Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 177 - Noose of Death

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NOOSE OF DEATH
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. THE FRIGHTENED MAN.
? CHAPTER II. THE HIDDEN HANGMAN.
? CHAPTER III. THE TELEPHONE CLUE.
? CHAPTER IV. THE MENACE OF SATAN.
? CHAPTER V. A HOME IN FERNDALE.
? CHAPTER VI. CAMOUFLAGED KILL.
? CHAPTER VII. BODY SNATCHER.
? CHAPTER VIII. BOX 691.
? CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN THE CHIMNEY.
? CHAPTER X. THE MYSTERY OF CIRCLE A.
? CHAPTER XI. THE SHADOWY FIREMAN.
? CHAPTER XII. MURDER WITHOUT TRACE.
? CHAPTER XIII. A ROCKET AT MIDNIGHT.
? CHAPTER XIV. THE SECRET OF THE CAVE.
? CHAPTER XV. THE AMAZING TRUTH.
CHAPTER I. THE FRIGHTENED MAN.
INSPECTOR JOE CARDONA was in high spirits as he stepped aboard the train at Albany early in the
morning. Routine business had brought him to Albany the night before, to confer with the head of the
State police.
The train he was boarding was the luxurious Twentieth Century Limited. It would bring Joe into New
York in plenty of time for him to put in a full day's work at his desk in police headquarters.
By the time Joe had located his comfortable reclining seat in the Pullman chair car, the first call for
breakfast was announced. Joe was hungry; he got up and hurried forward to the diner.
A lot of other early-rising hungry passengers had the same idea. The diner was almost full when Joe got
there. But his luck was good. There was a small table for two still unoccupied on the river side of the
train. Joe sat down and picked up a menu card.
A moment later, a man slid into the empty chair opposite. But he didn't remain seated very long. He gave
a nervous start as Cardona laid down the menu card that had been screening his face. The man rose so
quickly that his elbow upset a glass of water.
Cardona was puzzled by the man's odd behavior. So was the waiter.
"Whut... whut's de mattah, suh? Is anything wrong?"
"It's my stomach. I drank too much last night, and I've got a bad hangover. I'm afraid I feel a bit too sick
to eat right now."
He certainly looked it. His face was pale. There was perspiration on his forehead. It was a smooth,
youthful face, in spite of the grayish salt and pepper of his hair.
Staring at him, Cardona mentally contrasted the man's unlined face and his thick-chested, middle-aged
body. Probably one of these persons who always thought they were sick and who took better care of
their health than anybody else.
"I'll eat later," the man muttered hastily over his departing shoulder.
Cardona shrugged, ordered his breakfast. Throughout the meal, he mused over the stranger's peculiar
action.
For one thing, the fellow hadn't actually been sick at all. Cardona was willing to bet on that. He had seen
too many people in the line-up at police headquarters not to be pretty sure about human emotions.
This fellow had been scared stiff. Terrified!
Joe closed his eyes and concentrated on the middle-aged man with the youthful face. Joe had an
excellent memory. He recalled a faint white line like a tiny scar across the top of the man's forehead,
close to the roots of his hair. There had been another line like that, at the fleshy angle of his jaw and
throat.
And the man hadn't been scared until he had seen Cardona's face appear so unexpectedly from behind
the menu card. He had recognized Joe's identity as a police inspector. That was the answer to his sudden
fright and hasty departure. He wanted to get away to protect his disguise from discovery.
Cardona realized more than that. The two tiny white scar lines were telltale evidence of facial surgery.
The man had had his face lifted and made youthful by a plastic surgeon. He must he some well-known
crook, wanted by the police!
But Cardona couldn't place the man's real identity, in spite of his best effort at concentration. Hastily, he
summoned the waiter and paid his check.
CARDONA hurried back to the observation-club car. But he saw no sign of the man with the "sick
stomach." He walked slowly forward through each sleeping car, describing his quarry to every porter he
met.
The cautious flash of his badge got him quick, truthful answers. He located his man in the fourth sleeper
from the rear. The fugitive was occupying a drawing room. Its door was closed and locked.
According to the porter, the man had boarded the train at Chicago. He had stayed locked in for the
whole trip, emerging only for his meals in the diner.
Cardona sat down in an unmade-up berth and watched the drawing-room from behind the screen of a
newspaper.
He figured the crook would be jittery, would wonder whether he had tipped his hand by his flight from
the diner.
