Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 329 - Cry Shadow

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CRY SHADOW!

By Maxwell Grant

A BELMONT BOOK, APRIL, 1965

GREAT CITIES have a life of their own.

New York is a city that never rests. At any hour, by day or by night, the streets of the city are

quick and restless. In the day the noise and movement blend into a crescendo of constant motion

that boils and surges through the wide streets and the narrow streets-- a river of humanity that is

never still. From dawn to dusk the city dances in the light of day to its own massive and swirling

music.

At night the city slows, but it does not stop-- the river runs on, quieter but deeper and darker.

On the night streets of the city, the dark and hidden side streets or the wide avenues bright with

neon, there are always the shadows of men moving. Some move openly and with the echo of the

vanished noise of the day. Others move quickly, without sound. Behind the now silent facades of

the buildings there is a clandestine world of footsteps that echo through deserted corridors and in

abandoned rooms while the city of the day sleeps on in imagined peace.

Fifty-Seventh Street is one of the wide streets. All night there are neon lights and people

walking. It is a busy street in the heart of Manhattan, and there is no hour when the traffic does

not move along its length. In the day it is a Street of music and foreign tea rooms. Along its

length all things exist from the slums of Hell's Kitchen to the rich East Side streets of the

exclusive and wealthy. The river is not far away from Fifty-Seventh Street near First Avenue and

between the avenue and the river are the small rich and hidden streets.

Queenstanding Place is one of the small, rich and elegant streets off Fifty-Seventh Street near

the river. It is a street of art galleries. The private art galleries where the rich come to buy culture

and a measure of immortality. The galleries line both sides of the street. Some are on the street

level and have windows like shops where paintings are displayed to entice buyers to enter.

Others are above on the second and third floors and are identified only by polished brass plates at

the street entrances below. There are galleries above galleries; galleries next to galleries; and

galleries facing galleries across the quiet street.

At night the galleries are dark and empty, the paintings and sculpture hidden in darkness and

waiting for the morning to be seen again. Unless there is an opening of a new show. A party to

honor a new artist, a gathering by invitation to launch a new name into the world of art. At an

opening a gallery will blaze with light and noise far into the night beyond its normal time to be

dark and silent. The guests, and the critics, and the rival painters, and the simply curious will

crowd into the festive gallery where the opening is being held.

On this warm summer night, at a time just before midnight, the gallery that blazed with final

light before the party ended was the Adrian Gallery. The Pauli Gallery, at the other end of the

block, was dark and deserted. Close on First Avenue the traffic still moved, and people passed in

the heat, but inside the dark rooms of the Pauli Gallery on the street level all was silent and still.

CRY SHADOW!

Nothing had moved inside the many rooms of the Pauli Gallery for many hours. Nothing moved

in the dark and silent Pauli Gallery until just before midnight.

There was a faint sound at the rear door of the gallery. The sound was a quick rasp of metal

and then a faint clicking. Footsteps moved stealthily through the corridors and rooms of the

gallery. The sound of the footfalls moved deliberately from room to room in a straight line,

without hesitation or false turns, as if whoever were now in the gallery knew exactly where they

were going.

The two men stepped into one of the smaller rooms where the thick curtains hid the windows.

It was a room of glass cases that covered small statues of dull-colored stone or clay.

The two men were only vague and indistinct outlines in the dark room. They did not pause as

they entered the room, but moved directly to a glass case that stood near the center of the room

beneath a skylight that let the light of the moon into the room. They made no sound, and moved

not together but one behind the other. The man in front, obviously the leader, stepped up to the

glass case near the center of the room. He raised his arm and let it fall.

There was a loud shattering of glass.

His hands shaking, and breathing heavily now, the first man reached quickly into the case and

withdrew a small, squat statue. The second man stepped forward with a small bag held open. The

first man carefully dropped the statue into the bag. The second man swiftly closed the bag. Both

men turned and started for the door.

Suddenly, the two men froze in their tracks.

A weird, mocking laugh echoed through the small room like a chilling wail of the unknown.

