Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 240 - Blue Face

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BLUE FACE
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," February 15, 1942.
Nine times had Blue Face struck! Could The Shadow succeed in downing this
vicious killer where the police had failed?
CHAPTER I
MAN HUNT
THE policeman turned the corner of the dark street quickly. He moved
without sound, as if he hoped to surprise some prowler.
He could see nothing along the black sidewalk to justify his caution.
Nothing moved except a gaunt cat near a trash barrel. The cop sighed with
relief. But the ugly nickname of a dangerous criminal stayed in his mind.
Blue Face!
The cop continued down the deserted street. His heels clicked loudly. The
sound helped to reassure him. He passed the trash barrel from which the cat
had
fled. The sound of his solid heel echoes vanished.
From behind the barrel, a black figure rose. The figure seemed formless.
Then suddenly it straightened. A hiss of sibilant laughter was audible. The
figure moved swiftly past a light. For an instant, it was revealed.
The Shadow!
Police were not the only ones on a grim prowl tonight. The Shadow, too,
was taking a hand in the stalking of a dangerous criminal. The Shadow was
hunting the man known as Blue Face!
Certain precautions The Shadow had taken emphasized the seriousness of
the
situation. Every agent of The Shadow was on duty somewhere throughout the
city.
Stationed at various key points, they were in constant telephone communication
with Burbank, contact man for The Shadow. The Shadow was ready to race in a
swift car to whatever point Blue Face might strike tonight.
For Blue Face struck somewhere every night! Nine times the police had
almost caught him. Nine times Blue Face had escaped.
The police attributed this to luck. The Shadow believed otherwise. Nor
did
The Shadow believe a second police theory concerning Blue Face. He didn't
think
that Blue Face was a small-time burglar who killed people because he was
jittery.
In these strange burglaries of Blue Face, The Shadow sensed something
challenging. They seemed to be the work of a moron. Most of the people who had
been robbed were of small importance.
A list of the victims revealed them to be people like bus conductors,
longshoremen, petty clerks, laborers. A few were businessmen. But there was no
connection between any of them to indicate a planned motive on the part of
Blue
Face.
Proceeds of the robberies made even less sense. Blue Face usually escaped
with less than ten dollars in loot. The police would not have paid too much
attention to these queer robberies had it not been for the vicious tactics
Blue
Face displayed.
Out of his nine previous raids, seven people had been wounded by the
snarl
of Blue Face's nervous gun; two had been killed.
The Shadow ducked from the dark street into a vestibule. An inner door
opened and closed without sound. A moment later, The Shadow had a telephone
receiver at his ear, was giving a number.
"Burbank speaking," a voice said.
"Report!"
The messages of The Shadow's agents were transmitted by Burbank. They
were
dishearteningly alike. No news!
But when Burbank's voice ceased, The Shadow's face was grim. One agent's
report was missing.
"Report from Hawkeye," The Shadow said.
"None," Burbank replied.
"That is all."
The Shadow's voice revealed nothing of his grim tension. Hawkeye's
silence
had significance. He never disobeyed orders. He was a genius at trailing
crooks.
In fact, it was this very cleverness that had given Hawkeye his nickname.
Had Hawkeye run Blue Face to earth somewhere in the black-shrouded
vastness of New York City?
The Shadow wasted no time considering the answer. Soon, the hum of a fast
car was audible. Behind the wheel of a dark sedan, The Shadow raced to the
place where Hawkeye had been stationed.
It was a run-down neighborhood of tenements and alleys. The Shadow knew
exactly where to look. Hawkeye had been posted in the front hallway of a slum
tenement. The hallway was dirty and poorly lighted. But it had one virtue. It
contained a coin-box telephone from which Hawkeye could report.
The Shadow didn't enter the building. His breath hissed when he saw his
motionless agent.
Hawkeye was lying on the sidewalk near the entrance to a dark alley. His
face was paper-white and smeared with blood. He had been dealt a vicious blow.
