Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 332 - Go Mad

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Shadow--Go Mad!
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published by BELMONT BOOKS, September 1966.
X-2 + humanity = minus one world
The Shadow discovered this negative answer to an evil-
inspired equation, but could even he fight the X-2, the
ultimate weapon?
X-2 could make a good man kill--X-2 could influence a
man's mind, control his brain, his very actions. X-2 could
supply an army of fearless, undefeatable maddened killers
instantaneously. X-2 could robotize the masses. X-2 could
even make the Shadow go mad!
Could X-2 be stopped?
2
1
The Pantheon Theater is on Forty-ninth Street in New York City. It is a normal legitimate
theater where the great actors perform on a lighted stage. This night the play was Shakespeare's
Macbeth, the actor was the great Patrick McBride. It was the 112th night of the successful run,
the third time in his career that McBride had performed Macbeth to the cheers of the critics and
the attentive silence of the audience.
McBride had outdone himself this night, the audience as silent and motionless as if paralyzed
as the play drew to its tragic end. There was a slight movement, a readiness to cheer the great
actor, as the end approached. MacBeth, beaten but still undefeated, faced MacDuff for the final
fight.
"Lay on MacDuff, and damned be he who first cries 'Hold, enough!' "
The defiant words echoed through the theater.
Patrick McBride, proud and strong as MacBeth, drew his sword and faced the actor playing
MacDuff.
The actor playing MacDuff attacked. The two actors crossed swords and parried for some
seconds. The audience, fascinated, watched the carefully rehearsed fight. Both actors fought and
parried ferociously with their carefully blunted and edgeless weapons.
Then, without warning, the actor playing MacDuff suddenly seemed to stiffen, to brush his
eyes, and, with no hesitation, drew his dagger, stepped to Patrick McBride, and stabbed him to
death as the audience began to scream.
The giant Soviet jet touched down at London Airport. The knot of welcoming diplomats and
members of Government stepped through the drizzle of rain toward where the giant plane would
taxi to a stop.
The roaring of the jet engines grew louder.
The London Police kept back the small crowd that had come to see the Soviet diplomats
arrive. Beyond the first knot of curious a ragged group of marchers circled in the rain, their anti-
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Communist placards raised high. The circling marchers chanted as they marched and watched
the great jet taxi slowly toward the small group of British officials out on the landing area.
The reporters lounged behind the first barricade, making jokes among each other, half-awake
and idly watching as the jet came to a stop. They had been through it all so many times before,
Even the Soviet diplomats were the same old men--Valery Bukharin, First Deputy Premier; Ivan
Bunarov, Deputy Foreign Minister; and Georgi Kutusov, Military Attaché at the Embassy in
London.
Bukharin, as befitted his rank, was the first to emerge from the interior of the giant jet,
Behind Bukharin, Kutusov and Bunarov stood side by side. (The reporters began to write--it
looked as if Kutusov was moving up, or Bunarov was moving down in rank, or the Deputy
Foreign Minister would have preceded the Military Attaché.)
The British officials, looking at each other because they, too, had noted the probable shift in
rank, stepped forward wreathed in smiles intended to be friendly. The police stood alert. The
chanting marchers raised their voices and placards so that the Russians would see and hear. The
police firmly held them back.
Bukharin, a tall man, began to descend the landing stairs, followed by both Bunarov and
Kutusov. The Deputy Premier reached the bottom, smiled broadly, and extended his hand toward
the chief British official who hurried to meet him.
Georgi Kutusov, standing one step above the Deputy Premier, reached inside his coat, drew
out a small pistol, and shot the Deputy Premier in the back of the head.
Bukharin pitched forward into the wet landing area.
Kutusov turned and shot Bunarov.
When the police overpowered the Military Attaché he was smiling broadly and his eyes were
vacant, trancelike.
It was a clear night in the city of San Francisco when a young man named Walter Stock
stopped on his way home from a visit with friends to look out over the magnificent Bay and the
lights of the city spread out below where he stood high on one of the many hills. Walter admired
his city. He enjoyed the clear air and the hills.
He stood there about a half an hour, looking at the city, then he boarded a cable car to ride
down the hill toward another cable car that would take him up another hill to a spot near his
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home. He had been on the car about ten minutes, it was halfway down the hill, when the car had
to slow as it crossed one of the flat cross streets.