THE MACABRE laugh rang out again, reverberating among the glass cases of the room, filling the

darkness and the silence. An unseen voice spoke from nowhere.

"Do not look for escape," the voice said, mocking and yet cold and hard. "There is no

escape."

The second of the two men, the one who had not shattered the glass case, had taken two steps

toward the door. Now this man stopped, his mouth open, a thick fear deep in his eyes. He stared

straight ahead into the gloom of the dark room, his eyes staring as if at some horror he had never

in his wildest fear expected to see.

"Place your weapon on the floor. Now!"

The first of the two men, the obvious leader, hesitated. On his face was the clear battle

between his fear of the unseen voice and his greed for the squat statue in the bag he held in his

left hand. He looked quickly at the open door that seemed to offer such a simple escape. The

pistol he had used to break the glass case was still in his right hand. His whole body tensed,

shivered, with an effort to raise the pistol and dash for the open door at the same time.

The man did neither.

The chilling laugh rang out a third time and filled the small room of the Pauli Gallery. There

was a faint sound of movement. The shadows of the room themselves seemed to move.

A face appeared bathed in a sharp red glow.

The face transfixed the two thieves, rooting them to where they stood staring at the glowing

red face.

CRY SHADOW!

The wide brim of a black slouch hat shaded the face, its crown fading into the darkness above

the red glow. Beneath the brim two fiery eyes burned with an inner power greater than the red~

glow that lighted the face. A hawk nose stood out like a deadly sword in the glow above the

black folds of a great cape that covered the lower part of the glowing face. The red glow of light

itself came from one hand of the shrouded figure where a red gem shed a burning inner light

upward to outline the grim face whose thin lips were stern and yet smiling a thin, cold smile.

"So, Pedro Mingo," the voice of the looming black figure said, his stern lips barely moving,

"we meet again."

It was the second man, the follower, to whom the shrouded black figure spoke. Pedro Mingo

had not once moved his eyes from the face that shone in the red light of the fiery ring. Now he

opened his mouth to speak. Twice he tried to speak but the words would not come. When they

came at last, the words were more a terrified croak than human speech.

"The. . . The Shadow!"

"Yes, Pedro," the shrouded figure said, "The Shadow. Again you have crossed the path of The

Shadow! Was once not enough? You are not afraid of me? Have you not learned that the weed of

crime bears bitter fruit, Pedro Mingo?"

Mingo said nothing, his mouth moving, his lips working, but no sound coming from his

frightened mouth. The Shadow had turned his face toward Mingo, and now, suddenly, the first

man moved. He stepped toward the open door, raised the pistol in his right hand. The face of The

Shadow turned quickly toward him.

The man stopped moving. His hand that held the pistol stopped moving. The pistol seemed

suspended in the air, not pointing up or down. The man blinked, brushed his eyes, shook his head

as if trying to clear away a thick fog. A heavy cloud seemed to cover his brain. He could not

remember what he had wanted to do, what he had been about to do. He forgot the pistol in his

hand. The cloud settled over his mind and he could think of nothing, remember nothing. The

cloud seemed to come from the shrouded and indistinct figure in the gloom before him. Not from

the burning eyes alone, but from the whole figure-- from the face in the red glow, from the wide-

brimmed hat and the great cape and the glowing red jewel on the long finger, from the whole

person of the strange man before him.

"Who. . . who is he?" the man said to his partner, Pedro Mingo. "What . . . what does he

want?"

It was the Shadow who answered.

"You are a thief, Morris Kitt," The Shadow said. "You are a thief and you will be punished.

You cannot escape The Shadow. You will tell me now who else you are working with!"

Morris Kitt, the leader of the two thieves, battled the cloud covering his mind. Kitt moved his

head from side to side, his whole body shivered and trembled.

"No," Kitt croaked. "No."

"You will tell me!"

The eyes of The Shadow bored into the man.

"No . . . no . . . no . . ."

The second man, Pedro Mingo, spoke.

"Tell him," Mingo whispered, "tell him."

