Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 195 - The Spy Ring

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THE SPY RING
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. DEEDS AT DUSK
? CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN TRAIL
? CHAPTER III. COVERED CRIME
? CHAPTER IV. THE NEW ALLIANCE
? CHAPTER V. WITHIN THE CIRCLE
? CHAPTER VI. THE ILSA MEETS
? CHAPTER VII. THE MISSING MESSAGE
? CHAPTER VIII. TRIPLE BATTLE
? CHAPTER IX. THE GAME TO COME
? CHAPTER X. THE LOST TRAIL
? CHAPTER XI. THE AMAZING MR. CRANSTON
? CHAPTER XII. THE MAN WHO FAILED
? CHAPTER XIII. THE LINE TO CRIME
? CHAPTER XIV. HIDDEN STRATEGY
? CHAPTER XV. THE FATAL NIGHT
? CHAPTER XVI. BATTLE OF BLACKNESS
? CHAPTER XVII. FIND THE SHADOW
? CHAPTER XVIII. ENEMIES AT LARGE
? CHAPTER XIX. THE THREE-WAY GAME
? CHAPTER XX. BATTLE OF STEEL
? CHAPTER XXI. FRUITS OF FLIGHT
? CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHEST BIDDER
CHAPTER I. DEEDS AT DUSK
THE APEX AIRPLANE CO. was working overtime. Its many windows were alight, its walls thrummed
to the pound and whine of machinery. Only one section of the plant offered anything that resembled quiet
and seclusion—the executive offices in the corner of the second floor.
A peaked-face man sat at a desk that bore the name plate: JAMES DARR. Busy with account books,
Darr didn't look up when a door opened and another man came out. But Darr was listening, intently. He
heard the executive lock the door behind him and stride out through the outer office.
As footsteps faded, Darr pounced to the inner door. His hand was trembling with eagerness as he used a
duplicate key to unlock the private office. Thanks to the glow of lights around the factory, Darr found an
envelope in the drawer of a big desk. Pocketing it, he hurried out, locking the inner office as the other
man had done.
The executive had gone to supper at the factory cafeteria. Darr had thirty minutes to do what he planned.
Time enough.
They were particular about employees leaving the plant; guards were on duty outside the entrance to the
offices. But Darr had a good-enough excuse; one that he had tested previously.
"The boss wants to check over the expense sheets," Darr told a guard. "The ones that I've been working
on at home. Drive me over to my diggings, Kelly. It will only take me ten minutes to collect them."
Obligingly, Kelly stepped into his car. Darr joined him; they rode from the grounds, the guard's uniform
serving as their passport. They swung from the bleak area where the concrete walls of the factory
squatted like a white ghost in the dusk. They passed the low, corrugated buildings that served as
bunkhouses for the workmen.
Ahead were scattered lights—the border of a little town adjacent to the factory. As a member of the
office staff, James Darr rated quarters in a town house.
Half a mile brought them to the old-fashioned cottage where Darr lived. By then, the dusk had really
thickened. Honest Kelly didn't see the grin on Darr's face when the secretary hopped from the car.
Hurrying in through a gloomy, deserted hall, Darr sped upstairs and unlocked the door of a rear room. It
was a cozy room, already lighted by a crackling fire in the open fireplace. Many of the Apex employees
would have regarded that room as a prize, but Darr considered it a nuisance.
He preferred rooms with steam heat, and therefore regarded his present quarters as unbearable.
Chucking logs on the fire was too much effort, even though Darr kept them handy beside the hearth,
instead of in the large wood box that occupied an alcove past the fireplace.
At present, however, Darr had no complaint. He was thinking of other things; of an opportunity that
would bring sufficient reward for him to drop his hated job with the Apex Co.
How much Darr hated his job was evidenced by two empty whiskey bottles lying on the desk. There
were other bottles, too, that had once contained ginger ale; half a dozen of them, tossed in odd places.
Darr had a habit of using rye highballs to amplify the warmth from the log fire.
The expense sheets were in the desk drawer. Darr bundled them into his coat pocket. Removal of those
sheets revealed an odd-shaped instrument that looked like wooden lazy tongs.