Just before the car started its steep plunge down the next slope, Walter Stock pushed a
woman down, grabbed her purse, leaped from the car, and ran away along the cross street.
The police caught him twenty minutes later hiding in a dark doorway. He had the purse in his
hand. The purse was of no value. There was $12.65 inside the purse, there was nothing else of
any value at all. Walter Stock earned $150 a week, and had no family or dependents.
Walter Stock did not drink much, there was no record of his ever gambling, he was not a drug
addict, he was keeping no women. He had no criminal record, had never been in trouble, and
had $9,725 in his savings account.
He had never seen or known the woman he attacked before.
She did not know him.
Walter was smiling when he was caught. He stumbled as he was led away by the police, as if
sleepwalking.
On a country road in Southern France an armored truck stopped when it found a large tree
blocking the road. The guards were very cautious. Two got out to try to shift the tree, the other
two, including the driver, sat inside the truck, alert, their weapons ready.
The two guards outside the truck managed to shift the tree. Nothing happened. The two
guards studied the surrounding area. They saw nothing but a party of teenage boys and girls
having a picnic in the field that bordered the road.
The two guards returned to the truck. The inside guard opened the door to let them in.
The mortar shell exploded exactly behind the guards about to reenter the truck.
Flame and black smoke.
The two outside guards fell to the ground.
The guard inside began to choke as a gas spread into the truck.
From the field beside the road the picnicking boys and girls poured across the road to the
truck. The driver was shot in his cab. The two guards on the ground were shot where they lay by
the vicious teenagers. The guard inside was dragged out and shot. The teenagers climbed into the
truck, wearing gas masks, and the truck drove away.
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One guard did not die. "They were all laughing!" The one guard said when he could talk.
"Their eyes! It was their eyes. Like crazy animals!"
The police found the truck two days later, abandoned fifty miles away. All the money was
still in the truck.
The squad of Special Forces soldiers of the United States Army surrounded the cave on the
uplands of Viet Nam. Their green berets flashed as they moved swiftly in for the final kill of the
unit of Viet Cong hiding inside the cave. Their officer hissed his sharp orders. The soldiers went
forward without words or hesitation.
They moved into position, their stern faces set in ruthless lines. Four men ran forward and
lobbed tear gas grenades into the cave and dove for cover. Moments later a ragged group of the
Viet Cong enemy came bursting out of the cave ready to fight. The green berets raised their
weapons, their lips set in grim lines. The Viet Cong scrambled for some cover.
But there was no real cover.
The Viet Cong soldiers had no chance, they could only die.
Until, suddenly, the American green beret unit stood up as a man and surrendered.
The Brandenburg Gate splits Berlin into East and West. It is a favorite place to visit for
foreign dignitaries. On this day, the foreign visitor was the Prince of an Arab nation. He stood in
his flowing burnoose and dutifully admired the gate, deplored the split of the city, and
complemented the West Berlin officials on the great work they had done with their half of the
divided city.
The blond young man stood at the edge of the small crowd of onlookers attracted by the
strange robes of the Prince. He was undistinguished, no different from a thousand other blond
youths in Berlin. He watched the dark Prince for some time, admiring the flowing robes trimmed
with gold. He talked easily to other curious watchers who stood on either side of him. He
seemed, people said later, to admire the Prince. His eyes shined as if he could see far-off and
exotic lands.
No one noticed the change. No one saw the blond young man seem to stiffen, brush his hand
across his eyes, turn and look around as if searching for someone or something--or as if he was
wondering where he was and how he had gotten here.
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No one saw the change as he looked again at the dark Prince.
No one saw the blond young man walk straight to a stocky stranger standing a few feet away,
reach into the stranger's pocket, and draw out a Luger--a long-barreled Luger.
Everyone in front of the Brandenburg Gate saw what happened next. They saw the blond
young man step quickly out from the crowd, fire three quick shots straight at the Prince. They
saw the Prince fall. They saw the German officials and the police guard begin to shout. They saw
the bodyguards of the Prince run to him, whirl with their weapons ready.
Later, no one could remember what had happened to the blond young man. In the confusion,
the wild melee that followed the shooting of the Prince, the young man vanished. No one saw
him go--or almost no one.
One man did see the young man fire, and instantly turn and blend into the crowd. This man
saw the blond youth drop the pistol, move slowly but steadily into the crowd and through it and
out across the open space into a building. The man followed, and as he did he bent over a ring on
his finger and seemed to speak into it. The man spoke urgently for a few seconds, and then
followed the young man closely but unseen.
