Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 305 - Malmordo

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MALMORDO
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," July 1, 1946.
A daffodil as a symbol of danger; a creature with a rodent face; a menu
card with the circled message: "Midnight - Morte - Monday" send The Shadow in
pursuit of the world's most desperate criminal...
CHAPTER I
LIKE some weird creature from the deep, the crawling fog enveloped the
Steamship Santander as she lay at her North River pier. From the grimy
blackness that represented the river came the deep-throated blares of
steamship
whistles and the shrill squeals of tug-boats, like voices urging the thick
mist
forward.
The fog was kind to the Santander.
For one thing, the fog hadn't arrived until the banana boat had docked,
so
now its hemming mass was harmless. And now, artistically speaking, the
drizzling
mist was giving this floating junk-pile both grace and proportions that had
never belonged to such a ship.
The dim, dewy pier lights scarcely reached the side of the Santander. Her
hulk, fog-painted a whitish gray, seemed to be undergoing the swathes of an
invisible brush that produced a streamlined effect of motion. Magnified by
that
blanketing gray, the Santander literally towered out of sight, creating the
illusion that this squatty tub had the bulk of a leviathan.
Between the varied blasts of the frequent river whistles came silence,
broken only by an occasional splash. An angler might have mistaken those
sounds
for jumping fish, except that fish didn't jump in the oily, ugly water
flanking
these piers.
Then, like a warning all its own, came a slow, flat beat of footsteps
tramping inward from the pier end in slow, methodical rhythm. As those
footsteps neared a light that was hanging from a post, they were accompanied
by
a creaking from dried, warped boards that formed the surface of the pier.
Out of the fog loomed a burly policeman who, like the Santander, looked
three sizes bigger. His footbeats stopped as he heard a movement beside him;
bringing his swinging club to his fist, the officer turned sharply. The stir
had come from a batch of packing-cases stacked near the post. Hearing it
again,
the patrolman crouched and began a slow-motion approach to the pile of boxes.
Again the stack wobbled, to the accompaniment of a creak. The officer
straightened with a short laugh. A loose plank had jiggled the packing-cases,
that was all. After testing it a few times, the officer continued his patrol
toward the shore.
Whistles sounded intermittently, punctuated by those curious, recurrent
splashes from alongside the Santander. Then, from back where other lights
formed glowing dots and nothing more, came the plodding beats of the
patrolman's footsteps, making their return.
This time those beats halted at short intervals. Close to the post-light,
the patrolman showed his face in the murky glow and his expression was
troubled. He took a few more paces, stopped and listened. From behind him he
heard a slow creak-creak like something governed by remote control. It
couldn't
be the echoes of his own footsteps; echoes didn't act that way, nor footsteps
either.
He couldn't have been as clumsy as be looked, this cop, for at the end of
half a dozen paces he made a neat, deft shift beyond the packing-cases. There,
crouching, he put away his night-stick and drew a revolver instead. There
wasn't any guessing about those creaking sounds, not any longer. They were
approaching and with them bringing cautious foot-steps.
The crouching officer shifted upward, forward. He elbowed one of the
packing-cases and then grabbed at it. The box didn't fall, although the cop's
clutch was limited to his finger-nails. It must have struck a propping box
beyond. But the sound was heard by that other man, approaching through the
fog.
The creaky shuffle did a sidestep and halted.
There was only one place where the newcomer could have located himself;
that was behind the post, beyond the glare of the already muffled light.
Pointing his revolver at the post, the patrolman demanded hoarsely:
"Who's there?"
A voice returned the challenge with, "So it's you, Moultrie!" and a
stocky
man edged into sight around the old wooden post. Moultrie, the patrolman, slid
away his revolver and fumbled for the night-stick, trying to change his
sheepish look to match the poker-faced expression that showed on the swarthy
face of the stocky man.
"I didn't know who you were, Inspector -"
"That's all right, Moultrie," interposed the stocky arrival. "You're on
duty to question people. I wasn't sure who you were, either, the way you kept
halting your patrol. Notice anything special back there?"
"Only - well, only that I must have heard you following me -?"
