The switches which The Shadow ignored were the two that he knew must control the dropping of the elevator and the lowering of the portal on this side of the anteroom. Leaping to the side of the rising canopy, The Shadow was thus able to glimpse the final flight of Thade. He saw The Death Giver, glancing backward as he ran, making a frantic effort to gain the elevator, with its protecting door.
BUT The Shadow saw what Thade did not see. The lift was rising! The Shadow had pressed the switch which sent it upward. The Shadow’s automatic spoke. The aim of that hand never erred. Had The Shadow chosen to kill Thade with the shot, he would have done so. But this bullet was a warning that whizzed beside The Death Giver’s evil face.
It was The Shadow’s offer to let Thade live, if the murderer chose to go back into the hands of the law.
The Death Giver emitted a gloating cry. He was at the elevator shaft, and he thought that The Shadow’s aim had failed. Not knowing that the lift had risen almost to the top of the door, Thade leaped to the spot where the elevator had been.
The Shadow saw a sickly look of horror come over the ghastly, green-hued face as the robed monster missed his footing. Where Thade had expected solid floor he found nothing. His cry became a long, piercing shriek that died away to nothingness as the evil fiend plunged to his doom.
From the top of the secret shaft to the bottom, the full height of the towering building — that was the sequel to Thade’s mad flight. The laugh of The Shadow sounded as a fitting knell to the end of the master villain.
The black-clad victor was in the anteroom. His tall figure was merging with the gloomy walls. Out of sight, The Shadow, enfolded behind curtains of green, had left the field to the rescued forces of the law.
With quick precision, The Shadow had counteracted the efforts of Thade and his Nubian servants. He had saved Cardona and the detectives from certain death. The Death Giver’s mad career of murder had come to a fitting end.
No more would mysterious death be rampant. No longer would the threat of terrible, unseen crime hang over unsuspecting victims. The Death Giver and his underlings had perished to a man; and the plotting monster had been the last to die.
Justice had triumphed over evil. In the encounter, The Death Giver had fallen before the might of the avenger who had sought and found him in his hidden abode.
That meeting had marked a villain’s end. The Shadow, not Thade, was now the master of death!
CHAPTER XXII. THE PUBLIC LEARNS
AT noon, the next day, Detective Joe Cardona entered the office of Commissioner Ralph Weston. The commissioner arose to greet the ace detective. He clasped Cardona’s hand in a warm shake. When the detective had seated himself across from the commissioner, he placed an envelope upon the table.
Weston opened the envelope and read the paper that he found within. It was Cardona’s resignation.
Without a word, the commissioner tore up the document and threw the pieces in the wastebasket. He thumped a stack of newspapers that lay upon the desk.
“These are what I wanted!” exclaimed the commissioner. “Forget the resignation. These will do instead. Now give me the details.”
“They’re in the newspapers,” grinned Cardona.
“I want your story,” asserted Weston.
Briefly, the detective recounted what had happened. He admitted that he had received a tip-off. He had learned of The Death Giver’s high abode. He and his men had found the secret elevator; they had gone to the top; had surprised Thade; and had then been trapped.
Somehow, good fortune had aided them. The heavy canopy had lifted, and they had discovered the dead bodies of the Nubians. Evidently Thade had decided to kill his servants, and one of them, while dying, had pressed the switch to raise the canopy, in order that the detectives could avenge the death.
Searching through Thade’s abode, the detectives had learned the identity of the monster. He was Lucius Olney, an old inventor, disappeared a year before.
In the apartment on the floor above Thade’s lair, Cardona had discovered records which Thade had kept. These included diaries which recounted many details of The Death Giver’s evil deeds.
At first, the detectives had supposed that Thade had managed to escape. The elevator was on the floor above. Experiment with the switches on Thade’s chair enabled them to lower it. When they found that Thade was not hiding on the floor above, they made a search of the elevator shaft.
There, at the bottom, they had found the body of Lucius Olney, the man who called himself Thade, The Death Giver. The green-robed frame was a crushed and twisted thing. In life, The Death Giver had seemed inhuman; in death, he had become a shapeless mass that resembled no existing creature.
To-day, two bodies had been found in other places. Harlan Treffin had been discovered dead, in a closet on the ground floor of his home. Paul Roderick had been found shot to death in a downtown office building.
Thade’s records showed that these men were his underlings. Their deaths were largely a matter of conjecture. It was possible that Thade himself had left his strange abode to slay them. One thing was certain: death had ended the monstrous career of the fiendish Death Giver. Mysterious crimes had been solved.
COMMISSIONER WESTON was loud in his praise. He thumped the newspapers time and again as Cardona gave his statements. It was a triumph for the detective; but when Cardona left the commissioner’s office, he breathed a long sigh of relief.
For the ace detective had hedged and dodged a dozen questions that Weston had put to him — all in an effort to avoid mentioning one point that would have set the commissioner ablaze with wrath.
Well did Cardona know the source of the mysterious tip-off. It had come from The Shadow. His plans when he had led his squad to Thade’s abode had been inspired from a higher source. They were the result of orders from The Shadow. A sinister voice over the telephone had told Detective Cardona what to do.
The ace detective knew how the Nubians had perished and how Thade had gone to his doom. The Shadow was responsive for the end of the monster and his turbaned minions.
As for Treffin and Roderick, Cardona was sure that The Shadow could have explained their deaths; for the finding of those bodies had followed another mysterious telephone call that Cardona had received this very morning.
Moreover, Cardona had a hunch. When the detectives had emerged from the shrouding canopy, one of them had brought the elevator down by pressing a button. Another button had lowered the portal to the anteroom. The same detective had pressed other switches; and had finally raised the outer portal.
Entering the anteroom, Cardona had been surprised to find the door of the elevator shaft closed! While standing there, in wonderment, the ace had felt a swish of air. Opening the door, he had found the elevator back again.
Cardona had figured out the answer. The Shadow must have been in the anteroom. When the portal had dropped, he had gone into the lift in anticipation of more switch-pushing. He had gone to the bottom of the shaft in the car; and his hand had sent the elevator back on its upward journey.
In the triumph that now was his, Cardona felt the pangs of a guilty conscience. He, presumably, had solved the riddle of The Death Giver. He and his men had managed to end the murderous career of the monster, Thade.
Actually, all had been managed by The Shadow. The invading detectives had not helped him one iota; on the contrary, they had made his task more difficult. Joe Cardona, honest and fair-minded, longed to shout forth his tribute to The Shadow himself.
But who would believe the story? No one. It would open Cardona to ridicule instead of glory. It would be unfair to The Shadow, himself.