand had permitted Cranston to hear every word uttered on
the wire.
     He sent his automobile hurtling after the police car.
     In the lobby of the Hotel Grand, the night clerk was still crouched in
terror behind his desk. In the lobby lay the body of the slain house dick. A
trail of blood led across the floor to where the dead elevator operator's body
had fallen.
     The elevator had stopped at the fourth floor.
     Police raced up the stairs, with Lamont Cranston and Clyde Burke at their
heels. Roger Dodd's room was locked. From behind the panel came a snarling
shriek.
     "You dirty, double-crossing -"
     Pistol shots cut into that muffled shriek. They sounded like the swift
rat-tat of a machine gun.
     Police flung themselves at the door. It burst inward. Bluecoats surged
over the sill.
     Roger Dodd lay dead on the floor, his body pierced with lead. The thug who
had killed him was still savagely pulling the trigger on a gun that was now
empty.
     The bloodstained killer laughed feebly as police grabbed him.


     CHAPTER X

     ENTER MR. CORCORAN

     THE police chief dropped to his knees beside the victim on the hotel-room
floor. One glance, and he knew that Roger Dodd was beyond all human aid.
     Six bullets had ripped into the body of the bearded contractor from
Western City. The power of that fusillade of lead had blasted him into a
huddled heap. One of the bullets had torn through his cheek and ripped out the
back of his skull. The other five slugs had pierced vital organs.
     Growling an impotent oath, the police chief sprang to his feet and darted
toward the wounded killer. A cop was on either side of the disarmed thug. The
chief spat an order. The cop on the left moved aside. The chief grabbed the
killer's left arm.
     The arm hung limply. It was broken. At the chief's clutch, the killer
squealed with agony. But this was no time to be gentle. The voice of the police
chief was like a steel file.
     "Talk, or I'll tear this arm off you!"
     The crook's blood-smeared face turned a ghastly gray. Sweat dripped into
his staring eyes.
     "Don't hurt me!" he gasped. "I'll talk!"
     "Why did you trail Dodd here and shoot him to death?"
     "Because he was a double-crossing louse! He wanted all the swag for
himself! He waited until five of us - five damn fools who trusted him - were in
the middle of the railroad trestle. Then he blew it up!"
     "Wasn't Dodd with you when the trestle blew up?"
     "No. He left the train after we got aboard, before we uncoupled the
locomotive and the express car. The guy who took the engineer's place at the
throttle gave Dodd a whistle signal. Then Dodd jumped off the train."
     The police chief gasped.
     "You mean that Dodd jumped off the limited while it was traveling at
seventy miles an hour?"
     "It wasn't going no seventy. We slowed down to around forty for a few
minutes. None of the passengers noticed. We had a gasoline car trailing the
limited. It switched onto the main line from a spur a few miles back. Dodd made
his jump to the gas car from the train's observation platform. He had everything
figured out. He was smart, blast him!"
     Lamont Cranston listened, with blazing eyes. His mouth opened for a
question, but he closed his lips without uttering a word. He didn't want to
draw police attention to himself, he had entered the hotel room in his harmless
role of a New York millionaire friend of Clyde Burke, the newspaper reporter. It
was better strategy at this point to listen, and say nothing.
     "What about the gold?" the police chief cried.
     "Dodd hid it somewhere. I don't know where it is. After we dynamited the
trestle, we were supposed to meet Dodd and divvy up the loot. But he blew us
all up before we could get off the mined trestle. I was the only one to get
away."
     The thug shuddered.
     "The trestle explosion blew me into the water close to the shore. I got
ashore and dragged myself to where Dodd was waiting. He jeered at me. He
thought I was dying. Then he drove away to the hotel here in Newtown. But I
followed the skunk! He'll be damned clever now if he gets his dead fingers on a
dime of that missing gold!"
     Ghastly laughter filled the room with ugly echoes. The police chief cut
into the thug's mirth with a sharp question.
     "How did you highjack the gold? We found seals on the express-car doors."
     "Phony," the thug grinned. "The gold was gone before we reached the
trestle. We got rid of it while the train was tearing along at full speed.
Roger Dodd had this whole job figured out a long time in advance. We rehearsed
every detail. It would have been impossible, except for Dodd's part of the
stunt."
     "Dodd's part?"
     "Yeah. He had a -"
     The thug stopped talking suddenly. He had been standing with his face
turned toward the window, with a cop on one side and the chief of police on the
other. The thug's body suddenly crumpled.
     As he fell, the cops saw that the whole front of his face had been caved
in by a large-caliber bullet. There was an ugly hole in the pane of the window
which the thug had been facing.
     The crash of a rifle explosion echoed outside the hotel, as the thug
pitched to the floor in a dead huddle. The bullet had come from across the dark
street!


     QUICKLY, the police chief raced to the smashed pane, flung up the window.
The building opposite was a four-story brick structure. All its floors were
dark. So was the parapet of the roof.
     The roof was on a direct line with the hotel room in which the thug was
being questioned. Someone with a keen eye and a murderously accurate weapon had
not wanted the thug to explain how Dodd had looted the train and gotten away
with the gold shipment.
     That someone was now dimly visible on the roof across the street!
     The parapet at the front of the roof was about five feet high. It shielded
the assassin's body from view. But for an instant, a pale face peered to observe
the result of the rifle shot.
     In the darkness, the face was a formless blur. It was impossible to
identify it. But the hat which the unknown assassin was wearing brought yells
of astonishment and rage from the police chief and the cops who crowded close
to his shoulder at the open hotel window. It was a black slouch hat, with the
brim tilted low over piercing eyes.
     "The Shadow!"
     Voices yelled that accusing cry. Bullets ripped across the darkness of the
street toward the peering face. But there was no longer a target for police
lead. The face had dropped quickly behind the shield of the stone parapet. The
killer was fleeing.
     Lamont Cranston was not one of those who cried: "The Shadow!" He alone
knew that The Shadow had not committed the crime. The same disguised
supercriminal who had paid a sly visit to the deluded Alice Gunther in the fake
role of The Shadow was now protecting himself. He had ended the last chance of
the police to find out what had become of the gold shipment!
     Cranston and Clyde Burke raced down to the hotel lobby on the heels of the
pursuing police. They crossed the street to the dark brick building. There was
no sign of life inside. The front door was locked.
     Police gunfire took care of the flimsy lock. The door was smashed open.
Cops raced upstairs. Other cops darted through the ground-floor hallway and out
to the rear.
     Cranston stayed with the group that raced upstairs. They saw nothing on
the way up but dark hallways and locked business quarters. Either the killer
with the rifle had escaped by the rear - or he was still on the roof!
     It took only an instant for police to pry open the roof scuttle. They
spilled out into the chilly darkness.
     The roof was empty.
     There wasn't a place for a fugitive to hide. Except for the squat shape a
chimney, the roof was bare and flat.
     But the top rungs of a fire-escape ladder at the rear showed where the
fugitive had probably fled.
     A shout from down below confirmed this guess. A cop with a flashlight was
gesturing fiercely for his comrades on the roof to descend. The beam of his
torch explained his excitement.
     In the muddy earth at the rear of the brick building the print of feet
were clearly visible. The toes were more deeply indented than the heels. They
were the prints of a running man.
     The assassin had fled by way of the rear yard, carrying his rifle with him.
     That was what the police thought. But it was not the belief of Lamont
Cranston. The killer had reached this roof in some other way, Cranston divined.
Nor had he fled down those rear ladders. Footprints had been deliberately left
in that soft earth below as a means to mislead pursuing cops.
     The Shadow was certain of his shrewd deduction when he saw that there were
two sets of prints in the glare of the police torch below. One line of prints
led to the foot of the fire-escape ladder. They were alongside those hasty
toe-marks that indicated later flight.
     But there were no mud marks on any of the rungs of the ladders. The
evidence was a fake. The killer had neither gone up nor gone down those steel
ladders!
     In the next moment, The Shadow was aware of what the killer had done. He
noted that the building next door was not joined to the one on whose roof he
now stood. A narrow alley separated the two structures. How could a murderer
bridge that open gap?
     The answer lay in the form of a heavily insulated cable that carried
electric power from the rear of one building to the other. The cable sagged far
more than it should have. The metal support that braced its far end was bent out
of normal line. An unusual weight must have done that.
     A killer had gone hand over hand along that heavy cable!


     LAMONT CRANSTON raced down to the street, after motioning Clyde Burke to
remain with the police. The cops were all out in the back, now. They were
hunting, in vain, for some additional clue at the end of those faked
footprints. Cranston had the street to himself.
     He walked quietly toward the building across the other side of the alley.
He noted it was a wholesale wine establishment. It was still open for business,
although there was no sign of a clerk behind the counter in its dimly lighted
interior.
     Cranston didn't enter the wine shop. He stood out on the dark sidewalk,
his eyes staring shrewdly toward its cellar entrance. It was the sort of cellar
entrance with divided doors, that lie flat against the sidewalk when they are
closed. But the doors were now open.
     From the cellar below came the shuffle of feet. A man was climbing up to
the street. He moved loudly and carelessly.
     Cranston matched that with some carelessness of his own. Advancing
quickly, he turned as if he were about to enter the wine shop. He managed to
bump headlong into the man who suddenly appeared from the top of the cellar
steps. Cranston almost knocked two cobwebbed wine bottles out of the man's grip.
     The stranger muttered an impatient oath at Cranston's blundering
awkwardness. Then his face suddenly lighted up in a broad smile of recognition.
     "Why, Mr. Cranston! How do you do? This is a delightful surprise! What
brings you to Newtown?"
     He was a tall man, heavily built. Physically, he was about the same size
as the dead Roger Dodd. His face, however, resembled Martin Black more than it
did the bearded contractor. Like Black, this man had a clipped gray mustache
over a firm, resolute mouth.
     It was Peter Corcoran, political boss of Western City, and a power behind
the scenes through the whole state.
     Cranston had met Corcoran once or twice. But Corcoran was not a
particularly sociable man. He had talked with Cranston briefly about Black's
unhappy predicament, during the two meetings arranged by Henry Stuart, who was
Black's lawyer.
     Corcoran had made no comment about Black's guilt or innocence. He had
merely murmured something about help for a friend in trouble. He had promised
to turn political wheels in order to assure Black's release on bail.
     On Cranston's mental list of suspects, the name of Peter Corcoran was by
no means the least. He smiled at the politician's cool query about Cranston's
own presence in Newton.
     "I came for the same reason that apparently drew you here, Mr. Corcoran.
It was told in confidence that this little wine establishment is a remarkable
place to buy rare old vintages. Am I right?"
     Corcoran laughed. It was slow, pleasant mirth from a man who apparently
enjoyed the good things of life.
     "You certainly came to the proper place for wine. Look at these two
beauties!" He held up his cobwebbed bottles. "I had to poke around in that
dusty old cellar quite a while, before I located them."
     His calm voice suddenly changed to a more excited pitch. Cranston thought
the man's excitement was a bit overdone.
     "What in the world is the matter here tonight? Is anything wrong? What are
those police chasing around for?"
     Cranston told him. Corcoran uttered a cry of dismay when he learned of
Dodd's murder in the hotel. He said nothing about the thug who had been killed.
Nor did he seem interested in the identity of the man who had fired a rifle shot
from the parapet of the roof next door to the wine shop.
     "This is terrible! What does it mean? There must be a curse on the
prominent citizens of Western City! Excuse me. I've got to find out what
happened to poor Roger Dodd."
     He trotted across the street, the dusty wine bottles still under his arms.
Cranston was puzzled at this abrupt retreat. He had expected Peter Corcoran to
use some stratagem to remove Cranston himself from the vicinity of the wine
cellar.
     But nothing of the sort had happened. Corcoran didn't even glance back as
he hurried into the hotel.