The inspector's psychology was correct. The man unlocked the drawing-room door presently and took a
drink of ice water from the cooler at the end of the corridor. He didn't have to do that. There was water
in his own compartment. It proved he had come out merely to get a look at Joe.
Joe got a good look himself, through a small hole punched in his newspaper. He sat quietly while the man
walked back to his compartment and relocked the door. But Cardona's heart was thudding with eager
satisfaction. He knew his man!
It was Gunner Malone, wanted in New York for a dozen atrocious murders! His quick, shuffling walk
proved it. So did the fact that he had no lobes on his ears. But without the man's foolish behavior in the
diner, Cardona would never have given him a second glance. Gunner's own guilty conscience had
betrayed him.
Cardona held a whispered conversation with the porter concerning the sending of a telegram. The porter
informed him it could be thrown from the speeding train as it passed the next station, to he sent from
there.
Joe hastily wrote on a pad furnished him by the porter, addressed it to New York police headquarters.
When he finished the telegram, Cardona had the satisfied knowledge that a squad of New York
detectives would be waiting grimly at Grand Central Terminal for Gunner Malone.
There was no way the killer could escape en route. The train's speed was terrific.
Cardona held his post outside the locked compartment door, while the porter disposed of the telegram.
The train roared onward, eating up the miles with swift, effortless speed. At its Harmon stop-to change to
an electric engine-Cardona had the porter watch the drawing-room door while he covered the window
outside.
It left no out for Gunner Malone. When the train arrived at Grand Central Terminal, he could make only
one last desperate choice. Gunfire or surrender! But dead or alive, Gunner Malone was trapped!
At Ninety-sixth Street, as the train plunged into the mouth of the long tunnel under Park Avenue, leading
to the terminal, passengers stirred and began to pull on hats and coats. The train slowed up and halted
briefly. Then tunnel lights winked from red to green. The Twentieth Century switched smoothly to its
proper track. Finally it glided to a standstill alongside a concrete platform on the upper level of Grand
Central.
When the vestibule door opened, two hard-bitten plain-clothes detectives sprang aboard, guns in hand.
Cardona's gun was out, too; he was still on guard outside the drawing room. His curt question was
answered by one of the detectives.
"Murphy and Halliday are out on the platform. Gunner Malone didn't see us. His compartment is quiet.
The shade is drawn on his window."
Joe nodded. Without a change of expression, he stepped to the locked door, banged on it with the butt
of his pistol.
"All right, Gunner! This is the police and you're under arrest! Come out with your hands up-or we'll
scatter your brains!"
There was no answer.
"Gimme your key," Cardona growled to the porter.
The key was handed over. Standing well aside from the door, Cardona inserted the key and turned the
lock. He threw the door wide open. Three police guns jutted ominously through the opening.
But Gunner Malone didn't surrender. He wasn't there! The drawing room was empty!
FOR an instant, Cardona was dazed. It was impossible for a human being to escape from a speeding
train like the Twentieth Century without breaking his neck in a suicidal leap. Besides, there was no way
he could have lifted the window. The car was sealed with a modern air-conditioning system.
But Gunner had done it! And the drawn shade gave Cardona the answer. When he snapped it up, he
saw that the pane of the window had been neatly removed with a glass cutter. The shade had prevented
the detectives on the platform outside from noticing it.
In a trice, Cardona sprang through the ruined window to the platform, followed by his two subordinates.
Outside, Murphy and Halliday stared at him with gaping jaws. They couldn't understand what had
happened.
But Cardona knew. Rage flooded his heart at the cleverness of the escaping killer.
Gunner had removed the pane of glass as soon as the train dived into the tunnel under Park Avenue. The
underground roar had covered the noise of his glass cutter. He had dropped outside to the tunnel when
the train halted briefly to be switched to its proper track in the terminal.
There was only one direction in which Gunner could have fled. He dared not take a chance with waiting
detectives at the station. He had raced back through the dark tunnel, searching desperately for the
ladders of the emergency exit that would bring him upward to the surface of Park Avenue.
Cardona explained the situation in a terse growl. "Come on!" he shouted.
He ran to the end of the platform and leaped down to the tracks. The four dicks raced at his heels. The
dimness of the tunnel swallowed their flitting figures.
CARDONA'S guess was right. Gunner Malone was ahead of his pursuers, making a bold bid for
freedom. A small leather valise swung from his left hand. In his right was a .38 automatic.
He slowed his mad pace as a rumbling roar like an earthquake filled the tunnel. He flung himself aside to
avoid the swift rush of a speeding train, held on to a steel pillar until the danger was past.
