The Shadow - House Of Ghosts Part 7

Turning out the light, The Shadow became invisible as he stepped to the rear window. For that matter, Clyde and Margo remained unseen, even after The Shadow raised the shade, for thickening clouds had completely blocked off the moon.

"Someone has just left the house," declared The Shadow. "That person is about to join the confederates who played the ghosts. Watch!"

As they watched across the flat porch behind Margo's room, a phantom figure suddenly appeared beyond the house. Of all the shapes seen at Stanbridge Manor, this was the most ghostly. It seemed to have a glowing face that squinted back through the darkness as it moved away. To Margo's strained eyes, the thing looked like a decapitated head, floating off through the night.

The weird thing reached a bulky block of whiteness which promptly swallowed it. The ghost, or whatever it was, had gone into the old mausoleum. It was as if some master of the dead had returned to his own stronghold.

Margo's gasp was heartfelt: "What was it?"

"Whoever it was," replied The Shadow, "that person is wearing Jennifer's cape. Since Jennifer is the only member of the household who visits the cemetery, our ghost was wearing the cape purely to avoid suspicion."

"But I didn't see the cape," began Margo. "How could I see it in the dark?

I saw a face -"

"A face that Dunninger mentioned in the note he sent me," interposed The Shadow. "He took Jennifer's cape upstairs a short while before he left. He outlined the face on the back of the cape, using luminous paint that shows only in the dark."

Motioning his companions out to the pa.s.sage, The Shadow pointed to the little hallway. By the glow of the night lamp, Clyde and Margo saw that the cape was gone. Dunninger's ruse had worked; he had left a sure clue by which The Shadow could track down the real ghost of Stanbridge Manor.

The Shadow pointed to the doorway along the pa.s.sage. Clyde went to Gustave's door and listened. He eliminated Gustave by the latter's snores.

Meanwhile, Margo softly opened the opposite door and viewed old Jennifer sound asleep in bed.

Sneaking along the pa.s.sage, Clyde was bound for Hector's room, confident that the old servant must be the missing person. As a matter of mere routine, Clyde opened Roger's room and took a glance inside. Roger's bed was directly in the path of light that crossed Clyde's shoulder from the hallway.

The bed was empty!

Amazed, Clyde turned about. Margo saw his face and knew from its expression that Roger was gone.

Margo's own face reflected Clyde's amazement. Of all persons in the mansion, Roger was the one they had least suspected!

Along the pa.s.sage came a whispered laugh, weirdly expressive, as though The Shadow had foreseen this climax. The sibilant tone faded, leaving the pa.s.sage empty.

The Shadow, too, had gone, along the ghostly trail of Roger Stanbridge, thereal menace of the manor!

CHAPTER XII.

THE GHOST MAKERS.

UNDER the black sky, Stanbridge Manor showed a few flickers of light from its windows, rendering it visible in the night. The flickers, particularly those from the downstairs fire, could be mistaken for ghostly lights, but at least the manor could be seen.

In turn, that was probably the reason why the mansion held such a weird reputation, yet when considered logically, Stanbridge Manor was not the most sinister house in this neighborhood. That t.i.tle belonged to a little building so seldom noticed that it was invariably overlooked; namely, the cottage owned by Wiggam.

The Shadow was discovering this fact.

Finding no trace of Roger in the mausoleum, The Shadow had begun a zigzag rove toward Wiggam's. Nowhere did he find a path leading from the crypt, but that did not surprise him. Others than Roger had vanished after entering the mausoleum and The Shadow was convinced that their route was underground.

What The Shadow wanted were traces of that particular fact, and he found them.

There were deep ditches leading from the Stanbridge property, some of them much like gullies, worn by years of drainage. Though much neglected, these ditches showed some signs of repair. Always it was to one purpose, to veer them away from each other, leaving a path between. At no spot did a ditch cross the straight line that led from the mausoleum to Wiggam's house An old road did cross that imaginary line. It had a curious hump that showed in the roving glare of The Shadow's well guarded flashlight. Though years of disuse had smothered the fact, there were still a few indications that the hump was artificial. Digging into the dirt, The Shadow found chunks of gravel and pebbles that were common only to this brief section of the road.

As chance had it, The Shadow made another find. Something glistened silvery deep in the dried gra.s.s that nearly covered the old road. Something that someone had dropped, as The Shadow learned when he examined the article. Pocketing it, The Shadow continued on to Wiggam's, to discover more than he expected.

Despite its trifling size, Wiggam's cottage was more formidable than the manor. From a distance it looked flimsy, but at close range its strength was apparent. Enough light was filtering from the returning moon for The Shadow to observe patches of brick through the stucco facing of the cottage walls.

Closed shutters were backed with sheets of steel, that glistened through the slats when viewed from a close angle.

Even the chimney was topped by an ornamental grating and The Shadow could tell from the slight projection of the doors that they were but concealing surfaces for heavier barriers behind them. Yet even by daylight, no one had ever before suspected the truth about Wiggam's stronghold.

