Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 246 - Death's Bright Finger

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2024-12-23 0 0 188.39KB 80 页 5.9玖币
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DEATH'S BRIGHT FINGER
by Maxwell Grant (Theodore Tinsdale)
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. "I WANT FIVE YEARS!"
? CHAPTER II. HOUSE OF MYSTERY.
? CHAPTER III. HELL'S HENCHMEN.
? CHAPTER IV. THE LIGHT.
? CHAPTER V. MASTER OF EVIL.
? CHAPTER VI. TILE CLUB PENGUIN.
? CHAPTER VII. HIDDEN MOVES.
? CHAPTER VIII. A TANGLED TRAIL.
? CHAPTER IX. A KING'S RANSOM.
? CHAPTER X. DEATH IN WAITING.
? CHAPTER XI. DEATH IN DARKNESS.
? CHAPTER XII. THE MAILBOX CLUE.
? CHAPTER XIII. MR. CRANE WORTHINGTON.
? CHAPTER XIV. SINISTER ISLAND.
? CHAPTER XV. A FINAL RECKONING.
CHAPTER I. "I WANT FIVE YEARS!"
NOBODY at police headquarters knew the exact moment when fear first came to the underworld.
Everything seemed normal to Inspector Joe Cardona. Stool pigeons reported nothing out of the ordinary.
Cardona was so satisfied with events that he was about ready to take a brief vacation.
That was the day when Flash Snark came to police headquarters.
There was a gasp of surprise from the uniformed patrolman on duty at the front door of the
weather-beaten stone building when Flash walked calmly in. He came alone. In his hand he carried a
leather brief case.
He was dressed in his usual expensive fashion. A hundred-dollar suit, a twenty-dollar hat. The stickpin in
Flash's tie was a large diamond that only a criminal big shot would buy.
But the thing that made the cop gape was the fact that Flash came alone. No bodyguard walked at his
side. No high-priced lawyer. No bondsman trotted along to bail out Flash in case he was detained.
It seemed ominous and queer to the cop on duty at the big doorway of police headquarters. But his
tight-lipped question to the racketeer brought only a harsh snarl from Flash.
"Go twiddle your nightstick, punk! I got business with somebody important!"
He swaggered into the marble lobby.
Flash Snark belonged in the big-time criminal class. He was undisputed boss of the numbers racket--but
nobody could prove it. When lesser crooks bothered Flash, he had them knocked off--and nobody
could prove that, either. Flash's income tax was made out every year by the best accountant in New
York. The F.B.I. had wasted a lot of time checking and rechecking these financial statements. It hadn't
got them a thing.
Flash seemed to enjoy the sensation his lone arrival created. He swaggered over to the information desk
and said: "Hey, you! Phone the commissioner. Tell his nibs I wanta see him."
The cop hesitated. He felt like tossing this kingpin of crime into a cell. But there was something
triumphant in Snark's grin. Something ratlike and menacing. The cop swallowed his wrath and shrugged.
"The commissioner is not in today."
"O.K. Cardona will do."
Without waiting for an answer, Flash shouldered his way into one of the elevators. A few minutes later,
he barged into Joe Cardona's office without knocking.
"Hello, copper! I brought you some news. I decided to go straight from now on. How do you like that?"
Cardona didn't like it because he didn't believe it. His eyes narrowed; his voice was cold, as he said:
"What's the gag?"
"Don'tcha understand English? I decided to go straight! The way to start goin' straight is to pay for your
crimes. So, here I am! I made a little miscue a while back--I beat up a guy. The guy went to the hospital.
You never found out who done it."
Cardona's face was still rigid. There was a catch in this somewhere. But what?
"You mean you want to plead guilty to an assault rap that will hand you five years in jail?"
"Yeah."
Cardona swallowed. It didn't make sense. Here was a successful crook, one of the biggest in the city,
walking calmly in and asking for five years behind bars!
"Where's George Stoker?" Joe growled. "Did he figure out this little joke?"
Stoker was Snark's expensive lawyer. He knew every in and out of criminal law.