"I. . . no . . . no . . ."

"Tell him!" Mingo hissed. "He'll find out, I know him! Tell him, Kitt!"

CRY SHADOW!

Morris Kitt, thief, fought against the cloud that pressed down and down over his mind,

blotting out his brain, destroying his will. He fought, but the cloud enveloped his mind until he

could no longer remember why he should not do what the mysterious black figure asked.

"I. . . I. . . I. . . yes, all right, I'll tell you who. . ."

The sound was no more than a faint hiss in the dark room of the Pauli Gallery. A soft, light

sound like a sharp puff of wind. No more than a quick blow of breath in the night. it came from

the blackened doorway behind where The Shadow loomed, his face in the red glow fixed toward

the stammering figure of Morris Kitt. A short, sharp rush of air, a click, and nothing more.

Morris Kitt fell without a sound.

On the floor Kitt gasped once, touched his throat with a clawing hand, and lay still.

For a long second that seemed like hours there was neither motion nor sound in the dark of

the small gallery room. Pedro Mingo looked down at Morris Kitt and blinked. The Shadow took

a single step toward the fallen man. Morris Kitt himself lay with his eyes bulging and wide open.

Eyes that glazed and went cold even as The Shadow took his single step toward the fallen man.

Morris Kitt was dead.

Suddenly, recovered from the instant of shock, The Shadow whirled and glided away into the

dark. His shrouded figure went through the open doorway like a piece of the night itself. His

great black cape flying out behind like the dark wings of a giant night bird, The Shadow raced

through the rooms and corridors to the back door that stood open with the faint moonlight

flooding through. He ran through the doorway and emerged into an alley behind the buildings.

The thin moonlight bathed the alley in a pale, steel-blue light. The deep eyes of The Shadow,

with their power to see in the darkness, searched left and right. To the left there was nothing but

a dead-end at the rear of a tall building. To the right he saw nothing at first but another dead-end

far in the distance at the other end of the block. Then his keen eyes saw the running figure. Even

as The Shadow watched the figure vanished.

The Shadow raced through the alley in the hot night toward the figure he had seen so briefly.

The black slouch hat and black cape seemed to move over the ground without touching it, the

cape itself streaming out in the darkness. He reached the far end of the alley. There was nothing

but a wall and door that was locked on the inside. The figure he had seen for an instant had

vanished into thin air. The Shadow turned and slowly retraced his steps.

His piercing eyes noted every dark window and doorway. He tested all the doors and

windows. All were securely locked. He found no trace of the passage of an escaping killer. As he

searched his keen ears listened. But there was no sound, not until he reached the single building

on the block that showed light through its windows. In this building, on the ground floor, there

was light through the windows and noise. The Adrian Gallery.

In the dark alley The Shadow stood motionless, blending into the night, and listened to the

sounds of music and laughter, the ebb and flow of voices, inside the Adrian Gallery. He knew

what was going on inside the Adrian Gallery-an opening night party for a new Turkish painter.

The Shadow himself, in his alter-ego guise as Lamont Cranston, had been invited. But, until this

moment, The Shadow had had other business this night. Now he stood and his eyes looked at the

lighted windows of the Adrian Gallery.

He glided silently to the rear door and windows of the Adrian Gallery. All were locked from

the inside. They could have been left open and locked only after the unseen killer had gone into

the building. But the figure he had seen had not turned toward the buildings. The figure had

simply vanished in mid-alley. Turning, The Shadow moved soundlessly back to the center of the

moonlighted alley. He looked down. Then he bent close to the ground.

CRY SHADOW!

The alley was paved with a combination of asphalt and cobblestones. It was old, the alley, and

the cobblestones were worn smooth with use. They bad not been tampered with. But set in the

stones, directly behind the Adrian Gallery, The Shadow saw the round metal top of an old coal

chute. At one time the alley had been open at both ends and used for the delivery of fuel and

other necessities to the buildings. Now the alley was closed off, and the fuel oil, was pumped

into the buildings through small valves set in the sidewalk in front-- or the buildings used central

steam to heat. There was no more need for a coal chute.