The delay merely intensified the cruel grin he wore. He knew that Cardona was up against the same
danger of being cut to pieces. Pursuit would be necessarily slow.
Presently, Gunner saw the steel ladder. He climbed up it to a concrete landing suspended over the
tracks. A smaller flight of steps led to hinged grating above his head. Through the grating came the
sounds of busy automobile traffic along Park Avenue.
Gunner Malone knew exactly where he was. These surface ventilation gratings ran along the center of the
wide avenue, camouflaged by little grass plots that divided Park Avenue into uptown and downtown
lanes. All Gunner had to do was to pop up into the outer air, cross swiftly to the sidewalk, and vanish
among the usual crowd of pedestrians.
But when he peered cautiously, he found it wasn't as simple as he thought.
There was a traffic cop on the corner. He was standing so that his gaze was directly toward the grating
beneath which Gunner crouched. The patrolman would want to know what a man who was not a
workman was doing coming out of an emergency exit.
Gunner realized that he had only a minute or two to act before the pursuing Cardona reached him. Peril
sharpened his wits. He figured almost instantly a scheme to get rid of the traffic cop.
There was a pile of old newspapers on the concrete landing under the grating. Wind had blown them
across the grating bars and the suction of passing train below had sucked them through. Gunner struck a
match and set fire to the newspapers.
When the blaze had caught well, he spread a handful of dirt across the tiny bonfire to make the smoke
thick and black. It gushed up through the grating and smudged out into the sunlight of Park Avenue.
Then Gunner fired a booming shot from his automatic.
In the closed space of the tunnel, the gunshot made a thunderous echo. The traffic cop on the corner
heard it. His startled gaze saw the thick smoke curling upward into view.
He thought what Gunner intended him to think-that there had been an accident in the railway tunnel under
Park Avenue. To his deluded ears, the magnified echo of Gunner's pistol shot sounded like the crash of
two speeding trains in collision. The smoke suggested the horror of flames following instantly on that
crash.
The policeman raced to the center of the avenue, lifted the grating and hurried down the steps to where
Gunner was crouched out of sight. For an instant, the cop stared stupidly at the tiny bonfire of
newspapers. Then he realized that he had been tricked. Whirling, he saw a man darting at him with
slitted, murderous eyes and clubbed automatic.
The cop grasped at his own gun too late.
Gunner's weapon thudded against the policeman's skull. The officer's cap flew off; then his knees buckled
and he collapsed in a senseless heap.
GUNNER MALONE dragged his victim beneath the slant of the exit stairs and hid him from the sight of
anyone above. He was barely in time. Faces were beginning to peer down from the surface of the
avenue.
Instantly, Gunner raced up the steps. He had dirtied his face and rumpled his clothing. His eyes were wild
and staring, his voice shrill with fake terror.
"Help! A wreck-and fire! Two trains smashed into each other! People are dying like flies! For God's
sake, get some help!"
Hysteria began seeping through the gathering crowd. Some began screaming for police. Others were
running to a nearby drugstore to telephone for fire apparatus and ambulances. Automobile traffic had
halted in a growing tangle of cars and trucks.
Through this noisy disorder, Gunner Malone made a hasty sneak. Threading his way along the sidewalk,
he made for a taxicab that was parked along the curb, a half block away.
A swift dab of his handkerchief wiped away the dirt he had smudged on his face. He patted his clothing
into place and straightened his tie. His gun was inside the small leather valise which he carried.
The taxi driver gave him scarcely a look. In a moment, the cab had turned a corner and was over to
Lexington Avenue, heading north.
By the time Joe Cardona and his men appeared at the grating of the railroad tunnel, Gunner Malone was
a half-mile away and lengthening that distance fast.
A grin slashed his bloodless lips into a brief grimace of triumph. He had made a perfect getaway!
CHAPTER II. THE HIDDEN HANGMAN.
GUNNER MALONE'S conceited grin was not justified. The shrewdest pair of eyes in New York had
witnessed his smooth little sneak from the scene of the "tunnel disaster."
Lamont Cranston had just emerged from the marble entry of a swanky Park Avenue chub. He looked
like a fashionable man-about-town. This was the general opinion of him in New York. He spent a lot of
his time abroad, ostensibly hunting big game. He owned a mansion in New Jersey, and was quite
wealthy.
This Lamont Cranston was The Shadow-an unknown being who had dedicated his life to an endless
warfare against criminals who were too clever or too powerful for the police to cope with. The Shadow
often assumed the guise of the real Lamont Cranston.