STOOPING close to the sprawled figure, to pick up his unconscious agent,
The Shadow hesitated. His sharp eyes detected something lying on the sidewalk.
His gloved fingers picked up the object. One swift glance and The Shadow
shoved
it into his pocket.
The clue told The Shadow certain things. Hawkeye had been struck down by
Blue Face! Blue Face wanted the police to find Hawkeye. Blue Face wanted
police
to trail him down the nearby alley!
The Shadow decided to short-cut police help. They might ruin his plans.
With Hawkeye's unconscious body across his shoulders, The Shadow ran
silently into the darkness of the tenement alley.
He was not quite in time. A policeman had rounded the corner. He caught a
vague glimpse of something. The cop wasn't sure whether he had seen a human
being or not. But the nerves of the cop were on edge. Every policeman in town
had been given special orders to be on the alert for Blue Face. His capture
meant certain promotion.
The cop blew his whistle to attract other cops. He started cautiously
toward the alley, gun in hand.
There was little time for The Shadow to decide how to vanish with his
unconscious agent. But his eyes helped him.
Close to the alley wall of the tenement was a barrel filled with tin
cans.
Alongside the barrel was a small square grating in the pavement. The grating
covered a pit, evidently used to slide coal into the cellar.
A sharp tool from beneath the robe of The Shadow made a faint click. The
click was the severing of the chain that fastened the grating from the lower
side. The grating lifted and Hawkeye was lowered quickly into the dark pit.
Then The Shadow moved the barrel close to the edge of the opening.
A quick downward spring, and The Shadow vanished. The grating was lowered
without a sound. Through the bars appeared black gloved hands. They caught at
a
hoop of the barrel and pulled it over the grating. It was slow work, but The
Shadow was helped by the approaching cop's caution. The blue-coat came on
slowly, expecting gunfire from a cornered criminal.
By the time the cop entered the alley, the barrel of tin cans covered the
grating. The cop sneaked past. He found nothing but a high fence at the other
end. He came back. He was joined by another cop, who had heard the blast of
his
whistle.
Unaware that The Shadow and Hawkeye were almost under their feet, the two
cops conferred briefly. The Shadow listened grimly.
"Are you sure it was Blue Face?"
"I don't know. He looked like a patch of darkness sneaking into the
alley,
carrying somebody on his back."
"Did you see his face?"
"I saw almost nothing. But there's a smear of blood on the sidewalk.
Somebody ran into this alley carrying a wounded guy. I think it was Blue
Face!"
The voice of the second cop was tense.
"If it was Blue Face, why wasn't he dressed the way he always is? Why
wasn't he wearing a dark-blue suit, a blue cap? Why didn't he have that stuff
like blue Cellophane over his head? And why didn't we find a marijuana
cigarette? Blue Face is a hophead! He's always dropping those damned reefers!
It's what makes him so jittery and quick on the trigger."
"I don't know any more than I told you. But I know my orders. I'm going
to
phone headquarters. Stick around till I get back. And keep your gun out!"
There was a quick sound of his retreating feet. The second cop moved back
to the mouth of the alley.
The Shadow emerged soundlessly from concealment. He had profited by the
delay to revive Hawkeye, and to clap a hand over his agent's mouth. A whisper
in Hawkeye's ear transmitted orders.
Hawkeye faded away. He scaled a fence. A moment later, he was in a
cellar,
streaking grimly for a back street.
Left alone, The Shadow examined the object he had picked up on the street
close to where Hawkeye had fallen.
It was a marijuana cigarette.
Blue Face had left that clue as bait for police to pursue him. He wanted
police to see him in the very act of robbery - as they had done on nearly
every
one of Blue Face's previous crimes. But this time, fate had played a trick on
a
cunning criminal. The Shadow was taking a hand!
THE SHADOW was no longer in the alley. He had scaled the same fence over
which Hawkeye had vanished. But he did not enter the dark cellar. The Shadow
climbed another fence, dropped into the back yard of a different tenement.