     CRANSTON'S face wore a queer frown, as he descended quickly into the
cellar of the wine shop. He had hoped to find a hidden rifle there. Now he
began to wonder if this sleek Peter Corcoran wanted him to find the rifle!
     It took a patient search. But Cranston was stubbornly sure of his ground.
The first thing he found was a black slouch hat hidden behind a tier of empty
wine casks.
     It was an exact duplicate of the hat always worn by The Shadow when he
donned his black robes. It was the hat the police had seen above the parapet of
the roof next door!
     Cranston folded up this grim clue to his own murder guilt. He stowed it
away on his person. He had no intention of allowing this planted evidence to
fall into the hands of the police. They had been misled plenty already by a
wily supercriminal.
     The rifle was not easily located in the dimly-lit cellar. But presently
Cranston found it. It had been hidden at the bottom of the dusty dumb-waiter
shaft used to lift heavy consignments of liquor and wine to the shop above. The
finding of the rifle again suggested a deliberate plant on the part of a cunning
murderer.
     There were many better spots where it could have been hidden. The rifle,
as well as the slouch hat, was meant to be unearthed by the police.
     Lamont Cranston took no chances. When he finally tucked the rifle away, it
was in a place that even the murderer himself would have a difficult time
locating. It lay flat under a flagstone covered with debris at the rear of the
cellar.
     The rifle pointed definitely to the guilt of a man who was now dead. Roger
Dodd!
     Initials, "R. D.," had been engraved in the stock. An attempt had
apparently been made to burn away the initials with acid. But it had been a
blundering job. Enough of the bottom of each initial remained to make their
identification easy. The police were meant to link a dead Roger Dodd with The
Shadow!
     The Shadow suspected an amazing impersonation plot.
     Martin Black's crazy bank alibi began to appear in a new light. Perhaps
Black had told the truth about his appointment to meet someone at a nonexistent
farmhouse the night the bank had been robbed.
     A criminal skilled in disguise might have posed as Martin Black! Perhaps
that was why he was so eager to have himself identified as Black both before
and after he had entered the private office of the bank president.
     Roger Dodd, too, was innocent, according to this theory. A fake Roger Dodd
had engineered the amazing gold robbery from the speeding limited. But the Dodd
who had been shot to death in the hotel at Newton was the real Dodd. He had
been deliberately lured to a spot where a double-crossed thug would kill him.
     Was the real criminal Peter Corcoran?
     Cranston said nothing when he rejoined the police. He was very friendly
with Corcoran. He remained close to his side and listened to everything the
politician said. It was Corcoran who suggested that the police ought to search
Dodd's home in Western City.


     WHEN they reached Western City, Lamont Cranston managed to be present at
that search.
     Police axes broke down the wall of a concealed room. It looked like a
private office that had been turned into a theatrical dressing room.
     There was a mirror and a make-up table. There was a cupboard filled with
materials for clever disguise. In a wardrobe were suits of clothing that made
the police gasp. Each suit was an exact duplicate of the clothing worn by some
of Western City's most prominent citizens.
     Martin Black was one of these men. Another was Peter Corcoran. He cried
out in shrill wonder when he saw a tailored copy of one of his own suits. A
third potential victim was Henry Stuart, the lawyer who had undertaken the
legal defense of Black.
     The police accepted Dodd's guilt. They concluded that he had been killed
before he could involve either Stuart or Corcoran in further crime. Also, they
decided they had been mistaken about The Shadow being on the roof opposite the
hotel. They figured the man with the rifle must have been one of Dodd's
disappointed mobsmen.
     But there was a bad flaw in this solution. Neither the bonds from the
savings bank nor the gold stolen from the limited were located in Roger Dodd's
home.
     Corcoran smoothly suggested a search of Dodd's other real-estate property
in various parts of the town.
     Lamont Cranston said nothing.


     CHAPTER XI

     TRICKY WORK

     LAMONT CRANSTON was in his hotel room at Western City.
     A whole day had passed since his return with the police from Newtown. It
was a day that had seemingly marked the end of an amazingly clever criminal.
     Search of Roger Dodd's home had branded him with guilt. The finding of the
disguises which had enabled Dodd to appear at various times in the roles of
Martin Black, of Peter Corcoran, and the lawyer Henry Stuart as well, had
satisfied the chief of police that Dodd had come to a well-merited end at the
hands of a thug he had tried to double-cross.
     The newspapers accepted the police view. They were filled with scareheads
announcing the solution of the mystery.
     There was only one fly in the ointment. Nobody yet knew how the stolen
gold had been taken successfully from a train speeding at seventy miles an
hour. No one had discovered where the loot was now hidden. The same mystery
shrouded the whereabouts of the bonds that had been stolen from the savings
bank.
     Martin Black continued to refuse to talk. He claimed he knew nothing
concerning Roger Dodd's villainy. He was questioned at police headquarters, and
released on a continuation of his bail.
     No attempt to leave the jurisdiction of the State could be proved against
Black. Newtown was within the State limits, and it was for Newtown that Black
had bought a ticket.
     He had a complete alibi to prove his innocence of the train holdup. He had
remained aboard the Pullman during the highjack. He had still been aboard the
uncoupled end of the train when he and the rest of the passengers were brought
to Newtown by hired buses.
     Martin Black was enjoying a return to public favor.
     But The Shadow was not enjoying this new, and even more tangled, state of
affairs. In his darkened hotel room that night, he realized a grim truth. He
had been on the defensive ever since his arrival in Western City. He had
learned many things, but the dark core of the mystery was still unknown.
     He sat thinking - and waiting! He understood now the psychology of the
master criminal who was opposing him. That criminal specialized in direct
attack.
     Before this case was finished, The Shadow would again undoubtedly be
placed on the defensive. That was why Lamont Cranston waited patiently in his
darkened hotel room.
     He was not surprised when the telephone bell rang suddenly. He answered it
with a single noncommittal word.
     "Yes?"
     "Clyde Burke talking. Reporting to The Shadow."
     The Shadow knew instantly that the man on the wire was not Clyde Burke.
     No agent of The Shadow ever reported to him in person. Contacts were made
through Burbank. Crooks had not yet learned this vital piece of information.
     Cranston deliberately uttered a sibilant laugh.
     "Present your message," he intoned.
     The telephone caller hesitated. He said he had information that he didn't
want to divulge over the wire. Could he come to Cranston's room for a private
conference? Cranston agreed.
     Shortly after he had hung up the instrument on this crooked caller, The
Shadow was in touch with Burbank. He ordered Burbank to contact Clyde.
Presently, Burbank reported back. Clyde was not at his hotel. He had left
earlier.
     The Shadow realized the truth. The real Clyde Burke was undoubtedly on his
way to Cranston's room. The Daily Classic reporter had probably been fooled by a
fake message sent to him in the name of Cranston. A plot was under way. Not
against Clyde, but against The Shadow!


     THE SHADOW left his room, but not by the doorway. His door remained closed
and locked. He wanted to see what might develop from a more accessible spot in
the corridor outside his room.
     Presently, the real Clyde Burke stepped out of the elevator and hurried to
Cranston's door. He rapped sharply. Nothing happened.
     Clyde was about to turn away in complete mystification, when there was a
rush of feet. Two thugs appeared from a dark staircase. They attacked Clyde.
     Had The Shadow been in his room, he undoubtedly would have heard the
struggle. Crooks intended him to hear. But he didn't move from the closer spot
where he had secreted himself.
     He noticed that no attempt was made to kill Clyde, or to injure him
seriously. Clyde was knocked out with a gun butt almost at the beginning of the
struggle. The rest of the noise was made by the kidnapers.
     They vanished down the stairwell with their unconscious victim. Cranston
waited, then followed, as he knew the crooks were expecting him to do. He was
rushing headlong into a trap baited by the captive figure of Clyde Burke. But
The Shadow was entering that trap with wide-open eyes!
     Cranston's car was parked outside the shadowy rear of the hotel. He saw
Clyde tossed into a nearby machine by the two kidnapers. When the car raced
away, Cranston followed in his own car.
     The chase led to the north end of town, then out into the suburbs. The
crooks drove their car straight toward a large and expensive estate, that The
Shadow had little difficulty in recognizing in the darkness.
     It was the home of Western City's slickest politician: Peter Corcoran!
     A tree-bordered drive led through the grounds toward the mansion. The
kidnap car raced up the drive and vanished among the trees. But Cranston's car
didn't follow. He continued past the gateway of the estate. He parked, and left
his car.
     Robed in black, seemingly part of the night itself, The Shadow entered the
grounds on foot. Almost instantly, he was attacked by two thugs. Knives struck
from the gloom beneath a huge oak that bordered the drive.
     But The Shadow had seen the glint of naked steel. Twin guns leaped from
concealment. He fired without hesitation. Not only his own life, but the life
of the kidnapped Clyde, depended on The Shadow's aim.
     He swerved backward as a sharp blade stabbed fiercely toward his throat.
Had The Shadow been a shade less nimble in his movements, his throat would have
been ripped wide open. He would have fallen to the dark earth with blood
spouting from a severed jugular vein. But his backward swerve and the quick
upthrust of his shoulder saved him.
     The knife sliced across The Shadow's lifted shoulder. Its point ripped
through the black cloak. The Shadow ducked like a prize fighter rolling away
from a punch. His sudden recoil dropped him to one knee.
     However, the killer thought that The Shadow was hurt. He leaned eagerly to
finish a swift murder. It brought his bent leg within reach of The Shadow's
outstretched hand.
     A heave sent the killer plunging sideways to the ground. The Shadow
whirled to confront the other thug.
     There was no longer any second thug. The fellow had fled. The sound of his
retreating feet could be heard dimly, as he raced up the dark winding drive that
led through the trees toward the mansion of Peter Corcoran.
     That queer flight of an unwounded thug had a sinister significance to The
Shadow. Was his quick disappearance part of some new attack?
     The Shadow had scant time to wonder. The thug whom he had sent sprawling
to the ground had rolled to his knees with the swiftness of a cat. The knife
was still gripped in the fellow's hand. But he had reversed his position. The
blade lay with its pointed end flat against the thug's wrist. The flat handle
was cupped by bunched fingers.
     His hand swung to throw the knife.
     There was no choice for The Shadow. He fired. His bullet made a crashing
roar under the dark sweep of the thickly planted trees. The slug struck the
killer squarely in the chest. The knife was leaving his hand when the shock of
the bullet flung him backward. The weapon's point turned in midair and whizzed
at The Shadow.
     But its murderous accuracy had been deflected. The knife flew at an upward
slant. It pierced The Shadow's hat and carried it ten feet backward. But The
Shadow arose, unhurt.
     He darted toward the fallen thug and bent over him. A single glance showed
him that the man was dying. Eagerness to make sure of The Shadow's death had
sealed the thug's doom.
     When he had risen to his toes to give added power to the knife throw, he
had lifted a vital spot of his body in line with The Shadow's bullet. The
Shadow had meant to wound the man, and hold him for questioning later.
     The thug had practically committed suicide!
     The Shadow recovered his lost hat. He drew the brim low over the piercing
gleam of his eyes. He began to run cautiously up the drive toward the mansion
of Peter Corcoran.