But this coal chute cover had been used recently.

The Shadow bent closer to the round metal cover to make sure he had seen the marks. There

was no doubt. This cover had been lifted and replaced within the week. For another few seconds

he remained bent, over the iron cover. Then, satisfied, he straightened up and glided away down

the alley back toward the open rear door of the Pauli Gallery.

Inside the Pauli Gallery he moved swiftly through the dark and empty rooms, the paintings on

the walls dull and colorless in the night, until he was again inside the small room where the

smashed glass case stood in the center of the floor. The bag with the statue in it was still there.

The body of Morris Kitt lay where the thief had fallen. But Pedro Mingo was gone. The Shadow

smiled when he saw that Mingo had taken his chance to escape. He was not disturbed by the

flight of Mingo, that was taken care of.

Quickly, and in silence, The Shadow went to work. He opened the bag and removed the

statue. He studied it carefully, and then returned it to the smashed glass case. This done, he

turned to the body of the dead man. His quick, sharp eyes studied the body of Morris Kitt from a

distance. From the bulging eyes, the grimace of the tortured lips, the twisted position of the legs,

it was clear that Morris Kitt had died quickly and not from any simple cause such as a bullet.

The Shadow crossed to the body and bent closer. The bands of the dead man were still tensed

into a clawlike shape, the right hand still touching the throat where he had clawed in the instant

of death. A tiny hole, a point of blood and no more, showed on the throat. The blood was already

dry, crusted over the small, pin-point wound. A pin prick and no more, but it had been enough.

Not as high as the sky, nor as deep as a well, but it had been enough, it would serve. Swift, silent,

sure and deadly.

Too deadly. From the bulging eyes, the clawlike fingers, The Shadow knew that the tiny

missile had not killed Morris Kitt by itself. Not the missile, the needle-like bullet, but what had

been inside the bullet. Poison. And shot without any sound beyond the puff of air. He began to

search the floor of the silent gallery. He searched in the dark, his eyes seeing in the dark almost

as well as in the light. He searched all around the body, and then began to cover the floor

outward from the body inch by inch. At last he found it.

In his long, thin fingers it was no more than a tiny, thin glass needle. Thicker and squatter

than a needle, and hollow. Metal-ringed for strength. Shot from an air gun. Silent, a pin prick,

and death within moments. The Shadow studied the lethal little dart. The point had broken off

and would still be in the wound. He put the pellet-dart inside the secret folds of his cloak, and

returned to his search of the body of Morris Kitt. But he found nothing else. Kitt had been too

experienced a thief to work with identification of any kind. The dead man's clothes yielded no

clues. A swift but careful search of the gallery room offered no more.

For some time The Shadow stood in the small dark room among the glass cases. His gaunt

face was invisible now, the glow of the fire-opal girasol down at his side as he stood in thought.

Someone beside The Shadow had known, or guessed that Morris Kitt would burglarize the Pauli

Gallery that night. Someone whom Kitt could have named, perhaps was about to name. That was

CRY SHADOW!

almost certainly why Kitt had been killed. And yet how could the killer have known that the

Shadow, or anyone else, would catch Morris Kitt this night and force him to talk? The killer

could not have known that. Yet the killer was there waiting in the shadows.

His eyes grim, The Shadow left the small room and the body of Morris Kitt, and moved

silently through the rooms of the dark gallery until he reached the office. In the office he picked

up the telephone. His voice disguised, he told the police of the burglary and murder. He hung up

before any questions could be asked. That done, The Shadow glided from the desk and faded into

the darker part of the office. Moments later he emerged again into the faint light of the moon that

came through the office window. But it was not The Shadow who stepped into the thin bluish

light.

