Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 173 - Death's Harlequin

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DEATH'S HARLEQUIN
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. THE TRAIL OF NUMBER ONE
? CHAPTER II. THE LITTLE FACES
? CHAPTER III. THE MILITARY CLUE
? CHAPTER IV. THE PIT
? CHAPTER V. WHITE ORCHIDS
? CHAPTER VI. ALIBI FOR MURDER
? CHAPTER VII. EYES IN DARKNESS
? CHAPTER VIII. DELAYED DOOM
? CHAPTER IX. THE BROWN ENVELOPE
? CHAPTER X. MASTER AND MAN
? CHAPTER XI. THE CLUB BANDBOX
? CHAPTER XII. CLARITA UNMASKS
? CHAPTER XIII. THE HOUSE IN THE MUD
? CHAPTER XIV. DEATH UNDERGROUND
? CHAPTER XV. THE FACE OF GUILT
? CHAPTER XVI. TRAITOR'S END
CHAPTER I. THE TRAIL OF NUMBER ONE
A PLEASANT-FACED, mustached young man stood on one of the quiet streets of
Washington, staring cautiously ahead.
It was a cold winter night in the nation's capital, and few people were abroad. The young
man had halted at a spot well beyond the rays of the nearest street lamp.
A block away a taxicab had halted in front of a swanky apartment building. A women
alighted and dismissed her hackman. She was dressed in a gorgeous evening wrap with a
furred hood, lifted partly over her blond hair. She walked with leisurely grace into the
building.
The man who was watching her was not deceived by this maneuver. He expected the girl to
emerge again without much delay. He had never seen her before tonight, but that did not
lessen his suspicion that the girl in the furred wrap was a criminal—a paid spy in a powerful
international organization financed from abroad.
He had seen the blonde meet another woman who was definitely a suspect. He had trailed
her taxi in an apparently aimless journey through the dark streets of Washington. Her
present halt, he was convinced, was merely for the purpose of throwing any possible pursuer
off the trail.
The name of this man was Vic Marquette. Few people in Washington knew his real
business, Vic Marquette was an ace in the United States Secret Service, now temporarily
working for the F.B.I.
His loitering figure became tense as he saw the blonde in the furred wrap emerge again
from the apartment building. She didn't walk very far, before a taxicab swerved suddenly into
the curb. The woman got in and the cab sprang away. An instant later, Vic himself was on
the move.
He hurried to the corner. A small, dark-colored sedan curved from the side street into the
avenue. Vic eased his lithe body inside with a quick slam of the door.
He gave no orders to the man behind the wheel. None were needed. The driver was an
expert on tailing jobs like this one. The taxi's goal was evidently in the business district of
Washington. Vic Marquette's dark sedan was merely an atom in a stream of moving
vehicles under the blaze of neon lights and electric signs.
"O.K.!" Vic ordered suddenly. "Wait here!"
The blonde's taxi had parked in front of one of the most fashionable beauty shops in
Washington. Vic stared at the sign with a twinge of excitement: MADAME ALYCE. It was a
place where ordinary people were never quite able to secure an appointment.
It looked now as if it might be a clearing house for treachery in the heart of the nation.
The blonde disappeared inside. Vic had to be content with his cold vigil in front of a nearby
store window.
THE blonde's reception in the beauty shop was cordial. A pretty girl behind a desk smiled
and pressed a button.
"Good evening, Miss Purdy. Madame Alyce will see you in just a moment."
The girl slipped off her heavy wrap. She was gorgeously beautiful. Her low-cut and backless
evening gown was shimmering silver. So were the pointed tips of her slippers. Even her
fingernails were silver.
Madame Alyce appeared presently from the rear of the shop. She was a plump, smiling
woman with a voice that sounded thin, almost childish. But there was nothing childish about
her narrow, rather Oriental eyes. A steady coolness seemed to lurk in them as she greeted
Miss Purdy.
She led the favored client past curtained booths where other customers were undergoing
beauty treatments. There was no curtain at the end booth where Madame Alyce conducted
the blonde in the silver evening gown. A door closed discreetly behind them. It locked
automatically. No voices could be heard outside after the door closed. The room was
soundproof.
