The others stood petrified beside the door. Well did they know the reason for the gangster’s action. Silence — caution — both were thrown aside in the fervor of that moment.
The leading gunman had recognized the laugh of The Shadow! In desperation, he had sought to end the menace of that sinister being whose very name brought terror to the underworld!
THIS mobsman — one of the few who had escaped uninjured from the affray at the Cathcart estate — had forgotten all else in his mad desire to square accounts with The Shadow. Transfixed in the center of the room, the mobster waited, expecting to see a black-clad figure come plunging from the swaying curtain.
Instead, The Shadow appeared from an unexpected quarter. Like a specter of doom, his inky shape arose from the chair that stood a few feet away from the window. There, The Shadow had reached forth to shake the curtain. His ruse had been effective. The first gunman had fired in the wrong place.
“The Shadow!”
The cry came from a man at the door, and before the firing gangster realized it, he was confronted by the fearful figure itself. The muzzles of two automatics faced him like the mouths of defending cannons. With a fiendish scream, the first of the mobsmen turned his revolver and sought to fire.
Before he could press the trigger, one of The Shadow’s heavy weapons spoke. A bullet clipped the gangster’s arm. He staggered back, weaponless.
Another shot resounded, and with one accord the gunmen scrambled for the safety of the hall, the wounded gangster with them.
Strangely enough, The Shadow’s second shot had struck no one. It had not been delivered with that purpose. It was meant to drive the gangsters back — not to injure them.
As the four men scurried through the door, the gangster who guarded the barrier sought to stop The Shadow. He swung the door shut, and jammed the muzzle of his revolver through the closing space in an effort to shoot the black-clad figure that now was sweeping forward.
Once more, The Shadow fired. He picked the crevice, his bullet touching wood on neither side. It lodged in the gunman’s shoulder, and the wounded rat fled, screaming, his revolver falling as he ran.
The gangsters had spread when they ran from the room. Five in all, the wounded men dashed toward the entrance to the fire tower. The other three, anxious to thwart The Shadow from a place of security, headed toward a flight of stairs along the corridor.
New men were coming in from the fire tower. All were hastily preparing to resist, should The Shadow appear. They had not reckoned with the method that the black-garbed fighter would employ.
The door of the apartment opened inward, away from the fire tower. That door was ajar. The Shadow’s left hand reached it; the right hand, with its automatic, held a thin, blackened tube of telescopic metal. It placed this tube against the crevice, and The Shadow’s hidden eye peered into the lengthened cylinder.
Mirrored lenses in the tube made it a miniature periscope. Through this device — the object itself was unnoticed by the gunmen waiting on the stairs — The Shadow directed the aim of his left hand.
The quick shots that he fired were dispatched with deadly effect. The first downed a gangster at the top of the steps. The man plunged screaming as his companions dived after him — to be clipped by other bullets as they leaped for safety.
WITH swift, easy motion, The Shadow dropped his left-hand automatic within the folds of his cloak. The left hand then gripped the sighting tube, giving it a gentle shake that caused it to extend beyond the doorway. The right hand, simultaneously, drew forth an automatic. In scarcely more than a second, The Shadow had transferred his aim to the men at the fire tower.
They had heard the shots; they had seen the effect of the bullets. Waiting by the tower door, they wanted only an opportunity to bag The Shadow.
But before their chance came, the right hand was thrust forth from the door. Quick shots greeted the disconcerted gunmen. One fell dead; the others slipped to safely just in time, seizing their fallen comrade as his body dropped with them.
The Shadow was in the corridor now, striding swiftly after those who were fleeing down the tower. He leaped through the doorway, and his shots echoed down the stairway, where two skulking mobsters had paused grimly to await him. He beat the gangsters to the shot. Both fell before The Shadow’s bullets.
From his vantage post, The Shadow raked the courtyard with deadly leaden missiles. Cries and curses testified to the perfection of his marksmanship. Those hidden eyes seemed to possess the power to pierce into the darkness. Scrambling gangsters dived for the exit from the court.
Some escaped wounded; others were either killed or so severely hurt that they could not follow. A few wild shots were fired upward, but The Shadow had anticipated them. Crouching behind the rail of the tower, his huddled form offered no target to the hopeless shooters.
A loud, unearthly laugh sounded from the landing on the tower. It was The Shadow’s triumphant mockery — the strident mirth that gloried in another stunning victory over gangdom’s minions.
As the eerie tones died away in the night air, the sound of police whistles came from the street beyond the court. The racing motor of an automobile was the token of the few escaping gangsters fleeing to avoid the coming of the law.
Striding back through the corridor, The Shadow carefully gathered up the weapons that had been dropped by fleeing gangsters. At the stairway, The Shadow paused. There were sounds from below — startled cries two stories down. One gangster lay dead upon the landing.
Swiftly, The Shadow descended. He seized the prone body, and swung it with him to the floor below, flinging the motionless form along the corridor. The Shadow fired three shots with a gangster’s revolver, aiming at spots along the wall. He flung this revolver and the others on the floor.
Sweeping up the steps, he stopped at the landing long enough to seize the weapon that had belonged to the dead gangster, and toss it to the bottom of the steps. A few seconds later, the tall figure in black reentered Maurice Traymer’s apartment and closed the door.
IT was half an hour later when Maurice Traymer returned to his apartment house. The society man was taken aback when he encountered uniformed police in charge. One officer stopped Traymer.
“You live here, buddy?” he questioned.
The doorman saw Traymer, and hastened to explain to the police.
“Mr. Traymer lives on the fourth floor, sir,” he said. “He went out some fifteen minutes before the trouble started—”
“O.K.,” said the officer who had accosted Traymer. “Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Traymer. There was a gang fight busted loose while you were out.”
“A gang fight?” questioned Traymer, feigning surprise.
“Sure thing,” grinned the officer. “On the third floor. That’s where we found the walls shot up, and a dead gunman laying. A couple came down this way and flopped. We sent them to the hospital. The rest beat it by the fire escape. Plenty of shooting out in the courtyard. Looks like they’ve all scattered, but we’re going to be on duty for a while.”
When Traymer reached his apartment, his first action was to lock the door behind him. Then he opened the door of the room where he had left Lamont Cranston.
To Traymer’s consternation, he saw the white-shirted figure of his guest still reclining on the bed. Traymer turned on the light. He studied Cranston’s inscrutable profile. The man’s eyelid began to flicker.
Traymer stood by while Cranston moved sleepily. He watched the millionaire begin to blink. Then Cranston, with the action of a man awaking from a coma, stared groggily, looking at Traymer as though he did not know who he was.