Lamont Cranston, internationally known wealthy socialite and businessman, now stood in the

office of the Pauli Gallery. Prominent member of New York's exclusive Cobalt Club, confidante

of police the world over, and personal friend of Police Commissioner Weston of New York,

Lamont Cranston was a familiar figure to people on many levels, but there were few who knew

that the socialite was also the major alter-ego of the mysterious Shadow. The complete muscular

control learned by The Shadow long ago in the Orient from the great Master Chen T'a Tze,

enabled him to make Lamont Cranston appear shorter, heavier and less like some great bird of

prey. In Cranston's immobile face the hawklike features had become impassive, the eyes now

half-closed and steady, no longer aflame with the inner fire of The Shadow.

With swift efficiency, Cranston returned the special black garb of The Shadow, and the fire-

opal girasol ring, to their secret hiding places within his innocent business suit. He looked at his

watch. The placid eyes of the wealthy socialite, so unlike the eyes of The Shadow, became

thoughtful. Morris Kitt was dead, the killer had escaped, and, for the moment, Pedro Mingo was

gone. But Kitt was an art thief, the Adrian Gallery was an art gallery, and Kitt had been seen

entering the Adrian Gallery a few times. It was time for Lamont Cranston to attend the opening

at the Adrian. An art gallery, and art thefts, and yet-were Kitt's thefts worth killing for?

Using a key from his special ring of keys, Cranston opened the front door of the Pauli Gallery

and slipped out into the quiet of Queenstanding Place. He began to walk openly and casually

toward the lighted entrance of the Adrian Gallery. He was now no more than the wealthy

socialite on his way to a gallery opening. He looked neither right nor left so as not to seem in any

way suspicious. For this reason, and because he was now only Cranston and not The Shadow, he

did not see or know three actions that his sudden appearance set into motion.

As Lamont Cranston, and as all the many alter-egoes of The Shadow, he had every

mysterious power learned in the Orient and later by the Avenger-- except one. The power of The

Shadow to cloud men's minds, to reach out with his own mind and enter other minds, required

him to always wear the black cloak, the slouch hat, and the fire-opal girasol ring. The power did

not reside in these things, nor did it come from the burning gaze of The Shadow's eyes. The

power was of the mind, and of the whole person of The Shadow, and could be used only by The

Shadow when he was in entirety The Shadow. Such had been the wish, the condition, of the great

Chen T'a Tze when that Master of the Orient had passed on his power to The Shadow. A power

that had been known and used only by The Master, and was now known and used only by The

Shadow. So great a power must have its limits, Chen T'a Tze himself had commanded, and so, as

Lamont Cranston, the crime-fighter did not sense the three occurrences his appearance created.

High above Queenstanding Place, on the roof of the building that housed the Adrian Gallery,

two men stood in the dark night and looked down into the peaceful street where Lamont

Cranston walked casually toward the lighted entrance to the Adrian. As Cranston reached the

CRY SHADOW!

entrance and went in, both men quickly left their vantage point, crossed two roofs, and went

down a fire escape into the alley where The Shadow had pursued the killer. One of the men

moved rapidly toward the rear door of the Pauli Gallery that still stood open. The other man used

a key and entered a different building through the back door. Both men vanished from the alley

as police sirens began to wail in the distance and come closer.

At the same time that the two men had been watching Lamont Cranston, another man had

observed both the two men and Cranston from a darkened doorway across Queenstanding Place

that faced both the Pauli and Adrian Galleries. This man remained motionless and watching from

his hidden doorway. Neither Cranston nor the two men on the roof bad seen this watching man.

And this man in the doorway, in his turn, did not see the fourth man who had observed all that

had happened in the street, on the roof, and in the darkened doorway.

This fourth watching man had been seen by no one. Or, more accurately, he had been seen by

everyone on the street, but no one had noticed him. He was a familiar figure on the streets of the

city, seen but never really noticed. A taxi driver in his parked taxicab, alone inside his darkened

taxi and, seemingly, asleep as the two men left the roof above and Lamont Cranston went into

the Adrian Gallery.

The taxi driver was not asleep.

THE ADRIAN GALLERY was a cauldron of sound and motion. Men with glasses in their hands

talked in loud voices, gesturing at the gaudy paintings on the walls, shouting the names of artists

living and dead as they analyzed the work of the unknown Turk who was making his American

debut as an artist this night. Women with glasses in their hands laughed, and talked, and swirled

the bright colors of their summer dresses.