The caretaker was regarded simply as a recluse who had spent his life's earnings in buying and improving a cottage which he preferred to keep tightshut because he lived there alone. Indeed, people pitied Wiggam, never realizing that he was better deserving of their dread.

Noting the strength of the well-faked cottage, The Shadow glided off into the night, his whispered laugh a promise of future invasion by a route whereby Wiggam would never expect intruders.

WITHIN the cottage, Wiggam was seated at a table in a room with heavy curtains that blocked off any chance of escaping light. The curious thing was that even in his fortified home, Wiggam still looked the part of the faithful old retainer, a man to whom integrity was law. There was no brightness in his tired face; it still showed its full quota of droops.

Wiggam's honest manner was in no way lessened by the fact that he was harboring three men of crime. They were seated about the table, helping themselves to drinks while they bragged of their recent exploits. All that Wiggam drank was the chatter of his guests, accepting it without the slightest grimace.

Most talkative of the group was Carl Dorthan, the heavy-jawed embezzler who had reached Stanbridge Manor just ahead of The Shadow's first visit. To Dorthan's left sat Harvey Crispin, whose pointed face and quick eyes gave him a foxlike expression. On the right was Wallace Freer, a poker-faced man with a straight-chopped forehead that almost hid the eyes between his equally vertical nose.

Lifting a gla.s.s, Dorthan looked between the other embezzlers and gave Wiggam an approving stare.

"To Wiggam!" toasted Dorthan. "A great fellow, Wiggam. We're for him, all of us, and soon there'll be more of us."

Rising politely Wiggam bowed as the others drank. As the droop-faced man seated himself, Dorthan leaned forward and questioned sharply: "How come you're in this racket, Wiggam?"

Crispin and Freer s.h.i.+fted uneasily as they glanced toward a door that led down into the cellar. They were afraid that Dorthan was bearing too heavily on Wiggam and they wondered what Roger would have to say about it. But Wiggam remained quite unruffled. When he spoke, his tone was matter of fact.

"I am a Wiggam, sir," declared the old retainer. "My family has always served the master of Stanbridge Manor. Whatever he may order, we obey."

"The good old rule," approved Dorthan. "The king can do no wrong. Is that it, Wiggam?"

"Precisely, sir."

There was a short silence, then Wiggam cleared his throat and proceeded with a further explanation: "You see, gentlemen, the secrets of Stanbridge Manor belong only to the head of the family. But each master has always entrusted those secrets to a Wiggam. So whenever the head of the Stanbridge family dies, it is a Wiggam who tells those facts to the next master. Never has a Wiggam failed."

Dorthan supplied a puzzled frown. He nudged his thumb in the general direction of the manor.

"But what about Gustave, who owns the place at present? He doesn't know anything, does he?"

As Wiggam hesitated in replying, the door from the cellar opened and Roger entered. He was just in time to catch Dorthan's question. With a bland smile, Roger answered it, saying: "That's where I come in." HELPING himself to a drink, Roger finished it and promptly poured a second.

Gesturing occasionally with his gla.s.s, he picked up from Wiggam's breaking point.

"Gustave is a stinker," declared Roger. "We all know it, including Wiggam.

But the man who knew it most was my eldest brother Donald. Trouble was, he couldn't throw Gustave out. No Stanbridge ever did throw a relative out of the manor. The original will left by my great-great grandfather, provides against it."

Roger's gestures were making the gla.s.s spill, so he finished half his drink before he continued.

"Donald told Wiggam all about the mansion," said Roger. "But he told him something else. He said that Gustave was hounding him and that if he should die suddenly, it would be Gustave's fault. Wasn't that the way Donald put it, Wiggam?"

"Exactly, sir," replied Wiggam earnestly. "Mr. Donald used to leave the manor by the secret pa.s.sage and come here through the tunnel from the mausoleum, so Mr. Gustave wouldn't know where he had gone. Mr. Donald said that some day I.

might have to protect him, so I strengthened the cottage on that account.

Then, when Mr. Donald died -"

Wiggam choked and tears filled his eyes. Roger finished his drink and laid a friendly hand upon the old retainer's shoulder.

"I know," nodded Roger. "You just couldn't recognize Gustave as head of the family, so you told him nothing. You interpreted the tradition and remained true to it."

"Hoping you'd come back, Mr. Roger. I knew that you were the one to take Mr. Donald's place. I was waiting for you -"

"That's right, Wiggam, and we're waiting for another round of drinks.

Slide down to the cellar and bring up another crock of applejack."

As soon as Wiggam had gone down the stairs, Dorthan leaned forward and undertoned to Roger: "Did Gustave really croak Donald?"

"You haven't seen Gustave," snorted Roger. "He's a coward like every other stinker. He won't leave the manor because he owns it, but he's so scared he doesn't want to stay. You should have seen him let fly with that shotgun last night. Too bad he didn't clip the Lane girl. Doc Torrance might have sent him away."

Roger looked toward the cellar to make sure that Wiggam wasn't coming up.

