Cliff dived beyond a projecting ledge of flowstone. The Condor’s single shot was too late; it clipped the edge of the rock.
Cliff shouted for Harry and the others. He heard the clatter of arriving footsteps. The Condor snarled hoarse defiance; then raised himself upon the rock and dropped his wiry body into the big cylinder.
His hands shot out to seize the cap, which stood on a ledge beside the tube. Harry saw the master crook’s head and arms; he fired rapid shots that sizzled within inches of Treft’s hands. Then the top of the cylinder clamped down; Treft had yanked it by an inside bar.
Marquette and Brock were here. Cliff was springing forward with Harry. Four men were out to capture The Condor in his tubelike nest. Before they retached the cylinder, it lurched; Treft had toppled it by jolting with his body.
Falling, the cylinder bounded from the rocky floor. It careened into the outlet at the end of the pool. For seconds, it wavered there; clutching hands of the invaders made snatches at its slippery surface.
Then the big cylinder swung end upward. Caught by the surge of the water, it jounced over the edge of the natural dam, through a central channel of the outlet. An instant later, The Condor’s submarine device was gone from sight.
Frustrated men stood gaping, their prey swallowed into the stream that roared to the depths within the sloping hillside.
No one had remained outside the captured lodge. Hence there was none to see the strange manifestation that occurred above ground while strange episodes were taking place below.
A flare had gone up from Table Rock. In answer to the signal, two lights were hovering from the darkness of the sky. Green and red, those glimmers settled to the ledge that had become The Shadow’s goal.
The Condor had escaped a host of pursuers. There was one, however, who had not given up the chase.
The Shadow, taking to the air by an arriving autogyro, was following The Condor, even though the fiend had chosen subterranean depths!
CHAPTER XXIV. SPOILS OF THE CONDOR
No noise of battle had reached the north side of the hill. The brow of the wooded mound had cut off sound from this further slope. Beside the old mill, only the ripple of the creek disturbed the hush of night.
A light was burning in the main room. There, Hiram Zegler was ordering his nephew Elisha in the accomplishment of a curious task. The two were stacking metal tubes of three-foot length. The cylinders were glistening with dripping water.
The door to the cellar was open. Zegler and Elisha had brought their burdens up from the stream below.
Elisha was expressing high-pitched liking for the task. Zegler’s half-witted nephew regarded the whole thing as a game.
“Say, this beats fishin’, Uncle Hiram!” the dolt was saying. “What do you reckon is inside these here metal bottles? They’re like the little ones you used to find in the net, hadn’t they? The little ones that had notes in them?”
“Shut up, you fool!” snarled Zegler. “We’ve got to load this swag in the car and make a get-away. These are the last of the lot, I guess, but there ought to be a small one coming. With a message, telling us where to head. Come on — we’re going down again.”
The pair descended the winding stairs. They reached the net; Zegler flashed a light into the meshwork. It showed no glimmer of the little tube that he expected.
“Mebbe the note’s in one of them big ones, uncle,” suggested Elisha. “How ‘bout us agoin’ up to look?”
“Sometimes you aren’t dumb,” commented Zegler. “That might be it. Well, we’ll wait here though. Just for sure. Something ought to ride along to tell us that we’ve got the whole shebang.”
Elisha uttered an inarticulate cry as he gripped his uncle’s shoulder. Pointing up the stream, the nephew indicated an object that was swinging out from beneath the floor boards at the right; through from that hidden channel that The Shadow had scented on his visit here.
“Hadn’t that one a monster!” exclaimed the dullard, finding words. “More’n six feet long, that fellow. The biggest ketch of the lot!”
Twisting free of low-hung timbers, a mammoth cylinder revolved into the net. As one end swung around, Zegler thrust bared arms into the water. He snarled to Elisha to help him. They brought the cylinder against the side of the stream.
Zegler snatched up a hooked bar and tugged the big tube upward. Elisha caught hold; they rolled the cylinder from the stream. Madly, Zegler twisted at the cap; it gave. Elisha gaped as he saw a head and shoulders thrust themselves from the tube.
ZEGLER aided the gray-haired arrival from his torpedolike craft. Griscom Treft crawled to his feet. Seen in the light from a lantern that glowed on the cellar wall, Treft’s face was the evil countenance of The Condor.
“I made it,” he rasped to Zegler. “With all the swag ahead of me, except some of the gold. It was too heavy; it would have sunk the cylinder. I left it in a box in the strong room.”
“Some of the tubes were mighty heavy weighted,” observed Zegler. “But that channel comes down mighty steep through the slope. Remember the time we tested it? Even them logs with iron hitched to them came through.”
Elisha was standing in a gawky attitude, listening. The Condor shot a look of alarm. He nudged Zegler.
“What’s the matter, Elisha?” demanded the miller. “Hearing something?”
“Thought I heerd an automobile,” returned Elisha. “Hadn’t sure, though. She seemed mighty high up; like she was a-comin’ over the hill. No noise now, though.”
“There’s no road over the hill,” snorted Zegler. “And there’s no cars go along this road. Don’t stand there mooning, Elisha!”
“Come on!” rasped The Condor. “There is a road around the hill. It will take pursuers half an hour to reach here, assuming that the fools have sense enough to guess that the outlet of the subterranean stream is at this mill.”
“Twelve miles around, if it’s a foot,” asserted Zegler, starting for the stairs. “But it’s not more than two, through that underground stream.”
“My passage required less than ten minutes,” announced The Condor, following while Elisha brought up the rear. “It was a swift trip, Zegler, but rough in spots. There are waterfalls within the hill.”
They had reached the top of the stairs. The Condor’s eyes gleamed as he surveyed his precious cylinders. All had come through ahead of him. Save for a few thousands in gold, The Condor’s swag was intact.
“Fetch up the net, Elisha,” began Zegler. “We’re clearing out of here right now—”
“No time!” rasped The Condor. “We’re taking that north road, Zegler, the one we picked in case of flight. No one will think of following it.”
“Things went bad at the lodge?”
“Completely. The sheriff is there with sixty men! I alone was clever enough to escape. Come! Let us carry these cylinders to your car. We have a million here; your share will be greater, Zegler.”
The miller motioned to his nephew. They hoisted a three-foot cylinder. The Condor began to raise another, choosing a lighter one. Suddenly, he dropped the burden. His lips delivered a sharp, warning cry. Zegler stopped short with Elisha. Like The Condor, they stared toward the rear door.
A figure had arrived there. Tall, sinister, it had developed out of nothingness. The Shadow, cloaked in black, his fierce eyes burning their challenge, was here to stay The Condor’s flight!
THE SHADOW’S autogyro had come from Southbridge, handled by Miles Crofton, The Shadow’s skillful pilot. It had hovered above Table Rock; it had descended at The Shadow’s signal. Taking to the air again, the ship had come directly here.
Elisha had heard its motor. The ending of the sound had been the beginning of the autogyro’s straight descent to the clearing by the dimly lighted mill. The Shadow had picked this place as one that must be reached, no matter how the fight had turned at Mountview Lodge.