"You're late," Madame Alyce said.
"I'm sorry. Precautions take time."
"Precautions need not interfere with punctuality," Madame Alyce said grimly.
Her dark, almond-shaped eyes suddenly were like the glare of ice.
"Tonight you are being highly honored. You are to transmit an important code message to
Number One. You will understand how important it is when I tell you that death has been
decreed for two enemies tonight. Sit down, my dear."
Jane Purdy shivered as she obeyed, although the room was almost tropical in its warmth.
Madame Alyce turned toward a side table and her deft fingers selected certain tools of her
beauty trade. She worked with slow care, while the blonde submitted with patient
obedience. The task took a long time. When it was finished, Jane looked exactly the same
as when she had entered.
However, that was only an illusion.
The blond spy left the beauty shop. She didn't take another cab. She walked in a deliberate
effort to find out if she was being followed. Her fear was realized. A hand dropped lightly on
her shoulder.
Turning, she saw the lean face of Vic Marquette. He pointed to a dark sedan that waited
quietly at the curb.
"Get in."
"What does this mean?"
"I think you know." There was a brief flash of Vic's badge.
The blonde laughed suddenly. She obeyed without any further fuss. Neither she nor Vic said
another word on the swift drive to F.B.I. headquarters.
But in the quiet, brilliantly-lighted room where she was taken, Jane Purdy said plenty. The
gray-haired man behind the desk gave Vic a worried stare. A civil suit for false arrest was
not to his liking. It might ruin careful preliminary work already accomplished. But Vic
Marquette smiled.
"I don't think she'll cause us any trouble. I'm certain she's carrying a message of some kind."
"Very well."
The gray-haired man pressed a button. A matron appeared. She led Jane Purdy into a
windowless room and searched her to the skin.
The search was disappointing. She found nothing. Jane Purdy was allowed to dress and
was conducted back to the room where Vic and his chief waited.
Quickly, the matron made her report. Miss Purdy heard Vic reprimanded by his superior.
She was allowed to go after receiving an apology.
Her triumph was complete when she discovered that no further attempt was made to follow
her. She had fooled two of the shrewdest undercover men in Washington!
WHEN Jane Purdy returned to her apartment—a small suite on the top floor of a fashionable
building—she did an apparently senseless thing. Removing her silver evening gown, she
took a white silk swim suit from the closet and donned it in place of her wispy pink
undergarment.
It seemed a ridiculous change to make in the dead of winter, but there was no smile on Jane
Purdy's lips. Swiftly, she produced a more sinister object: a slitted white mask. With the
mask in place and a rubber bathing cap over her blond hair, her identity was completely
hidden.
All that was visible in the mirror was an extraordinarily beautiful woman in a skimpy swim
suit.
Jane Purdy's laughter rippled. She placed the mask, the cap and a pair of rubber bathing
shoes in her handbag. Once more, she donned her evening gown. The swim suit, however,
remained on her body beneath the gown. She was now ready to leave the apartment, and
she reached for her furred wrap.
A cautious knocking on the door interrupted her. Her face paled.
"Who is it? she whispered.
"Walter!" The voice sounded softly urgent. "Hurry up, sweet! I don't want to be seen!"
An instant later, Jane Purdy unlocked the door and a man in evening clothes slipped into the
room. It was evident that his arrival held no terror for the girl. The pallor on her face was
replaced with a flush of delight. The man caught her in his arms and held her in a long
embrace.
"I love you," he said. "I couldn't stay away. I had to see you!"
At first glance, he seemed a young and good-looking man. But there was weakness about
his mouth, a shiftiness in his eyes. His face was beginning to show the telltale marks of
dissipation and easy living.
His name was Walter Roscoe. In Washington society he was known as a playboy who had
plenty of money and didn't mind spending it. That had been true for several years, but it was
true no longer. Every penny of the wealth he had inherited was now spent. For the past year,
Roscoe's easy money had been rolling in from a more sinister source. Blackmail!
