Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 113 - Partners Of Peril

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PARTNERS OF PERIL
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," November 1, 1936.
Partners of Peril play a dangerous game. But it is The Shadow who makes
the final move that blasts to bits the plans of the unknown power of evil!
CHAPTER I
BREATH OF DOOM
THE tall gray-haired man who entered the Cobalt Club was badly
frightened.
He walked through the ornate foyer with almost cringing haste. But when he
reached the doorway of the lounge room he stopped and forced himself to act
more calmly. He glanced hopefully around, as though searching for some
reassuring face that would ease the fear that was flooding his rather spare,
well-dressed body.
He was looking for Police Commissioner Weston. At headquarters, they said
that Weston had left a few minutes earlier and had probably gone to the Cobalt
Club.
The gray-haired man had to see Weston. He was afraid to open his mouth to
any one else. To-night he knew he was marked for murder! Death before
midnight!
The man walked quickly toward the Cobalt Club's desk and spoke in a low,
guarded voice to the attendant. He hid his fear. He even managed a cool smile
as he asked for Ralph Weston.
The attendant told him that the police commissioner was not there.
"Perhaps if you tried his home, Mr. Harrington -"
He turned toward a row of discreetly closed phone booths. There was a
strained smile on his pale face as he nodded to members of the club who sat
idly about in comfortable chairs. He congratulated himself on his control of
his nerves. Nobody suspected anything was amiss with the tall Mr. Harrington.
He was wrong. Somebody did suspect. The man who suspected was uttering a
barely audible chuckle behind the spread pages of a newspaper. Apparently, he
was not even looking at Harrington. But his eyes had noted Harrington's panic
the moment the fellow had come in from the foyer.
THE clubman with the newspaper was Lamont Cranston. Tall, well-bred,
quiet, his outer appearance gave no hint of his keenness and strength. To
Harrington, he had always seemed a wealthy and not very sociable clubman. His
hawk nose and burning eyes were screened at the moment by the spread
newspaper.
Harrington, in his extremity of fear, would have thought it a waste of
time to have asked Lamont Cranston's help against a mysterious murder threat.
Yet Lamont Cranston, whom he was passing with a faint nod, was the only man on
earth who could have helped him.
Lamont Cranston was The Shadow!
For a week, he had been aware that Reed Harrington's life was in peril
from some unknown source. He knew from the reports of his agents that
Harrington had changed his residence three times in the course of the last
fortnight.
The Shadow had not yet acted on the information he had gathered, because
there was no definite clue upon which to base a move. The Shadow never acted
without logical reason.
Harrington was already closed in a telephone booth. He was talking in a
low voice. He called the home of Commissioner Weston and swore fretfully when
he was told that Weston was still away. He was unaware that Lamont Cranston
had
left his chair and was quietly listening in the adjoining booth.
"Tell him that Mr. Reed Harrington telephoned about a matter of the
utmost
importance," he whispered, shakily. "I - I prefer not to mention my present
address. I'll call the commissioner back, later. Please ask him to wait at
home
until he hears from me."
Cranston's sharp ears heard the whispered words with crystal clarity. His
face was turned toward the inner side of the booth, so that his ear rested
lightly against the frail connecting panel. Had Harrington noticed him at all,
he would have seen merely the dark, inconspicuous back of a fellow club
member.
He would have seen the receiver pressed lightly to Cranston's right car, as
though he were waiting patiently for a lazy operator.
But Harrington was not even aware that a man was closeted in the booth
alongside his. Fear for his own physical safety drove all other considerations
from his tortured mind.
Death! Midnight was the deadline! In Heaven's name, he thought shakily,
who was behind this nightmare threat - and why? What could he possibly have
done, whom could he have possibly harmed?
He left the Cobalt Club with a quick, anxious stride. The usual row of
taxis was in front under the ornate canopy. Harrington hurried to the head of
the line and jumped in the cab with fumbling haste.
THE cab had barely left the curb when Lamont Cranston appeared. He
quickened his leisurely step as he saw the first cab draw away. Something like
a rueful smile passed across his lips, as he hurried to the second cab.