The blond young man went through the building and down into the cellar. He crossed the
cellar and went through a break in the wall, still there from the destruction of the war, into the
cellar of another building. He went up a flight of stairs into the interior of the second building.
He left the second building and went out into the street.
The blond youth walked a few blocks and caught a taxicab. His shadower hailed another cab
and followed. The chase went on through the city, the blond youth in the first taxi obviously
unaware that he was being followed. He had not looked back once, but had stared straight ahead
as he made his escape.
At last the taxi stopped on a shabby street in one of the poorer sections of Berlin. Here the
evidence of a lost war and of the madness of Hitler in destroying his city with him, was still
visible. The blond youth, who had certainly not been born when the city died, or, perhaps, had
been born in those very days of flaming apocalypse, paid the taxi driver and walked calmly into
an old building still showing the cracks and scars of war.
He still did not notice the man following him so carefully. Not even when the man followed
into the building and up the stairs far enough to see the youth enter a room on the third floor. The
7
man turned back and descended the stairs. In the silent downstairs hallway the man bent again
over his ring. Then he quickly left the building and walked away.
The street was silent and deserted.
Some half an hour later, twilight began to settle over Berlin. In his room on the third floor the
young man sat in a straight chair, his hands on his knees, as rigid as a statue. He had not moved
since he came into the room. He stared toward the window but he did not see anything. He did
not hear the faint sound.
It was the sound like the light swish of a wind. It came from a dark part of the room near the
door. Even if the blond youth could have heard, and looked, he would have seen nothing--only a
darker darkness, a form, a shapeless shape that seemed to hover. As-if the dark itself had
thickened and come alive. As if the shadows themselves had taken on form, heaviness.
For some moments that was all that happened--a sudden sense that something more was in
the dingy room of the Berlin tenement.
Then, in the dark corner, there were two glowing eyes, the faint red glow of some eerie light.
The eyes stared unblinking at the blond youth in the chair. The eyes burned in the dark twilight
room where no light had been turned on. The blond youth did not move.
The growing eyes moved, came closer to the youth, and the great black shape emerged from
its covering shadows. A tall, black shrouded figure that seemed to blend into the dark itself. A
wide-brimmed black slouch hat shaded and hid all but the burning eyes, the long hawk nose that
cut the air like a scythe. A long hand reached out, and a blood-red gem glowed on one of the
long fingers. The hand with the glowing ring touched the rigid blond youth.
As if the hand contained some power of its own, the youth moved for the first time, turned,
his eyes gazing at the macabre figure before him.
The blond young man stared at The Shadow.
The Shadow's eerie laugh filled the small, dark room.
The young man smiled.
The chilling laugh shivered through the room. The eyes of The Shadow burned into the face
of the young man. The great black shape loomed like some avenging monster.
But the young man only smiled.
8
2
THE BURNING eyes of The Shadow studied the face of the blond youth who had killed the Prince.
The eyes were flat, vacant. Trancelike eyes and yet somehow smiling. The lips of the blond
youth were smiling as if he saw something funny, amusing. But the youth was seeing nothing.
Vacant eyes, and yet beneath the flat surface of the blue eyes there was something wild,
something animal like. The youth still sat rigid. Only his head moved, turned to look at The
Shadow.
But the eyes of the youth did not see The Shadow.
As he stared down at the young man The Shadow realized that the blond youth was seeing
nothing at all. No . . . that was not exactly it. The mind of The Shadow reached into the mind of
the youth who sat there in the strange trance. The eyes of the young man flickered, he moved in
his seat, as the power of The Shadow entered his mind like the probing of long fingers.
The Shadow realized that the young man could see, was seeing, but not what was in front of
him. The young man did not see what was in the dark room. It was something else, something
pleasant to the young man. Not an imagined scene, an actual scene. The young man thought he
was somewhere else, looking at some other scene in some other place. For all practical purposes,
the young man was somewhere else, seeing something else.
Yet the young man had come directly home--by a devious route as if he had had an escape
planned. But without looking back, walking in a trance according to the agent of The Shadow
who had made his report over his secret ring radio. Something was very unusual. The young man
had shot the Prince, made a careful escape, and come straight to his own room--and yet did not
know where he was!
