One was the front door, above a flight of brownstone steps. The other was a side portal which showed at a narrow passage beside the old house. Apparently, the apartment building — if it could be entitled to such distinction — was practically untenanted.
Blackness showed upon the brownstone steps. To Harry and Cliff, one hundred feet away, the forming shape was invisible. A cloaked figure reached the blackened door of the house. The barrier yielded to The Shadow’s touch. Easing inward, the entering visitant avoided the issuance of light from the gloomy hall. His tall form filling the opened space of the door, The Shadow succeeded in this purpose.
Ghostlike, The Shadow climbed a flight of stairs. He reached the third floor, after passing silent doors.
He found the entrance to the specified apartment. The door yielded to his touch. He stepped into a living room— crudely furnished — that was lighted by a single floor lamp.
In spectral fashion, The Shadow peered into the other rooms. The apartment was deserted. The Shadow knew that no one could have observed his arrival. He closed the door to the outer hall. He looked toward a corner of the living room.
An envelope was lying on a tall, clumsy taboret. The Shadow approached the spot and stopped. He knew that this was a trap. He made no effort to touch the taboret. Instead, he bent slowly forward. His hand, coming from beneath his cloak, drew an automatic.
A whispered laugh came from The Shadow’s lips. It was sneering challenge of contempt. It was a token of The Shadow’s sinister mockery to any hiding foe. Such was the purpose of The Shadow’s laugh; the result that it produced was unexpected.
The top of the taboret snapped open, in two portions. As the envelope fluttered to the floor, steel cylinders shot upward, like an opening spyglass. A rounded object, like a head of metal; a larger cylinder that served as body; then, in a twinkling, four armlike rods snapped forward.
Before The Shadow could swing clear, metal hands had caught his form in a viselike clutch. Pounding rods were swinging from the mechanical creature that had popped into view. The Shadow was fighting with a man of steel — a form that had no legs, for its body was anchored in the taboret.
Battling against four arms that plunged like pistons; double-actioned bars that swung like hammers also, The Shadow was in the clutch of a mechanical killer.
A murderer placed here by order of Charg! A robot that could fight with ten times the power of a human.
Such was the monstrous enemy that had caught The Shadow in its toils!
CHAPTER XVIII. AGENT VERSUS AGENT
IN a time space of one second, The Shadow had learned the power of Charg. The master sleuth had divined that Charg’s killers were creatures of small size but excessive weight. He had not, however, counted upon their expansive qualities.
Meldon Fallow had been crushed by beating arms of steel when a robot killer had popped from the rear portion of his desk. Herbert Whilton had been slain by a device which must have acted in a forward fashion, issuing from the box on the dumbwaiter lift.
The robot which The Shadow now fought was one of the type that had slain Fallow. It had been placed here in an apartment which was a trap. The taboret was anchored to the floor.
To The Shadow’s quick brain, all was apparent; moreover, another factor was explained. The starter of the robot was the vibration of a voice. Fallow’s slayer had been tuned to the inventor’s mumble; Dyke’s to the chemist’s basso; this slaying machine to The Shadow’s laugh!
Recorded sounds had been arranged to put machinery in motion, each for the particular victim whom the robot was set to kill. The robot would not respond to other sounds. This mechanical creature which The Shadow fought was here to encounter him alone!
Though such thoughts flashed through The Shadow’s brain, his physical form was busy with a desperate task. Fighting furiously, The Shadow was trying to break loose from this mangler that held him. His automatic, descending, clicked against a plunging arm. The weapon clattered to the floor.
Two viselike rods encircled The Shadow’s body. Crushing, they gripped against his ribs while the other pair of metal plungers swung downward toward his head. With superhuman strength, The Shadow warded off the beating blows; with one arm dropping, he jolted a rod that gripped his body.
Metal hands, clawlike and sharp, clutched for The Shadow’s throat. The black form twisted in the lower grip. The hands ripped away the collar of The Shadow’s cloak. Then, as The Shadow vainly sought to catch a rising arm, a steel rod pounded downward toward his skull.
A fling of The Shadow’s arm; the fabric of the felt hat; these were all that stopped the full force of the robot’s blow. The stroke that fell upon The Shadow’s head was stunning, but no more. Groggily, The Shadow balked another swing. Writhing, he tried to offset the force of lower pistons that were aiming for his ribs.
OTHERS had succumbed rapidly to the robot method of attack. Only a fierce fight — action as rapid as that of the mechanical killer itself — could save The Shadow from terrible death. Battling with all his might, The Shadow was holding his own, despite the pounding that he had received.
But bone and flesh could not stay steel indefinitely. Though The Shadow put the fight on even terms, he could not harm the robot. Moreover, The Shadow’s strength was due to weaken; the mechanical killer could keep on indefinitely.
Twisting in the grip of the lower rods, The Shadow surged upward. He jammed a knee against a mechanical arm. He caught the smashing upper pistons with his powerful fists. It seemed a hopeless effort; yet it was a tribute to The Shadow’s unyielding spirit.
Ready for death, grimly battling against an irresistible force, The Shadow sought a last triumph. He would, at least, hold Charg’s killer at bay if only for a fleeting instant.
Plunges shortened. Gripping rods were stayed. Pounds were caught by The Shadow’s gloved fists. With slouch hat tilted over his eyes, with cloak half ripped from his body, The Shadow forced a temporary stale-mate.
Like a man of iron, he gripped this killer of steel. With head bent forward, he became a living statue. The lamplight showed a strange, unbelievable tableau; a figure, in tattered black, rigid in the grip of a four-armed thing of steel.
Motion ceased as The Shadow flung his last ounce of strength into this hopeless contest. He had gained the only victory that he might have — a triumph that could last for seconds only, against the pounding, battering fury of those metal arms.
Then, of a sudden, came the strangest feature of the conflict. Steel arms shot inward from The Shadow’s grasp. The black form lost its hold and tumbled to the floor as the steel cylinders dropped downward.
The robot’s head clicked into its body. The open portions of the taboret fell into place.
The mechanical killer had disappeared. It had given up the fight. Only The Shadow remained in view, a crumpled form upon the floor. His strength was spent. His final effort had left him half-unconscious, battered and bruised, yet released from the relentless arms which had encircled him!
Through sheer endeavor, The Shadow had gained a result which no other had ever obtained against Charg’s killers. The robot had been designed to spring forth at the sound of the proper voice vibration. It had been set to pummel and smash its victim to death. But also, it possessed a third mechanical action — a simple device that the designer thought was perfect.
These robots were made to fight only so long as they encountered motion. With Fallow and Dyke, mechanical killers had battered their victims to death; when the bodies had stilled, the robots had automatically released and dropped into their cramped hiding places.
Such would have happened with The Shadow, had he merely kept on struggling. But through his strength; through his mad desire to show that he could stay those pounding arms, though only for mere seconds, The Shadow had brought a temporary cessation of action.