     THERE was no sign of the second thug who had fled. The front of the
mansion was dark. No sound within the house was audible. Evidently, the two
shots which The Shadow had fired near the entrance of the grounds had been
unheard by Corcoran. Or if they had, they had been mistaken for the backfire of
a car speeding along the highway.
     The Shadow rounded the mansion before he could see the light on the ground
floor. The light came from an unshaded window near the rear. Moving silently,
The Shadow approached the window. He peered in, taking care to reveal only a
scant portion of his face at the corner of the lighted pane.
     The first man he saw was Peter Corcoran. Corcoran was seated at a table
talking to a man who The Shadow instantly recognized. It was Henry Stuart, the
lawyer who had undertaken the legal defense of Martin Black after the bank
robbery.
     Stuart had evidently come to the home of the politician for a conference,
for the two men were deep in serious talk. But their positions at the table
were peculiar. Corcoran had taken a chair at a considerable distance from
Stuart. The Shadow wondered why he didn't sit closer to his guest.
     Suddenly, there was a cry from Stuart. He had glanced up. But he couldn't
see The Shadow. He was facing the other way. Stuart's rigid gaze was turned
toward the window on the opposite side of the study.
     The face of the vanished thug was outlined against the pane. The thug had
a gun. It was aimed straight at the cowering figure of Corcoran's guest.
     Stuart screamed, and flung himself backward as the thug fired. The crash
of the windowpane under the impact of a bullet came simultaneously with the
fall of Stuart's overturned chair. The gunman's hasty bullet missed.
     The lawyer rose groggily to his knees and tried to crawl behind the
protection of a padded armchair. He was a perfect target for the thug. Corcoran
seemed too dazed and terror-stricken to interfere. He sat like a frozen image.
     The speed of The Shadow's defense was all that saved Stuart's life. Before
the thug's second bullet could plow into the body of the terrified lawyer, the
roar of The Shadow's gun spoke on the side of justice.
     He fired across the room at the face that peered behind the window
opposite. A second splintery hole marred the pane. The hands of the killer
clawed suddenly at his throat. His face slipped out of sight below the level of
vision.
     Corcoran seemed suddenly to recover from his daze. With a bound, he was
across the study and fumbling in a drawer of a cabinet in a far corner.
     "The Shadow!" he shouted.
     He whipped out the weapon and fired at the face of the black-cloaked
crime-fighter who stood boldly outlined. The shot was too hastily fired. It
missed. The next moment there was no target for Corcoran's gun. The Shadow had
vanished into the darkness of the grounds.
     Peter Corcoran rushed to the window and peered out. He could see nothing.
Behind him he heard the moans of the terrified Stuart. Corcoran abandoned any
further effort to wing the vanished Shadow. He raced to the aid of his fallen
friend.
     "Are you hurt?"
     Stuart shook his head. He rose shakily to his feet.
     "There were two of them," he whispered from chalky lips. "A gunman and -
The Shadow!"
     "They must have been in partnership," Corcoran cried harshly.
     "How can that be? The Shadow killed the gunman."
     "He didn't mean to. Both fired at you at almost the same moment. The
Shadow's bullet went clear across the room and killed his own henchman. Wait!
Let's see what happened to the fellow."
     Corcoran raced to the bullet-marked pane and lifted the window. There was
a sigh in his voice when he drew in his head.
     "Too bad. He's dead! The Shadow killed his own accomplice. I think we
ought to call the police and get them on his trail as soon as possible."
     Stuart was staring at Corcoran, with a queer light in his eyes.
     "Let the police wait a moment. What in Heaven's name do you think is back
of this attack on me?"
     "The attack was directed against both of us," Corcoran rejoined.
     He began to talk in a low, soothing voice to the frightened Stuart.


     MEANWHILE, The Shadow had left the leafy darkness of the grounds that
surrounded the mansion. But he was not in the distant road that led back toward
Western City. The Shadow had changed his tactics from defense to offense.
     He was at this very instant in the basement of Peter Corcoran's mansion!
     The peril to Clyde Burke was the reason for this quick maneuver. Clyde, a
kidnapped prisoner, had been taken through the grounds. There was no sign of
him outside, or of the two thugs who had kidnapped him from Cranston's hotel in
Western City. Therefore, Clyde must be bidden somewhere within Corcoran's
mansion.
     Four thugs had taken part in tonight's murderous exploit; of that, The
Shadow was positive. The two gunmen with whom he had successfully exchanged
bullets were not the two who had seized Clyde and raced away in a car with him.
     An unlatched basement window answered the riddle of Clyde's quick
disappearance. Footprints outside showed that two men had come and gone. The
Shadow squirmed noiselessly into the basement.
     It was spotlessly clean. A closed door at one end gave access to a game
room. The other end contained an oil burner and various gadgets for controlling
heat and moisture and temperature. The only other door in sight seemed to lead
to what looked like a storage bin.
     Opening the door softly, The Shadow saw drums of fuel oil piled along the
wall. But the metal drums didn't interest him.
     On the floor was the unconscious body of Clyde Burke!
     The Shadow didn't hesitate. He lifted Clyde in his arms and carried him
into the game room. He laid his unconscious agent flat on his back on a
billiard table. Then he glanced swiftly around.
     Two things attracted his gaze immediately. He saw a small alarm clock on a
shelf. He also noticed a fuse box on the wall of the game room.
     He used both.
     A piece of insulated wire from a dangling droplight made a quick
connection between the alarm key in the back of the clock and one of the light
fuses. The Shadow was careful to loosen the fuse so that it would turn easily
on its screw threads. He was also careful to set the clock's alarm so that it
would ring fairly soon.
     The Shadow knew that when the alarm rang, the turning key would wind up
the wire and unscrew the tightly-wrapped fuse from its connection in the wall
panel. Darkness would descend on one side of the mansion, including the study
of Peter Corcoran.
     Five minutes later, the immaculately dressed figure of Lamont Cranston
rang the front doorbell of the mansion. Corcoran himself answered the bell. He
was amazed when he recognized his caller. He inquired in a puzzled tone what
the New York millionaire was doing at his house at so late an hour.
     Cranston matched Corcoran's astonishment. He had received a telephone
message, he said, that Corcoran wanted to see him. Corcoran became frightened.
He led the way into his study and explained what had happened there.
     Stuart, too, had the jitters.
     "Maybe Mr. Cranston is also marked for death," Stuart said, as he pointed
to the bullet holes in the study window.
     After Cranston had listened, he peered out the window at the thug whose
body had been drilled by a bullet from The Shadow. He suggested the police. He
didn't argue with Stuart's theory, that The Shadow and the dead thug had been
working together. Seemingly, he accepted the idea that the thug's death had
been an unlucky accident from the gun of a criminal Shadow.
     Corcoran started toward the telephone. But before he could lift the
receiver, the room was plunged into sudden darkness!


     THERE was a moment of confusion. Then Corcoran struck a match. He lit a
candle on a side table and restored some measure of light to the room. His
voice remained calm.
     "A fuse must have burned out. It's in the basement game room. Come on!"
     They went downstairs behind the beam of an electric torch in Corcoran's
hand. But it was impossible to get into the game room. The door was locked. The
keys were on a hook inside. The damaged fuse, too, was in the game room.
     Cranston was watching Corcoran's face. The man looked absolutely petrified
with amazement. Obviously, he hadn't expected to find the game room locked.
     Stuart spoke thickly.
     "Do you think that a... a killer might be in there?"
     "Nonsense!" Corcoran snapped. "Give me some help. We'll break down the
door."
     Stuart tried to assist, but he wasn't of much assistance. In the end it
was Cranston's stalwart shoulder that enabled Corcoran to burst the door from
its fastenings.
     When they entered, Cranston added his voice to the shrill yells that were
uttered by his two companions. The sight of the unconscious Clyde Burke, lying
flat on his back on a billiard table, seemed to unnerve both the politician and
the lawyer.
     Cranston watched them both. He was trying to detect a guilty glance toward
the supply closet where Clyde Burke had been actually imprisoned. But neither
Corcoran nor Stuart gave any indication that they were aware of the truth.
     "The whole thing is a vicious conspiracy," Corcoran snapped. "Kidnapers
meant the police to find this reporter's body in my game room. The attack has
turned against me!"
     "And me, too," Stuart whispered from pale lips. "If it had not been for
The Shadow's bad aim, I'd have been killed, instead of that accomplice of his!"
     There was no answer for a moment. Then Corcoran spoke sternly.
     "This reign of terror and murder has gone far enough. I'm going to insist
on a police conference, to get to the bottom of this. First it was Black, then
Dodd. Now it's Stuart - and myself! Perhaps even you are a prospective victim,
Mr. Cranston!"
     "Perhaps," Cranston said quietly.


