By the light of the corridor, Hollis could see the prone form of Joseph Rubal. The curator’s face showed pallid and distorted. Gasping lips and pleading eyes registered themselves to the chief attendant’s gaze. Hollis stooped beside the dying curator.
“Mr. Rubal!” blurted the attendant. “Tell me — what has happened—”
“Knode!” gasped the curator weakly. “Harrison Knode! He — he shot me; I’m dying—”
“Knode?” questioned Hollis. “Knode shot you? But — but where — where did he—”
HOLLIS paused abruptly. He caught a sound from straight ahead. The attendant looked up, then came slowly to his feet. He was looking toward the door of the filing room, where he could detect a slight motion.
Whirling impressions swept through the attendant’s brain. Finding Joseph Rubal on the floor, Hollis had first thought the curator stricken by a heart attack. Rubal’s words had astounded him; then had come this interruption.
Motionless, Hollis stared at that door. He realized that the murderer stood there; that the slayer had chosen the filing room as a lurking spot. Hollis did not picture what had happened. He did not know that Rubal, stepping from the filing room, had been a perfect target against a background of light.
Nor did he realize that he had stepped into a similar situation. With the light of the corridor behind him, Hollis was another target. His first cognizance of that fact came when he saw what Rubal had seen: the glimmer of a revolver.
Hollis uttered a hoarse cry. He started forward, hopelessly. Flame tongued through the darkened office; with it, the fierce sigh of the silencer-fitted gun. The second shot proved better than the first. Hollis doubled crazily and tottered.
Joseph Rubal delivered a last croaking gasp from the floor. Then Hollis came tumbling squarely on his body. The chief attendant gave a final writhe and rolled from the curator’s dead form. Side by side, Rubal and Hollis lay dead.
THE murderer did not turn on the light. Instead, he prowled about the room with a flashlight. He picked up the letters that Rubal had dropped upon the floor. He found the resignation and added it to the letters. He gathered up Rubal’s notations, including the marked plan of the museum. Then he extinguished his flash.
Stepping past the dead bodies, the killer sidled to the door. But he did not move into the corridor; wary, he wanted to avoid its revealing light, despite the fact that he had become the only living man remaining in the Latuna Museum.
An arm came into the corridor, reaching around the corner from the office door. A hand found a light switch that controlled the corridor lights. Three clicks. The pathway from office to the big front door was a mass of blackness.
Unaided even by his flashlight, the killer moved out of Rubal’s office and made his way along the corridor to the front of the museum. He reached the steps by the big front door and felt his way to the barrier. Groping, he found the bar and raised it. He swung the huge door inward, stepped out into the night and closed the door behind him.
A clouded sky had brought pitch-blackness to the ground. Even the whitened front of the museum was barely visible. The building looked a dim, ghostly sepulchre in the darkness. Its deathlike appearance was appropriate; for it had become the tomb for two murdered victims.
The killer gave a low, evil laugh as he stalked away from the museum of death. Treading hard clay soil, he left no footprints behind him. He found a hard-beaten path in the darkness and descended the hill in back of the museum until he arrived at an old road near the quarry siding.
Tiny lights were flickering half a mile away. The killer watched them bob and scatter. Then he kept on moving through the dark. They were doing night blasting at the isolated quarry. A hundred yards along the road, the murderer paused while a muffled boom resounded and the earth gave a slight shudder.
Then, as clattering rocks came tumbling down the neighboring hillside, the unseen killer turned from the road and stepped amid a thick cluster of trees. He flicked his flashlight on the stony surface of an abandoned road. The glimmer showed an old coupe, parked in readiness. The killer extinguished his torch.
Entering the car, this man of murder turned on the dim lights and started the motor. He drove bounding along the old road, curving off through trees, away from both the museum and the quarry. He reached a highway and began a curving course in the direction of Latuna.
Double death had struck tonight. With evil aforethought, a murderer had spelled finish to the affairs of Joseph Rubal. Then, as a final touch, the killer had lurked to deliver death to the only man who might have served as witness for the law.
He had slain Hollis, the man who knew. With the chief attendant dead beside the slain curator, it would take the efforts of a master sleuth to pin crime on the fiend who had committed it.
CHAPTER XI
AT THE PHOENIX HOTEL
SHORTLY after murder had been enacted at the Latuna Museum, a stranger entered the lobby of the Wilkin Hotel, Latuna’s most pretentious hostelry. There was something about the arrival’s bearing that was oddly reminiscent of Lamont Cranston.
The stranger in Latuna was tall, like Cranston; his face was hawklike and immobile; yet his whole visage was squarer and heavier than that of the New York millionaire. Moreover, his complexion was darker than Cranston’s.
The new guest at the Wilkin registered under the name of Henry Arnaud; his address: Cleveland, Ohio. He was given a room on the sixth floor front. Arrived there, Arnaud seemed satisfied. He dismissed the bell hop with a tip.
Moving his heavy suitcases from the luggage rack by the window, Henry Arnaud gazed out toward the town’s main street. Half a block away was the Phoenix Hotel. Watching the front of that building, Arnaud spied two men entering the hotel. One was Bart Drury; the other Clyde Burke. Arnaud’s eyes gleamed as he recognized the latter.
A soft laugh came from immobile lips as the new guest withdrew from the window. As Henry Arnaud, The Shadow had come unannounced to Latuna. His first purpose had been to learn how Clyde Burke was faring. Already, The Shadow had spied his agent.
Leaving his room, The Shadow descended to the lobby of the Wilkin. In the methodical fashion of Henry Arnaud, he strolled out to the street. He crossed the main thoroughfare and entered the Phoenix Hotel.
The Shadow discovered a large, glittering lobby that was cluttered with various slot machines. These devices were of a non-gambling type and had evidently passed police inspection. For tonight, two khaki-clad policemen were on duty; and they seemed mildly interested in watching the players at the game boards.
Bart Drury was seated in a corner chair, smoking a fat cigar. He had a complete view of the lobby and the small taproom that adjoined it. Near Bart was Clyde Burke, also on the watch.
Both were so concerned, however, with their more distant watching that they failed to notice the stranger who took a chair just past a potted palm tree to Drury’s right. In fact, neither man saw the inconspicuous figure of Henry Arnaud.
Listening, The Shadow overheard the conversation between Drury and Burke.
“Grewling’s got two cops on the job tonight,” laughed Bart. “Guess the old man got results with that editorial.”
“Are any of the riffraff around?” questioned Clyde.
“Sure,” returned Bart. “There’s a couple by the cigar stand. The rest are in the taproom.”
“I don’t see any cops in there.”
“Two detectives.” Bart paused to puff at his cigar. “Look through there to the corner table. See that guy with the funny-looking face? He’s one of Grewling’s dicks. Mushmug, we call him.”