Lamont Cranston stood just inside the main room of the gallery a glass in his hand, and

observed the scene. He had been extravagantly greeted at the door by the owner of the gallery,

Hubert Adrian, and by his assistant, a pretty girl named Penelope Drake. Adrian and the Drake

girl had swirled off to some other art patron as well known as Cranston, and Cranston was left

now with his glass and the paintings themselves. They were large canvases belonging to the

school known worldwide as "abstract expressionism"-- the outpouring of the inner visions of the

artist in abstract shapes of color that took no form from the real world.

Cranston studied the paintings with his trained eyes. He was known as an amateur critic of

art, and he was more than an expert. He examined the Turk's work carefully. They were not, he

saw, very good paintings, and he had come to the Adrian Gallery for other reasons.

He turned his attention to the people. The Turk himself was there, Turhan Kemel, as gaudy

and flamboyant as his paintings. Kemel had gathered a group of young, pretty, and too-well-

washed young ladies around him. The American girls seemed fascinated by the wild Turk.

Kemel was dazzling them with words in his thick accent, but there was something about the Turk

that was strange. Cranston saw that Kemel's eyes were not laughing with his mouth. The Turk

had a worried expression in his eyes, almost a look of fear. And the look was directed constantly

toward Hubert Adrian.

Adrian himself, a tall, elegant man dressed in the best and most expensive clothes, circulated

from group to group making pleasant and witty remarks, but, actually, selling his goods to any

CRY SHADOW!

prospective buyer. Adrian was quick-mannered and sophisticated. A man in his forties, he

worked through the crowded room as if he had no cares or problems in the world. He barely

noticed his debuting artist, Turban Kemel, and ignored his wife. Hubert Adrian seemed in his

element, and gave every sign of enjoying himself hugely. Avis Adrian was not enjoying herself.

The wife, a handsome blonde woman in her late thirties, seemed nervous, worried. A tall and

elegant woman, Avis Adrian helped her husband run the gallery, Cranston knew, and now she,

too, was moving among the crowd of guests offering food and drinks in a disguised attempt to

sell paintings. But Cranston could see that Avis Adrian did not have her husband's apparent lack

of cares. The elegant blonde had something on her mind.

While he thought about this, and continued to walk through the various rooms of the gallery

in a pretense of interest in the paintings, Cranston let his impassive eyes search every inch of the

place. The killer of Morris Kitt had vanished from the alley behind the Adrian Gallery.

Somewhere in this crowd the killer could easily be lurking, watching. But Cranston saw nothing

suspicious as he went on looking at the paintings-- those of Turban Kemel, and those in other

rooms where the regular artists of the gallery were on display. His mind on other things than art

tonight, he turned to go back to where the main party was being held. He stopped.

Something was strange about the artists displayed by the Adrian Gallery. He turned back and

looked at many of them again. They were of all styles, and had little in common. His hooded

eyes narrowed. The artists had only one thing in common-- they were all foreign. There was not

one American among them. Cranston looked around for a catalogue. He found one on a small

desk at the rear of a side gallery. He opened it and studied it. The artists of the Adrian Gallery

were from countries all the world, but none were from America.

"Are you interested in our catalogue Mr. Cranston?"

It was the assistant of Hubert Adrian, Penelope Drake, who had spoken. The pretty girl stood

behind Cranston as he turned. A girl in her mid or late twenties, perhaps twenty-seven years old,

she was dark-haired and pretty, but her eyes were hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses. Cranston

had met her once or twice before at art functions, and he remembered

her as the serious, almost studious type. Now he smiled at her.

"I'm always interested in new artists, Miss Drake," Cranston said. "I see that most of your

artists are unknown, at least in this country."

"We specialize in young and unknown painters, Mr. Cranston," Miss Drake said.