There was an interrupting nod. Inspector Joe Cardona, despite his
dead-pan
manner, could sympathize with a slight case of the jitters. In fact, though he
didn't mention it publicly, his years of experience had convinced Cardona that
a certain amount of nerves rendered a patrolman alert and therefore made him a
good patrolman.
This applied to Moultrie. Cardona gestured to the stack of packing-cases.
"Think there's anything in there, Moultrie?"
"I don't think so, Inspector," returned the cop, glad that his shift
behind the stack had been interpreted as a performance of duty. "Those boxes
wobbled when I was going past, but it may have been on account of this."
To illustrate, Moultrie stepped over to the right board and pressed his
foot on it. The boxes wobbled accordingly and the tilted one threatened to
topple, but didn't. Then, approaching the boxes, Moultrie added:
"I looked through them earlier. Maybe I ought to do the same right now,
Inspector, even though they're empty -"
By way of illustrating the final point, the patrolman thwacked one of the
packing cases with his club and automatically modified his statement.
Something
bounced from beneath the empty box, scudded across the planking and
disappeared
between the pier edge and the moored Santander, concluding its trip with one
of
the sharp splashes that had been featuring the entire evening.
Even in the gloom, Cardona and Moultrie didn't fail to recognize the
creature as a sizeable rat, which didn't require the magnifying effect of the
fog to class it as an unusually large specimen.
"Whoof!" exclaimed Moultrie. "That was a big one!"
"Not as big as the kind we're looking for," returned Cardona, "nor as
slimy. Human rats, those stowaways that have been slipping into port, from
where and how we don't know."
Cardona's lips kept moving along that line of talk but Moultrie didn't
hear him. The Queen Mary was speaking from somewhere in the fog, the grand
diapason of her whistle threatening to rip the mist asunder. Even the planking
of the old pier quivered under such vibration and the topmost packing case
began toppling, only to tilt back the other way as though hoisted from within.
It would have taken a dozen rats to have accomplished that, but Cardona
and Moultrie were both turned away, hence they failed to witness the
phenomenon. Then, when the ear-shattering blares from the Queen Mary ended,
Cardona managed to get some parting words across to Moultrie.
"The police boats take over at midnight," declared the inspector. "Until
then" - Cardona's hand made a sweeping gesture meant to include the pier as
far
as its invisible outer end - "it's yours."
With that, Moultrie resumed his outbound patrol, much bolstered by
Cardona's visit, plus the fact that there was less than a half hour remaining
to midnight. Cardona watched the pacing patrolman disappear into the fog; then
turned shoreward. But at the first post with its foggy light, the inspector
halted. In mentioning the time limit of Moultrie's patrol, Cardona had brought
to mind an appointment of his own.
From his pocket, the inspector produced a folded piece of cardboard and
opened it in the light. It was a half a menu card, which had measured about
six
by nine inches until someone had torn it across the middle, the short way.
What
Cardona held was the upper half.
The heading of the card read as follows:
MIDNIGHT REVEL
at the
CAFE DE LA MORTE
IN
Greenwich Village
MENU FOR MONDAY
Part of the menu list remained but most of it had been torn away,
reducing
the card chiefly to an announcement, accentuated by the upper portions of a
pair
of skeletons that stood at each side like heralds, pointing to the heading.
But
there was something else that interested Cardona more.
Three words of the heading were circled with a thick black ring, made by
an artist's crayon. Those three words were "Midnight," "Morte," and "Monday."
Right now, midnight was approaching, the word morte meant death, and today
happened to be Monday.
Probably a hoax, this card, like many other such trophies that the police
received, but Inspector Cardona wasn't passing it by. As an anonymous
communication, it was terse and to the point; it showed intelligence behind
it,
which wasn't usual with a crank note.
And thinking further in terms of the unusual, Cardona had heard that the
newly-opened Cafe de la Morte was a most unusual place, worthy of a visit
during one of its midnight revels. Having intended to go there anyway, Cardona
could think of no more fitting occasion than tonight.
Timed to the fading beat of Moultrie's plodding march, Cardona's creaky
footsteps dwindling in the opposite direction, leaving only the thickening
swirl of fog upon the gloom-laden pier.