"Was that Mr. Harrington who just left?"
"Yeah."
"Dash it! I wanted to talk to him. That fool attendant told me he was
down
in the grillroom."
He stepped into the taxi and closed the door with a mildly exasperated
gesture. "Follow him, please. I'll have to talk to him at his home, I
suppose."
"O.K., Mr. Cranston."
The cab got under way. Harrington's taxi was a dark blur down the avenue
and Cranston leaned forward.
"Oh, by the way, you'd better keep that cab of his in sight. I've
forgotten where Harrington lives, he's moved to some new address. Just make
sure you don't lose track of him, eh?"
He chuckled good-humoredly. "A rather amusing situation. Makes me feel
almost like a detective."
The driver laughed at the thought of the tall, immaculately dressed and
rather peaceful Mr. Cranston as a detective.
"I don't think crook-chasing would appeal to a gentlemen like you, sir."
"No," Cranston smiled. "I suppose not."
He leaned back, apparently bored at the whole business. But his profile
was bent forward so that he could survey the dark avenue ahead and observe the
course of the cab he was following. Traffic weaved in and out between pursuer
and pursued. But the thought of a generous tip from his swanky fare kept
Cranston's chauffeur on the alert.
Suddenly Cranston saw something that stiffened him on his seat and
brought
a quick tension into his narrowed eyes. Some one else was interested in the
movements of the furtive Mr. Harrington to-night! A small blue sedan seemed to
be keeping rather close to the rear of the speeding cab ahead.
As the cab and the blue sedan passed under a street lamp, Cranston saw
that there were two men in the sedan, but it was impossible to distinguish
them
clearly.
From the fact that Harrington's cab made no effort to increase its pace,
Cranston was certain that the fleeing man was unaware of any surveillance.
Taxi
and sedan passed a green traffic light - which immediately, to the annoyance
of
Cranston's chauffeur, changed to red.
"Nerts!" the hacker growled. "We're gonna lose Mr. Harrington, sir."
But his fare smiled softly. "It's all right. You've earned your tip. I
notice that the cab has stopped at that tall apartment midway through the next
block. You've done excellently."
As Cranston spoke, he was leaning forward, his eyes on the blue sedan. It
had slowed up as Harrington's taxi slid to a halt at the curb. Now it
increased
its pace and continued down the dark avenue. It turned a corner and vanished.
"I'll get out here," Cranston said, suddenly.
He paid off his driver and added a pleasant tip, a sum expected from him
as the wealthy and generous Lamont Cranston. A moment later, he had crossed
the
street on foot and was approaching the entrance of the tall apartment house
into
which Reed Harrington had hurried with a quick step.
CRANSTON'S eyes remained on the corner beyond, rather than the entrance
of
the building itself. He rather expected some one to appear around that corner
on
foot, nor was he disappointed. It was the man who had ridden beside the driver
of the mysterious blue sedan. Cranston had only a vague picture of the blur of
the fellow's face, but he had memorized the bulk of the sloped, heavy
shoulders
encased in a gray-checked suit, and he was quietly certain that this was the
same man.
The sedan had evidently pulled up around the corner and let this man out
to resume his mysterious surveillance in front of the house in which
Harrington
lived.
They passed almost in front of the canopied entrance. Cranston observed
the fleshy face, the thick, brutish hands. "Thug!" his mind whispered
instantly. "Gun-bulge on his hip, too!"
The fellow's face was utterly unknown to him. Perhaps a small fry in the
world of crime, or else a gunman imported into New York from the outside. Had
he been otherwise, the sharp eyes of The Shadow, possessed of vast and
accurate
information concerning the vicious personalities that dominated Manhattan's
underworld, would have immediately identified this shrewd trailer of a
frightened man.
Cranston lounged quietly into the lobby of the apartment house. The
switchboard was empty; evidently the man on duty had taken Reed Harrington
upstairs in the elevator. In an instant, the sharp eyes of The Shadow were
scanning swiftly the open pigeon-holes that contained mail for the tenants. He
noted Harrington's name neatly typed on a slip of paper below one of the
compartments on the bottom row. The suite number, not the name, was what
impressed him.