"Donald was nuts," confided Roger. "He had a persecution complex, though Wiggam was too dumb to know it. When Donald pa.s.sed out from a heart attack, Jennifer blamed it on Gustave and Wiggam took it for granted she was right. I wish I'd known about it at the time. I could have started this racket sooner.

"Anyway, after the mining dodge got too hot, I came home. I figured the manor would be a swell place for a wholesale hide-out, with fellows like you paying the freight. I thought I might be able to buy the house from Gustave, so to be smart, I called on Wiggam first. Did I walk into something swell!"

Laying down his gla.s.s, Roger tapped his chest with both hands and swelledproudly.

"I was the real master of Stanbridge Manor," he declared. "Wiggam told me all about the joint, things I hadn't even guessed. Why, you could smuggle a regiment in and out of that house if you wanted. I guess my original ancestors used to dodge the Indians that way. And my dopey grandfather, who was afraid of being buried alive, had gotten some Wiggams to run a secret tunnel from the mausoleum to here, so they could look in on him and see if he was still dead.

Wiggam showed me that set-up, too."

Wiggam was bringing up the applejack. Roger went to the stairs to help him with the crock. Dorthan gave a sweeping gesture to denote a pleasure that both Crispin and Freer already felt. Roger hadn't added the final point in this perfect set-up, namely that Wiggam's house, fortified at Donald's crack-brained wish, was an excellent hide-out in itself.

As a result, Roger had started his racket of hiding out crooks, without delay. In fact, he'd gone even further. All three of the embezzlers could tell the same story; they had been approached by Roger in advance. It was at his suggestion, coupled with a promise of absolute security, that they had delved into crime.

THE thing was a straight percentage deal. They were each paying a share to live at Wiggam's and when Roger took over the manor, they would become his guests in more elaborate quarters, leaving Wiggam's diggings to newcomers.

Both places were so suited to in-and-out activities that the law would never catch up with any of the residents in these made-to-order refuges.

As liquor gurgled from the fresh crock, Roger began a brief review of his current campaign.

"We're going to scare Gustave right out of his pants," a.s.serted Roger, "and mail them to him after he runs from the manor. Which reminds me, Wiggam, I have a letter I want you to mail tomorrow."

Wiggam smiled as he received the letter. He was filled with childish delight at Roger's desire to get rid of Gustave.

"The ghost stuff is a sure bet," added Roger. "The trouble was, we played it too strong. At least you fellows did" - he gestured from Crispin to Freer - "and Dorthan had the bad luck to run into Zeph Blaine. Anyway, I fixed that yokel."

"Like I fixed that bank watchman," put in Dorthan. "Permanently. Only you blamed your job on a ghost, while I picked a dope named Goodwin."

"Doc Torrance fell for everything," continued Roger. "I used my head, planting my own gun on Zeph, after I'd fired two shots wide of the tower. That accounted for the two shots you fired, Dorthan. The only trouble was, doc couldn't keep his big mouth shut. The papers picked up his jabber and brought Dunninger here. It wasn't easy last night, faking ghost stuff to make it look like fake."

"We made out all right, sir," put in Wiggam. "Under the circ.u.mstances it was quite fair to make Miss Jennifer and Hector take the blame."

Roger gave a sidewink at the embezzlers. The Wiggam proposition was working better than ever. It hadn't taken Roger long to realize that Wiggam's loyalty would stand any strain; indeed he had adopted the policy of pressing it, on the correct theory that Wiggam's long starved fealty to the proper master ofStanbridge Manor would increase, the more than was required of it.

Nevertheless, it was good to keep playing on Wiggam's personal animosities as well, so Roger added a subtle point while he was throwing Jennifer's cape across his shoulders.

"Now that the ghost stuff is disproven," said Roger, "we'll start working it again. Gustave will fall for it, if n.o.body else does. I'll keep working him into the mood, but we must be careful when strangers are around. Too many believers will hurt the game."

Roger was stepping to the cellar door. As he went through, he turned to close it. Neither Wiggam nor the embezzlers caught a glimpse of the luminous face that glowed only in darkness, for it didn't show until the door was closed.

Though he didn't realize it, Roger Stanbridge was playing the ghost role personally. No matter how cleverly he stalked through the darkness, he would automatically bring The Shadow on his trail.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WRONG GHOST.

CLOSE by the mausoleum, The Shadow listened.

So slight was the sound that came from within, that it could easily have been mistaken for the grind of tree boughs above the ancient crypt.

The Shadow did not make that error.

By this time he had accustomed himself to every wayward sound in this vicinity. This noise was necessarily from the mausoleum, since no other source could produce it. Black as the night itself, The Shadow edged through the door of the vault.

The stone floor was sliding when The Shadow stepped upon it. Before he could remove his foot, it stopped.

Next, footsteps, creeping up from below. Roger was emerging from beneath the inner end of the mausoleum. As he reached the top, he stepped to a corner.

The Shadow heard a very slight click.

The floor went backward, very smoothly and The Shadow traveled with it.

Roger was evidently standing on a stone ledge that skirted the inner walls. As soon as the faint grinding ended, the floor stopped moving. Roger made a stealthy creep to the door.