The thing was a pantograph, an adjustable device used by draftsmen for copying plans. Its great
advantage was the fact that it could produce tracings on a different scale than the originals.
Already set to the gauge that Darr wanted, the pantograph was ready for immediate use. He clamped it
to the desk; using thumb tacks, he affixed a three-inch square of paper beneath a pencil-bearing joint of
the pantograph. Opening the envelope that he had stolen from the plant, Darr thumbed through sheets of
plans, found the one that he wanted.
Holding the plan flat with his hand, Darr gripped another pencil, set vertically in the end of the pantograph
arm. He began to trace the plan, carefully and steadily. Under the glow of a desk damp that he had
lighted the effect was almost uncanny.
The pencil that Darr was using had no point, for he did not went to leave evidence that the plan-sheet had
been traced. But the other pencil—at the spot where the links joined—was inscribing every detail, in
miniature style, upon the three-inch square of paper!
DARR'S eyes were darting back and forth from the plan-sheet that he traced to the paper on which it
was being automatically reproduced. But his eyes, nervous in their movements, were not the only ones
that viewed the process.
Hard, cold, were the other eyes that watched. Eyes that peered from the slightly lifted lid of the big wood
box. Darr's actions were under the surveillance of an unsuspected spy, who had chosen that convenient
hiding place as the best possible watching post.
The crackle of the fire might have been an insidious chuckle from the lips of the secret watcher, as Darr
finished the transcribing of the plans. The lid of the wood box, lifting higher, showed an ugly, darkish face
quite as evil as the snakish, spying eyes.
His task finished in a few minutes, Darr tucked the plan-sheet back in the envelope with the others. In
turn, the envelope went into his pocket, ready for its return trip to the factory desk where it belonged.
Swinging the pantograph aside, Darr pulled the thumb tacks from the three-inch square.
Next came an ingenious move. Darr picked up a ginger-ale bottle, the only one that had no label. Tilting
the bottle, he spilled the small amount of remaining liquid on his fingers and moistened the outside of the
bottle. Taking the tiny tracing, Darr applied it, penciled side downward, to the bottle.
Slightly gummed, the paper square stuck in place because of the moisture. Darr held the bottle to the
light. The reverse side of his tracing bore the printing of a bottle label. Even against the light, it was
impossible to seethe traced underside of the label, for the glass of the bottle was a darkish-green that
concealed the pencil marks.
Darr tossed the bottle into a chair beside the desk. A satisfied gleam showed on the brown face that
peered from the wood box. The lowering lid narrowed to a crack as Darr turned toward the fireplace.
Darr had the pantograph in his hand; eagerly he tossed the wooden instrument into the heart of the blaze.
The fire gulped it instantly.
Needing the pantograph no longer, Darr was pleased. The fireplace had served him well enough to make
up for its shortcomings. It had worried him, keeping the instrument in his room, for he was a secretary,
not a draftsman. But there had been no other way. Darr had to be geared to work quickly when the time
came. But that was all over.
Rid of the pantograph, he could ride back to the plant with Kelly. Replacing the plans would be simple;
the ginger-ale bottle would be gone from the room when Darr returned. If there should be trouble, it
would strike someone else, not Darr. All he had to do was sit tight and collect.
The flickery firelight gave Darr's expression a touch of devilish cunning. They'd have to pay him, the
people who received the copy of the plans, because if they didn't he could find a way to spoil the fruits
that they gained. That was the best part of it, thought Darr, as he turned from the fireplace.
Then, half about, he stood frozen, despite the heat of the crackling logs. The sound that chilled him was a
mammoth wail from the emergency siren at the plant. The squatly factory had come to life like an
avenging banshee, to howl the fact that someone had betrayed it.
Did the shriek mean Darr? Had his theft been discovered? Darr did not know - but another did.
The lid of the wood box shot upward. Its darkish occupant bobbed into sight like a human
jack-in-the-box. The firelight illumined his face as it had Darr's, but with far stronger effect. Compared to
the satanic gleam of the dark man's countenance, Darr's expression was no more than impish.
Darr recognized his lurking guest, knew him as a man sent here as part of the transaction. Shrinking back,
Darr gulped the name:
"Kalva!"
