Dropping hat and cloak, The Shadow stepped into sight, as Cranston, just as he heard a girl's low, anxious voice:
"Lamont!"
It was Margo. The Shadow gave a quiet response as he stepped into sight. Margo clutched his arm across the banister. She didn't ask why he had gone from sight when the men from the truck entered.
Margo had something more to tell.
"Those men who came in -"
"I saw them, Margo," The Shadow interposed. "The two in uniform."
"But did you see the third?"
The Shadow shook his head.
"I did!" blurted Margo. "He was Dwig Brencott!"
In a style that was rapid for Cranston, The Shadow took a look out to the street. The truck was a short distance ahead, and no one in it appeared to be keeping lookout. Drawing Margo from the doorway, The Shadow pointed her to her car.
"Have the motor running," he said calmly. "Others may be along. If they come too close, get started.
Circle the block, and should they follow you, blow the horn. I'll recognize it."
Margo smiled despite her tensity. Her car had a musical chime that played "East Side - West Side," and very probably crooks like Dwig Brencott wouldn't be running around with horns of that type, hence Lamont wouldn't have much trouble identifying the right note.
With Margo gone, The Shadow picked up his cloak and hat in rapid time. He was donning them as he hurried up the stairs. Though speedy, he was quiet, for he wanted to see where the husky guard was. The fellow had gone from the door, leaving the way clear.
Sliding into the large room, The Shadow neared the door of Sherbrock's workshop office and was flat against the wall when the husky guardian came out, leaving the door ajar.
Peering through, The Shadow saw that Margo was right. The third man from the truck was Dwig. He was wearing street clothes, and he was leaning over Sherbrock's shoulder while the lapidary sorted a large array of jewelry that strewed the desk. On either side stood the two guards, watching the process.
A gun half drawn, The Shadow was waiting for a timely moment to move in on the conference, when he heard a hoarse shout from the guard at the outer door. As The Shadow turned, a surge of men came straight for Sherbrock's office, hurling the human watchdog ahead of them. So impetuous was their dash, that they flanked in upon The Shadow before he could wheel away.
Twisting back across the doorway, The Shadow tried to trick the sudden attackers by a reverse dive in the opposite direction - a move that would have succeeded, had not one stalwart supplied a lucky flying tackle that carried himself and The Shadow right through the doorway, into the light of Sherbrock's office, where they rolled aside, just clear of the trample from incoming feet.
It was then that The Shadow gave his tackler a further fling and came up, gun in hand, to meet a somewhat dazed opponent who had a revolver, but who was slow in bringing it to aim.
Finger on trigger, The Shadow could have fired, but didn't. He recognized the face of the fellow who had tackled him and come out worse in the sprawl. It was the swarthy countenance that belonged to Inspector Joe Cardona!
These men weren't more of Dwig's mob, coming to aid him in some fell work. The Shadow had encountered the wrong foemen - the police!
CHAPTER VII. PROOF OF CRIME
"Lookout, Sherbrock!"
It was Dwig Brencott who shouted the warning, and his cry took the attention of the invading detectives.
They knew that Cardona had tackled an opponent they had scarcely seen, but supposed that their leader had come out winner. For some reason, Sherbrock was the man they had come after, so they surged straight for him.
But Dwig and his men were quicker. It was Dwig who grabbed Sherbrock and fairly hurled him into the open door, while the two men with him, mobbies in guard uniform, seized the desk and hoisted it at the invading police.
Detectives ducked amid a shower of scattering jewels. They fired as they dived aside, but their shots were wide, for the desk was heavy and they had to avoid it.
By the time Cardona's men had a chance to take real aim, Dwig's uniformed pals were into the vault, too, hauling the big door shut behind them. It had hardly closed, before bullets from police specials began to bash the steel front.
Finding that they couldn't drill the heavy metal, the detectives sprang to the door and tried to get it open.
It was locked, automatically, from the inside.
In their futile effort to overtake four fugitives, the detectives left the door of the room quite clear. On his feet, The Shadow whisked out through that convenient exit, seen only by Cardona, who lost sight of the cloaked fighter between blinks.
Then, seeing what the detectives were about, Cardona found his own feet and started to join them, only to stop short and listen.
Cardona heard a sound which his excited men did not - the rumble of an elevator, coming from the wall that held the vault door. Joe shouted for his men to stop attacking the steel barrier.
"They've taken a way out!" Cardona bawled. "That's no vault. It's an elevator! They're getting to the rear alley. Come on - we're going down to head them off!"
Getting to the alley wasn't so simple as Cardona supposed, considering that all the windows in Sherbrock's place were barred, while the rear passage, downstairs, ended in a heavily locked door.
Bellowing orders as he reached the top of the stairs, Cardona heard responses from officers below: men that he had left down there. They were trying to get through to the alley, and couldn't.
The only thing was to go around by the front, and Cardona beckoned them toward the stairs. Joe was in too great a hurry to think of something that would ordinarily have puzzled him: namely, what had become of The Shadow. Somewhere between Sherbrock's offices and the floor below, the cloaked intruder had mysteriously vanished!
It happened that The Shadow had found what Cardona wanted, a short route to the rear alley.
SHERBROCK'S windows were barred, but others on the second floor were not. Cutting out from Sherbrock's. The Shadow had swung in back of the stairway leading up to the third floor, on chance of finding a suitable window - which he did.
It was narrow, barely large enough for The Shadow to slide his lithe form through. Once the squeeze was accomplished, he dropped to the ground below, the only token of his arrival being the swish of his cloak.
That sound wasn't heard. Others were making a loud clatter in the alley. Out of a rear door that slid suddenly open came Sherbrock, impelled to rapid gait by pressure of Dwig Brencott and the two thugs who wore the uniforms of armored-truck drivers.
There was a car in the alley, the low-built sedan that The Shadow had seen earlier. The fugitives dived into it, scooping up Sherbrock as he stumbled on the step.
The car was in motion when The Shadow turned and aimed low, swift shots at a rear tire. The answer was a clang, repeated with each bullet. The Shadow's fire had found an intervening fire plug, invisible against the fenders of the moving car. It was a squatty fire plug, wide enough to stop two shots, though The Shadow sliced them at slightly different angles.
Those blasts brought a jolt from the car, as though it had been hit. The driver veered across the street and zigzagged back again, putting all his weight on the accelerator. Off at a wild speed, taking a crazy course, the car was roaring away in a fashion calculated to offset the efforts of any marksman.
The Shadow held his next shots until the car swung the corner. There, the zigzag couldn't help. He ripped a rear tire broadside, and saw the car take a real jounce under the impetus of the bursting rubber. The car disappeared around the corner, but it wasn't going far. The Shadow started on the run to overtake it.
From the sharp crack of the first shots, Cardona recognized that he had heard them through an open window. Still on the second floor, Joe dived beyond the stairs and thrust his head and shoulders out in time to see the effect of The Shadow's second fusillade.