He could hear the faint whine of the descending elevator and he hurried
noiselessly across the deserted foyer and dashed up the shady stairs. He was
perfectly satisfied with the way things were going. He knew exactly where
Harrington was - and his own presence in the building was unguessed. He
ascended the shadowy stairs to the eleventh floor.
Harrington's door was two removed from the end of the hall. The end
itself
was closed off by the fire door through which Cranston had just appeared. He
returned noiselessly to the staircase and opened a window.
Outside in the darkness was a high-walled stone terrace formed by the
setback arrangement of the building. The Shadow laughed quietly. Bent low like
a flitting wraith, he crossed under one window without sound, and approached
the second.
WITH his eye carefully lifted to the lower corner of the window, The
Shadow was able to see inside a large, high-ceilinged room. Reed Harrington
was
in that room, seated at a low desk. He didn't notice the calm gaze that took
in
at a single glance every detail of himself and the room in which he sat.
Harrington was slumped in abject fear. He groaned and held his head in his
hands.
Finally he rose to his feet and walked with jerky haste to a telephone in
the far corner of the room. As he turned his back, the alert hand of The
Shadow
raised the sash of the unlocked window so that it moved a half inch or so
upward. The Shadow's sharp ear listened to the trembling voice of Reed
Harrington. The man was again calling the home of Ralph Weston, commissioner
of
police.
The Shadow knew that number as well as his own. As Lamont Cranston, he
had
often been an honored guest at Weston's home. The two were excellent friends,
although never for a moment had Weston ever suspected that this tall,
well-groomed clubman with the pleasant smile and rather piercing eyes was, in
fact, the grim avenger of crime that police and crooks alike knew only by the
grim pseudonym of The Shadow.
Cranston's lean body tensed, as he heard the frightened hiss of
Harrington's words on the telephone.
"Commissioner Weston?... Thank God! I've got to see you right away...
Murder! Some one has threatened to kill me before midnight to-night. It's
ten-thirty now and I have a queer feeling that people are following me... No,
I
don't know why. I've got to have police protection... Visit you right away?
Good...."
As Harrington turned from the phone he stood stock-still for an instant,
his face suddenly pale. His eyes had noted the open crack at the bottom of the
window.
The window had been closed when he entered the room. Harrington was
certain of it. His hand jerked from his pocket with a small automatic pistol.
He tiptoed to the window, lifted it, stared at the shadowy expanse of the
narrow terrace outside. There was no one there.
Harrington sighed, and replaced the gun in his pocket with a shaking
hand.
He was letting his nerves get the better of him, he thought. He had no idea at
all that The Shadow had listened, had heard all he wanted to know - and was
now
gone, hurrying like a dark spectre through the blackness of Manhattan toward
the
home of Ralph Weston, commissioner of police.
CHAPTER II
TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
RALPH WESTON smiled at the tall, handsome gentleman whom a servant had
just conducted into his study.
"How are you, Cranston? Nice of you to drop in."
Lamont Cranston smiled, shook hands with the commissioner and the short,
stocky man with whom Weston had been talking. "Hello, Cardona."
Joe Cardona was an ace detective in the police department. Weston
depended
upon and trusted Joe more than any other man under his command. Both were good
friends of this tall clubman who took a sort of amateur interest in police
affairs and had occasionally helped Weston with a suggestion or two in past
cases into which, seemingly, he had been accidentally drawn. That this affable
gentleman with the keen eyes could be The Shadow would have seemed utterly
ridiculous to the two men with whom now he was idly conversing.
"Anything new in the way of crime?" Cranston chuckled.
Weston stared, and Cardona said gruffly: "Why do you ask that?"
"Perfectly simple," Cranston murmured. "I find Weston looking worried,
glancing at his watch as though he expects another visitor. I find Joe Cardona
here -"
"Joe's presence is purely accidental," Weston replied, slowly.
