The Shadow - Crime Rides The Sea Part 12

"Something that I have to settle!" repeated Pointer, more emphatically.

His voice carried a note of accusation. "Last night, there was a fight aboard my yacht Marmora. Criminals, secretly joined with my crew, tried to kill the loyal men who served me.

"I escaped with my life. Since there was every reason why you should suppose me dead, I decided that it would be safe to come here, to confront you with the proof of crime that you engineered."

"What crime?" demanded Barvale. "And where is the proof?"

"I have certain doc.u.ments -"

"Let me see them!"

"I have left them elsewhere" - Trame's faked wheedle was a canny one - "for the law to find. That evidence, Barvale, was not destroyed, as you hoped.

My purpose is to aid justice; therefore, I intend to hold you here until I can summon the police."

There was a roar from Barvale, the thump of overturning furniture. Vic Marquette yanked at the k.n.o.b, found the door unlocked. He shouldered into the study, to find the two men in a furious tangle. Barvale was the aggressor; he had driven his visitor halfway to a corner of the room.

Marquette ended that with a commanding challenge that he backed with a drawn gun. Barvale's fingers slipped loosely from Trame's neck. Rubbing his throat, Pointer resumed the manner of Jerome Trebble.

"Thank you," he said politely, to Marquette. "Your arrival was most opportune!"

Hugh Barvale seemed to think the same, when Marquette showed his F.B.I.

badge.

"Arrest this impostor!" he stormed, motioning toward Pointer. "He claims to be Jerome Trebble, but he is nothing but a cheap crook trying to blackmail me!"

A cackly laugh came from the lips of Pointer Trame. He fiddled his gla.s.ses, blinking as he did, then studied Barvale as though examining a human curiosity.

"A most ridiculous charge!" declared Pointer, his tone caustic. "Mr.

Barvale might just as well claim that I belonged to his criminal organization!"

There was a tightening of Barvale's fists, then the exporter calmed himself. Folding his arms, he faced Marquette and the other Feds who had come into the study.

"Put your questions," said Barvale. "I can answer them."

"I'll do better than that," snapped Vic. Head tilted, he could hear the rumble of a motor from in front of the house. "Come out into the hallway. I think your front door will be wide enough for what I want."

WHEN they reached the hall, they found a crew of men at the doorway. They were bringing a very heavy burden into the house: the strong box that had been reclaimed from the sunken freighter Ozark.

With the aid of block and tackle, they hoisted it along rails that they had placed upon the front steps. The strong box finally thumped the hallway floor.

"You have keys to these padlocks?" demanded Marquette, facing Hugh Barvale.

The exporter hesitated, then admitted that there were duplicates in his desk; that the other keys had been sent abroad. Vic ordered him to bring them, and Barvale did. When the padlocks were opened, Vic ordered Barvale to work the combination.

The door of the strong box swung wide, to reveal stacks of metal bars wrapped in burlap. Some were silver; others had the glint of gold, from what little could be seen of them. Barvale made a bow, that meant he wanted hisvisitors to go.

"A funny thing," said Vic. "Pell said that strong box weighed less than three tons, and it does. If those bars are gold and silver, their value is a lot short of two million dollars. Was that your racket, Barvale - to send out half value and collect insurance in full?"

As he spoke, Vic stepped to the strong box and ripped away some burlap.

He gave a sharp exclamation, then yanked two bars free, one in, each hand. He let them clatter to the floor, where the light struck them. They were neither gold nor silver. Both bars were lead.

The dullness of the pretended silver bar was proof of its base metal. As for the fake bar of gold, it was lead, too, but with a coating of gilt paint.

"Three tons!" voiced Vic. "Just about right, for that amount of lead. The heaviest metal you could find, Barvale, but it doesn't have the weight of either silver or gold. It wasn't just a halfway job, like I thought. You went the whole hog!"

Hugh Barvale seemed totally bewildered; to Marquette, it looked like fakery, for that was the logical game that the fellow would play. Vic's opinion gained conviction, when Barvale took the tack that the Fed expected.

The exporter sputtered that this couldn't be his s.h.i.+pment; that somebody else was responsible. He even charged Vic Marquette with having a hand in the dirty work.

Ordinarily, that would have angered Vic, but on this occasion, it didn't.

Vic was expecting something else to come.

Barvale produced it, suddenly. His fuming ended, he steadied, shrugged his shoulders.

"What does this prove?" he boomed. "Nothing! Except that I have been robbed! You are trying to accuse me of stealing from myself. Very well; where is the wealth I stole?"

As he made that demand, Barvale looked around the group. His eyes fixed on Pointer Trame, as though asking him to answer. Pointer, serene in his part of Jerome Trebble, merely gave a cold-glanced return.