It was not guesswork. Before he had scaled the fence, he had bent close
to
the ground. At the base of the fence he found what he grimly expected: a
second
cigarette. Another "reefer."
Crouched in the tenement yard, The Shadow examined both those half-smoked
cigarettes. He examined their tips, made an interesting discovery.
The ends were not wrinkled and damp as they would have been had Blue Face
had them between his lips. Both of the marijuana cigarettes had been lighted,
but they had not been smoked. The theory of the police was wrong. Blue Face
was
not a hophead at all. He was a very clever criminal posing as a dope addict!
Glancing upward, The Shadow stared at the lowest ladder of a fire escape.
Its lower rungs hung just above his head. He saw something that revealed that
someone had recently climbed that ladder.
There was a smear of dirty water on the courtyard pavement from the top
of
an overfilled garbage pail. Someone had stepped in that smear. There was a
similar smear from a man's shoe on the lowest rung of the steel ladder above
The Shadow's head.
He leaped high. His gloved hands caught a rung and swung him upward. He
began to climb.
Darkness protected him. Shades were drawn on most of the tenement
windows.
The few that were open caused him no concern. He could hear the snores from
tired men and women. The people who lived in this shabby structure were
workmen
who labored long hours. Nothing would stir them from sleep except the peal of
their alarm clocks in the gray dawn.
Just below the slanting iron steps that led to the top floor, The Shadow
halted. The window above him was closed, but its shade was not drawn. The
lower
pane of that dirty window looked peculiar.
The glass pane had been cut out!
Twin .45 automatics appeared in The Shadow's hands. He began to move
silently upward. But he had hardly moved halfway when there was a startling
end
to his secrecy. Something light and taut stretched against his chest. He felt
the pressure and guessed what it was - a black thread of some strong material.
He tried to throw himself back, but it was too late. The thread was
attached to an empty milk bottle on the platform above.
The bottle fell to the courtyard below with the crash of smashed glass.
As The Shadow raced upward at top speed, the bedroom above suddenly
blazed
with light. A pistol shot roared inside the room.
A pajama-clad man was lying on the floor inside, with blood coming from a
hole in his neck. Alongside the victim stood the snarling figure of Blue Face.
IT was impossible to see the criminal's face. Over his head was a helmet
that looked like wrinkled blue Cellophane. But it was not really Cellophane.
It
was opaque, impossible to see through. It fitted closely over his head, giving
him the ugly appearance of an Egyptian mummy.
Through narrow slits in this queer headgear, the eyes of Blue Face burned
like flame.
"Die, copper!" he snarled.
His gun flamed toward the window. But as he fired, Blue Face received the
shock of his life. Instead of a policeman, he saw the grim face of The Shadow.
Unnerved, he jerked back. The move sent his bullet wide. It thudded into
the wooden sill of the window.
The answering shot of The Shadow went wide, too. He had fired, not to
kill
Blue Face but to wing him and take him alive. Blue Face's recoil carried him
backward, unharmed. He fled.
An instant later, The Shadow was racing through the apartment. He darted
out into the tenement hall. He could hear pounding feet above him on the
stairs. Blue Face was heading toward the roof.
The Shadow pursued swiftly.
He was delayed by the door leading to the roof. Blue Face had dropped a
hook into a stout staple on the outside, locking the door. The Shadow's .45s
roared at the barrier. Wood splintered. There was a rip as black-gloved hands
yanked a board loose. The Shadow unhooked the latch and flung the door open.
Blue Face was cornered in a bad spot.
He had raced across the black roof to the opposite edge. He seemed
gibbering with terror. Both hands were lifted above his ugly blue-swathed head
in token of surrender.
Below him was an unbroken fall of six stories to a stone pavement in the
rear courtyard.
The Shadow shouted an order to surrender. His .45s emphasized the order.
With a yell of fear, Blue Face went down on his knees. Then abruptly he
dropped backward. The desperate criminal had slid over the edge of the high
roof. He was hanging on only by his clenched fingers.
A moment later, the gripping fingers vanished.