Jane Purdy knew it and didn't care. She was in love with him. Occasionally, she even helped
him with his blackmail schemes.
Crook working with crook! There was nothing strange about that.
But love had made Jane Purdy do something that had placed her life in frightful danger. She
had disclosed to Roscoe the nature of her own employment.
Walter Roscoe knew that Jane was an important cog in the organization of the superspy
who was working to cripple America!
Roscoe's greedy mind saw at once the opportunity for profit. The biggest blackmail chance
of his life beckoned to him. He planned to use Jane to further his own daring scheme.
Tonight he was ready to disclose his hand. His love-making was merely a screen to mask
his greed and make the girl obedient to his will. He saw a million dollars ready to be plucked
if he could persuade Jane Purdy that she could betray her unknown chief without danger to
herself.
"You shouldn't have come here tonight," Jane whispered. "I've got to leave at once."
"Are you going to—him?"
"Yes."
"With a secret message from Madame Alyce?"
Jane didn't reply. Even her lips were pale at his careless mention of a forbidden name.
Walter Roscoe laughed. There was meaning in that laugh—a reassurance that the girl felt
instantly.
"Suppose I tell you," Roscoe whispered, "that you and I can make a half million apiece,
without the slightest risk."
"How?"
"By letting me see the message you're carrying tonight to Number One."
"Walter, you're mad! He'd find out and kill us without mercy!"
"He can't find out. I know too much about him. More, perhaps, than you think."
"Impossible!" she gasped. "I work for him. I carry his messages. I've seen him face to face.
And yet I know nothin'!"
Her voice was tremulous.
"As far as I can tell, Number One employs only women. Five of them, including myself. None
of us have the slightest idea of his identity. I don't even know the other four women when they
stand beside me at Number One's headquarters. I tell you, it's hopeless to trick him," Jane
said.
"Not if his real identity is known," Walter Roscoe replied.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. I know who Number One is! I haven't been idle since you first told me the
nature of the racket you were in. If you don't believe me, I can tell you where the swimming
pool is—and what's under it!"
JANE'S face was still as white as chalk, but there was a new expression dawning in her
hard, lovely eyes. Greed was beginning to replace fear. She knew her lover was an
experienced blackmailer. A half share in a million dollars was a powerful lure.
"Who is Number One?" she whispered.
"If I told you his name, you'd think I was crazy! He's the last person in Washington you'd
suspect. I know exactly what he's after. If I get hold of it, he'll be forced to buy it back—at my
price. And there'll be no danger of his harming us, because I can turn him over to the police
any time I choose."
Roscoe's arms tightened about Jane Purdy. He kissed her. His voice deepened
persuasively.
"Report to him tonight as usual. Leave the rest to me. Darling, will you do it?"
Her voice was barely audible. "Yes."
Walter Roscoe uttered a laugh of delight.
"Good girl! I knew I could depend on you. We've won, darling— we've won!"
"On the contrary," a soft voice said, very gently, "I'm afraid you've lost!"
CHAPTER II. THE LITTLE FACES
WITH an oath, Walter Roscoe whirled. His hand snatched at a concealed gun. But he didn't
draw it. He stood frozen, staring empty-handed at the dreadful figure that had emerged from
a shadowy corner of the dimly lighted room.
The muzzle of a rather queer weapon pointed steadily at the frightened blackmailer. It
looked like a tear-gas pistol. It was held in a hand that was gloved in shiny black satin
Jane Purdy's mouth hung wide open in the paralysis of terror. She seemed unable to
breathe as she stared at the soft-spoken figure that she knew only as Number One.
His figure suggested a deliberate and ghastly mockery. It was like death jeering at life. From
the white starched ruff at his throat to the white pompons at the tips of his black slippers, the
man was dressed like a Harlequin.
He wore a shapeless, wide-sleeved smock of black satin with huge and ridiculously
ornamental white buttons. The trousers, too, were black satin, and so floppy and wide that it
was impossible to tell whether they covered the lean, muscular legs of a man or the more
shapely limbs of a woman.