Her voice was cool and pedantic in odd contrast to what Cranston saw was a remarkably good

figure. The girl had a beauty contest body, and she was really very pretty behind the glasses and

the cool, academic manner. Cranston had the impression that Penelope Drake was in sharp

control of her body, that she was efficient as well as cool. Her eyes behind the glasses watched

him without a flicker, and yet there was a glint in them, a sense of considerably more passion

than her manner would make one think she bad, and a certain hint of amusement as she watched

him.

"Mostly foreign it seems," Cranston said.

"Mr. Adrian believes in fostering both new talent and better understanding among the

nations," the Drake girl said, and now she did smile. "In addition, it appears that foreign artists

tend to sell better than our own painters, especially to our less sophisticated clients."

"The lure of the unusual," Cranston said. "Or is it just that the ignorant always think men with

strange names make better artists?"

The girl laughed. "A little of both, I should think."

CRY SHADOW!

"The same kind of attraction we feel for such things as Pre-Columbian art, I imagine,"

Cranston said casually.

He watched the Drake girl intently from beneath the lids of his hooded and impassive eyes.

The statue that Morris Kitt had tried to steal was a Pre-Columbian statue-- one of the works of

art made in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus, native art of the Indians of North and

South America, but mostly of Mexico and south. Cranston watched, but the girl showed no

surprise and very little interest.

"Probably," she said.

"There seems to be a great deal of interest in the Pre-Columbian period of late," Cranston

persisted.

Again the girl did nothing at all suspicious. She seemed unaware of what Cranston was

talking about. Hubert Adrian was not unaware. As Cranston had spoken about the sudden interest

in Pre-Columbian art, the gallery owner and his wife had approached him and the Drake girl.

Hubert Adrian smiled as he heard what Cranston had said. Avis Adrian did not smile. The tall

blonde had an expression on her face that was close to fear. Hubert Adrian gripped her arm as he

spoke.

"By interest, Cranston, do you mean that strange series of thefts of Pre-Columbian works?"

Adrian asked.

"I was thinking about it," Cranston said. "Seven robberies in two months. The Commissioner

mentioned it to me."

"Don't tell me that Commissioner Weston is working on the case?" Adrian said with surprise.

"Why, the whole thing, everything taken, can't be worth more than five thousand dollars at most.

That's rather small for the Commissioner, isn't it?"

"He only mentioned the matter," Cranston said. "A rather strange series of burglaries. Who

would be so interested in such unprofitable thefts?"

"A crank, no doubt," Penelope Drake said.

"Cranks usually steal more obvious things than ancient native American statues, Miss Drake,"

Cranston said. "It takes a certain knowledge of art to know Pre-Columbian works."

Hubert Adrian laughed. "These days everyone is an expert, Cranston, and everyone knows

about Pre-Columbian."

"Perhaps," Cranston said. "You don't happen to handle such works yourself, do you, Adrian?"

"Me? No, Cranston, I'm strictly modern. Much easier to sell these days, and a lot easier to

get," Adrian said.

Cranston looked at Avis Adrian. "What about you, Mrs. Adrian? You don't happen to be

interested in primitive art, do you?"

"I. . ." Avis Adrian began.

Hubert Adrian held his wife's arm and smiled. "My wife just helps me, and a lot of help she

is."

Penelope Drake looked at her watch. "We must be closing soon, perhaps we all better go back

to Kemel, he is the reason for the party after all. Tell me, Mr. Cranston, just how do you like

Kemel's work?"

Hubert Adrian nodded quickly. "Yes, we better get back to Turban."

Now Adrian seemed nervous, and Cranston watched the tall gallery owner from beneath his

hooded eyes. But he allowed the Drake girl to lead him back into the main room where the Turk

was still holding forth to his bevy of young ladies. Adrian mopped sweat from his brow in the

hot night, although the gallery itself was fully air-conditioned. Avis Adrian had vanished. Adrian

CRY SHADOW!

himself resumed his round of talking with his guests, the party less crowded now. Penelope

Drake excused herself as they reentered the main room. Cranston watched the pretty girl turn

quickly away and go up the stairs to the second floor offices of the gallery.

