Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 167 - Realm Of Doom

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REALM OF DOOM
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," February 1, 1939.
The last "finger" falls from The Hand, as The Shadow cleaves wide open
the
Realm of Doom.
CHAPTER I
CRIME'S APPOINTMENT
Two men were standing near the center of the hotel lobby, watching the
bellboy bring their suitcases from the elevator. To all appearances, they were
a pair of motorists ending their stay in Charleston, West Virginia.
The fact that they were checking out at six in the afternoon was not
unusual. Many persons preferred to drive at night, and six o'clock was the
time
when guests had to leave or pay for another night's lodging.
One man was tall, with light hair and eyes. His face was a friendly one,
except for a disdainful smile that occasionally flexed his lips. The other, of
average height, had dark hair and sallow complexion, plus an expression that
showed shrewdness, even when he glanced at a road map.
It was the taller man who spoke, before the bellboy arrived. His words
were undertoned.
"Have the bellhop stick the bags in the car," he told his companion.
"We'll have chow before we scram. I'll take care of the bill, Clip."
The man called Clip was turning away, when he remembered something. There
was still time to ask about it, for the bellboy was having trouble with the
bags.
"What about that phone call, Rigger?" whispered Clip. "You're taking care
of it, too?"
A nod from Rigger settled that question. Soon, Rigger was standing by the
cashier's window, while Clip was strolling out through the lobby, preceded by
the bag-burdened bellboy.
The bill came to eight dollars and sixty cents. With one of his curiously
curved smiles, Rigger brought a fat wallet from his pocket, peeled off a
twenty-dollar bank note and shoved it through the window. When he had received
his change, he glanced about the lobby, then moved toward a large rack that
held road maps and other circulars.
He had decided to stall around for a few minutes, before making the
telephone call that Clip had mentioned. Haste didn't go along with Rigger's
plan of action, when he was posing as a gentleman.
In that policy, Rigger evidently had the right idea; for the next man who
approached the cashier's window was definitely a gentleman, and he possessed a
most leisurely manner. He was attired in evening clothes that fitted him to
perfection, and his arrival at the window brought a respectful bow from the
cashier.
This gentleman was Lamont Cranston, a wealthy New Yorker who traveled
much
and hunted big game, who had been in Charleston for several days. His evening
attire indicated that he was to be a guest at the governor's reception,
scheduled for this evening.
THERE was something in Cranston's mere approach that compelled the
cashier's attention. The man behind the window stopped as he stood, not even
moving his hand to place Rigger's twenty-dollar bill in the till. Looking
through the wicket, he met Cranston's eyes.
Calm eyes, those, as immobile as Cranston's face, with its hawkish
profile
and masklike look. When Cranston's lips moved, they retained their
straightness;
and his voice came with an even tone.
"Some change for this, please" - Cranston's fingers tendered a
one-hundred-dollar bill - "in any denominations that are convenient."
The cashier acknowledged by placing Rigger's twenty on the counter,
adding
two more twenties, then three tens and two fives.
Holding the wad of bills in his left hand, Cranston reached his right to
his vest pocket. Bringing out a monocle attached to a ribbon, he affixed the
glass to his right eye.
Slowly, he counted off the bills, until he came to the twenty-dollar note
at the bottom of the stack. He was turning away as he finished, and he stood
for a half minute as though glancing across the lobby, before he placed the
money in his pocket.
But in reality, he was intently studying the twenty-dollar bill that had
come from Rigger. Seen through the monocle, the tiniest details of the bill
were enlarged to immense proportions.
The monocle was a powerful magnifying lens.
What Cranston saw on the twenty-dollar bill must have pleased him, for a
soft laugh, scarcely audible, came from his fixed lips. He folded the money
into a wallet; let the monocle drop from his eye. Then, with another slight
turn, Cranston was faced toward the direction of the rack that held the road
maps.
Rigger had left that spot. Just beyond was a telephone booth, its door a
trifle ajar. Glancing toward the exit of the lobby, Cranston saw that Clip and
the bellboy had not yet returned. With that, Cranston took an immediate
interest in the big map rack.
Strolling there, he was close enough to catch the final words of Rigger's
phone conversation.
"So the dame's fallen for the hokum, huh?" Rigger's tone, though guarded,
showed that he was greatly pleased. "Good enough... Yeah. Keep her kidded
until
I show up... Don't worry. I'll be Mr. Fixit... Yeah, I'll be there in plenty
of
time for you to get her to the nine-thirty bus."
Despite his ease of motion, Cranston was at the news stand by the time
Rigger had come from the telephone booth. Clip appeared at the lobby door, and
the two went into the dining room.
FOR several minutes, Cranston scanned the columns of an evening
newspaper.
Big type told of frenzied efforts to locate the abductors of recent kidnap
victims. The search, so the newspapers said, was nation-wide.
Five victims, in all, were missing; and when last seen, they had been in
places very far apart - such as Chicago, New York and Miami. True, most of
them
had been starting on journeys, but their destinations had been quite as varied
as their starting points.