     CHAPTER XII

     A FINAL CONFERENCE

     THE police chief of Western City looked serious.
     He sat in his private conference room at headquarters. Facing other
serious men. The only reporter present was Clyde Burke. But Clyde was not there
as a news hawk.
     Like the others who had been invited, Clyde was a victim of an unknown
supercriminal who had turned the ordinary peaceful locality of Western City
into a swamp of suspicion and terror. A couple of cops stood on guard outside
the door of the conference room.
     The police chief was making a final, grim effort to get hold of some
forgotten bit of information, perhaps some vague recollection on the part of
these victims, that might give him a lead to the unknown identity of Western
City's genius of crime.
     Martin Black was present, pale but composed. His pretty niece, Alice
Gunther, was at his side, patting his shoulder affectionately. On the other
side of Black, his lawyer, Henry Stuart, mopped a perspiring face.
     Lamont Cranston sat alongside Peter Corcoran. It was Corcoran who had
insisted on this conference, after the criminal events which had occurred the
night before at his suburban mansion.
     "Mr. Black, have you anything to add to what you have already told the
police?" the police chief snapped. He sounded tired and irritable. "I must say
that through the whole series of crimes, you have said very little!"
     "I've already told you all I know," Black replied.
     He was keeping his temper in check. He smiled wanly at his pretty niece.
Alice Gunther was one person who had never ceased to reiterate her belief in
Black's innocence of the bank robbery.
     "The night that the bank was robbed, I was not in town," Black said
quietly. "I had a private business conference with a man at a farmhouse. It was
personal, and had nothing to do with crime. Therefore, I see no reason why I
should discuss it.
     "As head of the police force, you tell me that there was no man and no
farmhouse when your men investigated. I can't help that! The house was there
when I kept my date. If it's gone, I can only suggest that the house was
portable and was taken away on a truck after I left."
     "You still don't know who raised the cash bail for you the night the
limited was robbed of its gold shipment?" the chief queried.
     "I do not. My niece knows more than I about that."
     Alice Gunther spoke next. She had nothing new to report. She merely
repeated her strange tale of the visit of "The Shadow" to her apartment, soon
after Roger Dodd had called there.
     "I trusted The Shadow," she said, with a shudder. "But I'm afraid that
after what happened last night at Mr. Corcoran's home, it was a foolish thing
to do. My uncle was deliberately lured aboard that train to meet Mr. Dodd -
though why, I don't know."
     "I don't either," the police chief muttered. "Unless it was to identify a
fake Roger Dodd and throw suspicion on him. That would tie in with the later
death of the real Dodd at the hotel in Newtown.
     "It's a hellish mess, but the attack last night on Stuart and Corcoran
seems to prove that Dodd couldn't have been The Shadow, as I thought.
     "In other words, Dodd, as well as Black, was the victim of a criminal with
a marvelous ability to assume the identity of any person he chooses. He must be
a wizard at disguise, the way he's been able to fool people!"
     "Yet the disguises were found in Dodd's own home," Corcoran interposed.
"Queer, eh?"
     "Damned queer! Then there's the business of the vanishing bonds and the
missing gold. Gold transferred from a train that was racing at seventy miles an
hour!"
     "A fast car, perhaps?" Lamont Cranston asked mildly.
     He received an amused and sarcastic smile from the police chief.
     "An impossibly fast car, you mean! Remember one thing: According to the
testimony of the thug who was murdered by a rifle bullet from the roof opposite
the hotel, the leader of the gang was waiting at the trestle when the stolen
locomotive and pay car arrived.
     "How could he do that, unless he drove a car that was capable of making
two hundred miles an hour? Cars like that are possible. The trick has been done
on the salt flats in Utah, or at Daytona Beach in Florida. But have you ever
seen such a racing vehicle in Western City? It's fantastic!"
     "You're probably right," Cranston replied, with a faint smile. "My
suggestion is silly and impossible."


     CRANSTON wasn't watching the police chief during this interchange. He was
observing the faces of the others. But no one person looked directly at him.
All seemed bored by Cranston's fast-car theory.
     "Finally, there is the problem of the vanishing rifle that killed the thug
in the hotel," the chief of police resumed. "It's very funny that no trace of
the rifle has been found. Funny, too, that a rifle was missing from the gun
room in Roger Dodd's home.
     "Dodd is dead. I believe now that he was innocent of that train robbery.
The telegram we found in his pocket explains why Dodd was at the hotel. He was
lured there by a fake message.
     "But who lured him? And why does a dead and innocent Roger Dodd continue
to look more guilty the deeper we delve into this tangle of mystery?"
     "There's another, and even more remarkable, angle to all this," Peter
Corcoran said, dryly. "I refer to the fact that Lamont Cranston and Clyde Burke
also seem to be victims of this growing conspiracy.
     "Mr. Burke is a New York newspaperman, with neither friends nor enemies in
Western City. He's here only to cover news for his paper. Cranston came only to
make a few financial investments. Why should these two innocent strangers be
dragged into the web of danger?"
     Corcoran's shrewd eves bored into Cranston's. Stuart, too, seemed puzzled.
Evidently, Stuart hadn't thought of this angle to the affair. He started to ask
Cranston a question. But the chief of police interrupted Stuart impatiently by
questioning Clyde Burke.
     "How about it, Mr. Burke? Can you think of any sane reason why you should
receive a fake message to go to Cranston's hotel suite - so that thugs could
kidnap and hide you in the cellar of Peter Corcoran's home?"
     "Maybe I wasn't meant to be found there," Clyde said slowly. "I don't
believe the thugs who kidnapped me left me on that billiard table in the game
room. I have a dim remembrance of them throwing me into the fuel closet of
Corcoran's basement. Then I was slugged again.
     "Besides, why should kidnapers first hide me, then draw attention to me by
rigging up an alarm-clock device to disconnect one of the light fuses?"
     "The Shadow might have done that!" Stuart cried eagerly. "Perhaps The
Shadow is on the side of the law, after all! I thought he killed the thug at
the window by mistake. But he could just as logically have been an enemy of the
thug. After all, The Shadow's shot did save my life, you know!"
     Corcoran laughed scornfully.
     "It doesn't fit the pattern at all! Every time there's been trouble with
death, The Shadow is mysteriously on the scene - as a criminal! Remember the
killings in Dodd's unfinished skyscraper? Remember the man with the rifle? In
both cases, The Shadow was identified just before he pulled his clever
vanishing act. And he was certainly present outside the window of my study last
night."
     "But why did he kill Clyde Burke's kidnapers?" Stuart insisted. "The
Shadow must have killed both thugs, because we found the body of the other one
near the entrance to the grounds after the police arrived. If The Shadow is
really a criminal, he acts rather insanely. Would a criminal rescue his victims
and kill his own accomplices?"
     "He might easily enough," Corcoran rejoined, "if he wanted to protect his
own identity and shut the mouths of his hired gunmen. Have you identified those
two thugs, chief?"
     The chief cleared his throat.
     "No. Neither of them are local crooks. Our fingerprint records show no
activities of theirs in this city or state. I've sent samples of their prints,
however, to the F.B.I., in Washington. Perhaps in a few days -"
     He sighed. No one said anything. The conference was sagging under the
weight of its own futility. The silence became oppressive.


     "I'LL do the best I can, gentlemen," the police chief finished lamely. "As
we all agree, The Shadow is probably the criminal brain behind all this theft
and murder. I've an idea we've heard the last of him, for the present. He's
probably made his getaway.
     "The big job now is to get on his trail and try to find out what he did
with the two million in bonds and gold that he stole. My own hunch is that the
trail will probably lead to New York. Somewhere in New York, if we're lucky,
we'll uncover both The Shadow and the loot."
     Corcoran's face was scarlet with sudden anger.
     "You'll have to do more than be lucky, chief, or I'll be talking to the
mayor and demanding your resignation! For all I know, I may be on the spot as
the next victim of your Shadow!
     "In a few days, I'm leaving town to attend a big political reception in
Dadeville. The governor-elect will be there. So will every important personage
in the State. To say nothing of the fact that there'll be a king's ransom of
jewels on display."
     "You think," the police chief began nervously, "that there may be some
danger of an attempt to hold up the guests at the reception and snatch their
jewelry and money?"
     "Snatch, nothing!" Corcoran roared. "I told you there would be a king's
ransom in jewelry. During the reception for the new governor, there'll be a
private exhibition of the gem collection of the Duchess of Limeford. Her father
is giving the reception."
     There was a murmur at the news. Cranston looked astonished. Like Corcoran,
he had been invited to the reception. But Cranston hadn't known until now that
the famous Limeford gems would be on display.
     The Duchess of Limeford was Marjorie Gatlin, daughter of the man at whose
home the reception for the governor would take place. The jewels had been
brought from England for safety during the war in Europe. After that one
private display, they would be transported under guard to the theft-proof
vaults of a bank in St. Louis.
     "I can't protect you, or anyone else, at Jacob Gatlin's home in
Dadeville," the Western City chief of police said. "It's out of my
jurisdiction."
     For the first time since the conference had started, he looked relieved.
But the smug smile faded from his lips, as Corcoran's retort.
     "Arrest The Shadow before he tries a last million-dollar crime," the
politician rasped. "If you don't, I'll speak to the governor. I'll have you and
the mayor tried on charges of incompetence. I'll kick you both out and
reorganize the police department from top to bottom!
     "I've had enough of all this infernal crime! Besides, every moment that
The Shadow remains at large, my own life may be in danger from that black-robed
scoundrel!"
     "Interesting, isn't it, that you should have mentioned the reception,"
Cranston murmured. "I've been invited, too."
     "You have?" Peter Corcoran murmured.
     "So have I," Stuart said in a startled tone.
     "And I also," Martin Black cut in quietly. "That is, I haven't been
officially invited. My niece, Alice, received the invitation. I'm going along
with her as her escort. Odd, isn't it, how we all -"
     "Very odd!" Corcoran rasped. "It looks like a set-up for more crime. I
don't like it at all, gentlemen! It sounds exactly like -"
     "The Shadow?" Cranston cut in smilingly. "Isn't that a bit farfetched? The
Shadow may be an all-powerful crook, but he surely has nothing to do with the
issuing of invitations to an exclusive social function. Unless The Shadow is
working secretly with the Duchess of Limeford's social secretary."
     Stuart chuckled at so silly a notion. Even Martin Black looked faintly
amused.
     Nevertheless, the words of Corcoran had made a powerful impression on the
police chief of Western City. He agreed to get in touch with the authorities at
Dadeville and warn them of impending peril. He promised to send some of his best
detectives to the reception, to act as unofficial observers and to provide
additional help in the event of an emergency.
     The conference ended on that final, hopeful note. Everyone present agreed
that nothing more could be done.