Blue Face had let go! His body was hurtling downward to death!
CHAPTER II
DEATH IN THE DARK
AS the body of Blue Face hurtled out of sight, The Shadow darted forward.
Bracing himself at the edge of the roof, he stared down.
He received a stunning surprise. No crumpled and bleeding body lay dead
down below. That wild plunge of Blue Face from the coping of the roof had been
a fake to elude the guns of The Shadow.
The Shadow dropped to his knees. Turning his back to the dizzy canyon
below, he grasped the edge of the roof. He allowed his body to swing into
space, held only by the stretched arms above his head.
The Shadow was duplicating the tactics of Blue Face. The spot where he
hung was the same spot where he had last seen the vanishing criminal.
He was rewarded by an instant discovery.
A rope was stretched from a spot below the roof cornice to the open
window
of a top-floor apartment. Down this taut life line Blue Face had slid. He had
wriggled through the open window to safety.
A glance showed The Shadow that the window below belonged to an apartment
on the side of the building opposite that in which Blue Face's crime had
occurred.
Far down in the black street, police whistles were already shrilling.
Cops, drawn to the scene by the phone call of the patrolman on the beat, had
heard the roar of gunfire above. They were racing toward the tenement.
The Shadow was already sliding down the rope. His gloves protected his
hands from friction burns as he followed swiftly after his vanished foe.
His feet hit the window sill. He grabbed wildly at the casing.
He was met by a choking blast of smoke that rolled outward from the
window. The Shadow was caught unprepared, with his mouth wide open.
There was hellish potency in that smoke. It carried a noxious odor. The
Shadow's brain reeled. His fingers slipped on the window casing, his body
started to plummet backward to death.
But although The Shadow was for a moment only half conscious, his will
was
strong. His clawing fingers managed to grab another hold on the window casing.
He rolled inward, and fell safely to the apartment floor.
He was holding his breath, now. With lips tightly compressed, he sent the
ray of his flashlight cutting through the fog of death smoke.
The beam showed him the origin of the smoke that filled the room. It rose
in black clouds from a circular chemical bomb on a table in the middle of the
room. The table was the only piece of furniture visible. There was no carpet
on
the floor. The walls were dingy and bare of decorations. The apartment looked
as
if it had been empty for a long time.
Quickly, The Shadow raced from the apartment to the corridor outside. He
could hear the voices of tenants who had been aroused by the shooting and had
poured out into the hallway from other apartments.
Suddenly, there came the roaring echo of a shot. A moment later, The
Shadow leaped out into the hallway.
He almost fell over the bleeding body of a man dressed only in his
underwear. It was one of the tenants who had rushed into the hall. The Shadow
saw the direction of the wounded man's pointing finger. He raced down the
stairs.
None of the other tenants tried to stop him. One glance at the
black-robed
figure, and the people who had raced into the hall vanished back into their
apartments with cries of terror.
"The Shadow!"
Sound of those shouts brought grim laughter from The Shadow's taut lips.
He had already reached the street hallway. By the light of a dim ceiling lamp
he could see no sign of Blue Face. There were three routes the elusive
criminal
might have taken: The front doorway to the street. The rear doorway to the
back
yard. Or the stairway to the cellar.
Instantly, The Shadow decided on the cellar. The onrushing figures of
armed cops gave him the answer. They were racing into the building from both
the front and rear doors. Blue Face could not have passed them unseen.
Bullets ripped through the dark hallway from both ends. The Shadow fired
back. But he used his guns merely to delay the policemen, not to harm them.
While he fired, he was jerking at the knob of the cellar door.
It opened. He flung himself inward to a dark landing. The Shadow shot a
bolt on the inside. He could hear a bluecoat crash his body against the door.
But it was strong and solid. It would take tools and time to burst through the
stout barrier.
The Shadow raced down the cellar stairs.
THE cellar was pitch-dark. The Shadow halted an instant, to avoid the
possible spurt of bullets from the unseen criminal.