FEAR strained Darr's voice. His cringe was a mistake. Too late, he realized that his only chance for
safety would be a dash to the door.
Before Darr could turn in that direction, Kalva acted in cold, professional style. Whipping suddenly in
sight, Kalva's hand drove straight for Darr's heart, thrusting a knife ahead of it.
Needle-pointed, tapering into a long, roundish blade, the knife found Darr's body. Kalva was vaulting
from the box, using his lurch to drive the blade home. The twisty motion of his wrist was an expert touch
that carried the thrust between Darr's ribs. The knife did not stop until its circular hilt nearly met the
victim's chest.
The force of Kalva's thrusting-arm flattened the victim to the floor. Darr sprawled, prone and motionless,
skewered in the heart, with the projecting knife handle as visible evidence of the death stroke.
Half crouched above the body, Kalva displayed an evil smile at the sight of blood upon the dead man's
stiffened lips.
Darr would never tell who murdered him, nor could he ever admit the theft that he had accomplished. In
fact, Darr carried evidence—the envelope which held the original plans intact—that would pass as proof
that he had failed.
With the factory siren wailing louder than before, Kalva's next move was his own escape. He wanted to
make it a hurried one, to create the impression that he had fled too rapidly to make a search of Darr's
pockets. His knife still in Darr's body, Kalva needed an improvised weapon to beat off arriving
opposition.
He chose the most logical thing at hand—the ginger-ale bottle that Darr had tossed on the chair.
Snatching up the bottle with one hand, Kalva grabbed the doorknob with the other. He yanked the door
wide, as if expecting to meet a foeman on the threshold.
Kalva actually hoped for opposition, but not the sort that came. A figure swept inward, a swirling,
blackish form that drove for the murderer with whirlwind speed. Kalva's hand was stopped short as it
swung the bottle. The killer's wrist was nipped in the clamp of a gloved hand.
Burning eyes were all that Kalva saw, as a cloaked shape lurched him back into the death room. Eyes
beneath the brim of a slouch hat told the killer the identity of the avenger who had trapped him. It was
Kalva's turn to utter the name of an antagonist more powerful than himself, as Darr had done a few
minutes before.
Kalva gasped that name: "The Shadow!"
CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN TRAIL
LIKE a rat caught in a ferret's clutch, Kalva was reeling across the room, vainly striving to use the bottle
as a bludgeon. He was using his free hand to claw for a throat that he couldn't find; but The Shadow had
a free hand, too.
The fist that was on the loose contained a .45 automatic, which the black-cloaked fighter swung for
Kalva's skull. Only a lucky bob of Kalva's head, a frantic, warding motion with his left arm, saved the
killer from a blow that should have jarred him senseless.
Few fighters could stave off The Shadow, and Kalva knew it. Sheer desperation caused the murderer to
struggle against the cloaked battler who had long been crime's archenemy. Hurled against the desk,
Kalva knocked it over. The lamp crashed; only the firelight remained to disclose the fray.
Swaying forms cast blotting streaks across the glistening eyes of Darr, that were staring, sightless, from
the floor. Then blackness predominated the scene as The Shadow forced Kalva downward.
Momentarily, the murderer's figure was enveloped by the shrouding shape of his cloaked opponent. With
a mad wrench, Kalva tried to reach the open door.
The move was a bad one for Kalva. A hard-swung gun grazed the killer's head as Kalva stumbled; it
found the darkish man's shoulder and plunged him to the floor. Rolling over, Kalva came face upward, to
see a gun muzzle looming straight between his eyes. He heard the merciless tone of a whispered laugh.
The Shadow had brought the murderer to bay. There was nothing that Kalva could do to save himself.
The croak he gave was hopeless; rescue was something that he could not expect. Nevertheless, it came.
To Kalva's astonishment, The Shadow whipped suddenly away, seeking obscurity in a darkened corner
near the door.
Men were surging in from the hall—Kelly and two other guards who had just arrived from the factory.
The Shadow wanted them to see Kalva only; he was giving them a chance to capture the murderer on
the scene of crime. Often had The Shadow found darkness in a situation such as this; but, on the present
occasion, the firelight betrayed him.