"Mr. Cranston, I believe," a voice said behind him.

Cranston turned to see a tall, dapper man of average height. The man was about thirty-seven

years old, perhaps older or younger by a few years, and was now smiling directly at Cranston.

There was a tense, wiry quality about the slender man. He wore a thin pencil mustache barely

visible on his upper lip because it was the pale and sandy color of the man's hair. Cranston heard

the faint trace of an English accent in the man's precise voice.

"I thought I recognized you," the man said. "Should have guessed you would be here, eh? I've

heard of your work with the younger painters."

"Have you?" Cranston said.

"Of course. Name's Lambert, Jonathan Lambert from The Critic in London," the man said.

"That would be an English art magazine, I remember it," Cranston said. "I'm pleased to meet

you, Mr. Lambert."

"The pleasure is all mine, I assure you, my dear chap," Jonathan Lambert said. "Thought this

affair was going to be a total washout, eh? Terribly bad stuff. The Turk should go home without

a moment's hesitation. Frightful work, really."

"You don't think Kemel is very good?" Cranston said.

"Don't tell me you do? Of course not, bloody terrible. I can't imagine why Adrian brought his

stuff over. Adrian can't be that lacking in judgment, can he? I suppose he can, Can't think why he

bothered with the man otherwise."

"No," Cranston said. It had already occurred to him to wonder about Adrian. Kemel was not a

good painter, although not as bad as Lambert was implying.

"Be that as it may," Lambert said briskly, "I can save the night by interviewing you. The

Critic knows all about you, as I said. Now, aside from this Turkish nonsense, what about the rest

of Adrian's painters? Some of them seem not bad. Tell me, are you as interested as Adrian in the

work of foreign young painters?"

"I'm interested in all good young painters," Cranston said.

"Of course, very good," Lambert said. "You rich men have to help out, eh? But why

specifically foreign, eh? I mean,

Adrian obviously specializes in it. Unknown and foreign, that's Adrian's cup of tea. You're

here so I expect you share that interest. Why else would you be here, you're not a critic, you don't

have to come to these things."

"I like openings," Cranston said, and smiled. "Personally, though, I like the younger

American painters: Johns, Rauschenberg, Saul Lambert, your namesake."

"Very good," Lambert said. "Always stick to what you know, eh? Stay in your own bailiwick,

as it were. No end of trouble when you get into something you don't know much about."

Cranston looked sharply at the English art critic. Had there been a small but definite note of

something very much like a warning in Lambert's voice? Cranston could not be sure. A warning,

or, perhaps, a threat? If there had been such a meaning in Lambert's voice, it was gone as quickly

as it had come, and now the English art critic was jabbering on about the state of art on both

sides of the Atlantic.

". . . . . really can't understand why Adrian imports these second-rate foreigners. . . ."

Cranston smiled and nodded politely as he pretended to listen, but his quiet eyes glanced

carefully and unobtrusively around the now half-empty gallery. It was just past 1:00 A.M., and

CRY SHADOW!

the party was ending. Hubert Adrian still moved through the room smiling, cajoling, selling his

wares to potential art patrons. Avis Adrian and the Turk, Turban Kemel, had gotten together. The

Turk did not seem happy about his first showing in New York. Avis Adrian had been watching

Cranston until the wealthy socialite looked at her. Penelope Drake had apparently not come back

downstairs since she had gone up. Cranston was wondering about this fact when his impassive

eyes saw a man standing in the main entrance to the gallery.

The man, who wore a chauffeur's uniform but did not look much like a chauffeur, was

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CRYSHADOW!CRYSHADOW!ByMaxwellGrantABELMONTBOOK,APRIL,19651GREATCITIEShavealifeoftheirown.NewYorkisacitythatneverrests.Atanyhour,bydayorbynight,thestreetsofthecityarequickandrestless.Inthedaythenoiseandmovementblendintoacrescendoofconstantmotionthatboilsandsurgesthroughthewidestreetsandthenarrowstree...

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Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 329 - Cry Shadow

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