But again, Blue Face was unnaturally silent. The only sound The Shadow
heard was a strange clang. It sounded exactly like the dropping of a steel bar
into a slot on the inside of a cellar door.
The sound was not repeated. Silence filled the blackness of the cellar.
Soon, the beam of The Shadow's torch located the electric switch on the
cellar wall. He flooded the place with light.
Blue Face had vanished!
Turning his gaze toward the two doors that guarded the front and rear
exits from the cellar, The Shadow saw that both portals were locked. On the
inside!
Was Blue Face still in the cellar? The Shadow did not believe it.
And yet, the evidence of the two locked doors showed that Blue Face could
not have escaped either to the street or to the back yard. For one thing, both
doors were locked by heavy steel bars that rested in solid metal supports on
the inside of each door.
The Shadow gave each door a lightning scrutiny while the shouts of
policemen trying to break through from the top of the cellar staircase rang
like doom in his ears. He was looking for signs that might indicate that Blue
Face had rigged a cunning mechanical device to enable him to slam a cellar
door
behind him - and also drop a ponderous steel bar in its metal slot on the
inside.
He found no such evidence.
Indeed, added proof that Blue Face could not have escaped from the cellar
to either the front street or the rear yard was given to The Shadow in the
form
of yells from cops outside each of those doors.
"Open up! In the name of the law!"
Blows began to rain on the outside of the barriers. The Shadow could hear
the splintering of wood.
He remembered the strange metallic clang he had heard on reaching the
cellar. That sound was the only clue Blue Face had left behind him. What did
it
mean?
The Shadow sought for the answer in a furnace that stood in a dark corner
of the cellar. It seemed an impossible place for a man to use as an escape.
But
to The Shadow, nothing was impossible that was logical.
Opening the furnace door, The Shadow found the firebox was cold and
empty.
The dust-covered grates offered no clue.
Dropping to his knees, The Shadow swung open the lower door of the
furnace. This was the door to the ashpit. Here he found the clue for which he
was seeking.
Across the film of dust and dirt on the ashpit floor was the unmistakable
trace left by the body of a man. Blue Face had crawled straight into the
ashpit.
But where had he gone?
The Shadow followed the trail of his cunning foe. It was a tight squeeze,
but he made it. Upstairs he could hear the smash of police sledges. The cellar
doors were being attacked, too, by heavy tools rushed up in a police emergency
truck.
At the back of the ashpit, The Shadow found a metal panel that was not as
immovable as it should be. He was able to pivot it with the pressure of his
wrist and forearm. The panel moved aside. The Shadow wriggled through a narrow
opening into the foundation wall of the building.
At the end of a short passage was a vertical pit. The pit was dark. The
Shadow couldn't see to the bottom. But he saw at his elbow a loop of wire that
looked like an old-fashioned bell-pull.
He yanked it. Instantly, he understood the meaning of the clang he had
heard earlier. He heard it now behind him. The wire loop had closed the open
ashpit door of the furnace. The Shadow's disappearance from a sealed cellar
was
covered - exactly as had been Blue Face's, a few minutes earlier.
THE SHADOW'S electric torch showed him the bottom of the vertical pit
into
which Blue Face had descended. It was about ten feet deep, but easily reached
by
the rungs of a wooden ladder. The bottom was greasy with slime and filled with
the odor of rats and decay.
A single glance told The Shadow the nature of a tunnel that stretched
from
the pit through the earth in the direction of the nearby East River.
It was a length of abandoned sewer pipe. The tenements of this
neighborhood were in an old section of town. New sewers had been installed a
few years earlier by a reform administration. The old trunk line was not worth
reclaiming. The pipes had been abandoned. People had forgotten they ever
existed.
But not Blue Face.
The Shadow crawled noiselessly ahead through the nauseous film of slime
on
the base of this old sewer line. Around him he could hear the squeak and
scurry
of rats. One of them bit savagely at his arm. He flung it quickly aside. The
hungry rodent smashed against the slimy wall of the tunnel with a dull thud.