The sudden flare of a log gave the arrivals full sight of The Shadow, as he took his angled course.
Attracted by the swirl of living blackness, they did not notice Kalva. Instead, they drove in massed force
for The Shadow's corner. Reversing his whirl, he met them, hurling them aside with flaying arms.
Kelly was jolted by the backhand swing of a fist weighted with a heavy gun. He rolled across the floor,
as his companions tried to grapple with The Shadow. The stroke did more than put the first attacker out
of the fray; it dropped Kelly right in Kalva's path, as the assassin, seeing the door blocked, made a leap
for the window.
As Kelly grabbed him, Kalva showed a skill that he had not exhibited against The Shadow. Flinging the
guard aside, he yanked the window open. Persistent, Kelly made another lunge and caught Kalva half
across the window sill. It was just what Kalva wanted. Protected by Kelly's body, he started to swing
the bottle for the guard's head.
Kalva shifted as he made the swing. Inadvertently, he poked his left shoulder from cover. A gun spoke
from between the figures of two other men, the guards who were groggily trying to suppress The
Shadow. A sizzling slug from The Shadow's .45 clipped Kalva's shoulder, jolted him backward.
The murderer did not topple forward after receiving the bullet. He was off balance, and Kelly's weight
was pressing him. The writhe that Kalva gave was a frenzied one; his lashing feet struck Kelly's chest.
Instead of stopping the guard's lunge, Kalva's kicks launched his own body outward.
Before Kelly could grasp the murderer's squirming form, Kalva was through the window, plunging
downward. Headfirst, he struck a cement walk that ran beside the cottage; the bottle smashed beside
him.
Kelly heard the clatter of the breaking glass; staring from the window, he looked for Kalva's crumpled
form. It was revealed immediately by the lights of a coupe that wheeled in from the road.
Two men sprang from the car, to reach the motionless figure of the murderer. Kelly saw badges glitter
under the headlights; he knew that these men were Feds who had come to the factory that afternoon. The
guard turned to shout the news to his comrades.
They were sitting on the floor, rubbing their heads and looking quite bewildered. Remembering The
Shadow, Kelly stared about, hunting for the fighter in black. He realized that he owed The Shadow
thanks for handling Kalva, but that would have to come later. The Shadow was gone.
BELOW the second-floor window, the Feds were satisfying themselves that Kalva was dead. The
shortness of his fall was merely incidental, considering his head-on collision with the cement. The Feds
looked up to the second-floor window from which they had seen Kalva start his dive.
They didn't notice the dark sedan that came slinking in from the road. Its own lights extinguished, the
mystery car was guided by the glow of the coupe's headlights.
A window slashed open on the ground floor, just below Darr's room. A challenging laugh, punctuated by
spurting gunshots, quivered the darkness. The Shadow had reached a new vantage point, in time to spot
the dark sedan that was creeping up on the Feds.
Revolvers answered wildly from the darkness as the sedan swerved away, its motor roaring loudly. The
Feds dived for the darkness of the wall, away from Kalva's body. They fired futile shots at the fleeing
men who had been thwarted in their effort to reclaim Kalva, dead or alive.
While the Feds were blazing away with their guns, The Shadow vaulted from the darkened ground-floor
window.
Then, before the Feds could start toward their own car, its motor gave a rumble. The coupe whipped
backward; swerving, it sped after the fugitive sedan. The crook-manned car was out of range, but its
lights were on, giving the direction of its flight.
A trailing laugh from the coupe told the Feds that The Shadow had borrowed their vehicle for the chase.
Soon, the pursuit had reached the open highway. At the wheel of the coupe, The Shadow was coolly
checking on the distance between his car and the one ahead. He was keeping the coupe at its top speed,
but it was not enough to overtake the sedan along the straightaway. The fleeing car was speedier.
Nevertheless, The Shadow clung to the trail. The other car was slackening on the curves, allowing The
Shadow to make up the distance that he lost on straight stretches. Ahead lay hills, with dangerous bends
that would further handicap the sedan's driver, while proving advantageous to The Shadow.