"Nevertheless, there is something queer in the wind. Do you know a man named
Reed Harrington, a member of the Cobalt Club?"
"Slightly. Just say hello occasionally and that sort of thing. Why?"
"He's coming here to see me. Called me on the phone a little while ago
and
seemed frightened to death. Says some one has threatened to kill him to-night.
So I asked Cardona to wait here until Harrington arrives, and see if we can't
discover just what all this nonsense is -"
THE commissioner broke off short. The front doorbell was ringing. It was
a
short, nervous peal, repeated instantly as though the man whose finger was on
the button could hardly wait for the arrival of the servant.
"That will be Harrington, I expect," Weston remarked, quietly.
Lamont Cranston lighted a cigarette; his whole appearance was that of a
man very mildly interested in all this talk of fear and death.
Harrington came abruptly into the room and the servant bowed and
withdrew.
"Thank Heaven I've finally located you, commissioner!" Harrington burst
out. "I -" He noticed the two other men and stopped talking.
"This is Joe Cardona," Weston said, his eyes studying the countenance of
the frightened man. "Cardona is one of my best detectives. I believe you know
Mr. Lamont Cranston? A fellow member of yours at the Cobalt Club."
"Oh - yes. Sorry to have come in so abruptly, gentlemen, but the fact is
I'm terribly worried! My life has been threatened and I - I -"
"Perhaps you'd rather talk privately with the commissioner and Cardona?"
Cranston suggested, politely.
"No. You may be able to help me. Have you ever noticed anybody shadowing
me lately to and from the Cobalt Club?"
"Can't say that I have," Cranston replied. "But then I'm not very
observant, I fear." He laughed ruefully.
Harrington accepted nervously the cigar that Weston handed him. Under the
expert questioning of the commissioner, he began to talk in short jerky
sentences. Cardona listened, his face intent. So did Cranston. But the
latter's
eyes were veiled, almost closed.
Harrington's story was confused and vague. A harsh and utterly unknown
voice had warned him three times over the telephone in the past week that he
was doomed to die. No reason, no explanation - nothing except a viciously
growled warning and a broken connection. To-night the voice had added a single
sentence to the veiled threat. "You will die this evening," it said with ugly
clarity over the wire. "Before midnight!"
Instinctively, all three listeners glanced at the ornate clock in
Weston's
study. The hands pointed to a quarter of eleven.
Weston and Cardona began to ask eager questions, designed to pick out
from
the fog with which the whole affair seemed to be shrouded, the name of some
personal enemy or enemies of Reed Harrington. But the frightened man shook his
head. He knew no man who had cause to wish him dead, and he was positive that
he had done nothing to set a criminal gang of killers on his trail.
He could think of only three or four people who might have even a remote
interest in his activities. One of them was his business partner, a man named
Arnold Kling. Another was a chemical manufacturer named Simon Todd. Still
others were Thomas Porter and his son Ray. All of them were merely business
associates, former partners - things like that.
Harrington explained that his interest lay in joint companies, business
mergers and the like. The Porters and Kling and Todd had formerly been
associated with him in a chemical manufacturing plant in Millcote, New Jersey.
"I mention the Porters," he said, grimly, "because I have never quite
liked or trusted either the father or the son. However, I still can't see why
they or any one else, for that matter, should want me killed."
WESTON produced paper and pencil and wrote down the names that Harrington
had disclosed. He didn't seem particularly excited, nor did Cardona. Both of
them had run into frightened men before; sometimes the fear was justified,
more
often not.
But Lamont Cranston carefully memorized those names behind the veil of
his
lazy cigarette smoke. Simon Todd of Millcote, New Jersey, former partner and
now
complete owner of the Millcote Chemical Corporation. Ray and Thomas Porter.
Arnold Kling - who, like Harrington, had sold out his interest in the Millcote
firm. The information seemed prosaic, not worth mentioning. But to the ears of
The Shadow, nothing was too trivial to be recorded and later investigated.