"Stoker?" Snark grinned. "I fired him. I fired my bodyguard, too. Pal, I'm not kidding. I'm out of the
racket! Half of my ex-mobbies are already on trains headin' for Chi and St. Louie and Kansas City."
"But why?"
I told you. I wanta go straight! Maybe I got religion. What the hell do you care? I'm pleadin' guilty to
felonious assault. Here's the evidence."
He opened his brief case. Cardona noticed that Snark's fingers trembled as he unlocked the briefcase
clasps. There was a peculiar pallor underneath his flushed cheeks. He handed over a paper.
"Look it over. A statement from the victim identifying me. An affidavit from three people who saw the
thing and kept their mouths shut at the time because they were scared. And, lastly, a signed confession
from me."
CARDONA got up and began to pace the room. What was the catch? It sounded to Cardona like the
beginnings of a slick alibi.
There were plenty of people in town whose guts Flash Snark hated. Suppose one of them was bumped
off while Snark was in a cell? Suppose the guy who did the bumping got bumped himself a day or two
later? It would be very tough to pin it on Flash.
George Stoker, of course, could be counted on to pull some legal trick that would quash the five-year
assault rap. Cardona suddenly picked up the phone, called the number of a lawyer friend.
"Hello, Harry! Do me a favor. I've just heard a funny rumor. Check up on it for me, will you?"
"Sure thing! What's it about?"
"George Stoker has quit acting as mouthpiece for Flash Snark. According to rumor, Snark decided to go
straight and fired Stoker. Is it phony?"
"No. It's true! I was talking to Stoker earlier this morning," the politician said. "The guy is fit to be tied.
He thinks that Snark has gone crazy. I was just going to call you up about it. What's it mean?"
"I dunno," Cardona growled. "I'll let you know later."
He pronged the receiver. A shove at a button on his desk brought in an attendant. The attendant was sent
racing over to the detective bureau. Soon another man came hurrying in.
He gave Flash Snark a challenging look. Cardona explained the set-up.
"It's true, Joe," the detective finally said. "I can't make head nor tail of it. My boys are phoning from all
over town. Penn Station and Grand Central are lousy with crooks buying tickets. They're on the lam,
every one of them! And they're all members of Snark's numbers racket."
His voice hardened.
"They claim Snark him self warned them to get out of town. The rumor is that Snark has busted up his
own racket. Those mobbies my men talked to all had plenty of dough, which means Snark paid them off.
It sounds crazy to me!"
"What do you care what it sounds like?" Snark grinned.
His lips were white. The lips of the man from the detective bureau were white, too.
"Lemme take charge of him," he said to Cardona in a tight voice. "I'll make him come across with the
truth!"
Cardona shook his head. "I'll handle this."
He sounded calmly contemptuous when he spoke again to the racketeer.
"Beat it! "Don't bother me."
"Aren't you going to put me in jail?" Snark said.
"Like hell!" Cardona replied evenly. "I don't like the smell of this. There's something fishy about it. When
I arrest you, it will be for something tougher than assault. Maybe it will be murder. In the
meantime--scram!"
Flash Snark began to laugh. It wasn't a pleasant sound. The sweat on his forehead wasn't pleasant to
look at either.
"I figured you'd get smart," he snarled. "O.K.! If you won't give me action, I'll see what the newspapers
will do about it."
He turned arrogantly on his heel and started for the door.
"Wait a minute," Cardona barked. "What do you mean?"
"Simple enough," Snark grated. "I'll just take my confession and these affidavits over to the Daily Classic.
The Classic has wanted to know for months why you haven't put me out of business. I'll tell 'em that I
offered to surrender and take a rap--and you were too scared to put me in a cell."
"You win," Cardona said quietly. He eyed the haggard face of the criminal. Snark's smile was wider now.
He seemed happy at the prospect of spending five years in jail. But behind his eyes was a veil of terror.
Cardona sent for a cop, had Snark taken away to a cell. He sent the affidavit and the confession
downstairs to have the racketeer properly booked. He was still puzzled. Something ugly was going on!