     LAMONT CRANSTON drove back to his hotel. As soon as he was alone in the
privacy of his suite, he reached for the telephone. He murmured a number
unlisted in any phone directory.
     It was a number that was changed frequently, as occasion demanded. The
crisp, faraway voice of The Shadow's contact man replied.
     "Burbank speaking."
     To Burbank, a name was whispered by The Shadow: Miles Crofton. Miles
Crofton was a skilled airplane pilot, and an agent of The Shadow.
     Burbank repeated the orders concerning Crofton. When The Shadow hung up,
he knew that within an hour a fast plane would wing its swift way westward
under cover of darkness. The plane would land at a small airport on the
outskirts of St. Louis. It would be available for action either at Western City
or at Dadeville.
     The Shadow intended to take the offensive. He was convinced that a
specially-built vehicle of tremendous speed had been used to transfer the
stolen gold from the limited. If the supercriminal who bad robbed the train was
planning a further exploit at Dadeville, the speed car would undoubtedly be
brought into use again.
     This time, The Shadow intended to match speed for speed, power for power!


     CHAPTER XIII

     MEN AT WORK

     THE road was quite dark. It was well-paved, but rather narrow. The
three-lane State highway which carried most of the through traffic was ten
miles farther to the east.
     But this narrow road had one advantage which the State highway lacked. It
afforded a straight, easy route to the town of Dadeville.
     At Dadeville, an important reception was scheduled for the evening at the
home of Jacob Gatlin, whose daughter was the Duchess of Limeford.
     A contractor's truck was parked at the side of the road. It was a closed
truck, and only the driver was visible. The driver was asleep on his front seat.
     The truck's wheels were muddy, as if the driver had recently emerged from
a side lane about fifty feet to the rear. The lane, however, seemed a queer
place for any car to traverse, especially a big truck like this. The lane was
narrow and muddy. Bushes hemmed it in on both sides. It wound deeply through
what seemed to be swampy woodland.
     There was a sign at the lane's entrance, to discourage drivers: "DANGER!
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!"
     Just outside the lane, a man was standing. He wore a coat with upturned
collar. The brim was drawn low on his forehead. It was impossible to see more
than a faint outline of his face in the darkness. He was standing with his back
toward the parked contractor's truck. He was staring along the regular highway.
     Lenses of powerful night glasses were glued to his eyes.
     He was watching the branch of a tree in which another man was perched. The
man in the tree could see over the brow of a hill and along the highway for a
considerable distance. He was watching for a car of distinctive foreign make.
     Presently, he saw the twin glow of headlights. He stiffened, and sharpened
the focus of his glasses. They were powerful enough to pierce the glare of
distant headlights and identify the shape of the approaching car.
     The man in the tree grunted with excitement. His free hand swung backward.
He was holding a flashlight equipped with a reflector such as photographers use.
The shield made the light invisible from in front when the man in the tree
flashed a swift triple signal. But the signal was clear enough to his pal on
the ground.
     Quickly, the man darted toward the muddy lane. In a trice, the danger sign
was whisked from its position. In its place went another sign, which the man
snatched from concealment beneath a bed of dry leaves.
     This new sign read: "DETOUR!" An arrow pointed straight into the lane!
     While the man in the overcoat was doing this, he was also lifting his
voice in a warning shout.
     The "sleeping" truck driver sprang from his seat. The rear doors of the
truck flew open. Half a dozen men dressed in overalls piled out. They carried
picks and shovels.
     Two of them reached into the truck and hauled out a pair of wooden
stanchions. The stanchions were placed on either side of the road. A long
timber was laid crosswise above them. From the timber, a red lantern dangled on
a nail.
     It was the normal obstruction used by laborers on a road project.
     The laborers got busy with their tools. The men with the picks swung their
tools high, but their actions were purely bluff. Not a single pick dug into the
smooth expanse of the well-paved highway.
     Already, the motorist was slowing down. A few hundred yards up the road,
he had passed a sign that read: "SLOW DOWN! MEN AT WORK!"
     He didn't know that the sign had been in position barely a moment. Nor did
he know that the man who had planted the sign was at present hiding not more
than ten feet away, protected from view by dense shrubbery.
     The car proceeded slowly to the highway obstruction. The car halted and
the chauffeur stuck his head out. He didn't like the delay. He liked it even
less when the foreman told him he'd have to back up and take the detour. He
began to curse.
     Then his passenger appeared. It was Peter Corcoran. He was mad clean
through.
     "Why can't we pass? I'm in a hurry. My name is Peter Corcoran. I'm on my
way to an important political reception at Dadeville. Tell those fools to shove
that obstruction aside!"
     The foreman explained why the request was impossible.
     "You could pass here, all right," he said, "but the whole roadbed is
ripped up farther down the line. You can't possibly make it to Dadeville -
unless you back up a bit and take that detour. The lane will put you back on
the highway in about five miles. You won't lose more than fifteen minutes."
     Corcoran fumed. Then he glanced at his watch.
     "All right. We'll take the detour."


     THE big car backed up under the sullen guidance of the chauffeur. Its
headlights swung toward the mouth of the lane. The detour didn't look very
good, but the sign was encouraging. And there were signs of recent wheel marks
that indicated other motorists had passed through.
     In a few minutes, the lights of the car faded in the thick growth of trees.
     Two minutes after the car faded from sight, the man in the big overcoat
laughed harshly. He spat out an order.
     With his words, all the phony activity on the road ceased. Picks and
shovels were tossed back into the contractor's truck. The timber obstruction
followed them out of sight. So did the red lantern.
     The rear door of the covered truck closed, hiding the presence of the fake
laborers. The driver climbed to his seat.
     The man in the overcoat examined the road where the "work" had been going
on. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the road's surface. Not a pick had
marred it. It would be impossible for anyone to guess that a "construction job"
had been so recently under way there.
     "O.K.!" the leader of the gang snarled. "Scram!"
     As he turned the truck, the driver was careful to leave no marks of wheels
on the soft shoulder of the highway. He had parked at the edge of the concrete,
thus leaving no clue to the presence of his halted truck. He returned toward
Western City, leaving the man in the overcoat alone in the darkness.
     Presently, the man was joined by his pal who had been in the tree. The pal
carried the "SLOW DOWN! MEN AT WORK!" sign. With a grim chuckle, he handed it to
his boss. The latter kept it, as he walked to the entrance of the lane.
     Reaching up to a tree trunk, he yanked down the fake detour sign. In its
place he put the original sign, which had been removed to fool Peter Corcoran
and his chauffeur. The sign now said once more: "DANGER! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN
RISK!"
     "Couldn't be sweeter, boss!" the thug from the tree said.
     "Shut up!" his boss snarled. "The thing isn't over yet. You've still got a
job. And don't miss - or you're liable to miss your own life!"
     "I can handle my end," the thug muttered.
     He sounded cocky, but there was an undertone of fear in his voice. He
faded into the underbrush without another word. For a moment his hidden
progress was faintly audible; then all sound vanished.
     The man in the overcoat began to run along the dark concrete highway at a
brisk trot. He carried with him the fake signs. Choosing a place where a slight
peeling of bark had been made on a white birch, he vanished into the woods.
     Soon, there was an enormous clamor behind that leafy screen. The sound was
that of a tremendous engine being warmed up. It made a loud racket; but the
sound was brief. It died soon to a humming purr.
     Boughs alongside the road began to quiver. They lifted slowly. A dark
clearing was disclosed. The clearing seemed to be empty. It was only when the
car moved that it became visible.
     The car was painted black. It was streamlined for tremendous speed. The
only break in the streamline was the snoutlike projection of a steel turret
that rose from the roof of the car midway between the hood and the rear bumper.
Its tires were the fat balloon type used on airplane undercarriages.
     It was the amazing high-speed vehicle that had carried away the looted
gold shipment from the limited!
     In a moment the black vehicle was on the highway. Inside it were the fake
road signs that had been carried out of sight by the man in the overcoat. The
same man was behind the wheel.
     He was not a particularly strong man, but it didn't take strength to
manipulate the steering mechanism of that heavy vehicle. The wheel was so
geared that a child could have swung it.
     The car began to speed in the direction of Dadeville. It went faster -
faster! There was no clashing of gears, no roar of power. But inside the
driver's cowled seat, the instrument panel was recording an amazing
acceleration.
     Sixty miles an hour. Seventy-five. One hundred - It rose to one hundred
and twenty-five and stayed there. No quiver came from the chassis. The noise of
the engine remained a steady hum.
     The car raced into darkness down the straight road with such enormous
speed, that it seemed as if it had abruptly vanished from the face of the earth.


     MEANWHILE, the foreign-make car of Peter Corcoran was having an
increasingly difficult time as it tried to get through that muddy "detour"
through a desolate section of woods.
     The clay beneath its wheels changed to sticky mud. The car rocked and
pitched. In the back seat, Corcoran cursed at having ever allowed himself to be
persuaded to take this short cut.
     "Can't we turn around?" he yelled to his chauffeur. "This thing gets worse
instead of better. Turn around and go back to the highway. We'll take a chance
on the construction work."
     "I can't turn around. It's too narrow and too dangerous. I might run into
a dark gully or tear a tire apart on a stump."
     "Then back up!"
     "I will if you order it," the chauffeur said. "But I wouldn't advise it,
sir. Backing up in a hell-hole like this is as dangerous as trying to swing off
the lane and turn around. I hate to suggest it, sir, but I think we're going to
have to keep moving ahead."
     There was a rasp in his voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was
jittery, or if that rasp was a snarl of satisfaction.
     The ground sloped lower. The jerking beams of the headlights showed swampy
patches where water gurgled alongside the lane. The lane was planked underneath
like a corduroy road in a logging camp. The planks were all that kept the
automobile from bogging down in the lane itself.
     Suddenly, a wooden bridge appeared ahead. It spanned a stream that wound
from the underbrush and passed like a sluggish black snake beneath the road.
The bridge was well braced, and protected by railings. But Corcoran's chauffeur
took no chances. He rumbled over it in low gear, driving with careful skill.
     His skill was in vain. The car was in the middle of the bridge, when there
was a ripping crash. The whole center section of the bridge gave way, as the
crossed timbers underneath let loose. The car fell with a sickening bounce into
the muddy bed of the stream.
     It was not much of a drop, but the impact was enough to snap one of the
car's axles. It slid sideways, with muddy water lapping over its running boards.
     Corcoran was unhurt. But his chauffeur had a nasty cut on his forehead,
where he had pitched forward against the windshield.
     He cursed, until Corcoran grasped him grimly by the arm. The look in
Corcoran's eyes made the chauffeur forget his own discomfort. He had been long
enough in Corcoran's employ to obey any order when he saw that savage flame in
the politician's eyes.
     "We can't stay here," Corcoran snarled. "I've got to get to Dadeville, and
get there in a hurry! If I don't, certain - events - may not happen as I wish
them to. Get back to the highway and stop the first car that passes."
     "But -"
     "Get out, blast you," Corcoran roared, "or I'll strangle you! Do you hear?"
     The chauffeur couldn't help hearing. Corcoran was yelling with rage.
     Gingerly, the chauffeur stepped into the muddy stream. His boots made a
sucking sound when he tore them out of the mud. The smell of the mud made him
gag. But he managed to haul himself up the bank to the unbroken end of the
bridge.
     "Has that bridge been tampered with?" Corcoran snarled from the bogged
car. "Can you see any signs that the supports might have been sawed partly
through?"
     The chauffeur looked for a long time. When he spoke, finally, he sounded
hesitant.
     "I... I don't think so, sir. It looks more like an accident to me. My
guess is that these ancient, rotted timbers -"
     "You're either a fool or a liar!" Corcoran snarled. "Get going along that
lane! Here, take my gun! Fire it, if you succeed in stopping a car on the
highway. I'll join you when I hear the shot."
     The chauffeur's face was pale, as he leaned to take the gun from his
employer. His position above the car was an insecure one. If he swayed, the
pressure of his finger on the trigger would send flame spurting into the
furious face of the politician below him. It would be an unfortunate accident.
No jury would ever -
     But the chauffeur forced the idea of murder out of his mind. He pulled
himself back to the smashed edge of the bridge and shoved the gun into his
pocket, with a shaking hand.
     He began to hurry back along the winding lane.
     He slowed down as he went. He didn't know that Corcoran had suddenly left
the mired car. But Corcoran had!