CHAPTER II
MINUTES until midnight.
Slowly, those minutes were ticking by, broken as before by the weird
whistle blasts and those maddening splashes which now meant rats. Choked more
than ever by the fog, the light from the pier post failed even to reach the
bulking side of the Santander. Glowing downward, that light barely disclosed
the warped planking of the pier beneath it.
Then even those boards were obscured, but not by fog.
Something that swirled more fantastically than the mist was cutting off
the gleam. A figure, shapeless at first, had moved up beside the post to
appear
only as a darkened smudge of enormous size. Then, momentarily revealed in a
fog
rift which its own arrival produced, the figure showed as a human form cloaked
in black, with a slouch hat above.
Gathering as if by command, the fog shrouded the mysterious arrival,
whose
disappearance, as much as his brief disclosure, marked him as that legendary
personage known as The Shadow.
At least it wasn't strange that The Shadow should have put in an
appearance here. The setting was of his choice, the situation intriguing,
particularly because it had already attracted the attention of the police,
whose interests were The Shadow's also.
The uncanny part was that The Shadow should arrive, as usual, just as the
situation was taking an important turn. Hardly was The Shadow at his chosen
post, before the mass of packing-boxes stirred.
From that stack emerged a darkish man wearing old, ill-fitting clothes.
His teeth gleamed white as he turned his grinning face and even the dull light
produced the glitter of gold ear-rings from beneath the shaggy black hair that
made the man's old straw hat appear two sizes small.
The Shadow observed that this man's baggy trousers, frayed jersey, even
the straw hat, were all dark in color, giving him an advantage in the night
fog. For when the darkish man completed a slink to the side of the Santander,
he became quite inconspicuous against that background.
There was a sharp, low hiss, like a signal. It came from the grinning
lips
of the darkish man. A pause, then the signal was repeated. This time it
brought
a response. A man in the gray working clothes of a sailor appeared several
feet
above, like something floating in the fog, until a slight swirl revealed that
he
was leaning over the rail of a lower deck of the Santander.
The sailor spoke, in foreign accent:
"That you, Panjo?"
From below, the hiss turned to a snarl, then became words.
"Give no names, please." Panjo spoke it more like an order than a
request.
"You tell me, you bring birds?"
"Tried to bring them," replied the sailor, "but no luck this trip."
Panjo didn't seem to understand.
"I come for birds," he snarled. "You let me have them now, see? You let
me
have them quick."
"No luck, I tell you. They're all dead."
"You kill them? Why?"
The sailor laughed at Panjo's query.
"You want to know what killed them?" asked the sailor. "Listen, if you
want to hear."
Whistles throated through the fog, then ceased. The sounds that
supplanted
them were those same, startling splashes from the water beside the ship.
"That's what killed them," informed the sailor. "The rats. They flattened
the cages to get at them. I mean it, Panjo."
Again, Panjo delivered a half-snarled hiss. It wasn't just a reminder
that
he didn't want his name mentioned. It was a warning, too, induced by the
returning pound of Moultrie's footbeats. The sailor slid down behind the solid
rail of the deck, while Panjo crouched low against the background of the ship.
They remained that way while the patrolman passed, bound toward the shore end
of the pier. The figures reappeared and the conversation was resumed.
"You bring no birds," rebuked Panjo, in an ugly tone, "so why do you
bring
rats?"
"Because we take food to Europe," the sailor explained. "The rats know it
comes from the ship, so they come on board to get their share."
"But no food they find. So why they stay?"
"They want to get to the place where the food came from. Rats are smart
that way."
Panjo thought that over. Then, sharply he asked:
"You bring birds from Europe?"
"Parrots, macaws and such?" queried the sailor. "We picked them up in
South America, on the way back, where we unloaded surplus military supplies."
"If rats so smart," conjectured Panjo, "why they not go ashore then?"
"Because the South Americans were smarter. They took the supplies and
left
us the rats. We unloaded onto little boats - lighters they call them - outside
the harbor!"
"And then you pick up birds?"