Cardona asked himself two grim questions. Why should a successful criminal suddenly abdicate the
rulership of his profitable crime empire and break up his mob? Secondly, why should such a crook
deliberately confess to a crime that would hand him a five-year sentence?
Joe could find no reasonable answer to either question. He did some more buzzing of buttons. Presently,
he left police headquarters. With him went a group of trained police specialists.
They headed for the home of Flash Snark.
SNARK'S home was more a fortress than a dwelling. Its doors were of steel. Metal shutters covered the
windows. There was an alleyway leading to the rear, but it was blocked by a metal fence. Cardona's men
had to use a blowtorch before they could get through the alley to the rear of the house.
Cardona preferred to force an entrance from the rear because he did not want to attract attention to his
raid. He gave a grunt of amazement when he saw the rear door.
There wasn't any door. It was gone!
An empty opening gaped where the enormous steel door had once stood. Even the hinges were gone.
The huge door could not have vanished more completely had it been made of tissue paper instead of the
toughest kind of steel!
No gunfire greeted Cardona and his men as they walked cautiously into Flash Snark's stronghold. Every
room was empty. No sign of a mobster anywhere from cellar to roof. Expensive rugs, high-priced
pictures were undisturbed.
The house looked like a ship abandoned in midocean. There was food on the table in the dining room.
"How long would it take to remove that steel rear door?" Cardona asked a police expert.
"Not less than a full day of hard work--if you had the proper tools."
"What sort of truck would you need to cart it away?"
"A huge one. Plenty of workmen and tackle, too."
"Go through the neighborhood and do some asking."
Asking didn't help. No one had seen the enormous steel door carted away. No one had seen any truck.
Cardona posted men inside the empty house. He went out front and had the cop on duty summoned.
The cop remembered something strange. A man had walked quietly out the front door of Flash Snark's
home earlier that morning. He locked the huge steel door quietly behind him and started slowly toward
the avenue.
"I followed him," the cop said, "because of the funny way his face glowed."
Cardona looked puzzled. "His face glowed?"
"His eyes. His teeth, too. There was sort of a light about them. That's the only way I can describe it."
"What did he look like?"
"All bent over. Like a hunchback. But he couldn't be a cripple. He was too tall."
"Did you stop him for questioning?"
"He acted like he was deaf when I called out to him. He kept on walking. Then he... he sort of
disappeared."
"You mean he vanished?"
"No, sir. Not exactly. Wait--I wrote a report about it in my book."
The cop reached in his tunic pocket. Then he looked surprised.
"That's funny! The book is gone!"
"Never mind," Cardona rasped. "Tell me everything that happened from the moment you first saw this tall
man who had eyes and teeth with a peculiar glow."
"Well," the cop began, "as I say, I saw him come out the front door. And that was kinda funny,
because--"
The cop's voice stopped suddenly. He pitched forward. He landed full length on the sidewalk and lay
there. Once glance was all Cardona needed to know that the cop had been shot to death.
There had been no sound of gunfire. All Cardona had heard was a faint wheeze like the noise of an air
rifle. A silenced gun--from somewhere above!
The bullet had ripped through the top of the cop's skull!
THE steel door at the front of the house was still closed and locked. All the front windows were covered
with metal shutters. The death slug could have been fired only from one spot: the porch roof above the
front door.
The porch was a sort of architectural parapet. A solid railing screened its roof surface from below.
Staring upward, Cardona could see nothing.
Leaving a detective on guard below the parapet, Cardona rushed to the back of Flash Snark's house. He
darted in the gaping opening at the rear and shouted at the cops he had left on guard inside.
They looked at him blankly. None was aware of the tragedy out front. None had heard a sound from the
parapet. The steel shutters had deadened the faint wheeze of the silenced gun.
In a moment, the steel-shuttered window that faced the roof of the front porch was forced open. Police
guns jutted, ready to cut down a trapped murderer.
But there was no murderer. The roof of the small parapet was empty!