His voice, too, was sexless. A timid man might have uttered those softly spoken words of
warning, or a woman with a smooth contralto voice.
But there was nothing feminine about the pale, yellowish face that seemed to shine faintly
with the glimmer of decay.
It was the face of a man long since dead! Roscoe, staring at it in frozen terror, could think
only of an Egyptian mummy. The thin lips were drawn away from skull-like teeth. The cheeks
were sunken and leathery. Dank black hair lay matted thinly on a baldish scalp the color of
old parchment.
A living corpse in the costume of a gay Harlequin! With a wide-muzzled gun. And a jeering
laugh that made the silence in the room crawl with menace.
Roscoe took a slow step backward. His voice was hoarse.
"What do you want?"
"Your death, Mr. Roscoe."
"You don't dare kill me! I know who you are! I've already made protective arrangements to -"
"So have I," Number One interrupted in his soft murmur. "But before I carry them out, I'd like
to hear you tell Miss Purdy what my real name is. I don't believe you know. But I'll give you
your chance to prove I'm wrong. Tell her, please."
Roscoe turned toward the girl, playing for time. Treacherous to the core, he saw a chance to
save his life at the expense of Jane. Instead of speaking, his hands jerked swiftly. One of
them seized Jane and tried to swing her in front of him like a shield. The other lifted with the
lightning glint of a gun.
His defense failed. Jane recoiled with a scream. Maddened by the knowledge that he was
sacrificing her life to save his own, the girl's desperate shove sent Roscoe staggering off
balance. Before he could fire a single shot, the trigger of Number One's gun squeezed
remorselessly.
There was no explosion. Instead of a bullet, a quick puff of brownish vapor spat in a tiny
cloud. For the fraction of a second it enveloped Roscoe's head, was drawn into his mouth
and nostrils. Then the brownish vapor was gone.
But already it had done its work.
Roscoe's pistol fell to the floor. His knees buckled. The powerful gas brought him tumbling to
the floor, unconscious.
JANE PURDY was still unharmed. She dropped to her knees and began to beg for her life.
"I didn't mean to betray you!. He forced me into it. Don't kill me! I'll be your slave—I'll do
anything you ask -"
But Number One was unmoved by the plea. A gloved hand twisted in the girl's blond hair
and lifted her upward. Again the trigger of his strange weapon jerked.
Number One stepped away from the puff of brownish vapor and watched Jane Purdy
collapse. She was not dead, but unconscious.
It was her silvered fingernails that interested the corpselike intruder in the Harlequin suit.
Producing a tiny bottle from Jane's handbag, Number One dissolved swiftly the coating of
silver that covered the girl's long, tapering nails.
The result was startling. On each of the nails, except two, a tiny face had been drawn with
what looked like indelible black ink. The two other nails held initials.
Eight faces and two initials from the alphabet formed what was evidently a code. A cunning
message that had escaped even the keen, resourceful search of the Secret Service matron
at F.B.I. headquarters.
The tiny pictured heads were crude. They were the sort a child might draw. But with the aid
of a code book, Number One had no difficulty deciphering the message.
Jane Purdy had carried her own death warrant from the beauty shop! For the message
read:
This girl is traitor. Advise immediate death. V. M. Suspicious.
"V. M.," of course, was Vic Marquette. Number One didn't care about him. He had a
profound contempt for the government Secret Service. They hadn't even been able to
prevent his own personal vengeance on a traitorous agent.
Very carefully, he removed the indelible marks from Jane's unconscious fingers. He used a
greenish paste that dissolved the queer markings and left the nails smooth and natural.
Number One was now ready for a horrible and cold-blooded double murder. But he had no
intention of letting the Washington police suspect murder when they found the remains of his
two victims.
The spy picked up a short steel bar from the shadowy corner where he had waited unseen
for his victims. It was not an ordinary bar. The steel was covered with a soft layer of black
felt.