"Find the stolen goods!" stormed Barvale. "Produce any items from my machinery s.h.i.+pments! Show me some of the platinum that came from Colombia! Let me see some real silver, some genuine gold!"

VIC MARQUETTE acknowledged the request with an obliging bow. He had two of his men range beside Barvale. Accompanied by Pointer, Marquette led the way out through the front door.

Barvale was storming that he didn't want to go where they were taking him, but Marquette told him to be patient. It wouldn't be very far.

They turned through a pa.s.sageway beside the mansion, reached the back door of the Eclipse Garage. The front of that garage was being watched by Feds on the other street, so Vic went at his own task with a.s.surance. He had men batter down the little door at the back of the garage.

With flashlights blinking, the first men who entered went through to the front of the garage and unbolted the big street door. By the time they had slid that door open, Marquette had found a light. He pressed a switch that brought adull illumination throughout the garage.

Viewers saw stacks of boxes everywhere. Vic ordered men to rip them open.

As box sides slithered apart, machinery came into sight. They were from Barvale's earlier s.h.i.+pments: the goods that had been reputed lost at sea.

Other boxes, small ones, contained the platinum. At last the workers came to crates that were packed tight with small containers, so that they could be loaded piecemeal. Ripped apart, the first of those final boxes displayed their contents as being the bars of gold and silver that should have been s.h.i.+pped aboard the Ozark.

Here was the swag that Hugh Barvale had challenged Vic Marquette to produce. The proof of crime, ready to be pinned upon the man to whom the blame belonged!

CHAPTER XX.

THE FINAL PROOF.

WITH enough boxes open to satisfy him that the swag was intact, Vic Marquette turned an accusing eye upon Hugh Barvale. In brief detail, Vic summed up the elements that branded the exporter as a supercrook.

"Those s.h.i.+pments were faked," declared Vic, "and the swag was stowed here.

You collected the insurance, Barvale, which just about left you even. All you had to do was peddle the swag.

"You intended to fence the machinery through the Brighton Supply Co., as we know from letters that you wrote them, although they claim that they never heard of you. The platinum offered easy outlets in this country; we have memos that you made regarding that matter.

"As for the gold and silver, you planned to s.h.i.+p it abroad with other exports. We have doc.u.ments showing that you intended to s.h.i.+p certain items in oversized boxes that you were ordering from various concerns.

Barvale's expression showed that he wanted to offer argument but couldn't find the right words. Marquette decided to present a clincher.

"Most damaging of all," declared Vic, tapping a briefcase that he carried, "is your letter, of the thirteenth, to a fake outfit called the Waterways Transfer Co. ordering them to send the lugger Welcome to attack the salvage s.h.i.+p Hercules.

"That letter bears your own signature, Barvale. The man we have to thank for it" - he turned to Pointer Trame - "is Jerome Trebble. By this time, Mr.

Trebble, you have realized that we found all those valuable doc.u.ments that you were forced to leave in your cabin on the Marmora."

Pointer Trame nodded, almost mechanically. His eyes were looking past Vic Marquette, toward the opened boxes on the garage floor. Those eyes had lost their fake blink, although Marquette didn't notice it.

Somehow, Pointer Trame wasn't as pleased as he should have been, at clearing himself and s.h.i.+fting the entire blame to Hugh Barvale. His lips showed slight signs of a great fury that was stirring him. He was tightening one hand against his hip, when he looked past the boxes to stare toward the front street.

"Come along, Barvale," suggested Marquette. "You've seen enough here. I'm taking you back, to let you look over the other evidence - the papers that Mr.

Trebble spent a lot of money to gather."

By way of precaution, Vic started to slap a pair of handcuffs on Hugh Barvale. With the glimmer of the bracelets, there came a hurried stir from beyond the farthermost stack of boxes.

"Wait!" It was a girl's voice. Any other tone might have roused Marquette to action, but he simply stood back and looked, when he spied a black-haired brunette who was scrambling into sight. Whoever she was, she had something to tell, and she couldn't make trouble alone.

THE girl reached the group. Hugh Barvale was staring without recognizing her. He wasn't the man that she intended to accost. She was facing another man, the one whom Vic Marquette believed was Jerome Trebble.

"Do you know who I am?" demanded the girl. "Tell me, Mr. Trebble" - she gave the name sarcastically - "did you ever hear of Ruth Eldrey?"

Pointer Trame began to shake his head.

"Another lie," declared the girl, scornfully. She turned to Vic Marquette.

"This man who calls himself Jerome Trebble is actually a crook named Pointer Trame! He, alone, is responsible for all these crimes!

"I know, because I worked for him. His final plan was to s.h.i.+p all this swag away, leaving only a few boxes as evidence that would convict my" - she caught herself - "that would convict Hugh Barvale.