Cardona searched every inch of the roof in vain. A shout downward to the man on duty on the sidewalk
revealed that he had seen nothing.
It was enough to make Cardona believe in ghosts!
His jaw tightened. The cop who had seen the tall man with the peculiar eyes and teeth, was dead, his
mouth silenced forever. Flash Snark's house was empty of clues The mystery of what had become of a
huge steel door that had vanished as if it weighed ounces instead of tons--still no answer to that either!
Flash Snark was in jail at his own request.
Something devilish was brewing!
Cardona had a sick feeling that whatever it was, it was going to be too tough for him to handle. This was
something big enough to challenge the power of The Shadow!
CHAPTER II. HOUSE OF MYSTERY.
LAMONT CRANSTON drove his big car through the darkness of downtown Manhattan.
Beside him sat one of the prettiest girls in New York. Her dark loveliness had been photographed many
times by society photographers. She and Lamont Cranston were seen together often. They made an
attractive couple.
The girl's name was Margo Lane.
Tonight, Margo was puzzled. Lamont Cranston seemed to be driving the car in the wrong direction. At
Margo's request, Cranston had met her at one of the big midtown hotels, he had agreed to drive her
uptown to the penthouse suite of a wealthy young man named Ron Dexter. Margo had a date with
Dexter for tonight. She had excellent reasons for not wishing to be late.
She was meeting Ron Dexter at the secret orders of The Shadow.
Margo stared at the dark, rather narrow streets through which Cranston continued to drive.
"Aren't we going the wrong way, Lamont?"
Cranston laughed.
"I'm sorry! I forgot to tell you. I'm almost out of tobacco. There's a small shop here run by a man named
Jonas Lee. Do you mind if I waste a few minutes to buy a pound or two of my favorite mixture?"
Margo's puzzlement was redoubled. It was queer that Lamont should delay her from carrying out the
orders of The Shadow.
Lamont Cranston was The Shadow!
It was a subject never discussed between Margo and Cranston. His enigmatic smile warned Margo to
drop the subject. Perhaps the plan for her to meet Ron Dexter tonight had been altered. If so, she would
be notified in plenty of time. The Shadow would contact Margo directly.
Aware of this, Margo relaxed.
Presently, the car halted. Cranston pointed across the street.
"An odd place, eh? But Jonas Lee has been selling fine tobaccos for many years. His father ran the
business before him. Since his customers don't mind driving downtown, Jonas Lee has always refused to
move to a more pretentious neighborhood."
Cranston got out of the car. He was carrying a small brief case.
"I won't be long," he said.
He crossed the narrow street to the tobacco shop. Margo saw that it was a faded brick building, two
stories high. The shop on the ground floor was dingy and dark.
When Cranston opened the shop door, Margo could hear the faint tinkle of an old-fashioned bell. She
relaxed in the car to await Cranston's return.
The tinkling bell woke up an old man who was dozing behind the counter. He smiled as he recognized his
customer.
"Good evening, Mr. Cranston. Haven't seen you in some time."
"I've been traveling. I thought I'd pick up some tobacco while I happened to be in your neighborhood."
"Certainly," Jonas Lee said. "Your usual mixture?"
Cranston shook his head.
"I'd like to make a change in the formula." He mentioned a rare type of Latakia tobacco. "Could you add
some of that to my regular mixture?"
Jonas Lee's eyes surveyed the glass canisters behind his shelf. The brand Cranston had asked for was
not among the selections displayed. Cranston was well aware of this; that was why he had made his
request.
"I'll have to get some from the stock upstairs," Jonas Lee murmured. "Owing to the war, I have not had a
shipment in some time. What little I have is packed away in the stockroom. Could you return later?"
Cranston agreed.
He moved toward the front door. It opened and the bell tinkled. It closed. Left alone in his shop, Jonas
Lee went up a back flight of stairs to his supply room.
Lamont Cranston remained. He had not departed, as the opening and closing of the door had seemed to
indicate. He stood crouched against the dark wall of the narrow passage that led to the shop door. The
nearsighted old eyes of Jonas Lee failed to notice what had happened.