"That's right. We took on a cargo of mahogany logs that they towed out on
barges, because they're too heavy to float by themselves." The sailor leaned
well over the rail, as though to become confidential. "That's how I made the
deal for the birds, Panjo. The men on the lighters fixed it with the barge
men."
Panjo was still obdurate. There was something sullen in the darkish man's
snarl:
"Maybe something more big than rat kill bird."
Their faces were sharply etched, Panjo's and the sailor's, for there
wasn't much distance between them.
Panjo was glaring upward, the sailor staring downward, so neither noticed
the shape that glided to the side of the Santander, somewhat toward the bow.
In
fact, the shape couldn't be seen at all, though it manifested its presence by
the eddy it produced in the fog.
In a sense, The Shadow was surrounded by a ghostly wrapping that finally
dissipated itself as he reached the ship's side and began an upward climb
toward the higher bulwark near the bow.
Meanwhile, the sailor was parrying with Panjo.
"Something bigger than rats?" The sailor's face scowled down at Panjo.
"Like what for instance?"
Before Panjo could specify, there came a louder splash from near the
ship,
a sound which by comparison with those earlier plops could represent something
of human size. The sailor turned quickly and Panjo, giving his head a quick
tilt to make sure the patrolman wasn't near, traced a rapid course back toward
the stacked packing cases.
Hardly had Panjo reached there, before another man-sized splash was heard
off the bow of the Santander. It was then apparent that Panjo hadn't wheeled
away just to hide. He was turning again, to get a better look at the
Santander,
to see what was happening on its upper decks.
Panjo made only one mistake. From this range, he couldn't hope to see
much
through the soupy fog. The sailor's plan was better; he was racing up a
companionway, shouting for other crew members to join him and find out what
was
happening on board. Nevertheless, Panjo did see something, thanks to a
brilliant
light which suddenly arrived atop a stumpy mast near the bow of the Santander.
Some crew member had turned on the light just in time and at the wrong
time.
What Panjo saw was a figure like a monstrous bat, rising above the
bulwark
of the Santander, spreading what seemed to be gigantic wings for a forward
swoop. The thing was human-sized and Panjo, terror stricken by the very sight
of it, shrieked wild words that stabbed like a warning through the fog.
"Vourdalak!" screamed Panjo. "Vourdalak! Nosferadu! Vampyr! Vampyr!"
Those last words struck an echoing note. From the far side of the
Santander, near the bow which none of the sailors had yet reached, came a
high,
frantic shout:
"Vampiro! Vampiro!"
Moultrie was arriving on the run. The patrolman saw the thing that Panjo
mistook for a vampire and fired three shots at it, all much too late. The
figure was gone, swallowed by blackness below the high rail of the upper deck.
And Moultrie was glad that he had missed for he was realizing that the
creature
was more human than batlike.
To Moultrie came recollections of a strange personage that he had heard
about, but never before had seen - The Shadow!
Savagely, the patrolman turned to deal with the malefactor who had led
him
into firing shots at the law's best friend. The malefactor that Moultrie had
in
mind was Panjo, who by now was diving deep into his nest of packing cases. The
boxes were wobbling, toppling, and Moultrie used the remaining three
cartridges
in his police positive to riddle them. Then he scrambled on board the low deck
of the Santander, dropping to shelter in order to reload his gun.
Panjo hadn't halted among the packing cases. Sounds of the first shots
had
spurred him right on through. The darkish man was speeding shoreward; all
Moultrie had riddled was an empty nest.
What covered Panjo's flight completely was the excitement on that high
deck of the Santander. Following the cry of "Vampiro!" there had been two loud
smacking splashes from the water alongside, indicating that a pair of men had
jumped there, rather than combat the formidable unknown.
But there was another, who had taken a different route. He was scurrying
down a companionway, heading for a hatch, dodging crew members in his wild
flight. Rather than cross the deck and make himself a target in the light, The
Shadow was following that last man, knowing that one stowaway, if captured,
could give details concerning the rest.
When three sailors cut across The Shadow's path, he gave them precedence.