The blazing eyes of the shrouded black figure glowed stronger in the dark room of the Berlin
slum. His powers, learned so long ago in the Orient from the great Master Chen T'a Tze, probed
into the mind of the young man, clouded the youth's mind until the young man had no will, no
more awareness of anything but the thick fog that permeated him and made him want to tell all
he knew to this weird black figure. The youth moved, his eyes, shifted in his seat and slowly
relaxed, no longer rigid. The powerful voice of The Shadow filled the dark room.
9
"Why did you kill the Prince?"
The young man blinked, saw the looming shape. "Who . . . are . . . you? What . . ."
"Why did you shoot the Prince?"
The youth shook his head as if to clear the fog from his mind. He stared puzzled at The
Shadow whose eyes glowed above him. The young man looked at the glowing girasol ring on
the finger of The Shadow.
"What . . . do you . . ." and the boy stopped, shook his head "Shoot? I . . . shot . . . no one. No,
I shot no one!"
You used your Luger," The Shadow intoned, guiding the mind that was in his power now.
Luger? I have no Luger! I own no gun!"
The Shadow tightened his power on the mind of the young man. He saw the youth twist in his
seat as if in pain. The voice of The Shadow was relentless.
"I am The Shadow! You cannot resist me. I avenge all evil acts. Why did you shoot the
Prince?!"
The youth blinked again. "Prince?" And, suddenly, the youth smiled, brushed back his blond
hair, his eyes eager and excited as if seeing a vision. But it was not a vision. The young man
leaned forward in his chair, his eyes watching something in front of him that excited him. "Isn't
he magnificent? A Prince! Think of it, a real Arab Prince and I'm watching him. Look! Look at
the way he smiles!"
The young man leaned forward, strained as if seeing over the heads of people in front of him.
The Shadow watched the young man, his piercing eyes glowing in the dark room. He watched
the young man carefully.
"You admire the Prince?"
"Of course!" the young man said eagerly. "Look at him! The power, so regal. There is a
leader, a ruler! Do you know what he did to become Prince?"
"Tell me," The Shadow intoned, watching.
"He fought a ten year Holy War. He came out of the desert and defeated all of them! Strong,
you see? A strong man! A true leader."
The power of The Shadow probed deep into the mind of the young man before him. But the
youth said nothing more--only leaned in his chair as if staring still at the Prince at the
Brandenburg Gate, talked of the Prince, admired the Prince as if he could see the regal figure in
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its flowing gold-and-white burnoose still in front of him. He looked up at The Shadow without a
trace of fear or surprise. He seemed to be asking if The Shadow, too, could see the Prince there
in front of The Brandenburg Gate.
"What is your name." The Shadow said, gently now because he knew that there was no use
trying to learn more from the young man.
"Kurt Pieper," the young man said promptly. "I wish I could stay here and watch the Prince
all day, but I must get home. I work at night."
"Yes, Kurt Pieper," The Shadow said.
Now he knew. All the power of his unique mind would not affect Kurt Pieper--because the
young man had no knowledge of anything that had happened since some minutes before he
killed the Prince! Time had stopped for Kurt Pieper while he stood there admiring the Arab
Prince. For how long, The Shadow could not tell. But he would learn nothing--Pieper knew
nothing!
Pieper had no knowledge of what he had done, of anything that had happened. And, Pieper
had no reason to have shot the Prince! If Pieper had had any reason for his act, if he had planned
it, or wanted it, or had even known of the Prince, the power of The Shadow to cloud men's minds
would have revealed it all. But there was nothing in the mind of the young man that related in
any way to the Prince.
"You must rest now," The Shadow said gently.
Kurt Pieper nodded. The blond youth stood, walked to his bed, and lay down fully clothed. In
an instant he was asleep. Above him the great black shape of The Shadow looked down. The
eyes of the Avenger blazed. Someone had done this! Some force had been used to make this pale
blond youth a killer--without rhyme or reason! Somehow, by some diabolical force, this
innocent man had been made to kill a Prince he did not know--to kill quickly, ruthlessly,
expertly!
Not only had some unknown force made Pieper a quick, expert assassin, but had somehow
given him a gun he did not know he had, had induced the man to make an escape over a route he
seemed to know! The eyes of The Shadow blazed again--what power could make a simple
youth into a deadly assassin? An assassin with no knowledge of what he had done or why?