Soon, a pale glow was visible at the end of the sewer. It marked the spot
where the ancient pipe line ended on the mud flats below the shore end of an
East River pier.
The Shadow emerged cautiously. He stepped into the soft mud that sucked
at
his shoes. It forced him to walk carefully.
He was underneath the flooring of a covered pier. Beyond him, he could
see
a line of muddy footprints that showed where Blue Face had retreated a few
moments earlier. The prints were backward, indicating that Blue Face had hoped
for the appearance of The Shadow, in order to send a hail of bullets into the
body of his blackrobed nemesis.
But Blue Face's eagerness to escape was stronger than his lust to kill.
He
was afraid of The Shadow! His flight proved that.
The footprints ended suddenly. They ended far short of the tide mark
where
the dirty water of the East River lapped at the mud flats under the pier. Blue
Face had taken another twist in his cunning flight.
He had gone upward.
In the rough pier planks over his head, The Shadow found the square edges
of a trapdoor. He climbed up on a cleat to brace himself. The cleat had
evidently been placed there for just such a purpose by the amazingly
foresighted Blue Face. The Shadow forced the trapdoor open.
As he did, he heard a distant shot.
The roar came from the river end of the pier. The Shadow raced forward.
He
had a difficult time getting to the scene of the shot. The pier was jammed
with
piles of merchandise in heavy cases. Several times, The Shadow had to turn
back
and find another route through the darkness.
When he reached the river end of the pier, he found the wounded body of
another victim of Blue Face's determination to escape. This time, it was a
pier
watchman. A bullet had hit him in the back.
The end of the pier where the watchman lay reeked with the smell of oil.
An oil drum had been upset; the greasy liquid formed a puddle all around the
watchman. His clothing was soaked. Had a match been applied to that sinister
puddle, the watchman would have been burned alive.
A grim thought entered The Shadow's mind. Only the swiftness of his
arrival had prevented a horrible death for a helpless man.
He sprang to the stringpiece and peered into the darkness of the East
River. He had heard a rhythmic sound. It was the noise of oars working
desperately in oarlocks.
Suddenly, The Shadow's laughter rang ominously. He was staring directly
at
Blue Face!
He could see a hideous blue helmet that looked like wrinkled Cellophane.
He could see fiery eyes glaring at him from the slitted holes in that opaque
blue mask.
Blue Face was rowing swiftly toward where a slim speedboat was moored. He
redoubled his efforts to row faster.
The Shadow's automatics barked. He didn't aim at Blue Face. He was
determined to capture this unknown criminal alive. He fired at the rowboat.
Two
smashing impacts sent water flooding into the craft. Two more, and the rowboat
began to settle, fast.
Blue Face dived overboard. The tide was strong. He didn't appear to be a
very good swimmer.
Diving from the pierhead in a clean splash, The Shadow, too, took to the
water. He began to swim swiftly toward the criminal who was floundering near
the speedboat.
But The Shadow had made an error. He discovered his mistake when his head
appeared above the surface of the river. All around him, the water was coated
with oil from the overturned drum on the pier edge.
Blue Face stopped swimming the moment he saw The Shadow's dive. His hand
produced something from his pocket. It was a waterproof match case. There was
a
small spurt of flame in the air as the criminal handled the case. He flung the
lighted match backward.
The next instant, the spark became a roaring sheet of fire. The
oil-covered surface of the river spouted blue-and-yellow flames. They raced
like hungry serpents toward The Shadow's head.
THE SHADOW dove instantly.
Kicking vigorously with his upended legs, he fought to keep his head
below
those roaring flames on the surface. Lungs that were nearly bursting forced
him
soon to the surface. He dove again. But he felt the agony of the flame before
the river engulfed him again.
He struck out underwater with a desperate power that sent him through the
water like a champion swimmer. When he again rose to the surface, he was past
the area of the blazing oil.
Turning dizzily, he tried to locate the moored speedboat aboard which
Blue
Face had already climbed.