As he stepped to the sidewalk from the club, he turned toward where his coupé was parked at the curb.
It was a light, low-priced car that he preferred to use when he drove himself.
There were secret compartments in that car that contained a strange assortment of objects. They ranged
from burglar tools to a compact kit of theatrical make-up. Under the hood of the coupé was a racing
engine that had been custom-built on special order.
Lamont Cranston heard the underground explosion and saw the smoke rise from the grating. He also
witnessed the disappearance of the traffic cop and the subsequent appearance of Gunner Malone.
Cranston had no idea of Gunner's real identity. But he realized instantly that the apparently terrified victim
of a tunnel disaster was a liar. Too many tiny details proved that Gunner's story was false.
If the roar from below the grating had been the real crash of colliding trains, there would have been a
perceptible vibration in the ground. The lack of vibration suggested only one alternative: a pistol shot fired
to fake an accident and lure the traffic cop out of the way.
The smoke, too, was suspicious. It rose from the grating too soon after the "crash." Had there been a real
collision underground, followed by flames, the smoke would have taken a lot more time to seep through
the tunnel and find its way to the surface. And no passenger trapped in a wreck could have reached the
street with such uncanny speed.
Lamont Cranston decided that the so-called victim was undoubtedly a criminal making a sly getaway
from a tight spot. He was sure of it when he saw Gunner tidy his appearance and vanish discreetly in a
taxicab.
Cranston's fast-moving coupé took the turn east to Lexington Avenue and followed the trail of the cab.
He kept well behind, not caring to tip off the fugitive that he was being followed.
At Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue, Gunner paid off his cabby and walked east to Second
Avenue. There, he took another cab. He left that at 110th and Broadway. A third taxi took Gunner to his
destination.
It was a hotel on Fifty-first Street, just west of Eighth Avenue. Cranston's careful tailing job in the coupé
attracted no attention. He got out quietly and followed Gunner into the lobby of the hotel.
Gunner started for the elevator, then suddenly halted, moved backward, behind a potted palm, He was
watching with absorbed attention a young man who was talking to the clerk at the desk.
CRANSTON felt a shock of quick interest himself as he studied this second man. He was tall,
good-looking, with a rather pleasant face. But he was obviously an ex-convict.
His clothing was ill-fitting and badly made. His shoes showed the unmistakable evidence of prison
manufacture. He must have been just freed after a term in prison. About six months perhaps, Cranston
guessed, judging from the lack of pronounced prison pallor.
The greeting of the hotel clerk disclosed that the young man's name was Ralph Trent.
"Your father has made a room reservation for you, Mr. Trent," the clerk said smoothly, pretending not to
notice the young man's attire or his uneasiness. "I also have a letter for you."
"A letter?" Trent's voice crackled harshly. "Let me have it."
He tore it open and read it hastily. Then his voice got even harsher.
"When did this come? It's not stamped or canceled. Wasn't it delivered by mail? Who brought it?"
His low-toned questions were like the snap of a machine gun. He seemed worried and upset.
The clerk could tell him little to reassure him. The letter had been delivered personally, by a man the clerk
couldn't remember.
"It doesn't matter," Ralph Trent replied, with assumed carelessness. He glanced at the bellboy who had
taken his small, rather battered suitcase. "Wait here for me. I'll be back in a few moments."
He strode through the lobby to the street. Gunner Malone drifted after him. So did Lamont Cranston,
after a suitable delay.
The trail led around the corner to Eighth Avenue. Trent walked toward the huge structure of Madison
Square Garden at the corner of Fiftieth. Cranston wondered grimly what business an ex-convict could
have there. The big electric sign over the marquee advertised that the annual rodeo was being shown
twice daily.
But Trent didn't buy any tickets for the show. He turned west into Fiftieth and stopped in front of a
shabby brownstone boarding house that stood almost directly opposite the stage entrance to the
Garden.
He went up the stoop and rang the bell. Gunner loitered nearby, pretending to light a cigarette. He was
able to listen to the quick conversation between Ralph Trent and a frowzy-looking landlady.
Cranston was across the street, out of earshot, but he was easily able to see the conversation. He had
stepped behind a parked car. A pair of powerful field glasses, taken swiftly from his own coupé when he
had left the hotel on Fifty-first Street, enabled The Shadow to read the lips of both Trent and the
landlady.
The letter Trent had received seemed to be a fake. The landlady insisted that she had never heard of the
man for whom Trent asked. She grew angry when Trent persisted. Finally, he shrugged and gave up.