Accustomed to speedier cars than this one that he had borrowed, The Shadow had pulled the throttle
wide and intended to keep it so. Handling the steering wheel with absolute ease, he centered his thoughts
on the occupants of the car that was ahead.
Their part fitted perfectly with the scheme of things. It wasn't difficult to analyze events, so far.
Darr had been bribed to acquire plans of new model aircraft from the plant where he worked. Kalva was
the man deputed to pick them up. While Darr served as a mere tool, Kalva was obviously a valuable
member of some spy ring. Two things had concerned Kalva, as soon as the game went wrong.
First, to dispose of Darr, who was better dead than alive once his part was suspected. Second, Kalva's
own departure, to close the trail to the spy ring. Both matters had been arranged beforehand. But The
Shadow, though reaching the scene too late to prevent Darr's death, had managed to frustrate Kalva's
getaway.
The trail to the spy ring was not closed. It would exist as long as The Shadow maintained his pursuit of
the sedan. Only men of Kalva's own ilk would have been deputed to convey him from the scene. By
taking one or more of them alive, The Shadow could gain much-needed facts.
Perhaps, like Kalva, the men ahead prided themselves on being the sort that would not talk. They would
change such an opinion should The Shadow question them. He employed persuasive ways of obtaining
answers, methods more subtle than any third degree.
THE hills were rising ahead. The Shadow's laugh was meditative as he saw the sedan brake for a curve.
One man in the fleeing car was thinking of his own hide. That man was the driver. He wouldn't wreck the
sedan if he could help it. A fellow who feared an automobile crack-up would be one who feared other
things as well.
Through such reasoning, The Shadow had already picked the spy that he intended to quiz—when the
sedan took a sharp veer to the left into a patch of woods. The trees fringed a gorge; The Shadow could
see a short, high bridge above the chasm, for the lights of the other car revealed the scene.
Those lights gave a peculiar blink as the car struck the bridge. Its possible meaning impressed The
Shadow as he was taking the curve at top speed. In the midst of the narrow belt of trees, The Shadow
let his foot relax the accelerator for the first time.
The bridge was just ahead; the fleeing car was almost across it. The Shadow's hawklike eyes spotted a
crouched figure on the other side of the bridge, a man who had evidently caught the blinked signal.
Jabbing his foot to the brake pedal, The Shadow threw all his weight behind it.
As if actuated by the pressure, the bridge gave a heave. With the lifting of the structure came the rumble
of an explosion. Momentarily, the end of the bridge seemed rising to meet The Shadow's swerving car;
then the whole arch broke apart, like chunks of cracking ice.
The sedan was safely across, picking up the man who had touched off the explosion. But The Shadow's
car seemed destined for the caving bridge. The brakes had locked, but they weren't enough to stop the
skidding coupe. The roadway had taken a sag, with the collapse of the bridge abutment. The Shadow's
car was no longer on level ground; it was skewing down a slope.
To escape the menace of the yawning gorge, The Shadow threw the car into a wider skid. Spinning
about, the coupe actually skimmed the brink, then lurched for the outside of the road. There, it seemed
destined for the same fate that it had escaped, for the road at that point bordered the ravine.
There was only one hope: the wire guard rail. It was useless at the bridge abutment, for there the wires
dangled. But the whirling lights of the spinning coupe showed a white post still rooted in the ground, with
solid cables leading back from it.
The coupe became a living thing under The Shadow's guidance. With a writhe, it escaped the post and
found the solid cables. There was a twang, like the touch of giant harp strings; huge wires bellied
outward, clutching the coupe in their powerful web.
Nosing downward, the car threw its full weight against the guard rail; the rear wheels, lifted high, were
churning the air, as if anxious to drive The Shadow to destruction.
For long, ominous seconds the mechanical creature balanced. Reluctantly, it was about to settle back to
the roadway, when a splintery sound came from beside the car. The weakened post had given; the
coupe's fate was settled. Pivoting lazily upon its snout, the car took a sidewise plunge into the ravine.
From the road beyond the gap where the bridge had been, observers saw the coupe's gyroscopic twirl
down into the gorge, very much like the headlong plunge that Kalva had taken from Darr's window. The
revolving drop was accompanied by the clatter of the coupe's flapping doors; then that minor rattle was
drowned by the crash of the car upon the rocks.
