SOON after sending Stanley home, with Talney as a passenger, The Shadow approached Lenfell's gloomy house, but not as Lamont Cranston. The Shadow was cloaked, the proper guise for this occasion. In a way, he had borrowed an idea from Talney, based on the latter's tale of the secret six.
Since hooded men had moved in and out of Lenfell's practically at will, a cloaked visitor should find the same process satisfactory. But The Shadow was not taking this expedition as a sinecure.
From Talney's account, he inferred that Lenfell had given the servants evenings off whenever he expected his hooded friends - or dupes - to visit him.
Lenfell's house was an index to that fact. It was not as gloomy or formidable as Talney had described it.
The Shadow saw lights that appeared to be in the kitchen; others, on the third floor. Unquestionably, there were servants about. But when The Shadow glided to the side door and tried it, he found it unlocked.
The Shadow paused just inside. If Lenfell expected no more visits from his five companions in the secret six, why was the door unlocked? There was a plausible answer: the servants.
Probably Lenfell locked the doors himself; otherwise the servants, in the past, might have unwittingly blocked out the hooded visitors. It wouldn't be wise for Lenfell suddenly to change that policy over night, particularly on a night when murder was rampant.
Finding Lenfell's study was doubly easy. Talney had mentioned its location; from outside, The Shadow had seen a light in the room. Of all mysterious visitors who had entered Lenfell's house, none moved with more stealth than did The Shadow as he took the side stairway to the second floor. None, that was, except Jan Garmath, on the occasion when the elderly gem maker had returned to eavesdrop at Lenfell's study.
So far as the servants were concerned The Shadow's stealth was superfluous. None was close enough to overhear his approach to the study. The Shadow was thinking purely in terms of Lenfell, and when he reached the study, his gliding arrival gave proof of dividends. Through the door, which was ajar, The Shadow saw Lenfell seated at the desk.
Only a lamp gave light. It was on the desk, and its rays were directed toward a sheaf of letters. Lenfell was leaning forward in his chair, one elbow on the desk; his face, though away from the light's glare, was plainly directed toward the stack of letters. His other hand gripped a fountain pen, ready to affix a signature.
Easing the door open, The Shadow performed a quick, roundabout glide, skirting the desk in darkness.
An automatic drawn, he approached Lenfell and stopped short of the seated man's shoulder. One nudge of the gun muzzle, Lenfell would be helpless.
But The Shadow did not touch Lenfell with the muzzle. He did not even brush the back of the chair. He did feel a floor board give loosely beneath his foot, but he suppressed its creak by adding pressure.
That same board ran beneath a leg of Lenfell's chair. It might have jarred the chair a fraction of an inch, but not enough for Lenfell to have noticed it, because a slight shift of his own body would have produced the same motion. In fact, Lenfell did not notice the effect at all; nevertheless, the result was large.
Lenfell's pen hand slid across the desk. It flopped past the edge, and its weight carried him with it. Rolling from the chair, the financier struck the floor and stretched there. His broad face, though turned upward, was not in the light, but his left hand was. It lay across his chest, and upon the third finger The Shadow saw a ring.
Not a ring with a sapphire, real or synthetic. The ring contained a specimen of very pure glass, as colorless as other worthless pieces of junk jewelry that The Shadow had viewed earlier.
Normally broad, Lenfell's face did not look bloated away from the light, but when The Shadow tilted the lamp toward it, the condition was plainly discernible.
The Shadow had come to meet the master of crime. He had found Armand Lenfell. The two were not the same, however deep Lenfell's schemes, no matter what part he had played in the strange plot of murder. For no man of hideous crime would have numbered himself among the victims.
Armand Lenfell was stone dead, struck down by the same virulent poison that had taken the lives of others whose fingers bore rings of doom!
A low, grim laugh whispered in the darkness above the dead figure on the floor. It was still The Shadow's task to find a master mind of murder!
CHAPTER XV. CREEP OF DOOM
UNDER the lamplight, Lenfell's face seemed to grimace upward at the eyes above it, as though the man enjoyed the death that had come his way. Certainly, Lenfell had more cause to grin in death than in life.
Had he been living at this moment, he would not have grinned at all.
There wasn't a doubt that Lenfell had betrayed the trust that others had placed in him. But his crimes did not include murder. Lenfell, alone, could point the finger upon the master plotter who had gone still further, to trick him along with his dupes.
Lenfell's knowledge, however, was locked as tightly as the teeth that gritted from the midst of his wide death grin.
The trouble was that Lenfell had known too little. Had he known enough, he would not have been lying dead.
Thinking in terms of the unlocked door below, The Shadow came to a new conclusion. There was another reason why that door was open, and a good one. It could mean that Lenfell still expected visits from members of the secret six, not knowing that death was to befall them. A good explanation, since it gave a plausible reason for Lenfell's own death.
Considering the complexities that Lenfell's death produced, The Shadow turned toward the large safe that stood at the rear of the financier's study. Catching the glow of the lamplight, the glistening bulk added challenge of its own.
Like its owner, Lenfell, the safe refused to talk. But it might be possible to pry facts from the safe, instead of Lenfell's grinning jaws. Stepping to the safe, The Shadow crouched, pressed his gloved fingers against the dial.
Before he could test the intricate combination, The Shadow was attracted by a sound outside the study.
It came as a slow creeping, and it was close, yet elusive, as it traveled along the hall.
Having heard no creaks from the stairs, The Shadow was sure that the creeping arrival must have been cautious while coming up from the ground floor, only to drop the guarded manner as he neared Lenfell's study.
Adding that to previous facts, The Shadow found the answer.
The man whose creeps were coming closer was the murderer of Armand Lenfell!
Such logic was perfect. In his own approach, The Shadow had moved silently all the way. The newcomer had done the same only as far as the second floor. He was taking pains to avoid being heard by servants in the kitchen, but once near Lenfell's study, he did not care what sounds he made. It meant that the approacher knew that he would find Lenfell dead.
Properly translated, the facts proved that this was Lenfell's murderer. If not, the creeper would still be using caution.
Turning from the safe, The Shadow sidled into darkness, drawing an automatic, to await the appearance of the creeping criminal who was in the hall. Yet, even to The Shadow's skilled ears, the approaching sound was elusive. At moments, it seemed close, then far away until, when The Shadow did not actually expect it, a huddling figure showed itself within the doorway.
Even when close, the creeping man's face could not be distinguished. The Shadow, himself, was partially to blame. He had turned the lamp so it no longer shone toward the door. Creeping footsteps entered, their maker with them, and the huddling man kept looking toward the desk for a sight of Lenfell. The action turned his face away from The Shadow.
Of one thing only was The Shadow certain: that this was not Dwig Brencott, nor any of the slick crook's crew. This was the master criminal, in person, the conniver who had somehow managed to pass death along with the faulty sapphires that Lenfell had given out.