A single blow of this soundless weapon killed Jane Purdy. It struck an inch or two below the
base of her skull and broke her spine. Walter Roscoe died in the same swift fashion as he
lay in a drugged sprawl on the floor. It was the most cowardly kind of murder, but the shrill
giggle from the thin lips of Number One showed that he enjoyed it.
He moved with catlike strides to the telephone and called a private number not listed in the
Washington directory. Vic Marquette would have been interested in that number. It was a
wire that led to a soundproof room in the fashionable beauty shop run by Madame Alyce.
The voice of Number One uttered a crisply brief message: "Special order! Admit no more
preferred customers until further notice!"
His voice was metallic, utterly unlike the one which Jane Purdy and Walter Roscoe had
heard. Evidently Number One was a master of tone control.
Swiftly, he consulted a notebook, then called a second number. There was a bit of
bargaining, talk of money for carting away of bodies. The reply the spy received was
evidently satisfactory. He replaced the instrument with a throaty chuckle.
He stared, still chuckling, at his reflection in a mirror. The black satin Harlequin costume with
its huge buttons and ridiculous pompons on the tips of his slippers made the spy chief seem
like a ghastly travesty of death. But it was a travesty that was make-believe. He proved it by
placing both hands at the side of his head—and slowly lifting his head upward from his
shoulders!
The whole counterfeit head was a masterpiece of plastic art. It fitted over Number One's
flesh-and-blood head like a helmet. The white ruff of the clown suit at the spy's throat
effectively hid the lower edge of the strange disguise.
As he lifted the helmet, the line of his real chin and jaw began to appear. But he was a man
of infinite caution. Even in a silent room with only two corpses as witnesses, Number One
was unwilling to reveal his hidden identity. His left hand jutted with a quick motion and
snapped off the electric switch. He finished his unmasking in darkness.
A moment later, he was tiptoeing softly from the top-floor apartment.
With him went the steel bar encased in felt. He took also the handbag of the dead Jane, the
one that contained her mask, her bathing cap and the rubber bathing shoes. He didn't
attempt to recover the silken swim suit that was still on the girl's dead body beneath her
silver evening gown. Time was pressing!
Number One didn't descend. He slid past the feeble glow of a red exit bulb, and ascended
the steel-inclosed fire stairs that led to the roof.
AFTER ten minutes, a second figure appeared in the top-floor corridor. It was impossible to
know whether the man had descended from the roof or had made the long, weary climb by
stairs from the street level. The only clue was the fact that he was panting heavily.
He pressed the button of the service elevator several times in what was evidently a signal to
someone below. The elevator began to rise.
The face of the man who had given the signal was strong and clean-shaven. with rather
full-shaped lips. His eyes stared straight ahead without blinking. He wore a gray overcoat, a
gray fedora, and there were gray gloves on his hands.
He was a figure well known in Washington society, by reason of his political and social
activities. His name was Mike Porter. He was a lobbyist, hired by the numerous industrial
firms who wanted to present their views on legislation to the congressmen who framed the
laws. Mike Porter's creep, cordial voice and cheery laugh were well known and well liked at
social receptions and in the marble corridors of the Capitol.
But there was nothing cordial about the way he greeted the men who stepped slyly from the
service elevator. His snarling query was husky with tension.
"O.K. downstairs, Blackie?"
"Yeah. We got the car all ready. Any time me and Slim can make a cool grand apiece
ditchin' a coupla stiffs, we're right on time."
Blackie looked like an ex-pug. He was a thick, hammered-down sort of man, with wide
shoulders and practically no neck below his bullet head. His nose had once been broken
and it made his breath hiss softly when he breathed.
Slim was tall and gangling, had a protruding Adam's apple.
Mike Porter led the pair along the corridor to the death apartment. Quickly the two thugs
shouldered the bodies of Jane Purdy and Walter Roscoe, took them to the service elevator
and descended.
The bodies were put in the back of Roscoe's own sedan. The car was driven out of
Washington, through the suburbs. On a lonely road, whiskey was sprinkled over the corpses.
The three men got out. The car was set in gear, the hand throttle pulled down.