"He happened to place that task with me. I sent the van away empty. Along with these marked boxes" - the girl was pointing them out - "I kept all the rest. That is why Mr. Trame, alias Mr. Trebble, looks very unhappy at present!"

Pointer Trame did look unhappy, but he rallied from that mood. He wasn't beaten entirely; he still had a trump card. Pointer turned to Marquette.

"This girl," said Pointer, "is evidently Ruth Eldrey. By her own admission, she is a crook. We have trapped her, and she is trying to bluff out of it. How else can she explain her actions?"

For answer, the girl whipped away her dark wig. The transformation was startling, as her blond hair shook half down to her shoulders. It was Hugh Barvale who solved the riddle of that sudden change in ident.i.ty.

"Edna!" he exclaimed. "My daughter!"

"Now you should understand," interposed Edna, turning to Marquette. "I knew that my father was worried over his losses. I suspected that men he trusted were crooks. As Ruth Eldrey, I met men who were working in his warehouses.

"I learned that they were switching s.h.i.+pments before they went aboard the boats. Unfortunately, they knew that I had found it out. I had to join the mob for my own protection. I had to wait until I could safely inform the law.

Today, I found my first opportunity."

There was sincerity in Edna's tone, but it merely brought a chortle from Pointer Trame. The big-shot gave the laugh that was a perfect imitation of what Jerome Trebble's had been.

"The girl is working for her father," announced the big-shot. "She is trying to help him, that is all. She knows, for instance, that Barvale owns this garage -"

"Which he rented," put in Edna, "to persons who were working for you."

"She knows he moved into his town house," added Pointer, blandly, "so that he could be close to the swag. Why else would Hugh Barvale have left his home on Long Island?"

"Because he had to sell it," snapped Edna. "His insurance was not sufficient to meet his coming debts. Yet you wanted to bleed him of the funds that he owed to others, and declare himself a total bankrupt!"

THAT shot scored. It brought an exclamation from Hugh Barvale, wh.o.r.ealized, at last, the reason for Pointer's recent visit. There was something so genuine in Barvale's cry, that Pointer knew it would carry far.

Forgetting his part of Trebble, Pointer started to spring for Edna, intending to throttle the girl.

Sight of a gun muzzle stopped Pointer. The weapon was poked from above a stack of boxes; behind the gun was Harry Vincent, coolly announcing that another move would bring severe damage to Pointer Trame. The big-shot halted his surge.

Edna smiled. That meant a lot to Harry. He and Edna had become real pals, during the hours that they had waited for this climax. He'd wondered what was coming next, when she had released him from the pit below the grating, a long, long while ago.

Then Edna had told him.

Harry had misjudged her all along. She hadn't wanted to shoot him in her cabin on the Ozark; she'd merely wanted to keep her disguise unknown, by getting him away before crooks dropped in to talk to her. She hadn't given that tip-off at the Maritime Pier. It had been the work of Jorgin, who had actually recognized Harry.

In having the truckers throw him in the pit, Edna had been putting on an act to make the thugs admire her toughness. But after Harry had been imprisoned, she hadn't known what to do next, for she had no idea what Harry's actual purpose was.

The Shadow had solved Edna's dilemma. He had actually entered the garage.

Trapping Edna, he had heard her story and, for some reason, had already known its truth. He had written a message to Harry, and had given Edna the duty of releasing the prisoner, to hand him those instructions.

Teamed together, Edna and Harry had followed orders with exact.i.tude. They had broken Pointer Trame, making the big-shot give himself away. Nor was that all. Edna still had something to tell the helpless master crook.

"All that I hadn't known," said the girl, "I learned today - from The Shadow!"

Pointer went stiff; then gave a snarl that showed disbelief. He wouldn't fall for that statement, he was sure that The Shadow was dead. But Edna's testimony was backed, a moment later, by a low laugh that crept through the old garage.

Turning, Pointer saw The Shadow stepping in from the rear door. The arrival was no masquerader; Pointer could tell that, when he saw the burning eyes above The Shadow's cloak. To Pointer, that weird laugh brought recollections; told him suddenly why his shots aboard the yacht had failed.

Pa.s.sing as Raydorf, The Shadow had been alone in Pointer's cabin. The first thing that he had done there had been to take the bullets from Pointer's gun and subst.i.tute blank cartridges in their place. All during the fight aboard the Marmora, The Shadow had been totally immune to any shots delivered by Pointer Trame!

THE SHADOW arrived beside Vic Marquette, reached for the briefcase that the Fed held. From it, gloved hands extracted two sheaves of doc.u.ments. The Shadow placed the first batch upon a box, where Pointer Trame could see them.