The Shadow - Foxhound Part 10

Meanwhile, The Shadow was on the move. Pa.s.sing noiselessly between towering piles of sc.r.a.p metal, he approached the shack in the center of the yard.

He saw the broken window through which Clyde had leaped to fool Alonzo Kelsea and a thin-faced gunman. He saw other things by a dim light that sprang from his flashlight. In the middle of the office floor was the outline of a crack. The crack formed a perfect square. It could be nothing but a closed trapdoor.

However, The Shadow did not enter the empty room. He knew that to follow Clyde by the trapdoor route was suicidal. Kelsea and the thug with him would turn the steps below into an inferno of flying lead, before a rescuer could descend.

The Shadow's burning eyes left the broken window and surveyed a queer circular patch of blackness in the tangled weeds at his feet. He was bending to investigate when he heard with startling distinctness the voice of Alonzo Kelsea. It issued from the ground itself!

"I'VE been very patient, Mr. Burke," Kelsea was saying. "I've given you ten long minutes to think things over. You still have two minutes left, in which to save yourself the agony that comes from my particular type of drug store treatment. Will you talk?"

Clyde's voice seemed weak and far away. "If I talk, you'll kill me anyway."

"Right! But without torture. That, I promise you."

"Let me think it over."

The Shadow knew Clyde was trying to play for time, to lengthen by two precious minutes the span that might enable The Shadow to reach the scene and capture the cunning criminal lawyer who was either Foxhound himself or one of his chief lieutenants.

Already, The Shadow was acting with cool speed to justify the confidence of Clyde Burke.

From the dark circle in the ground that was almost hidden by the tangled weeds that overgrew it, The Shadow lifted a disk of grated metal. It was more than a foot in diameter. It lay like a hingeless cover over the top of a large,circular pipe that descended in a steep slant toward the cellar beneath the shack.

The Shadow's arm explored the pipe. He felt thick dust, a coating that clung to his fingers like gray, powdery fluff. That, and the size of the pipe itself, suggested an answer to him.

The Shadow had divined correctly that the opening in the earth was an air duct designed to carry fresh outside air to be heated and distributed by an old-fas.h.i.+oned hot-air furnace.

Again he felt the interior of the pipe. It was stone-cold. Nor would the dust that lined it be quite so thick if the pipe, or rather the furnace below it, were in operation.

He had wasted almost thirty precious seconds in this swift inspection.

Only a minute and a half left before the torture of Clyde would begin.

THE SHADOW lowered himself, headfirst, into the maw of the huge air pipe.

It was a close fit for his extended body, but he was able to move. The thick coating of dust was a double help to him. It kept him from sliding too fast down the steep slant; and it masked any sound of his movement.

It was easier when he reached the bottom of the slant. The rest of the pipe was horizontal. He wriggled ahead with infinite caution, lest the weight of his body might send the ancient pipe cras.h.i.+ng from its support to the floor.

A faint glimmer of light ahead showed where the air pa.s.sage ended. The rusted metal damper was wide open. The dim light came from the interior of the furnace itself.

Thrusting, his head forward, The Shadow drew an inaudible breath of relief as he saw there was neither firepot not grate; merely the rusted inner sh.e.l.l of an old furnace, the ash pit below and the grated door of the ash pit.

It was through this hinged metal door at the bottom that the faint illumination streamed. It came from an electric light somewhere in the cellar.

The Shadow's body moved wormlike, inch by inch into the cold sh.e.l.l of the abandoned furnace. His chin and chest touched the floor of the ash pit and remained rigid, supported by his outstretched palms. It was a slow, ticklish task to withdraw his legs and feet from the pipe opening and to get them down without losing his balance and toppling awkwardly in the narrow s.p.a.ce into which he was now crammed.

A twist of his head brought his eyes toward the metal slots through which yellow light streamed. Hidden effectively from view in the last place where Kelsea would have expected to find him, The Shadow was able to peer into the cellar.

CLYDE BURKE was seated directly under a ceiling light. He was bound hand and foot to a chair. His face was a ma.s.s of dried blood from the gashes he had received when he had leaped through the shack window above. Kelsea stood at his left, a watch in his pudgy palm. On the other side was a wolfish-looking thug with thin cheeks and pitiless eyes.