The speedboat was under way. The throb of its engine sounded dimly from
the foggy murk. Soon it was gone. The silence was broken only by the swish of
the tide against the spongy spires of the pierhead.
A moment later, The Shadow's safety was threatened by a new danger.
Policemen had appeared on the end of the pier. They had been drawn there by
the
roar of the shot that had wounded the watchman. Flashlights bored out into the
river. One of the beams barely missed The Shadow's head. He dove under the
surface just in time.
The Shadow let the fast current carry him away from danger. He reached
another pier, and climbed swiftly out before the police could spread up and
down the river front and trap him.
He had fought Blue Face and lost.
But The Shadow's initial defeat was only an apparent one. His grim
laughter whispered as he vanished among the dark streets of the water front.
The laughter indicated that The Shadow had found out many things unknown to
the
police.
This duel between Blue Face and The Shadow was only just beginning!
CHAPTER III
CHALLENGE OF EVIL
IN pitch-darkness was the room. Silence filled it. It was a place of
black
nothingness.
The Shadow was in his sanctum - a room hidden away in the heart of New
York City.
Darkness afforded no hint of how The Shadow had entered this well-guarded
sanctum. Nor when he left would there be any betraying sounds to indicate his
method of departure.
Many criminals had plotted countless schemes for locating this spot and
destroying The Shadow and all his works. No crook had ever succeeded in
achieving this ugly ambition. The Shadow was still supreme!
A ghostly rustle of laughter ceased in the darkness, its echoes dying
into
silence. Then, suddenly, a blue light glowed. Its illumination was thrown
downward, lay like an oval pool of brilliance on the polished surface of a
desk.
In that oval, the hands of The Shadow were visible. Above the hands
gleamed the blur of The Shadow's face. His powerful beaked nose betokened
strength of character. Deep-set eyes held a strange inner light of their own.
The Shadow was ready to sum up certain facts he had obtained the night
before. Some of these facts he had learned at the risk of his life. These
risks
were now forgotten. Brain work counted now.
His fingers moved beyond the oval of light on his desk. When they
returned
into view, they held a small packet of newspaper clippings.
The Shadow examined the clippings first.
News of Blue Face's latest burglary had created a sensation in all the
newspapers. The robbery committed in the tenement near the East River was
described as the work of a criminal lunatic. Or, at the very least, a
dope-crazed moron.
The total value of the loot which Blue Face had stolen last night was six
dollars and seventeen cents.
To gain this pitifully small sum, Blue Face had seriously wounded a man,
had broken the jaw of the victim's wife with a blow of his gun butt. He
wounded
another tenement dweller who had tried to block his helter-skelter race down
the
tenement stairs to freedom. He had shot a pier watchman.
The victim of the robbery and his wife could tell little of the events
that had thrown an entire neighborhood into an uproar. Blue Face had appeared
in the tenement apartment without warning. He had forced the awakened man and
wife to hand over a small amount of cash.
Dazed, they had stood alongside their bed. Blue Face had forced the woman
to enter a small bathroom. He had struck her savagely in the jaw with his gun
butt, and had locked her in.
Then he had waited, his gun trained on the husband. Finally, a sound came
for which he seemed to be waiting. It was the crash of a milk bottle from the
fire escape outside.
At the sound, Blue Face fired instantly at his helpless captive. That was
the last the man remembered until he had awakened in a city hospital.
His name was Peter Kolchak. He worked in a small bakery not far from the
Brooklyn Bridge. His pay was pitifully small. Nothing about the man, his job
or
摘要：

BLUEFACEbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"February15,1942.NinetimeshadBlueFacestruck!CouldTheShadowsucceedindowningthisviciouskillerwherethepolicehadfailed?CHAPTERIMANHUNTTHEpolicemanturnedthecornerofthedarkstreetquickly.Hemovedwithoutsound,asifhehopedtosurprisesomeprowler.Hec...

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Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 240 - Blue Face.pdf

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：73 页 大小：181.78KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

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