Quickly, the sedan burst through a frail fence, disappeared over an embankment. There
came a rending, splitting sound as the car crashed on boulders in the bottom of a dry creek
bed.
Just a couple of gay drunks on a joy ride! That would be the impression when the bodies
were found.
An unknown superspy had stacked the cards to cover a cunning crime. More crime was
planned. The peace and safety of the United States were about to receive their greatest
attack in years.
But there was the one fact on which neither the spy nor his criminal satellites had counted.
High in the black sky, midway between New York and Washington, a transport plane roared.
Aboard that plane was a quiet-faced man who was flying to Washington to arrange the
details of a pleasant vacation trip with gun and rod in the Rockies. He was completely
unaware of impending crime; but events would soon draw him into the midst of a murderous
intrigue fomented by a warlike foreign dictator.
Mike Porter would have been less complaisant when he returned to Washington, had he
known the true identity of that quiet gentleman flying swiftly toward the nation's capital.
It was The Shadow!
CHAPTER III. THE MILITARY CLUE
AN hour or so after the crash of the car containing the dead bodies of Jane Purdy and
Walter Roscoe, a plane skimmed earthward from the black sky and landed at the
Washington airport.
Lamont Cranston emerged with the other passengers. He was given prompt and courteous
attention. Officials recognized him as a prominent millionaire, a well-known sportsman and
traveler.
However, none of the attendants had any idea that the name and reputation of Lamont
Cranston cloaked the personality of The Shadow. Many people, of course, had heard of The
Shadow, knew of his grim and unrelenting warfare against organized crime. But only a few
desperate criminals had ever discovered the secret of who he really was. These few had
died swiftly in battle, before they could tip off their pals in the underworld.
The Shadow remained, as always, an unknown creature of darkness.
An airport official greeted Lamont Cranston as the millionaire passed the administration
building on his way to a taxicab.
"Good evening, Mr. Cranston. A pleasure to see you in Washington again. Are you planning
to remain long?"
"Just a day or so. I'm on my way West to do a little hunting in the Rockies. I thought I'd stop
off and pick up some information about the best place to visit at this time of the year."
"The department of the interior should be able to help you."
Cranston nodded.
"That's what I thought. I'm planning to confer with Mr. Jim Whelan. I wrote him I was coming."
"Whelan?" the official echoed. "I wondered what brought him here so late at night. He's
waiting outside now."
Cranston was pleased. He hadn't wired the time of his arrival ahead, and had not expected
Whelan to take the trouble to drive out to meet him.
But Jim Whelan's greeting puzzled Cranston.
"Hello! Mighty glad to see you, old man! Hadn't the faintest idea you were due here tonight.
Thought you'd arrive later in the week."
"That's funny," Cranston said. "They told me you were waiting for me."
Whelan shook his head. There was a frown on his face and an uneasy glint in his eyes that
interested the observant Cranston. Ordinarily a talkative man, Whelan was almost taciturn
tonight. He was both puzzled and angry, Cranston noticed. His guess was that Whelan had
come to meet someone else, someone who had failed to arrived at the airport.
Whelan's annoyed comment proved the truth of Cranston's guess.
"I can't understand it," he fumed. "I had a wire earlier this evening from Colonel Standish,
asking me to meet him here. Yet there's no sign of him. You'd expect an army officer to be
punctual. Damned annoying!"
He choked down his anger and remembered that he was scarcely being polite to his friend
Cranston. With a wave of his arm, he dismissed Colonel Standish from his mind.
"Let's get back to town. I have my car here. Shall I drop you at your hotel, or would you like to
stop at my apartment and have a highball with me?"
摘要：

DEATH'SHARLEQUINMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI.THETRAILOFNUMBERONE?CHAPTERII.THELITTLEFACES?CHAPTERIII.THEMILITARYCLUE?CHAPTERIV.THEPIT?CHAPTERV.WHITEORCHIDS?CHAPTERVI.ALIBIFORMURDER?CHAPTERVII.EYESINDARKNESS?CHAPTERVIII.DELAYEDDOOM?CHAPTERIX.THEB...

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