He rose now, yawning a little. "I'm afraid this problem is too much for
me, gentlemen. If you'll excuse me, I'll be moving along."
He bowed, shook hands and withdrew. Outside, he saw a figure who might or
might not be watching Commissioner Weston's house, but the tall, imperturbable
Cranston did not stop to investigate. He had other things to do - urgent and
important matters that concerned the bodily safety of the unfortunate Mr.
Harrington.
Fifteen minutes later, Lamont Cranston had vanished from the streets of
Manhattan as if he had stepped into another world. It was a world of silence,
of blackness that was deep and impenetrable. It was a retreat withdrawn from
the distant clamor of the city. A room whose existence no one knew except The
Shadow.
A faint peal of laughter was the only evidence that a human being was
within that room. The laugh was proof that The Shadow had returned to his
sanctum.
Under the faint bluish glow of a single lamp, a black-clad arm reached
forward across a polished desk top. A spot of illumination glowed and the
probing hand returned noiselessly, a pair of headphones in its grasp. The
phones were placed quickly over the shrouded head.
For an instant, a private wire hummed with faint murmuring. Then - curt,
brief, respectful - a voice sounded: "Burbank speaking."
Burbank was The Shadow's trusted contact man. All orders passed through
him and were relayed and transmitted to the clever agents who served The
Shadow
and obeyed his wishes.
"Report," The Shadow whispered.
"Harry Vincent at Hotel Metrolite. Clyde Burke at newspaper office. Both
notified to stand by."
"Good," The Shadow said, quietly. "No further orders for Vincent. Burke
to
go to police headquarters and await possible call from home of Reed
Harrington."
"Orders received and understood," the dry voice on the wire replied.
"Repeat Harrington's address."
Burbank repeated it.
"That is all."
The tiny light went out. The headphones were replaced. In the velvet
blackness of the room a faint laugh echoed. The Shadow had no idea, as yet,
what the mysterious force was that threatened the life of Reed Harrington, but
the wheels to stop crime were already turning. Cardona would be able to watch
over Harrington until the deadline of midnight had passed. Clyde Burke, an
experienced newspaperman, would be on the move to represent The Shadow.
Meantime, there were documents to be studied, names to be investigated in
order to find out more definitely where the threat against Harrington had
originated. The black-gloved hand of The Shadow drew paper toward him. On the
paper he wrote in quick succession the names of four men:
Simon Todd
Thomas Porter
Ray Porter
Arnold Kling
The names were visible in the glow of the blue lamp for only an instant.
They faded one by one, beginning with the first name inscribed. Presently they
were all gone, faded out into invisibility as the peculiar ink that The Shadow
used dried on the paper.
But in the brain of The Shadow those names remained fresh and unfaded.
JOE CARDONA sat in an easy-chair, watching Reed Harrington. He felt
grimly
annoyed by this assignment. To Joe's matter-of-fact mind, the whole business
of
the threat and Harrington's terror was so much bunk. He knew that Commissioner
Weston felt the same way.
But Weston had sent Cardona and two detectives to guard Harrington for
the
remainder of the night, in case there might be something more to this strange
story than the phobia and worry of a tired and overworked businessman.
Walsh and Garrity, the men whom Cardona had brought with him, were
stationed outside in the hall. They commanded a view of the apartment door,
the
elevator shaft, as well as the fire stairs that connected with the lobby
downstairs.
Cardona's glance alternated between the haggard face of Harrington and
the
window. He had already locked the window. He made sure while he did so that
there was no possible killer lurking outside on the terrace framed by the
setback of the tall building wall.
Joe glanced at the clock and saw that it was now five minutes to
midnight.
He yawned, lighted a cigar and offered Harrington one with gruff good nature.
"Have a smoke on me. You'll feel a lot better in five minutes."
Harrington smiled wanly. "Thanks, I'll smoke one of my own. They're
milder." He lighted up and sat alertly watching the telephone on his desk. "I
have an uneasy feeling I'll get one last message," he said, shakily, "before -
before -"
"Rats!" Cardona snapped. "Don't let this thing get you down. If you ask
me, the whole thing is a practical joke. I knew a guy once -"
The abrupt ringing of the telephone cut short Cardona's reassuring
murmur.