Lights were shattered. The blackness at the bottom of the gully blanketed the crushed pursuit car. From
its spot of safety on the solid road beyond the gorge, the sedan sped off into the darkness.
Men of crime, freed from the menace of The Shadow, were satisfied that they had seen the last of their
cloaked pursuer.
CHAPTER III. COVERED CRIME
BACK in the room where James Darr lay dead, a taciturn man had completed his survey of the scene.
He was a swarthy man, with dark eyes, and a heavy brown mustache that somewhat lessened the deep
lines of his face. Like the men who had found Kalva's body, the swarthy individual carried a badge that
identified him as a member of the F.B.I.
He was Vic Marquette, veteran among Feds, whose specialty was bringing undercover crime to light.
Weighing all the evidence, Vic came to sound conclusions. The envelope of stolen plans was still in Darr's
pocket; but Marquette did not discount the possibility that Darr could have copied the ones he wanted. If
he had done so, only one man could have taken the duplicate sheet. That man was Kalva.
Fortunately, Kalva's career had been stopped as suddenly as Darr's. Even better, there was no link
beyond it. Darr could have handed something to Kalva, but the murderer could not have passed it
farther. The Shadow had blocked the sequence.
Finishing his inspection of Darr's room, Marquette went downstairs. Outside, he found two Feds loading
Kalva's body into an ambulance that was serving as a dead-wagon. They had searched the murderer's
person and found no evidence. Vic told them to go upstairs and get Darr's body, too.
"Stay on duty at the morgue," insisted Marquette. "Don't let anybody near the bodies. If there's any clue
on either of these birds, we'll find it!"
Marquette already had one clue. Not the envelope, for it was merely proof of crime, and belonged back
at the factory. Vic's clue was the knife that he had drawn from Darr's body. A very curious dirk, the
weapon that Kalva had used for murder.
Its blade was something like an ice pick; its handle resembled four spools fitted together. It was a metal
handle, however, made in one piece, of an aluminum alloy. The handle was coated with a peculiar
varnish-like substance.
A clever weapon, that knife. Its beveled sections allowed a sure grip for every finger, offsetting the
smoothness of the curious lacquer which coated it. The gloss, in its turn, served a purpose; of obscure
Oriental origin, its substance was such that it did not readily take fingerprints. The few prints it did take
were vague, unrecognizable.
Thus, Kalva, able to deliver sure death with his probing blade, could also have remained a murderer
unknown had he managed his escape.
Marquette was quite positive on the final point. He had heard of such knives as these, though he had
never seen one. They had been found in the bodies of murdered men, in various countries and climes,
and no one had ever traced the actual killers who used them.
Producing a notebook, Marquette inscribed a single word, in capital letters:
ILSA
At the front door of the cottage, Marquette found Kelly waiting. The guard told him that another
company man was on duty upstairs, outside Darr's room. Marquette gave a methodical nod. The room
had been searched thoroughly, and Darr's body had been removed. He wouldn't have to detail one of his
own men to watch the place.
A car stopped in front of the cottage. From it came a man in overalls, whose long face looked very
worried. He was accompanied by a Fed, who brought him to Marquette.
"You're Windle?"
At Vic's query, the worried man nodded.
"Why did you start the siren?" demanded Marquette. "When we learned that the plans were missing from
the vice president's office, we knew Darr was the man to blame. We'd have trapped him, and that fellow
Kalva, too, if the racket had not started."
"It wasn't my fault," insisted Windle. "I got the order from Mr. Jennings, the plant manager."
"Who told him to start the siren?"
"I don't know."
Marquette checked with the Fed who had accompanied Windle. He learned that other men had been
chatting with Windle when the call from Jennings came through. None of them knew what was happening
outside. The order that Windle repeated simply called for a general alarm.
"All right, Windle," decided Marquette. "Where do you live? I'll need you when I talk to Jennings."
Windle pointed to the lights of a house some distance in back of Darr's cottage and off at an angle.
Marquette told him that he could go.