Even The Shadow felt a faint chill--because this, he knew only too well, was not the first
such killing, and it would not be the last. But who? How? Why? All over the world the agents of
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The Shadow were watching, as his men in Berlin had watched, but now The Shadow knew the
truth--it would do no good to catch the killers, they would know nothing!
It was the trained sixth sense of danger, learned with so much pain and effort years ago in the
Orient, that mode The Shadow turn. The great black shape glided across the dark room to the
single window. His eyes that could see farther than any human eyes, and could see at night as
clearly as in the day, searched for what he had sensed. He saw them on the roof of a building
across the street.
Two men who stared toward the window where The Shadow stood. They appeared to be
watching, just watching. They had not seen The Shadow. It was the room of the blond youth they
watched as if to be sure of what he did. The Shadow whirled and glided from the small, shabby
room of the sleeping Kurt Pieper. Whoever the men on the roof were, they must know something
or they would not be interested in Kurt Pieper.
The Shadow seemed to float down the silent stairs and out into the now dark night of Berlin.
The lights of the city glowed in the sky, but here all was dark and silent. Unseen, the black
shrouded figure moved across the street and into the next building. He seemed to rise up the
stairs without touching them, soundless in the dark of the old building. Unseen and unheard, a
black shape that moved among the shadows.
But the men on the roof were not caught by surprise. They were not unprepared. As the figure
of The Shadow emerged onto the roof, making no sound, his keen ears heard a faint buzzing.
The two men whirled. They saw no more than something that looked like part of the night itself.
But it was enough. Warned by their buzzer warning system that someone was approaching, they
ran. One man ran to the left toward a door down from the roof that was not the door The Shadow
had come up through. The second man ran to the right toward the nearby roof of another
building. Each man turned and fired three quick shots to slow their pursuer. The Shadow could
not pursue both at once. He chose the man who had run to the right. His giant shape seemed to
fly across the roof with the black cape streaming out like great wings.
The second man never looked back or attempted to aid his comrade. In an instant he had
reached the other building and was gone. The first man, aware of The Shadow behind him, made
a desperate effort to reach the safety of the exit door down. The Shadow bounded across his path
and blocked the door, his fiery eyes concentrating on the man to reach and cloud his mind. The
man saw his way blocked, whirled and ran toward the rear edge of the roof where it adjoined still
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another roof high above the streets of Berlin. The Shadow leaped through the night like a giant
bird of prey and stood in front of the frantic man. The Shadow's laugh echoed across the high
roofs of Berlin.
Frantic, the man fired madly at the great shadow that seemed to be everywhere at once. The
Shadow's laugh rose mocking in the night, maddening. The man fled back and forth across the
roof, always blocked by the inescapable black shape. The man fired at The Shadow, and when
the man fired The Shadow was no longer where he had been. At last the gun in the man's hand
clicked empty. The man stopped, backed up against the parapet of the roof. The Shadow's eyes
glowed as he seemed to float forward in the night toward the man. His figure loomed up above
the man as if to envelop him like some monstrous force. The man looked wildly around. The
Shadow laughed again.
The man stood perfectly still for a moment. His eyes, no longer frantic, stared calmly at the
black shape before him. Then he turned and stepped over the edge of the roof. The man neither
spoke, nor screamed, nor made any sound at all as he fell the six stories to the street where his
body lay crushed and forever silent.
The Shadow stood at the edge of the roof and looked down. The chill he had felt when he
realized that Kurt Pieper had not known why he killed, had had no reason, became colder now as
The Shadow stared down at the dead body far below and realized that he was dealing with
something almost beyond evil.
Below, people were now coming from the buildings to gather around the dead man. They had
waited, and they came slowly. This was Berlin and a slum, and people did not expose themselves
here. The people below looked up. One man pointed at the great black shape of The Shadow as it
stood at the edge of the roof outlined against. The Shadow turned and faded into the night of the
roof.
Fifteen minutes later a black Mercedes saloon drove along an empty slum street six blocks
from where the Berlin Police were now gathered around the dead man who had jumped from the
roof. The black car slowed before the dark mouth of a narrow street. Something seemed to leave
the small street and glide swiftly to the car. The car drove off rapidly toward the heart of Berlin.