They knew this ship better than The Shadow did and they were competent to make
the capture. Nevertheless, The Shadow followed them, ready to remain in
reserve. The chase proved as short as it was rapid.
The chase ended in the hold.
There, dull labored sounds told that the fugitive was seeking shelter
among great piles of mahogany logs that banked clear to the ceiling at one end
of the hold. Armed with improvised clubs, the sailors were moving in that
general direction. Hearing the clang of arriving footsteps, The Shadow merged
with the darkness at the fringe of the hold, just as Moultrie arrived.
The sailors were voicing admonitions:
"Don't let him out of there!"
"Watch him or he'll get out through the hatch over those logs!"
"He can't manage it. That hatchway is clamped on the deck!"
A fierce bellow came from among the logs, half challenge, half terror, a
man's voice so strained and frantic that it was impossible to define. To
settle
the question, Moultrie fired above the heads of the sailors, ploughing his
bullets deep into the mahogany.
The result was stupendous.
With a great heave, the huge pile of logs came tumbling, rolling, sending
the sailors dodging along with Moultrie. Out of that melee, rolling like one
of
the logs, came the fugitive stowaway. Clambering over the logs, sailors and
patrolman reached him, only to find him limp, almost lifeless.
The reason was plain when they turned him over. The man's body was
contorted, crushed. It was horrible, but not surprising, considering that he'd
been carried in the midst of that unexpected avalanche of huge logs, from the
moment the pile had given away.
He was an ugly, rattish man, this stowaway, and his eyes glared up from
beneath the twisted visor of his shabby cap. Then, with gasps that marked his
death-throes, the man panted these singular words:
"Malmordo - morto - noktomezo -"
Those words were all. Having gasped them, the man sank back dead. Like
the
other listeners, The Shadow heard them, for he had drawn close. Now The Shadow
was on the move again, to reach a layer of logs against the bulkhead, the only
portion of the stack that had not toppled.
Swiftly, silently, The Shadow scaled that layer like a ladder, nor was
his
route interrupted at the top. The hatchway that the sailors had mentioned was
wide open; its cover lying beside it, ripped from the big clamps that had held
it. The top log gave way as The Shadow used it to propel himself up through
the
hatchway. It came banging down, bringing Moultrie and the sailors to the
alert,
leaving them wondering as they stared upward and saw the wide gap leading to
the deck.
By then, The Shadow had reached the rail and his keen eyes were probing
the blackened water below. No figures were visible there, but The Shadow could
trace a thin, undulating line in the oily scum, fading off from the side of
the
Santander.
Crossing the deck, The Shadow dropped to the lower rail on the dock side,
then to the dock itself. A low, whispered laugh stirred the hovering mist as
the cloaked figure flitted past the hanging light and took the shoreward route
that Panjo had so recently followed.
"Malmordo - morto - noktomezo -"
Unintelligible words to others, but to The Shadow they formed a link to
something far more sinister than the chance death of a fugitive stowaway on
board the Steamship Santander!
CHAPTER III
IT was nearly midnight when The Shadow left the North River pier and
midnight was the hour for the usual revel that took place at the new but
already popular Cafe de la Morte, Greenwich Village's latest screwball
attraction.
With his head-start from the pier, Inspector Cardona had reached the cafe
just before the appointed hour. He was reluctantly checking his hat and coat
in
a cloak room painted all about with imitation flames and presided over by a
somewhat timeworn check girl who looked anything but cute in a devil-costume
adorned with imitation horns.
The hell-fire motif persisted into the cafe itself, then gave way to
walls
painted to represent tombstones with hovering ghosts all about. The waiter who
conducted Cardona to a table was dressed in an outfit decorated with skeleton
ribs and over his head he wore a hood painted to represent a skull.
Cardona noted that the other waiters were similarly attired, which gave
them excellent opportunity to cover their identity, a fact which the inspector
intended to put in his notebook at an early moment. The one man who was not so
disguised - and therefore worthy of a separate notation - was a stolid
bartender over at one side of the cafe, behind the inevitable bar.
Maybe the barkeep objected to such a costume or was too busy to be
encumbered by one. At any rate, he had nothing to conceal, for Cardona
recognized him as a veteran bartender who had served at several Village spots.