Kelsea pocketed his watch, snapped, "Time's up! Ready to talk?"

There was anguish in Clyde's eyes, but no trace of fear. He said nothing.

With an oath, Kelsea bent and picked up something from the floor. It was a rubber hot-water bottle, distended and bulging with some undisclosed liquid that had evidently been poured into it from an empty gla.s.s container on the cellar floor.

The cramped position of The Shadow was such that he was unable to twist his hand far enough backward to draw his gun. His only movement was tocompress the hand that lay athwart the ash pit door into a hard, clenched fist. He waited, his eyes at the narrow slits in the door.

Kelsea had attached a long, flexible tube to the hot-water bag. The thug with him held the bag high in his hands, while the lawyer forced open Clyde's jaws and introduced the end of the tube into his throat.

Clyde gasped, gagged, began to swallow spasmodically as Kelsea struck him a numbing blow in the face. Milky liquid ran from the corners of his mouth, dripped on his clothing and the floor. He writhed, gave a strangled scream and managed to spit out the tube.

At that same instant, the balled fist of The Shadow struck the metal door in front of his face, sending it cras.h.i.+ng open.

He emerged headlong, like a projectile shot from a gun. The thing he had counted on was the complete surprise of his attack. He was only partly successful. Kelsea yelled with terror, dropped the water bag and ran like a streak for the trapdoor stairs. But the thug at his side was made of deadlier stuff.

He screamed harshly, "The Shadow!" and his gun pumped lead.

The bullet struck the floor in the exact spot where The Shadow's head had rested, a second earlier. Before he could change his aim, The Shadow's writhing body was upright. Black-gloved hands were clutching twin guns s.n.a.t.c.hed with dizzy speed from hidden holsters designed for a fast draw. They roared, driving the thin-faced thug to his knees behind the shelter of the chair in which Clyde was still helplessly fettered.

From this cunning protection, the gunman drove The Shadow swiftly backward. It was not, however, a retreat, as the gunman thought, but a more prudent method of attack. Screened by the semidarkness in the corners of the cellar, The Shadow was circling warily to flank his foe without risking the accidental death of the helpless Clyde.

His final rush brought him into a clear line with his crouching enemy.

The gunman fired almost point-blank. But The Shadow's bent knees dropped him vertically under the bullet. He had seen blood spurting from the neck of Clyde Burke and he realized that the treacherous killer had already sent a murderous slug into the body of a helpless man.

There was no pity in The Shadow's heart as he dropped his foe with two bullets. The thug fell backward against the bottom step of the stairs that led to the trapdoor.

The trapdoor was wide open. Alonzo Kelsea had wasted no time in saving his own skin.

THE SHADOW'S only thought was for Clyde. The reporter was badly wounded, unconscious. His head hung slack as The Shadow slashed his bonds and slung him over his shoulder.

Up through the cellar trapdoor and out the broken window above, The Shadow raced at top speed. He knew that the sound of firing would bring police to the scene in a few minutes. He wanted neither himself nor Clyde to be intercepted.

To permit that disaster would be to ruin his whole campaign and expose his true ident.i.ty.

He reached the gate in the junk yard fence and threw it open. Moe Shrevnitz, warned by the sound of shooting, had backed his cab directly opposite. He started the cab almost before The Shadow had hurled the wounded Clyde within, jumped in himself and slammed the door. The taxi raced aroundthe corner.

Moe slackened his speed slightly and went straight uptown, cutting corners occasionally and gradually working westward. The Shadow's voice had whispered a curt command in his ear and he knew exactly what he was expected to do.

He stopped for a brief instant, and when his head turned The Shadow was no longer in the cab. He had sprung out as it slowed up.

Moe's own course was clear. He was to drive Clyde Burke to the private hospital maintained and operated by the wealth of The Shadow for just such an emergency. It was in a neighborhood where the arrival of a nighthawk taxi would excite no particular attention. Nor would the spectacle of a sick man being carried indoors seem strange. A public "accident ward" was part of The Shadow's camouflage to screen his own private needs.

Moe Shrevnitz drove grimly to save Clyde Burke's ebbing life.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FRESH WATER CLUE.