     THE politician stepped into the muddy creek, waded to the bank and pulled
himself up as his chauffeur had. But he didn't follow his employee.
     He disappeared into the bushes beyond the lane. He made little noise.
     It was impossible to tell whether he was searching for some clue to the
mystery of the ruined bridge, or if he was merely exploring the darkness for
some other reason.
     It was a long time before he reappeared again.
     Meanwhile, Corcoran's chauffeur was nearing the paved highway at the end
of the winding lane. He could see a vague patch of gray, where the woods ended.
But he never reached the exit.
     Hands reached suddenly from the leaves. They were gloved hands. They
clamped with cruel and murderous strength on the victim's throat.
     The chauffeur had no warning of attack. He had heard no sound of
footsteps. One moment he was staring hopefully toward the end of the lane; the
next, he was struggling for his life.
     He was hauled backward into the dense shrubbery. The fierceness of the
struggle made a terrible sound. But there was no yell for help. The gloved
hands on the throat of the strangling man never once relaxed their grip.
     The chauffeur's squirming body relaxed. He was unconscious.
     His assailant heaved him upward and tossed him over one shoulder. For a
short while, the noise of stumbling feet was audible. It faded gradually.
     Silence filled the lonely lane.


     CHAPTER XIV

     GEMS OF DOOM

     THE mansion of Jacob Gatlin was situated in parklike grounds a few miles
beyond the town of Dadeville. It was a remote spot for a man who was one of the
nation's biggest millionaires, and the father of a British duchess, to set up
his establishment.
     But Jacob Gatlin had been born in Dadeville. After he had amassed his huge
fortune from mining and oil operations, his wife had induced him to move to New
York. Gatlin, however, soon tired of the East.
     After his wife died, and his daughter married the Duke of Limeford, the
homesick Jacob Gatlin found nothing left to interest him.
     He moved to Dadeville and built this huge Tudor mansion on the outskirts
of the little western town where he had been born.
     There was noise and excitement at the entrance to the grounds. The
reception was already under way, but cars were still arriving. Headlights cut
the darkness. Horns honked at the crowd of townspeople who had come out to gape
at the notables.
     Police were on duty - more than the usual number. A rumor swept through
the crowd that something ugly was in the wind. People whispered that a threat
had been made against the life of Gatlin's titled daughter.
     Actually, nothing of the sort had occurred.
     Within the mansion, the reception was proceeding pleasantly in an
atmosphere of music and gaiety. The Duchess of Limeford stood at the head of
the reception line, at her father's side, greeting the distinguished guests.
     A newly-elected governor of the State was present. So was every bigwig in
politics and business. The men were in white ties and tails. The gowns of the
ladies flashed with jewels.
     There was an undercurrent of eagerness to their talk. Everyone knew that
as soon as the last guest arrived, the world-famous collection of Limeford gems
would be thrown open for display.
     The gems were in a small chamber off the main ballroom. Its doors were
closed. A couple of plainclothes cops were inside. The glances of the guests
kept straying toward that locked door.
     Lamont Cranston, however, seemed completely uninterested in the treasure
chamber. He was watching the guests. Or rather, he was watching for the belated
entrance of a man who had not yet appeared at the reception.
     The missing guest was Peter Corcoran.
     Martin Black was present, looking paler and more reticent than ever. He
was chatting curtly with his niece. His lips scarcely moved. Occasionally, his
gaze shifted slyly toward Cranston.
     Alice Gunther was not aware of her uncle's tension. She looked
breathlessly beautiful in her evening gown. People stared at them, knowing that
her uncle was at liberty tonight only because he had been released on bail.
     The death of Roger Dodd after the train robbery had seemingly proved
Black's innocence of the bank outrage. But he was still the subject of whispers
and conjectures.
     Henry Stuart, his lawyer, was nearby. Stuart kept away from Black as much
as he could, too tactful to draw attention to Black's unpleasant legal position
by talking with him.
     Lamont Cranston joined Stuart presently. While they were talking, a
servant came up with glasses of champagne on a serving tray. Stuart took one.
Cranston declined.
     After a while he left Stuart, and drifted over to Black and his lovely
niece. Alice Gunther chatted pleasantly, but Black was not very sociable. He
spoke in curt monosyllables. He seemed anxious to get rid of the New York
millionaire.
     Cranston was glad, suddenly, that things were happening this way, for he
soon found urgent reasons to get away from the unpleasant Mr. Black.
     He noticed that Henry Stuart was leaving the ballroom.
     The lawyer was edging toward the staircase that led to the floor above. He
looked very queer. He seemed to be trying to escape observation from the rest of
the guests in the crowded ballroom.
     Cranston waited until the lawyer had vanished slowly up the stairs. Then
he followed, ascending as casually as Stuart had. At the top of the stairs, he
could see no sign of Stuart. He spoke to a wooden-faced footman on duty in the
richly-carpeted corridor.
     "Didn't Mr. Stuart come up here a moment ago? I'm anxious to discuss some
personal matters with him. Do you happen to know where he went?"
     "Yes, sir. He's in the rear guest room, sir. I believe he's lying down."
     Cranston murmured a surprised comment.
     "I don't think Mr. Stuart is quite well, sir," the servant added. "He said
he was feeling a bit rocky. Said he wanted to rest for a moment, before the gem
collection was put on public display."
     "Thank you. I won't disturb him till later."


     CRANSTON retreated. But he kept his eye on the servant at the top of the
staircase. Presently, the fellow was summoned away by a superior. The moment he
passed out of sight, Cranston again went up the stairs. Because of the constant
movements of the guests below his absence was not noted.
     He went down the hallway to the room which the servant had pointed out.
But he didn't knock on the door. Dropping to one knee, he applied his gaze to
the keyhole.
     Stuart was lying on a couch. His eyes were closed.
     The Shadow studied the lawyer's face intently. He wondered suddenly if the
man on the couch was really Henry Stuart!
     It seemed an insane speculation. But the keynote of the bank robbery and
the theft of gold from the limited had been disguise. Was an unknown genius of
crime already at work in the mansion of Jacob Gatlin, impersonating Henry
Stuart? Why this sudden desire for sleep on the part of the usually active
lawyer?
     Cranston tried the door softly. It wasn't locked. He tiptoed toward the
couch. He suspected that another face might be concealed behind the familiar
countenance of Henry Stuart! A plastic mask, prepared by an expert in disguises
and cunningly tinted to natural flesh tones, was by no means an impossibility.
     Gently, Cranston touched the lawyer's cheek. His suspicion was wrong. He
touched normal flesh. At the light touch, the eyes of the lawyer opened. He sat
up, looking frightened. Then he swayed.
     "What's the matter?" Cranston whispered.
     "I... I don't know. I feel terrible!"
     Stuart staggered to his feet. Cranston supported him.
     "I think it was that glass of wine I drank. Five minutes after I drank it
I began to feel sleepy. I... I think I've been drugged!"
     It was harder for him to talk. His words sounded muffled and faraway.
     "Call someone, quick! Call the police! I'm afraid that something...
criminal... may be -"
     His words blurred. He collapsed like a straw dummy. Cranston lowered the
drugged lawyer to the couch. He leaned over him to twitch up an eyelid.
     He never completed the gesture. Behind him, a quick foot thudded on the
rug. Something struck Lamont Cranston on the back of the skull with terrific
force. He pitched forward, unconscious.


     IN the little anteroom, where the gem collection of the Duchess of
Limeford awaited public inspections, all was quiet and serene. The noise of the
reception filtered dimly through the locked door.
     The two cops who were guarding the collection were having a boring time.
One of them yawned.
     "This is a hell of a way to spend an evening!"
     "Yeah. I'm getting hungry. What time do we eat?"
     "Probably not before everybody else lines their stomachs, including the
servants! If you ask me -"
     There was no opportunity for his partner to ask him anything. A man
clapped his hands twice. At least, that was what it sounded like.
     The two guards reeled. One of them pitched headlong to the floor. The
other caught at the back of a chair. Then the chair and the man went down.
     In the forehead of each guard was an ugly hole. Both had been shot through
the head. They had died instantly at the sound of that double handclap.
     The man who had caused the sound appeared with catlike stealth. He stood
over the bodies of the slain guards, his face frozen with murderous alertness.
He was listening for any sound of alarm from behind the locked door that gave
access to the reception room.
     Outside noise had drowned the silenced shots and the collapse of the two
murdered guards. The killer smirked at the two long-barreled weapons in his
gloved hands. They were single-shot pistols. Both were equipped with silencers.
     In an instant, they were stowed neatly away in a leather bag which the
killer dragged from a closet.
     Lamont Cranston would have had no trouble recognizing the face of the
smirking assassin. Nor would any of the distinguished guests in the reception
room beyond the locked door.
     The man was Peter Corcoran!
     From his leather bag, he took a black silk mask. When Corcoran donned it,
only the gleam of his eyes was visible. His tails and his white tie made the
rest of his costume indistinguishable from any of the other guests.
     He tiptoed to the window, unlocked and raised it. Into the room came more
men. Half a dozen of them. All were masked, like their leader. Two of them
carried Tommy-guns. The others had automatics. None said a word. They had been
well-rehearsed.
     Corcoran himself looted the priceless collection of gems that had been
brought from England by the Duchess of Limeford. Every sparkling piece went
into the leather bag. The bag snapped shut.
     "Ready?"
     There was a murmur of assent from the armed thugs.
     "Make the rest of this quick! If anybody squawks, or moves an inch - shoot
to kill! Watch for cops. There're about six of them planted here in evening
clothes. You can't go wrong, because the cops are wearing white carnations to
distinguish them from the guests."
     Corcoran chuckled behind his mask.
     "Jacob Gatlin didn't want any heiresses making monkeys of themselves by
dancing with dressed-up cops. It's a break for us."
     He unlocked the door. Suddenly, he flung it wide. The raiders burst into
the ballroom.