With a further eye to detail, Cardona noted that the bar was well-stocked,
both
in quantity and variety of liquors. Behind the barkeeper was a rack of
shelves,
divided in three vertical sections, all loaded to capacity with fancy bottles
of imported goods.
The patrons next.
Studying the customers, Joe Cardona decided that they represented the
usual sprinkling of Villagers and the customary majority of out-of-towners who
would patronize a freakish place such as the Cafe de la Morte. Business was
always good when such establishments opened and generally sustained itself
until some other novelty supplanted it.
Many of the customers were drinking beer, the chief reason being that the
beverage was served in big mugs shaped to resemble skulls. Quite a thrill,
such
sport, but it wasn't showing big profits for the house. The popularity of beer
in skull-mugs could account for the untouched stock of much more expensive
elixirs on the shelf behind old Jerry, the squatty bartender who looked as
though he didn't have enough to do.
In Cardona's opinion, the Cafe de la Morte wouldn't begin to make profits
until it stopped serving beer in bizarre mugs; and when it stopped that
practice, people wouldn't come here any more.
But people were here tonight, that was the important thing. Moreover, the
menu card lying on Cardona's table was a perfect match for the half-card, that
Joe had in his pocket. If death happened to be due at Monday midnight, it was
Cardona's business to pick the persons who might be involved.
So far, Cardona could only pick the waiters, with their disguising
skull-hoods. Ordering a beer, Joe not only kept a close watch on his waiter,
but all the others who came within his scope.
The policy brought results.
One waiter, passing another, whispered a word that Cardona overheard, a
word that sounded like a name:
"Malmordo."
The second waiter repeated it to a third and Cardona caught the word
"Malmordo" plainly. He also saw both waiters throw worried glances toward the
rear of the cafe and when men in masking hoods could give the impression that
they were worried, it was obvious that they must be worried indeed.
Joe's trouble was that he couldn't see the rear of the cafe at all.
Ignoring his beer, he rose from his table and sauntered over toward the bar,
then changed course and found a good observation spot along the same wall. The
spot was particularly good because it was beneath a stretch of sloping
ceiling,
about four feet wide, that slanted down behind the bar and cut off old Jerry's
view of the place that Cardona had chosen.
From his new vantage, Cardona saw that the rear of the restaurant opened
into an outdoor garden and through the connecting door, the slight breeze
wafted the strains of wild exotic music, played by a violin.
Wondering who the musician might be, Cardona took a casual stroll out to
the garden.
From the moment that he made his advent into the al fresco setting, Joe
Cardona was spotted. The man who pegged him was a rather handsome young chap
named Harry Vincent. Parked at a rather obscure table alongside the green
board
fence that served as boundary to the garden, Harry immediately concerned
himself
with the remaining contents of a skull-mug, rather than have Cardona see his
face.
As a rule, persons who didn't want to be noticed by Joe Cardona were
fugitives from justice. Harry Vincent happened to be a rare exception.
Harry Vincent was an agent of The Shadow.
Through channels peculiarly his own, The Shadow had ways of finding out
about things and places that aroused the suspicion of the police. There were
times, too, when The Shadow anticipated a growing interest on the part of the
law. Though The Shadow's data might be incomplete, he seldom let such a
condition continue.
The Shadow had ways of building up his own statistics. One of those ways
was Harry Vincent.
This evening Harry had been told to cover the Cafe de la Morte. He had
picked the outdoor garden as the best area, because it had attracted the
majority of the patrons. The weather was warm and the garden was therefore
cooler than the cramped indoors. Though the high board fence cut off passing
breezes, there was compensation in the fact that the garden had no roof.
Running from the building to the fence were a series of well-spaced iron
rods intended as a support for a huge canvas canopy that served in rainy
weather. At present the canopy was rolled up and parked against the building
wall, above the down-slanting rods.