In the back seat of the Mercedes, The Shadow sat hidden in the dark of the interior. The
driver, dressed in the full uniform of a chauffeur, drove steadily and carefully without once
13
looking back. His alert eyes searched the street and all the side streets without seeming to be
concerned with anything but his driving--a simple chauffeur driving his employer through
Berlin. But this man was no ordinary chauffeur. On his finger there was a smaller replica of the
fiery girasol ring worn by The Shadow. Beneath his neat chauffeurs uniform there was an
automatic pistol he knew how to use--there was also a blackjack, two small smoke bombs, and a
knife, all of which he knew how to use. Under the calm exterior of the chauffeur were the trained
muscles of a Sixth Dan Black Belt expert of karate, as befitted the Number Two agent of The
Shadow.
"Report, Stanley," The Shadow said sharply from the rear seat of the Mercedes as it drove on
through dark streets.
"Two other incidents in Berlin alone," Stanley, the chauffeur and agent, said. "A minor
official was stabbed in broad daylight by a trusted assistant. A branch of the Central Bank was
held up by a lone bandit who escaped but dropped his loot a block away. Both have been caught,
they appear to be in some kind of trance."
The Shadow's eyes were grim in the rear seat. "Very good, go on."
"Burbank signaled that he is ready to report from New York Central Communications."
The Shadow leaned forward and picked up what appeared to be the microphone to a private
executive tape recorder of the type used by so many busy businessmen these days. No more than
the instrument of a businessman conducting his business away from his office. But the
instrument in the Mercedes was not a tape recorder, it was a special short-wave radio designed
by The Shadow himself and broadcasting on a secret wave-length no one could intercept. The
Shadow pressed a button, flicked a miniature dial, and spoke sharply.
"Report!"
A voice answered instantly. As if the voice were in the black car, and as if the man behind the
voice sat at a broadcasting console from which he never moved. This was, in essence, true--the
voice was that of Burbank, the rarely seen Communications agent of The Shadow who never
moved from his secret blue-lighted room hidden high in the Park Avenue building in New York
that was the Central Headquarters of The Shadow's vast crime-fighting organization. Now, in the
far-off blue-lighted room that seemed to have no walls, but only the giant communications
console set in a hazy blue glow, Burbank reported to his Chief.
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"All reports not in, but to date there are reports of the murder of a Deputy Premier of The
Soviet Union, and a Deputy Foreign Minister, by their Military Attaché. The robbery of an
armored truck in France, murder of three of the four guards, by a teenage gang. An unexplained
and inexplicable purse snatching in San Francisco by a young man with no record and no
motive. The surrender of a United States Special Forces unit to a smaller Viet Cong unit that was
hopelessly defeated! In all cases there is no explanation, no motive. In each case except the last
where the men are not available for interview, the criminals are reported in a trance state, eager,
even happy. They seem to have no knowledge of what they have done. Two are now reported
out of the trance, but they cannot explain their actions. Hypnotism and lie detectors show no
results."
"Is that all?" The Shadow intoned.
"Report one incident in New York, Agent Lane is investigating in company with
Commissioner Weston. Famous actor Patrick McBride stabbed to death on stage by fellow actor.
Said actor also in trance, now out of it, no knowledge of his action, and no apparent motive to
date."
"Instruct Margo to continue investigation," The Shadow said. "Is that complete?"
"Report completed. Standing by for further information."
The Shadow clicked off his special radio and sat back. His eyes blazed but he did not speak.
The Mercedes drove on through the dark streets. Now it approached the gaudy and lighted streets
of the heart of the booming city. Here there was no sign of the giant holocaust of twenty years
ago. The Mercedes moved more slowly in the heavier traffic, between the bright cafes, the loud
clubs, and all the people out for another gaudy night on the town. The chauffeur, Stanley, turned
now to ask his boss where to go from here.
"Where to now, boss?"
The man in the back seat of the Mercedes considered. The man was not The Shadow!
Instead of the black-shrouded figure with the hawk nose and burning eyes beneath the broad
brim of the black slouch hat, the man who now sat in the back seat of the Mercedes seemed a
smaller man, stockier and shorter. He was, actually, none of these things, but had the power of
muscular control to seem this different from the tall figure of The Shadow. This new man's eyes
were hooded and impassive, quiet and without fire. His face showed no emotions, and had a
quiet, thoughtful aspect. A steady, passive face where the face of The Shadow was all power and
15
vitality. And yet, with all the differences--the short cropped grey hair, the neat and expensive
business suit, the entire aura of the successful business man he was--this new man somehow
strangely resembled the black cloaked Avenger.