     THEIR guns and masked faces paralyzed everyone for an instant. Then a
woman screamed. Her scream was the signal for death.
     The masked thugs didn't waste a shot.
     Every bullet found a victim. A half-dozen men in evening clothes crumpled
to the floor before they could clutch at hidden holsters. Each of them wore a
white carnation. The mob had picked off the police at the first blast.
     The rest of the victims were cowed by a snarling order from the masked
leader of the mob.
     "Don't anyone move an inch! We've just killed six cops to show we mean
business tonight! We'll kill sixty, if we have to! Hands up high! Faces to the
wall - everybody!"
     His orders were complied with. The two thugs with the Tommy-guns stayed
where they were. The other mobsters darted toward the paralyzed victims.
Necklaces were snatched. Bracelets and rings were grabbed. Watches, money -
everything that could be easily stolen by experienced stickup artists, was
tossed backward to the floor, to be picked up by the masked leader.
     The loot went into the leather bag, to join the fabulous gems of the
Duchess of Limeford.
     A woman screamed as a priceless brooch was torn from her dress. It was
snatched so brutally, that the thin evening gown was ripped apart. Her scream
was her death warrant. A pistol roared. The woman dropped to the floor, a
bullet in her spine.
     This devilish murder of a helpless woman aroused the male victims to a
frenzy of rage. Men whirled from the wall, where they had been standing stiffly
with arms upraised. Some of them sprang toward the gunmen. Others leaped at the
masked leader with the bag of loot.
     They were met by a spray of lead. Tommy-guns had gone into action. Men
pitched to the floor, dead, like soldiers cut down in a desperate frontal
attack.
     Jacob Gatlin and his daughter were wounded. The governor-elect of the
State pitched to his knees, his mouth dripping blood. The gunmen backed up,
snarling.
     Then a bold thing happened. As the leader's head turned to scan the
position of his mob, a man sprang forward with clutching hands. He caught hold
of the leader's black silk mask. The mask was torn loose.
     By the action, the identity of Peter Corcoran was exposed to everyone in
the room!
     The man who had unmasked Corcoran paid for his daring with his life.
Having killed him, Corcoran backed away with his leather bag. He faded toward
the jewel room where he had killed the two guards.
     His partners tried to cover his retreat. But they found themselves facing
a tough situation. Cops on duty outside had heard the snarl of gunfire. They
poured into the house from the grounds. Taking cover wherever they could find
it, the police began a vicious counterattack on the trapped thugs.


     LAMONT CRANSTON recovered consciousness in the room upstairs to hear the
sound of gunfire in his dazed ears.
     For an instant, he couldn't remember what had happened. Then the ache in
his skull and the sight of Henry Stuart staggering dazedly to his feet from the
couch jogged Cranston's memory.
     There was a faint, pungent smell in the air. On the floor, where Cranston
had lain unconscious after he had been struck on the skull from behind, was
something that made his eyes narrow.
     There were a few tiny fragments of wafer-thin glass.
     But Cranston had no time to ponder on the meaning of the pungent odor in
the air or the glass on the floor. He knew from the roar of pistols below that
death was lashing out at the guests in the ballroom.
     He staggered to the door. The door was locked and the key missing. Stuart
moaned. He was still sluggish. His bulging eyes glaring.
     Cranston whipped out a gun. He fired at the lock, smashing it. A stern
shout at Stuart roused the dazed lawyer. He added the strength of his shoulder
to Cranston's. The weakened door burst open.
     Quickly, Cranston pulled out another gun and shoved it into Stuart's hand.
With his own gun ready for action, he raced to the head of the staircase.
     He was just in time to witness the arrival of police from the grounds. A
battle was under way between snarling thugs and the law. The edge was with the
criminals. Their two Tommy-guns outpowered anything the cops could offer in
reply.
     Cranston and Stuart changed that situation in a flash. Their heavy .45
automatics began to speak from the top of the stairs. The crooks were taken by
surprise. They whirled to meet this rear attack - and the cops dived forward.
     Thugs began to crumple. One of the mobsters with a Tommy-gun pitched in a
dead heap.
     Cranston's gun ended any hope of a flight of the killers up the staircase.
At his side, Henry Stuart matched Cranston's bravery. He was still wobbly on his
feet, but whenever his automatic blasted, a criminal slumped.
     In a few minutes, the battle was over.
     Men ran to summon ambulances. Jacob Gatlin and his daughter were not badly
wounded, but the governor-elect was desperately hurt. A bullet had drilled
through his lungs. Blood dripped from his gasping mouth as he coughed.
     Police hunted madly through the house for some trace of the vanished Peter
Corcoran. But Corcoran was gone! He had made the most of the confusion that
followed his cold-blooded murder of the man who had unmasked him.
     The bag of loot had vanished with him. The entire collection of gems that
belonged to the Duchess of Limeford had been successfully snatched!
     At the height of the confusion, the front door of the mansion opened. A
man stared silently for an instant at a ballroom that looked like a
battlefield. He was breathing heavily.
     But his voice was clear and distinct. It rasped like metal.
     "What in the world has happened here? A riot?"
     The man who stared so calmly from the front doorway was Peter Corcoran!


     CHAPTER XV

     SKY RAIDER

     CORCORAN'S face was streaked with dirt. Mud caked his shoes and stained
his clothing. But his eyes were calm. A faint smile twisted his lips.
     Men sprang toward him, the chief of the Dadeville police in the lead. He
grabbed Corcoran fiercely by the arm, said:
     "Do you think you can bluff your way out of murder and theft?"
     "Get your stupid hands off me, you fool!"
     In spite of his rage, the chief of police quailed. Peter Corcoran was the
biggest political figure in the State. He had made and broken governors and
senators. He seemed so sure of himself, that the chief became uneasy.
     "You've accused me of murder and theft," Corcoran sneered. "Can you prove
it?"
     The chief nodded grimly. He recounted everything that had happened in the
mansion since the swift appearance of the masked raiders. He described the
ripping of the mask from Corcoran's face, and the latter's successful flight
with the Limeford jewels.
     Corcoran barked with harsh laughter.
     "I thought so! A frame-up! Somebody impersonated me! I'm not guilty,
because I wasn't here. Not until I stepped through that front door, a moment
ago. I've got a perfect alibi!"
     He told of his adventure in a muddy lane miles away from Dadeville. With a
sardonic grin, he glanced at the crusted mud on his evening clothes.
     "How do you suppose I got this way, you fool? Do you think I go around
wallowing in pigsties?"
     "I don't suppose anything," the chief replied. He was nettled by the
politician's contempt. "I intend to check on the facts."
     He picked up a telephone, and was connected with the State police
headquarters not far from Western City.
     He talked at some length, then there was a long wait. Finally, the man at
the other end of the wire returned. The chief listened tensely to what was
said. When he hung up, he was tremendously excited.
     He went back to where Corcoran waited sneeringly.
     "You damned liar!" he rasped.
     Corcoran tried to fling himself at the chief of police. The cops who stood
on either side of him discouraged that.
     The police chief reported what he had learned. It was a complete smash-up
of Corcoran's alibi.
     "The State highway patrol has examined the spot where you claim you were
delayed. There is no evidence that a construction gang was working at that
point. You claim they were digging with picks and shovels. The concrete roadbed
hasn't been touched! Furthermore, no repair crew was on duty tonight at any
point along the highway. Traffic was never interrupted!"
     Corcoran cursed. The chief of police cut him short.
     "You lied about the sign at the head of the lane. It is not marked Detour.
It's plainly marked: 'Danger! Proceed At Your Own Risk'! You had no excuse to go
up that lane!"
     Corcoran's teeth showed, as he said, "You found no smashed bridge and no
mired car, I suppose?"
     "They found the car, all right. But the testimony of the State police
nails that lie about your disappearing chauffeur. He never drove that car into
the lane! Some other henchman of yours did the job.
     "You killed your real chauffeur to shut his mouth. We found his body - or
rather, the State patrol did - at a spot miles away from where you claim he
disappeared. Do you care to know where we did find his body?"
     "I don't give a damn where -"
     "Less than a mile from this mansion!"
     "But -"
     "Arrest this man!" the chief snarled. He had forgotten his awe of the
politician.
     Cops sprang at Corcoran and grabbed him. There was a fierce struggle.
Guests at the reception stared in terrified wonder.
     Lamont Cranston was not one of the staring spectators. The moment he had
heard Corcoran's sneering alibi, Cranston had faded quietly. No one noticed his
departure. He vanished along a dim corridor.
     That was the end of Lamont Cranston.


     IT was The Shadow who appeared presently at the doorway of a small sitting
room. He was garbed in a black cloak. Black gloves shielded his hands. The brim
of a slouch hat shaded the gleam of his eyes. He picked up a telephone.
     The Shadow was ready to make his final move!
     That move would, in turn, force a move on the part of a master criminal.
The Shadow intended to frighten his unknown foe into headlong flight.
     A calm voice on the wire replied to The Shadow's whispered call.
     "Burbank speaking."
     To Burbank, brief orders were given. Those orders would send a swift
airplane winging upward into the black sky from a nearby airport. The plane
would be piloted by Miles Crofton, agent of The Shadow.
     Crofton knew exactly where to come. Flat pasture land not far from the
mansion of Jacob Gatlin had been surveyed for just such a midnight emergency.
     The Shadow's laughter was soft, as he hung up; then it died in his throat.
Behind him he heard a gasp. Whirling, he saw one of the house servants. The man
had entered the room on a routine errand. He found himself facing - The Shadow!
     That servant had courage. He sprang to the attack. With the move, he
opened his mouth to emit a yell of warning to the police in the front of the
house.
     The scream was never uttered. A gloved hand caught the man by the throat.
A fist thudded against his jaw. For an instant, the servant jerked rigid. Then
he slid in an inert heap to the floor.
     The Shadow fled soundlessly toward a rear staircase.
     When he reappeared, he was on the second floor. He emerged on a small
balcony, where the musicians had been stationed. The balcony overlooked the
roily ballroom. The Shadow could see police and guests milling around the
captive figure of Peter Corcoran. There were steel cuffs on Corcoran's wrists.
He was snarling with rage.
     The Shadow laughed!
     His mirth cut like a knife through the confusion below. Every eye lifted
toward the small balcony. They saw a black-robed figure, with eyes like flame.
     Twin automatics were in The Shadow's gloved hands. The guns discouraged
any attempt of startled police to grab for weapons. The voice of The Shadow
uttered a single word:
     "Attention!"
     Through a hush of terror, he spoke. He made a startling statement. He
declared that Peter Corcoran was innocent!
     There were shouts of incredulity. The Shadow's clear voice silenced the
interruption.
     He asserted that he not only knew Corcoran was innocent - but that he knew
also the identity of the real criminal, who had impersonated Corcoran and stolen
the Limeford jewels!
     "I know him!" the stern voice from the balcony rasped. "I shall now point
him out!