In an instant, the stocky detective was on his feet, moving toward the
instrument. But fast as he was, Harrington was faster. His pale face was
ghastly.
"I'll take it. If it's the - same voice, maybe you can skip outside and
trace the call on another phone."
He left his cigar at the ash tray beside his chair and picked up the
receiver. Cardona, standing closely beside him, could hear the metallic sound
of the voice on the wire.
"Hello. Is this Mr. Reed Harrington?"
He glanced toward Cardona. The detective was watching the window like a
hawk, his gun in his big hand. Suddenly, Harrington clutched at the
detective's
sleeve. His hand was clawlike. Cardona whirled, puzzled by the queer look of
the
man beside him.
Harrington's left hand had dropped the receiver. He was turning slowly on
his heel, staggering slightly. He tried to whisper something, but the words
stuck in his throat with a horrible gurgling. Suddenly, he pitched forward and
slipped through Cardona's grasp to the floor.
His eyes were bulging, glassy. He twitched feebly and stiffened. Then
there was no further movement.
CARDONA'S ear pressed against the stilled heart for an instant, then he
was up like an arrow and reaching for the dangling receiver. But the line was
empty. The unknown caller had hung up at the other end.
Quickly, Joe called the operator, shot her his name with brisk clarity,
asked for a tracer on the number.
The thing was done with well oiled police efficiency. The call was traced
to a public booth in a drug store not ten blocks away from Harrington's
apartment. A policeman rushed from his alarm box to the spot - and found
nothing. The man was gone. The clerk in the store hadn't noticed any one, had
no idea who might have made the call.
All this took place while Cardona and the two dicks, Walsh and Garrity,
were conferring in grim haste over the body of the dead Harrington.
Apparently,
nothing had happened except the mysterious phone-call. But how could a mere
telephone call kill a man?
Walsh and Garrity had seen nothing suspicious in the hall outside.
Cardona
was positive that the mysterious death that had felled Harrington had not
reached him by way of the balcony window. Yet Harrington was stone dead, as he
had dreaded and expected.
In spite of himself, Cardona shivered a little as he glanced at the clock
on Harrington's desk. The killing had occurred before the deadline of midnight
had been crossed. The hands of the clock seemed to glisten mockingly as they
pointed to two minutes of midnight!
CHAPTER III
DEEP WATER
THE face of Reed Harrington had undergone a swift and horrible
transformation. His skin was wrinkled and faintly blue like the leathery
features of an embalmed mummy. His body was twisted and shrunken like a
hunchback's.
The stolid Garrity, who had rushed inside at Cardona's summons, uttered
an
awed exclamation and pointed at the corpse with a tremulous forefinger.
"Golly, Joe - look at him!"
But Cardona was again on the phone, this time calling police headquarters
in an even voice. When he hung up, he examined the body with swift energy.
Undoubtedly poison. But what swift-dealing agency? And how administered?
He sniffed the still lips and detected a peculiar odor - the queerly
clean
smell of ozone. Joe was familiar with that odor; he had smelled it in the air
after thunderstorms. He knew it came from molecules of oxygen, broken up by
the
passage of a powerful electric current. But where had the current been in the
room? There had been nothing like that at the moment of the phone call. And if
not electricity, what had killed Reed Harrington with such startling
suddenness?
Joe walked about the room with quick, catlike steps. The burned cigar
that
Harrington had left in the ash tray interested him, but he could see no
connection with murder. Joe himself had been smoking a cigar at the fatal
moment.
There was a small safe in the corner. Joe fiddled with gloves hands at
the
dials, but was unable to open it. He decided to call in a police expert
without
delay. Perhaps the safe contained a clue to this mysterious crime.
He went back to the body and again sniffed at the man's lips. This time,
the result was unexpectedly horrible. Putrefaction had already set in. The
odor
of decay was overpowering. Whatever had happened to the unfortunate Harrington
had already begun to rot his internal organs.