As he descended the stoop, a man came out of the boarding house and passed him with a quick step. He
was a big, handsome fellow with a sun-bronzed face, obviously a Westerner. He was wearing
high-heeled cowboy boots and a sombrero. He gave Trent a swift, sidelong scrutiny, then he crossed the
street and vanished into the performer's entrance of Madison Square Garden.
Cranston decided he must be one of the rodeo riders. He had no time to worry about the cowboy.
Trent hurried back to his hotel, followed by the inconspicuous figure of Gunner. The bellhop was still
waiting at the desk with Trent's luggage. Trent stepped into the elevator with him and the two were
whisked swiftly upward.
Gunner waited until the empty elevator returned, then he in turn vanished upward. The Shadow had to
make up his mind quickly. He did so without a second's delay.
He turned and hurried through the ground-floor corridor to the lobby in the rear. In his hand was a
leather brief case taken from his coupé parked outside. He was taking a chance of losing the trail of
Gunner, but there was method in his sudden move. The Shadow was playing a hunch based on what he
already knew.
He was aware of the interest of both Trent and Gunner in the rooming house on Fiftieth Street. He knew
the rooming house was directly behind the hotel. His guess was that Gunner would alight from the front
elevator at the second floor and hurry through to the rear, after throwing any possible pursuers off the
scent.
There was an elevator shaft at the rear, but Cranston didn't ring for the car. He climbed the seldom-used
stairs.
THE moment Cranston faded from sight, a quick transformation took place in his appearance. From his
brief case came a black cloak and a slouch hat. The cloak covered Cranston's street clothing. Black
gloves incased his hands. In the dimness of the staircase he seemed almost invisible, except for the strong
jutting nose and the gleam of piercing eyes under the brim of his slouch hat.
The Shadow was ready to combat crime in person.
His hunch concerning the movements of Gunner quickly proved to be a good one. The click of
approaching footsteps echoed along the second-door corridor. Gunner, having slyly quitted the front
elevator, was doing what The Shadow had anticipated. He hurried to the dim rear staircase and began to
climb.
The Shadow followed him with noiseless stealth to the fourth floor.
With his hidden gaze concealed by a tiny crack in the fireproof door, The Shadow watched Gunner hurry
to a room midway down the corridor.
Gunner rapped softly at Room 428. He didn't have to wait long. The door was opened furtively by
someone The Shadow couldn't see. Gunner faded inside.
The moment he vanished from sight, The Shadow was in motion along the corridor. Dropping noiselessly
to his knees, he looked to see if the room to the right of the one Gunner had entered was empty. He was
able to do this by using a peculiar device that was actually an adaptation of the mouth mirror used by
dentists. The mirror was at the end of a slim handle.
It was really two flat mirrors, joined in a slight V, so that the image in one was reflected in the other.
When The Shadow inserted it under the crack beneath the door, he was able to see into the room.
It was occupied.
The Shadow straightened and tried the room at the left of Gunner's retreat. This time, luck was with him.
The room was empty. A skeleton key opened it.
Locking the door behind him, and drawing down the shades, The Shadow turned his attention to the
inner wall between his room and Gunner's. There was a connecting bathroom between, but evidently
meant to be used only by guests of the room The Shadow was in, for the door of Gunner's room was
bolted on the bathroom side.
The flat V-shaped mirror slid quietly beneath the crack under the bathroom door. Lying flat on his
stomach, The Shadow could see the reflected faces of Gunner and the man he had come to visit.
The Shadow still had no idea who Gunner really was. Like Cardona, he had noticed the strangely
youthful face on a middle-aged body. He suspected plastic surgery. But Gunner's criminal identity was
not yet clear to him. He learned it when he heard the quick throaty tones of the other man.
"It may be big dough, as you claim-but I still say you're a fool to risk coming to New York. Gunner
Malone-wanted by the cops for half a dozen murders! Safe as a tick out in Chicago, yet you're dope
enough to-"
"I wasn't in Chicago," Gunner grinned. "I was a lot farther west than that. Never mind where I was, but I
picked up a hell of a big secret. One that's worth millions! That's why I took a chance. You've got brains
and dough. I'm offering you a half split. Fifty-fifty. What do you say?"
THE other man pursed his lips into a tight, sneering smile. The Shadow knew him the moment he had
seen him. His name was Jack Bishop, and he was supposed to be a Wall Street broker.
But Bishop's real racket was gambling. He owned two or three expensive layouts in different parts of the
city-places the police had wind of, but could never get enough direct evidence to close.