AS soon as the tobacconist had vanished aloft, Lamont Cranston opened his brief case. He made a swift
change.
The well-dressed man of affairs vanished. In his place appeared a black-cloaked figure with burning eyes
and powerful beaked nose: The Shadow, avenger of crime!
The Shadow had dangerous business to attend to. The goal he had in mind was close to this dusty old
tobacco shop. Jonas Lee had no connection with The Shadow's maneuver. The Shadow had merely
used the shop to prevent any chance of smart criminals discovering that Lamont Cranston and The
Shadow were one and the same.
He peered cautiously out the back door. The darkness reassured him. He slipped quietly outside and
was swallowed up into the night.
Presently Margo, sitting in Lamont Cranston's car, heard a sibilant whisper of laughter. She turned her
head.
The Shadow was facing her.
Margo listened attentively to a slight change in the orders she had received previously.
She was told to take leave of the car and hire a taxi. She was to keep her appointment with Ron Dexter
at his penthouse apartment.
Margo had contrived to make Ron Dexter fall in love with her. The Shadow wanted Dexter to leave his
apartment, so that it could be carefully searched from one end to the other in the playboy's absence.
Margo's job was to entice him away. The rest was up to The Shadow.
His crisp voice instructed Margo about new signals. There were two of them. The first would indicate
that Margo had entered Dexter's penthouse home. The second would be proof that Margo and Dexter
had departed, leaving the coast clear for a search by The Shadow.
A search was necessary, because The Shadow suspected that Ron Dexter's wealth came from a vicious
blackmail racket.
"Repeat!" The Shadow said.
Margo repeated her orders. When she glanced around, she saw only blackness along the curb. The
Shadow had vanished!
A moment later, Margo left the parked car. She hailed a taxi and gave the address of Dexter's apartment
building. The cab raced uptown.
No time was being lost by The Shadow, either. Shielded by darkness, he was headed on foot toward the
nearby headquarters of Flash Snark.
The Shadow was aware of Snark's strange surrender to the police. The murder of the policeman outside
Snark's home was even stranger.
It was The Shadow's intention to look over the scene of the policeman's murder before the trail grew too
cold. There was time to do this before he hurried uptown to search the penthouse of Ron Dexter.
The windows of Snark's house were still heavily shuttered. But chinks of light showed that police guards
were inside the building. Cops patrolled the back of the house, too. This was natural, since the vanished
steel door had left a huge opening through which someone might sneak.
Cardona had an idea that the tall man who had vanished so neatly might return.
The Shadow had other ideas. He was interested in the roof of the portico above the front door.
It was a dangerous task to scale the porch of a house guarded by cops. But the black cloak of The
Shadow blended with the darkness. He took his time.
He flattened himself into motionless rigidity whenever he heard the footsteps of roving bluecoats. The
closed metal shutters on the windows screened him from the gaze of the cops on duty, inside.
PRESENTLY, The Shadow bellied swiftly to the roof of the dark portico. Cardona had been unable to
find a clue up here to the magical disappearance of the tall murderer. The Shadow didn't believe in magic.
He believed only in fact and logic.
Soon he had his reward. Alongside the portico roof was a brick chimney. The Shadow spotted it
because it was architecturally wrong. It didn't belong there. There was no possible way it could connect
with a normal fireplace on the ground floor. Was it alongside this portico roof simply for ornament?
The sibilant laughter of The Shadow indicated otherwise.
By leaning precariously over the side rail of the portico roof, he could reach the brick wall of the
chimney. He was far enough back from the street to be unseen.
The Shadow was duplicating logically the actions of the tall man who had disappeared. His gloved hands
touched something on the side wall of the brick chimney. It felt like a small metal handle. Why hadn't the
police noticed this strange projection on a chimney wall? Bracing his stretched body with a toehold, The
Shadow learned the answer. The strip of metal was painted red. It was the same color as the chimney. It
blended with the hue of the bricks.
It took time to discover how the metal projection worked. But presently there was a faint click. A section
of the chimney pivoted outward. A square hole was disclosed.