BEFORE Clyde was on the operating table in a bright, high-ceilinged room, heavy with the smell of ether, The Shadow was inhaling the dull, clammy odors of the Hudson River. He was gliding quietly through the unlocked gate at the street end of Pier 139. He was now completely aware of Harry Vincent's delayed report.

That report was a strong indication to The Shadow that the cunning Thomas Springer - Foxhound himself - was somewhere along the length of this darkened pier. The thought made the burning eyes of The Shadow glow, not with triumph as might have been expected, but with a grim apprehension. He was thinking of Jimmy Dawson.

From the facts The Shadow had already gathered in the course of this amazing conspiracy, he was aware that Dawson held the key to the whole enigma.

Dawson was the man who possessed the stolen Colette. It was now a grim race to see who could nab him first: The Shadow or Foxhound.

The unlocked pier gate was an ominous hint to The Shadow. Unless his intuition was wrong, it meant that the body of an innocent pier watchman had already been sacrificed to the needs of a sly criminal.

He found the watchman's body barely twenty feet inside the cavernous maw of the long covered structure that extended hundreds of yards into the black expanse of the river. The victim had been killed without a chance to defend himself. Stabbed through the back!

The Shadow began to glide silently down the length of the pier. His goal was the distant stringpiece beyond which was deep, black water and the distant twinkle of lights on the New Jersey sh.o.r.e.

As he approached the pier end he saw suddenly a deeper blackness on the surface of the river. A faint rhythmic hum came to his ears. He identified it as the murmur of a powerful Diesel engine. The engine was idling, waiting to transmit instant power to the screw of a motionless speed boat.

The Shadow was bending forward to see more clearly whether anyone was aboard the mysterious craft, when hands slipped like twin snakes over his shoulders and fastened grimly on his throat. THE struggle that followed was vicious. The two antagonists fought backward along the pier. The Shadow's foe hung on grimly, but his pressure was weak and his lighter body swayed like a pendulum as he strove to increase his grip on The Shadow's windpipe.

The Shadow made no effort to batter at the unseen face jammed like glue in the small of his back. Instead, he planted both legs solidly on the flooring of the pier, and his gloved hands swept backward and down in a wrestler's hold.

He heaved, his knees bent and his head dipped forward.

Leverage and gravity did the rest. The man flew over The Shadow's shoulders like a flying blur and landed with a thump on his back, six feet away.

Before he could gain his feet, The Shadow had straddled him with both knees, a gun b.u.t.t swinging upward for a final blow.

The blow didn't descend. Both men cried out with an amazed, double recognition. The man on the pier floor was Harry Vincent!

Gaspingly, he tried to explain, as a strong arm held him upright on dizzy, wavering feet. He had regained consciousness, sick and weak, on a park bench in lower Manhattan. His orders had been to carry on, no matter what happened. And he had. Except for the weakening effect of the drug, his head was now fairly clear. He had caught a taxi, left it a block away from the pier, found the dead watchman - THE SHADOW laid a sudden hand on the babbling lips of Vincent. His sharper ears had detected the faint splash of oars. The sound came from beyond the pier end where lay the speed boat.

Instantly, The Shadow raced toward the stringpiece. He saw that the mysterious oarsman had already tied a rowboat to the stern of the speed craft and had leaped desperately to its throttle.

It was impossible to see anything but the dark blur of the man's bent body, The Diesel engine roared and the craft shot away in a cream of churning foam. It curved into shrouding darkness and headed upriver, throttle wide open.

The Shadow caught at Vincent's arm, made him lower the weapon he had drawn. The roar of a pistol shot was the last thing he desired at this moment.

Besides, the craft was already far out of range. Except for the fading murmur of its engine, it had completely vanished far up the river.

"Quick!" The Shadow ordered. "Hold my legs!"

Dazed, Harry stared at him. He understood, however, when he saw The Shadow lie flat across, the murky stringpiece and begin to lower himself, headfirst, below the level of the pier.

Bracing himself, Harry gripped the ankles of the descending figure and held him inverted at full length over the water that sucked at green-sc.u.mmed piles.

He could see vaguely that The Shadow's head had ducked inward out of sight. He felt tremors run through the suspended body in his grasp, as The Shadow clutched for an unseen handhold. Then there was a curt command from below and Harry let go obediently.