"O. K., Gunner," Bishop said softly. "Your racket must be a sweet one, or you wouldn't have had the gall
to come rolling in on the Twentieth Century. What's the stunt?"
"A cinch! The easiest job you ever tackled for a million-dollar stake. All we have to do is to take
something away from a guy who doesn't realize he has it!"
Bishop didn't seem impressed. His smile deepened.
"Maybe I know already what it's all about. Maybe that's why I'm here to meet you. Anyhow, you can
count me in on the deal. Tell me how much you know."
"Nuts to that!" Gunner snarled. "Look at the risks I took already. The cops will be hunting for me all over
New York after Cardona gets through cursing at the way I outfoxed him. I'll need dough to hide out.
And you know that costs plenty in this burg. I want five grand in advance! Right here and now, in my
pants pockets! Or the deal is off."
Bishop didn't seem to be surprised at the large sum Gunner demanded. He had evidently come to the
hotel prepared for just such an emergency. Without a word, he produced a big roll of bills, peeled off ten
five-hundred-dollar bills, and handed them to his eager pal.
Gunner chuckled. He stowed the money carelessly away in a trousers pocket.
"Stop giggling and give me the facts," Bishop growled impatiently. "Let's have the dope."
Gunner's voice dropped to a sly, confidential pitch. "I was well heeled when I lammed to Chicago to beat
that last murder rap. So I didn't have any trouble finding a hide-out. I paid a crooked surgeon plenty of
dough to alter that wrinkled map of mine. He did a good job, too. At least I thought so, until Cardona-"
"Skip it," Bishop growled. "Get to the point. I don't want any travel talks!"
"That's just the point,'' Gunner said gleefully. "I did some extra traveling! I heard something about a
vacation hide-out that appealed to me as a swell way to kill time while I was waiting for the cops in
Manhattan to cool down. I went out there and I found-the big idea!"
He wet his lips nervously.
"Here's the secret. A guy by the name of-"
It was the last human sound Gunner Malone ever made. His voice was choked off in mid-speech.
Through the open window behind him came a hissing blur, like a long, whitish snake. A loop dropped
over Gunner's head and tightened like a steel band around the flesh of his tortured throat.
It was a lariat made of a clothesline, tossed in through the window from outside. Whoever threw it was
an expert at the art of strangulation.
A strong heave hurled Gunner from his feet as the rope tightened. His body was dragged swiftly across
the floor toward the low sill of the window. It jammed there for an instant, with Gunner's hands making
feeble efforts to tear the noose away from his purpled throat.
Then there was a jerk, and his body vanished out the window into space.
THE whole murderous attack happened with extraordinary speed. Jack Bishop had barely time to gasp
and stagger back from danger when Gunner's roped body was gone. Bishop had whipped a gun out of a
concealed holster, but he had no time to fire and no target at which to aim.
The attack had been made from a rear window of the rooming house across a narrow airshaft. The shade
was now drawn, the window closed. But if the killer was invisible, his ghastly victim was not.
Gunner Malone dangled from that rooming-house window sill at the end of a noosed lariat. His head
hung at a stiff, horrible angle. When the dangling rope had tightened, the sudden stopping of Gunner's fall
had broken his neck.
He couldn't have been killed any more neatly than if he had been dropped through the open trapdoor of a
prison gallows!
His swinging body brought the frightened face of a woman into view.
She saw the grisly shape of the dangling corpse. The lifeless body was twisting slowly, round and around,
like a bug on the end of a string.
The woman screamed. Then she tumbled backward in a faint.
CHAPTER III. THE TELEPHONE CLUE.
THE SHADOW was an unsuspected witness to the swift, merciless murder of Gunner Malone.
Crouched on the inner side of the connecting bathroom door, through his trick mirror, he had seen the
clothesline lariat whiz through the open hotel window and tighten about the throat of the doomed man,
then pull him through the window.
The Shadow had not anticipated murder. The bold and unusual kill surprised him as much as it had Jack
Bishop. But unlike Bishop, The Shadow had trained himself to act swiftly in unforeseen emergencies.
摘要：

NOOSEOFDEATHMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI.THEFRIGHTENEDMAN.?CHAPTERII.THEHIDDENHANGMAN.?CHAPTERIII.THETELEPHONECLUE.?CHAPTERIV.THEMENACEOFSATAN.?CHAPTERV.AHOMEINFERNDALE.?CHAPTERVI.CAMOUFLAGEDKILL.?CHAPTERVII.BODYSNATCHER.?CHAPTERVIII.BOX691.?CHA...

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