To the matter-of-fact Cardona, the electricity hypothesis seemed
farfetched. Poison! But what and how? He was back to the same old helpless
questions.
To add to Joe's confusion, there was a canary chirping away in an
uncovered cage in the corner. Why had not the bird died and Joe himself? Both
had been in the room at the time of the attack. How could a sinister gas death
single out one particular victim and fell him without harm to other living
beings?
Joe was still frowning when the headquarters men arrived. With them came
the medical examiner and a man whom Cardona recognized with a quick smile.
This
new arrival was a newspaper reporter, one of the best in the city. He was
Clyde
Burke.
The Shadow's curt summons had brought Clyde hurrying to police
headquarters, and he was there when the call from Harrington's apartment had
come through. Cardona liked and respected Clyde because he was a
square-shooter
and a good reporter. But never for a moment did Cardona suspect the real truth
-
that Clyde was a trusted agent of The Shadow.
THE medical examiner rose from beside the body. He looked unhappy and
baffled.
"Well?" Joe snapped. "What was it? Poison?"
"Yes. Look at him! Twisted all together as though he had swallowed some
powerful corrosive acid! His insides are already in an advanced state of
putrefaction. We'll have to hurry him downtown for the autopsy, or we'll be
too
late for an analysis of his vital organs."
He stared at the cigar butt in the ash tray and at the dead one in Joe's
broad fingers.
"Did you both smoke from the same box?"
"No. I smoked one of my own. I thought of that possibility. But I still
can't see how a vaporizing cigar could kill a man like that."
"That's a job for me," the medical examiner said. "I'll take the butt and
the rest of the box."
"I don't think it will do much good," Clyde Burke said, quietly. "If he
was actually poisoned by that cigar, it's my hunch the rest in the box will
turn out perfectly harmless."
He pointed to the square wooden container.
"Harrington smoked the last one in the top row. Looks like a new box. My
guess is that the murderer arranged things beforehand, so that Harrington
would
smoke that and no other."
Cardona's face looked pale for an instant. "He offered me one and I
refused. If I had taken it -"
"You, and not Harrington, would be twisted on the floor right now," Clyde
said, slowly. "Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my guess."
Two men advanced from the doorway with a wicker basket. The corpse was
taken away. The medical examiner followed with a brisk tread. He had been at a
thousand such scenes. Harrington was to him just another case to be unraveled
in the police laboratory.
Cardona glanced at the finger-print man inquiringly.
"No prints," the man said. "I've taken a lot of photos, but most of them
are clever smudges. I don't think the killer left a single trace."
"See if you can open the safe, Garrity."
But the safe remained impregnable. Cardona growled softly in his throat
and wished the department safe expert would hurry up. He was itching to get
his
hands inside and find out what documents or papers the safe contained.
Suddenly, Joe's head lifted sharply. From the hall outside the apartment
came a shrill sound. The frightened scream of a woman! Instantly, Cardona
sprang toward the partly opened door of the suite. But quick as he was, he was
behind Clyde Burke. The reporter was out in the hall before Joe reached the
door.
A man was advancing grimly down the dimly lighted hallway from the
direction of the fire door at the end of the corridor. Wriggling helplessly in
his grasp was a very pretty girl. The man was Walsh, whom Cardona had ordered
to search outside for possible clues.
"I found this dame hidin' on the fire stairs," Walsh panted. "She tried
to
scram when I sneaked up on her."
"Good work. Bring her inside," Cardona said.
His eyes glistened with satisfaction. This was the first definite break
since the whole mysterious affair had started.
摘要：

PARTNERSOFPERILbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"November1,1936.PartnersofPerilplayadangerousgame.ButitisTheShadowwhomakesthefinalmovethatblaststobitstheplansoftheunknownpowerofevil!CHAPTERIBREATHOFDOOMTHEtallgray-hairedmanwhoenteredtheCobaltClubwasbadlyfrightened.Hewalkedthro...

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