
of a long campaign to end a series of crimes that still had the police completely baffled.
Houses of the wealthy had been robbed. The intervals between such burglaries had not been long. As
Joe Cardona had told the reporters at the morgue, the crooks had shown a surprisingly exact knowledge
of the houses which they had entered.
But despite the similarity of the crimes, the ace detective had not been able to put his finger on the
marauders. Servants had been quizzed; houses had been searched for clues. Results came up blank.
And Marsland, working for The Shadow, had been busy in the underworld. The bad lands of Manhattan
were Cliff's habitat. There he was regarded as a man of crime; he had the confidence of gangsters who
never dreamed that Cliff was an agent of The Shadow. Yet Cliff, although he could accomplish more for
The Shadow than a score of stool pigeons could for Joe Cardona, had been unable to trace the crooks.
The intervals between the robberies, though short, were evidently sufficient for the rogues to cover up
their tracks. Some mobleader was doing crime in a big way, but Cliff had been unable to spot the man.
Meanwhile, The Shadow had been working among the upper crust of society. A master of disguise, The
Shadow could adopt personalities that placed him among the elite. Since the wanted crooks were rifling
the homes of the wealthy, The Shadow had chosen his course of investigation among the Four Hundred.
The Shadow had struck a clue. Somehow - Cliff did not know the answer - the master sleuth had
learned the identity of the mobleader responsible for these crimes. "Marty" Lunk - a racketeer who
controlled a squad of capable gorillas - was the man whose name had been relayed to Cliff Marsland.
More than that: The Shadow had sent word where crime was due to strike. Through Burbank, Cliff had
been ordered to station himself outside of the home of Brandley Croman. The house, empty at present,
offered easy entry. Yet Cliff would not have picked it as a spot for gangs to burgle. The obscurity of the
house was its best protection.
Somehow, Lunk and his crew must have learned that valuables were stored at Croman's. How had they
gained such facts? Only The Shadow knew. At present, Cliff was acting under the final orders that had
come through Burbank.
Should Lunk's marauders appear, they could be easily observed from Cliff's watching post. Once Cliff
saw them, the rest of his task would be easy. Thus soliloquizing, The Shadow's agent waited in the
darkness.
MOTION in the space between the houses opposite. Cliff stared. He was sure that he had caught a
momentary glimpse of a figure by the building that he was watching. The dim light from the further street
had been momentarily increased by the swinging headlights of a turning taxicab a block away. The form
had faded.
As Cliff continued to watch, he decided that he had been mistaken. Lunk would not have sent a single
mobster on this task of entry. Nor could a man have faded so completely as had that phantom figure.
Nevertheless, Cliff had seen right. A living person was standing in the space beside the home of Brandley
Croman. The figure that Cliff had glimpsed was that of his own chief. The Shadow had arrived before the
expected crooks.
It was not surprising that Cliff had failed to view The Shadow after that momentary vision. The Shadow
had taken a course that carried him from view. His fadeaway had been straight upward.
Squidgy sounds - inaudible a dozen feet away - were marking The Shadow's ascent of the precipitous