Into this hole The Shadow squeezed his dangling body.
The side of the chimney closed as softly as it had opened. In pitch-darkness, The Shadow clung to a
metal rung inside the flue. He listened.
After a moment, his flashlight sent a beam of light upward and downward. The top of the chimney was
impassable. It was a dummy chimney, bricked over at the top.
The Shadow descended.
Long before he reached the bottom, he was certain that the tall man with the curiously humped
appearance had gone down this same chimney. The rear wall of the flue bore a strange vertical mark all
the way down its dusty surface. It looked as if it had been wiped by a cloth.
The Shadow's back didn't touch that rear wall as he descended the steel rungs. But a man with a humped
back, descending as The Shadow was now doing, would inevitably rub the dusty surface with his
shoulders.
To The Shadow, the mystery was deepened by this clue. The Shadow had never heard of a tall
hunchback. It was physically an impossibility. Why, then, was the tall murderer so queerly humped?
And--most puzzling of all--what relation did he have with the jailed Flash Snark?
The Shadow hunted at the base of the chimney for something that might cast light on the riddle.
What he found brought a gasp of genuine surprise. The ray of his electric torch picked up the glitter of a
jeweled cigarette lighter. It was an object that The Shadow recognized the moment he examined it.
The lighter belonged to Ron Dexter!
There was no mistaking it. In his Lamont Cranston role, The Shadow had helped Margo select this very
lighter as a birthday gift for the wealthy playboy. The gift had helped to ingratiate Margo with the man
whom The Shadow suspected was the head of a vicious blackmail ring.
Was the tall man with the hump--Ron Dexter?
Two separate cases had suddenly become one. Blackmail and the numbers racket! Flash Snark--and
Ron Dexter!
QUICKLY, The Shadow turned his energies to getting out of this trick chimney. It was not too difficult.
A gadget similar to the one that had permitted The Shadow to enter the chimney from the portico roof,
opened an exit from the chimney's sealed base.
The Shadow stepped into a square pit below the level of a paved courtyard in the rear of Flash Snark's
house. Above the pit was a metal grating that permitted coal to be slid through the pit into the cellar bins.
A cellar opening was alongside the apparently immovable base of the chimney.
The Shadow had no time to enter the cellar and do any further searching. It was more important now to
get as quickly as possible to the penthouse of Ron Dexter.
A small tool from beneath The Shadow's robe severed the chain that held the courtyard grating locked.
An instant later, he dropped flat on his stomach inside the pit.
He had heard a warning sound. Police brogans were crossing the dark courtyard. A cop on outside duty
was approaching the grating under which The Shadow was hidden.
The cop halted above the grating. The Shadow lay motionless on his face, waiting for the policeman to
move onward in his tour.
But the cop stayed. There was a rasp of a match. The cop was sneaking a smoke for himself.
The Shadow's exit was blocked!
There was no telling how long the cop intended to stand where he was. The Shadow didn't wait to find
out. He retreated noiselessly through the coal entrance to the cellar.
A swift scrutiny in the dimness of the cellar showed The Shadow two things that made his eyes gleam.
One was a hot-air furnace, with a maze of pipes and air ducts to carry heat through the house. The other
was a heap of old newspapers.
The Shadow stuffed a bundle of papers into an air duct. Shielding a match, he ignited the paper. He
could smell the acrid odor of smoke from the plug of paper in the pipe. He knew the smoke would
ascend through the furnace ducts and pour out of the hot-air registers in the floors above.
摘要：

DEATH'SBRIGHTFINGERbyMaxwellGrant(TheodoreTinsdale)Thispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI."IWANTFIVEYEARS!"?CHAPTERII.HOUSEOFMYSTERY.?CHAPTERIII.HELL'SHENCHMEN.?CHAPTERIV.THELIGHT.?CHAPTERV.MASTEROFEVIL.?CHAPTERVI.TILECLUBPENGUIN.?CHAPTERVII.HIDDENMOVES.?CHAPTERVIII....

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