     A GLOVED finger began to move. People below quailed as it seemed to point
in their direction. At one side of the room, Henry Stuart was frozen with
horror. His gaze was fastened on the pale face of Martin Black.
     Black had moved away from his pretty niece. He was crouched against the
wall, opposite Stuart.
     Before the finger of The Shadow could halt, to indicate the guilty man,
every light in the huge ballroom suddenly went out!
     In the darkness, there were oaths and screams. There were thuds, as men
tangled together and fists swung. Then one sound topped all the others. Someone
unseen was fleeing out the darkened front door of the mansion!
     Bullets from the invisible fugitive effectively halted pursuit.
     A dark figure sped across the grounds outside. A man vaulted a low stone
wall. He vanished into shrubbery across a narrow road.
     In an instant, a roar blasted the night. The roar changed to a steady hum
of power. Bushes ripped aside. A car whirled into view, turning on the road as
it appeared.
     It was the black, turreted automobile in which the highjacked gold from
the limited had been carried away.
     The car raced up the narrow road with terrific speed. The road was a
connecting link that joined a three-lane highway a few miles past the brow of
an intervening hill. The driver had been over this route many times in a
smaller car, by way of preparation. He drove without lights.
     Meanwhile, The Shadow was not idle. A split-second after the lights went
out, he was no longer on the musician's balcony. He raced to the back of the
mansion, vanished through a rear window. But he didn't run through the grounds
in the same direction taken by the fleeing criminal.
     When The Shadow vaulted a stone wall, he was on the opposite side on the
grounds. Five minutes later, he emerged on smooth pasture land. The field was
well screened by a border planting of shaggy oaks. The Shadow flashed an
electric torch three times. There was no reply from the darkness.
     The field was empty!
     With a piercing gaze, The Shadow lifted his face to the dark sky. A faint
whining was audible. It grew into the roar of an airplane shrieking down for a
quick landing.
     The moment the ship landed, The Shadow was alongside. He leaped with
frenzied haste into the cockpit.
     No words were spoken. Miles Crofton knew exactly what to do. The ship
raced along the dark turf and bounced upward into the air. It skimmed above the
line of black oaks, missing their topmost branches by inches. Then it headed
across the black sky in the direction of the broad highway beyond the hill.
     Headphones were clamped over The Shadow's ears. The phones were attached
to a compact high-powered radio set. The radio frequency was tuned to the wave
length of the State police broadcast station. The Shadow listened.
     Words of alarm were crackling through the ether. The criminal's amazing
car had been seen! Its passing along the highway was marked by death and
destruction. Heavily armored, it seemed to be easily controlled, also.
     A few cars had been unable to get out of its way. These, the armored car
had plowed into at terrific speed. Smaller vehicles had been hurled into ruin.
Motorists lay dead and mangled.
     The police radio continued to spurt words of warning.
     Hasty barricades had been thrown up at crossroads to halt the fugitive.
They had been smashed aside like straws. The armored car couldn't be stopped. A
machine gun from its open turret sprayed death against any human being who dared
to appear in its cometlike path.
     The gun was handled by a thug who knew how to shoot. Evidently, the master
criminal had foreseen an emergency such as this. He had left one of his gang
with the car, to help clear the way to freedom with spraying lead.
     But a master criminal had not calculated on attack from the air. Nor had
he thought of airplane speed!


     THE big ship guided by Miles Crofton roared through the night. It had
dropped to a low altitude. The road below raced backward at terrific speed.
This plane could match every ounce of power the racing auto had!
     Presently, Crofton saw the armored vehicle. The plane swooped to the
attack like a hawk. The thug in the car's turret swung up his machine gun to
meet the new threat. He was a dangerous foe. A quick storm of bullets forced
the plane to veer upward with a shriek like a hurricane.
     But it returned swiftly. The Shadow knew how to handle a rapid-firing
weapon, too! He returned burst for burst. The advantage was now with the
airplane, for it could maneuver in more directions than could the car.
     Lead whistled toward the gunner in the car's turret. It snarled like the
drumming of a hailstorm on a tin roof. The gunner swayed, dropped his trigger
hold. For an instant, he lay half across the circular lip of the turret. Then
his body slipped like a broken, crimson-smeared doll inside the steel opening.
     The Shadow sent a burst of bullets against the cowled seat where the
masked driver was crouched. It did no good. The car was too strongly armored.
     The driver never slackened his mad speed. He had the road all to himself.
The warning of the police radio alarm had whisked every other vehicle off the
highway. The only impediments to freedom, except for the black shape of the
pursuing airplane, were scattered groups of local police, who fired vainly from
rifles as the chase roared past them.
     At The Shadow's touch on Crofton's arm, the plane began to creep slowly
ahead of the speeding car. The Shadow shelled the road in front of the fleeing
car with grenades.
     Their bursting explosions made small craters in the concrete. The car
swerved past the holes with incredible skill. But no skill could match the
threat of those exploding bombs. The car swerved too far to the left. The
driver tried to recover - and failed!
     With a tremendous crash, the heavy car skidded from the road.
     It struck a drainage ditch and turned over. Then the plane lost sight of
it, as powerful motors urged the ship on.
     A swift banking turn brought the plane back. Miles Crofton cut the motors.
The ship spiraled down out of the black sky. Its wheels touched the bumpy
surface of a grassy field. It shuddered to a jarring halt.
     Miles Crofton raced across the field after The Shadow. They reached the
drainage ditch where the speed car had crashed. A bleeding figure had crawled
from the car. There was a gun in his gloved hand. But the fugitive was badly
hurt. The gun fell from limp fingers.
     The Shadow leaned over to tear the mask from the master criminal.
     "We've caught him," Miles Crofton exulted. "Martin Black!"
     "No! Not Black." The Shadow's voice was like a murmur of doom. "Henry
Stuart!"
     His prediction was verified when the mask was ripped away. The face of the
noted lawyer glared up at them!
     Swiftly, The Shadow examined a thin, barely noticeable scratch near the
angle of Stuart's jaw. The scratch had not been caused by the auto wreck. It
had been present on Stuart's face when he had apparently recovered
consciousness in an upstairs room of Gatlin's mansion, with Lamont Cranston.
     The Shadow knew what had caused that scratch. It had come from the
fingernails of the man who had ripped the mask from "Peter Corcoran."
     "Corcoran" had actually been Henry Stuart in disguise!


     OTHER things had warned The Shadow of the amazing truth. The queer,
pungent smell in the air of that upstairs room had been the faint reek of
ammonia. The bits of powdered glass on the rug had confirmed this deduction.
     Stuart had merely pretended to faint after his glass of champagne. A
hidden henchman had knocked out The Shadow before he could lift one of Stuarts'
eyelids and discover that the lawyer had not been drugged. Stuart had then
donned the Corcoran disguise.
     He sneaked downstairs by a secret stairway giving entrance to the jewel
room, and committed the robbery. The snatch of the mask from his face had been
prearranged with a confederate. After having been "exposed" as Corcoran, Stuart
killed his trusting confederate and fled under cover of gunfire.
     He had raced upstairs to where Cranston lay and revived him with a whiff
of ammonia from a glass capsule. He pretended to recover his own senses at the
same instant. Stuart was in a marvelous spot, pretending to shoot down his own
gang at the side of The Shadow!
     But all Stuart's cleverness was finished now. He had been ruined by a
small scratch, the reek of ammonia and a few bits of powdered glass on a rug!
     The Shadow knew that the "Martin Black" who had held up the bank, the
"Roger Dodd" who had looted a speeding train - both were Stuart, profiting from
his amazing knowledge of disguise! Stuart had also a perfect alibi in his speed
car.
     It enabled him to be three hundred miles away from the bank robbery when
Black had telephoned for his aid as a lawyer!
     He was also far from Newtown when the police telephoned him, to report the
murder of Dodd at the hotel.
     But Corcoran and Dodd and Black were not completely innocent. Earlier
crimes had placed them at the mercy of the vengeful lawyer.
     With a ghastly chuckle, Stuart confessed to The Shadow. The four men had
been linked in many dishonest rackets. That was how they had amassed their
money. But they had quarreled.
     Stuart, their leader, had been forced to take a smaller cut on the graft.
He agreed - and bided his time.
     The three crime exploits were his grim answer to his former cronies. Each
crime netted Stuart a million-dollar profit. Each crime pinned the blame on a
man whom Stuart hated. His victims were afraid to talk. They had no proof. They
knew nothing of Stuart's new speed car.
     In the wrecked car The Shadow found the leather bag containing the
Limeford jewels. He also found a map in the wounded man's wallet. It showed the
location of an underground garage, where the speed ear was kept when it was not
being used along deserted midnight highways.
     With a snarl, Stuart confessed that the gold from the limited and the
bonds from the bank were hidden in a steel vault in the underground garage.
     "No use trying to kid you," he jeered from pale lips, "The jig is up and I
know it!"
     He writhed suddenly; his eyes closed. But he was not dead. There was a
slim chance that Henry Stuart might yet live to pay the penalty in the electric
chair.
     The Shadow straightened suddenly. Through the darkness came the distant
wail of police sirens! The law was on its way to claim a master criminal who
had defied The Shadow, and failed.
     The Shadow didn't flee at the sound of those approaching sirens. He took
his time to do something quite necessary.
     When he bent finally over the unconscious criminal, he dropped a sheet of
paper. On it, in the bold handwriting of The Shadow, was a complete summary of
Stuart's crime. It explained the link that had bound Stuart earlier to his
crooked graft partners, Black and Dodd and Corcoran.
     When police cars shrieked to a halt, they found only the limp figures of
Stuart and his dead machine-gunner.
     High in the night sky, a plane was winging away. It was impossible to see
the ship. Police eyes glared aloft, vainly.
     Suddenly, there was a lull in the sound of the motor. In the brief
silence, police looked at one another with awe. They couldn't swear to it, but
all of them were sure they heard a faint, eerie whisper from the sky.
     The triumphant laughter of The Shadow!


     THE END