The resemblance was not an accident. The man now in the back seat of the black Mercedes
was Lamont Cranston, wealthy socialite and businessman, close friend of Police Commissioner
Ralph Weston of New York City, well-known amateur criminologist--and the major alter-ego
The Shadow assumed to hide his true identity. There were few in the world who knew the power
that hid beneath the passive surface of Lamont Cranston. Only the members of the cloaked
Avenger's far-flung secret organization, the small but powerful army of dedicated crime fighters,
knew that their Chief and Lamont Cranston were the same man. There was no one on Earth who
knew who The Shadow really was, or had been before he became The Shadow and his many
alter-egoes. Only two people had ever known the real man--The Shadow himself, and his master
Chen T'a Tze. The Master had been dead many years now, his powers passed on to The Shadow,
and it no longer mattered who The Shadow had been so many years before he became The
Shadow. That man was gone, and only The Shadow now existed--a cloaked instrument
dedicated to perpetual vigilance in an evil world, a man of many faces and mysterious powers
that were used only for good and justice.
The face The Shadow now used was that of Lamont Cranston, the international business man
whose far-flung business interests were the cover for the organization of The Shadow. Beneath
his clothes, in the hidden pockets, the cloak and slouch hat and fire-opal girasol ring waited for
the next time they would be called into play. Beneath his impassive face and hooded eyes, the
mind of The Shadow considered this new and chilling problem that faced the world--men who
killed without reason, or motive, or knowledge of what they had done!
Cranston leaned forward and spoke quietly.
"To the airport, Stanley. I must find out all that the authorities know before we can begin to
fight this evil."
The black Mercedes drove faster toward Templehof Airport.
16
3
THE JET touched down at Idlewild Airport in New York and taxied up to the unloading area.
Outside the gate where the incoming passengers would arrive, a woman stood quietly. She was a
striking woman, the kind who made the heads of men turn as they passed and admired her. She
was beautiful, but it was more than that. It was in her eyes, the carriage of her lithe body, an
inner power that radiated from her no matter what she did, whether she was walking or laughing
or standing quietly. Her dark hair shined under the airport lights, and framed an intelligent face.
More than intelligent, her eyes revealed a mind that was sharp and quick. Apparently doing
nothing more than waiting for the arrival of some friend, she was actually aware of all that went
on around her, was watching everything that happened, everyone who passed. Not a tall woman,
the poise of her lithe frame made her seem taller than she was. Her alertness hidden, she stood
passively, and yet the men who passed all looked at her. They looked at the slim curve of her
hips beneath her reserved dark blue suit, the high and full breasts that swelled the blue cloth, the
long and slim legs. The woman did not look at the men, or she did not seem to look. Actually she
saw them all, and inside she smiled. She was a woman, she enjoyed the eyes of men, but her
mind, as her life, was on other matters. Now she saw the two men emerge from the covered
passage from the jet to the building. She walked to them.
"The car is outside, Lamont," the woman said to the well-dressed and impassive man who
smiled to her.
"Very good, Margo," Lamont Cranston said. "We have a lot of work to do. Get the luggage,
will you, Stanley?"
"Right, boss," Stanley said. The chauffeur-bodyguard-Number Two agent of The Shadow
smiled at the woman as he went for the luggage.
Cranston and Margo Lane walked slowly toward the waiting car. Cranston told his Number
One agent and private secretary all that had happened in Berlin. The woman listened intently, her
quick mind digesting it all, analyzing it in seconds. When Cranston finished, Margo nodded
thoughtfully.
17
"The case here is much the same, Lamont," Margo Lane said. "The police have gotten
nowhere. Detective Cardona is on the case, and he admits he is stumped. The actor who killed
McBride was an acquaintance, but hardly a close friend. He had nothing against McBride, the
police can find no professional motive and no private motive. His record all the way back is
clean and quiet and normal. He's a family man, stable, has no vices anyone can find."
Cranston's hooded eyes frowned. "It sounds like all the other cases. How long was he in the
trance state?"
摘要：

Shadow--GoMad!byMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedbyBELMONTBOOKS,September1966.X-2+humanity=minusoneworldTheShadowdiscoveredthisnegativeanswertoanevil-inspiredequation,butcouldevenhefighttheX-2,theultimateweapon?X-2couldmakeagoodmankill--X-2couldinfluenceaman'smind,controlhisbrain,hisveryactions.X-2c...

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