The garden's chief attraction was the violinist, who answered to the name
of Gregor. He wore a Hungarian costume of boots, baggy trousers, fancy sash
and
ruffled shirt. He was a good-looking chap despite his frequent scowls which
seemed the result of concentration on his music, which constantly approached a
tumultuous staccato and always ended unexpectedly. However, it had taken Harry
less than an hour to observe that Gregor's gripe concerned something other
than
his music; namely, Madame Thalla.
According to the little cards that she distributed at tables, Madame
Thalla was a gypsy palmist and she certainly looked the part. Though young,
Thalla had a wise face that befitted her colorful gypsy costume. It wasn't
always possible to see her face, because the brilliant handkerchief that she
wore as a head-dress drooped down beside her cheeks like the blinders on a
horse.
At least those blinders helped Madame Thalla concentrate on the person
whose fortune she was telling. There was another point that interested Harry
quite as much. Though she advertised herself as a palmist, Madame Thalla told
fortunes by playing cards instead. The particular type of cards she used were
the old-fashioned tarots, with curious pictures embellishing their faces.
At present, Madame Thalla was dealing the tarots for a blonde young lady
who wore a white dress. Since Cardona was noticing Gregor, Harry decided to
look at the blonde instead. In fact, he shifted his chair so he particularly
gained a ringside seat to the conference between Madame Thalla and the girl in
white.
What Harry heard made him forget the hazard of being observed by Cardona.
"Your name," Madame Thalla was saying, in a low, sharp tone. "I can read
it here in the cards."
"My name?" exclaimed the girl. "But that's impossible."
"It is not impossible," declared Thalla. "It is Janice. Wait, I can read
the rest! Your full name is Janice Bradford."
From the way the girl drew her breath, Harry knew that Madame Thalla had
scored a ten-strike. Then:
"That is my name," the girl admitted, soberly. "But surely, the cards
could not tell you."
"The cards tell everything," asserted Thalla. "Most of all, they warn of
danger. The danger that comes to those who wear the yellow flower."
Janice Bradford went tense. Harry Vincent saw her hand creep to the lapel
of her jacket, where a daffodil was pinned. A rather unusual flower, thought
Harry, and apparently Thalla was of the same opinion.
"Three nights now you have worn it," the gypsy told the girl, "and each
night brings more danger. I warn you, it is not safe to come here!"
"But I have come here safely -"
"And you may not find it safe to stay." Thalla pointed a shapely finger
to
one of the tarot cards. "This is the sign that tells your future."
Janice stared at the card, much puzzled.
"But that card is blank!" she exclaimed. "How did it come to be among the
others?"
Thalla shrugged as though she didn't know.
"But since it is blank," persisted Janice, "how can you read it? What
does
it tell?"
"Your future." Thalla intoned the words solemnly. "No future. Blank, like
the card!"
Thalla could say no more, for Gregor was drowning all sounds with the
maddened shriek of his fiddle. Then, with a burst that seemed to strain the
violin's strings, the wild music ended.
The sudden silence seemed sharp. It made ears keen, too, for Harry could
hear a peculiar sound from somewhere along the wooden fence. The more he
listened, the more that sound reminded him of something gnawing at the wood.
Immediately the thought of rats sprang to Harry's mind, though it seemed
unlikely that rats would try to chew their way into as populated a spot as
this
outdoor garden.
And then, from within the Cafe de la Morte came the strokes of a strange
gong, announcing the beginning of the midnight revel.
A revel that tonight spelled death!
CHAPTER IV
JANICE BRADFORD was rising before the gong strokes ended. Madame Thalla
was saying something to the girl and again Harry Vincent caught the words,
when
the gypsy repeated the admonition.
"Your future will be blank," Thalla stated, "unless you heed my warning.
Go, before the message of the tarots can be fulfilled. The blank is one that
allows you another choice." Sweeping the cards from the table, Thalla held
them
as though about to deal, then shook her head. "But tonight, we have not time
摘要：

MALMORDObyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"July1,1946.Adaffodilasasymbolofdanger;acreaturewitharodentface;amenucardwiththecircledmessage:"Midnight-Morte-Monday"sendTheShadowinpursuitoftheworld'smostdesperatecriminal...CHAPTERILIKEsomeweirdcreaturefromthedeep,thecrawlingfogenvel...

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