THE route that Windle took naturally led him around the side of the cottage. Once out of sight, the
long-faced man lost his worried look. Looking up at Darr's window, he picked a space beneath it, darted
there as soon as he was out of Marquette's sight.
Crouched on the ground, Windle pulled a flashlight from his overalls, kept it covered while he probed the
ground. A green glitter met the glow. Windle was finding pieces of the ginger-ale bottle that Kalva had
used as a bludgeon. Feds had kicked the broken glass out of the way while examining Kalva's body.
The Feds couldn't be blamed for their oversight. Kelly had told them that Kalva had simply grabbed the
bottle as a club. It looked like all the others bottles up in Darr's room, except for one tiny detail that the
Feds hadn't noticed. But Windle detected the difference when he found the chunk of glass that bore the
label, intact.
Windle's flashlight showed a tiny pin prick in each corner of the label, the marks of Darr's thumb tacks.
With a quick motion, Windle shoved the curved glass into his pocket, extinguished the flashlight and
sneaked off into the darkness.
Another car had stopped in front of the cottage. Marquette spoke to the Fed who leaned from the wheel.
"What luck, Tyson?"
"They got away," returned Tyson glumly. "Blew the bridge over Cedar Gorge and blocked off our
chase."
"But the car that was after them?"
"It went through the rail. Crashed down into the gorge. It looked like a tin can hit by a sledge hammer."
"And the driver—"
"They're still looking for him. The doors must have flapped open when the car took the dive. He'll show
up somewhere on the rocks."
Standing at the front of the car, Marquette could not see the bulky blackness that rose between the
taillights. The hinged flap of the trunk compartment was rising; it stopped halfway, then settled back into
place. Tyson started away, for he had a carload of company guards to take back to the plant.
As the car swung about, each taillight was momentarily blotted by a black shape that formed a solid
figure in the darkness.
Tyson was right. The Shadow had gone out when the doors flapped open. But that had occurred during
the brief seconds before the guard rail gave way. The cables that had failed to hold the toppling coupe
had proven strong enough to retain The Shadow when he gripped them.
The cloaked fighter had stowed himself in Tyson's car while the latter's men were making their trip down
the bank of the ravine.
Though Vic Marquette did not see blackness cross the departing taillights, the Fed was thinking of The
Shadow. This was not the first time that the mysterious investigator had used his efforts to aid Marquette.
Quite sure that The Shadow had escaped death, Vic was puzzling over another matter: How The
Shadow had happened to suspect trouble at the aircraft plant, and had shown up as soon as the Feds—if
not sooner.
Deciding that his present work was done, Marquette was walking away from the cottage, when he heard
a phone bell-ringing downstairs. Turning, he hurried through the front door, to meet the guard from
upstairs. The fellow had come down to answer the phone call. Brusquely, Vic sent him back to his post.
The door of Darr's room had closed before the guard returned. The Shadow had already entered the
cottage, and had found a chance to reach the death room.
THINGS were not as The Shadow had last seen them. Everywhere was evidence of Marquette's recent
search. Nothing, apparently, had been left unnoticed; still, The Shadow started a search for clues,
beginning with Darr's desk.
Long, thin fingers, stroking the desk top, discovered the four punctures made by Darr's thumb tacks.
Scarcely noticeable in the desk's roughened surface, those tiny holes were significant to The Shadow. His
eyes saw a ginger-ale bottle on a table in the corner, and compared the size of the square label with the
marks on the desk.
An understanding whisper came from The Shadow's lips. A slight crackle from the fireplace blended with
his repressed mirth. Turning toward the hearth, The Shadow saw a feebly-burning log sunk deep in the
grayish ashes. He approached.
Vic Marquette had already poked among the remnants of the fire, without discovering anything that
摘要：

THESPYRINGMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI.DEEDSATDUSK?CHAPTERII.THEBROKENTRAIL?CHAPTERIII.COVEREDCRIME?CHAPTERIV.THENEWALLIANCE?CHAPTERV.WITHINTHECIRCLE?CHAPTERVI.THEILSAMEETS?CHAPTERVII.THEMISSINGMESSAGE?CHAPTERVIII.TRIPLEBATTLE?CHAPTERIX.THEGAMET...

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