The legs turned over in a somersault and struck the surface of the water with a splash. They were drawn inward out of sight. Harry could hear a faint series of thumps that dwindled into silence. UNDER the pier, The Shadow had found the foothold he desired in the crossed V of a wooden support. There were other such V's, s.p.a.ced at regular intervals connected by an overhead beam. The Shadow used the beam as a suspension bridge, moving hand over hand with silent speed, using the crotched timbers occasionally to rest his dangling feet.

Presently, he saw the dark blob of a rowboat. The boat was tied loosely to one of the piles by a hastily drawn loop in a thin, pliable cord. The current had wedged the stern of the craft between two upright timbers, and it rested motionless on the water.

The crumpled body of a man lay in the bottom of the boat, the upturned face a vague blur in the gloom. The Shadow's flashlight threw a bright oval on the face.

It was Jimmy Dawson!

His lips were stiff in a frozen grin, as The Shadow dropped carefully into the rowboat and examined him. He was stone dead. There was not a mark on him; but the method of his death was clear. He had been drowned.

His clothes were dry, but they were rumpled and clung to his body like shapeless bags. His eyes were wide open in a face that was bloated and horrible from long submersion. His queer grin puzzled The Shadow. Why should a drowned man grimace so triumphantly - unless, in some mysterious fas.h.i.+on, he had outwitted his murderer?

The Shadow divined the answer. Dawson had died with the secret of the missing Colette painting still locked in his own brain. Foxhound had drowned him without learning the precious secret that he had to learn, if he was to destroy the evidence gathered in France by the dead Herbert Backus. Until he located and destroyed that painting, the safety of Foxhound was not worth a penny. Drowned though he was, Jimmy Dawson still held the master card in this intricate game of crime.

The Shadow stared at the dead face below his. Then he bent suddenly and did a strange thing. He rubbed the forehead of the drowned Dawson with the tip of his forefinger and then touched his tongue. He did the same thing with the dead man's hair.

The harsh laugh of The Shadow echoed eerily in the murky gloom under the pier.

He had discovered something extraordinary. Dawson had not met his death in the salt tides of the Hudson River. He had been drowned in fresh water! And, unless the sharp perception of The Shadow was at fault, the water that had drowned this man had been heavily impregnated with iron!

THE SHADOW wasted no further time. Like a lean, swaying pendulum, he made his precarious way back to the stringpiece of the pier and whistled a signal.

The arms of Harry Vincent leaned and clutched at the outthrust wrist below. A moment later, The Shadow rose above the pier edge.

He seemed to be filled with a measureless content. With Harry at his side he glided silently down the pier, past the body of the unfortunate watchman whom Foxhound had slain, and out to the dark street. There remained only one grim task to be performed.

The two then descended to the deserted platform of a subway station.

While Harry watched for loitering pa.s.sengers, The Shadow stepped into an open phone booth and called police headquarters in a low voice. He spoke swiftly and hung up. A train was already roaring into the dim station. Harry boarded it. The Shadow returned to the darkness of the street above. THE next morning, Lamont Cranston made two telephone calls from his luxurious suite at the Cobalt Club. The first was to a certain private hospital in a restricted neighborhood of Manhattan. He learned that the midnight operation performed on Clyde Burke had been completely successful. The bullet had been removed, and the patient was resting and in no danger.

The second call was a friendly h.e.l.lo to his good friend, Police Commissioner Weston. The talk drifted gradually to the news of Jimmy Dawson's death, which Cranston declared he had read in the morning paper, to his great surprise. What did it all mean?

Weston confirmed the amazing clue discovered under a smelly pier the night before. Dawson had been drowned in fresh water that had been heavily impregnated with iron. And the killer had had the effrontery to call police headquarters and admit it! He was gone when a squad car reached the lonely subway station from which the call had been made.

That made Lamont Cranston chuckle. "I'm afraid it's all too much for an amateur like me," he said softly, and hung up.

He wondered if Weston was considering the same peculiar fact that was now making his eyes narrow with a gleam of inner concentration. Less than a month previous, Doctor Bruce Hanson, had been awarded a gold medal for his successful experiments with soluble iron, as a cure for pernicious anemia!

CHAPTER XVII.

VISITOR IN GRAY.