In two cases, ransom money had been paid; but the victims had not been
returned. That seemed to be a well-settled policy on the part of kidnapers,
although it made their racket tougher, even for themselves. It had also
produced the conclusion that the snatches were the work of different parties.
Kidnapping, it seemed, came in waves - like other types of crime.
Whether or not Lamont Cranston agreed with those theories was something
difficult to tell; for he tucked the paper under his arm, inserted the
monocle,
and strolled into the dining room.
Rigger and Clip, at a table only a few feet away, had finished their soup
when Cranston sat down.
With a nudge of Rigger's arm, Clip said, "Pipe the monocle the guy's
using. The guy must be a duke or something!"
They watched Cranston in amusement, until he had finished with the bill
of
fare. Then their grins increased, as the fastidious diner adjusted his monocle
more carefully and began to study a card that he took from his inside pocket.
It was about the size of a postcard and was printed with tiny dots,
arranged in rows. Those black dots, smaller than the head of a pencil, formed
a
design that looked like a honeycomb. Engrossed in his study of the card,
Cranston was tapping a finger from one dot to another.
"What is it?" Clip asked Rigger, with a grin. "Some game the guy is
playing?"
"Looks like it," returned Rigger. "Say," he chuckled, "maybe it's a punch
board. He'll be pushing those dots with a match stick, if we watch him long
enough!"
Clip added a louder chuckle, and Cranston heard it. He looked about,
removed his monocle and stared haughtily at the two. Suppressing their
laughter, they resumed their meal.
The two men finished dinner and went from the dining room. With sidelong
gaze, Cranston saw them go out through the lobby. A faint smile appeared upon
his thin lips. Pushing aside his coffee cup, he again drew the card from his
pocket and adjusted the monocle to his right eye.
Under the powerful microscope, that card underwent a remarkable
transformation. Those dots, tiny blobs of black print to the naked eye, became
the size of silver dollars. Thus enlarged, they were dots no longer.
They were photographs!
Upon that single card were more than one hundred and fifty portraits,
depicting human faces in clear detail. Faces that were of many types, but all
with a sordid touch that marked them as the countenances of crooks, despite
the
smooth expressions that many possessed.
Beneath each portrait, but inscribed within the printed circle, was a
name
identifying the owner of the face. The card that Cranston carried was a
rogues'
gallery in miniature!
UPON that card, Cranston found one face he wanted. It showed a man of
light complexion, whose eyes were almost colorless and whose lips wore a
twisty
smile, caught to perfection by a timely click of the camera.
Beneath that portrait was the name: Rigger Bayne.
A few circles away, another photograph portrayed a sallow-faced subject
whose eyes and hair were dark. It bore the name of Clip Rallin.
Those two members of Cranston's pocket rogues' gallery were the men who
had watched him in the dining room. Crooks they were, as Cranston alone had
suspected.
The lobby clock showed half past seven, as Cranston strolled past.
Ascending to his fifth-floor room, Cranston stared out across the lighted
streets of Charleston, toward the flowing blackness of the Kanawha River. That
moving darkness, that seemed a portion of night itself, reminded him of a part
that he himself could play.
Removing his coat and vest, Cranston pulled away the collar of his stiff
shirt and seated himself before a mirror. With deft fingers, he began to
change
his face. He molded it into a new shape, building its contours with dabs of a
puttylike substance, until only a semblance of its hawkish look remained.
From changed lips came a whispered laugh that brought eerie echoes from
surrounding walls. Neither Rigger Bayne nor Clip Rallin would have enjoyed
that
mirth. They would have identified it with a being cloaked in black, whose ways
brought doom to persons of their ilk.
That tone was the laugh of The Shadow, master fighter who conquered men
of
crime!
CHAPTER II
THE SECOND MEETING
IN the dusk that The Shadow viewed from his hotel window, Rigger Bayne
was
driving through the side streets of Charleston, taking a circuitous course to
a
highway that led from the city. Rigger was riding alone; his pal, Clip Rallin,
had dropped off soon after they left the hotel.
Rigger's car was an old one that thumped heavily when he crossed the
tracks of a little-used railway line. The jolts made Rigger grin. He was
thinking of another car, one that hadn't stood bumps so well; a car that he
expected soon to view.
A few miles from the city limits, Rigger reached a rough stretch of road
marked as being a detour. Another mile, his headlights glinted upon the
gasoline standards of a small service station. There, a coupe was standing in
front of a tiny shack close to the pumps.
Beside the coupe, a man in overalls was stooping to peer beneath the car,
while a girl's face was visible at the window of the driver's seat. Rigger
pulled up beside the coupe; the man in overalls turned a flashlight in his
direction.
Rigger saw a blunt face above wide shoulders. He also caught the grin
that
was meant for him. But it was gone when the man turned to the girl.
"This is my partner," said the blunt-faced man. "The fellow who called up
a while ago. I gotta talk to him. We'll be right out."
Had The Shadow been present, he could have identified the blunt-faced man
by another consultation of the microscopic rogues' gallery. The fellow's name
was Uke Flenn, and he teamed excellently with Rigger and Clip. All three were
specialists in crime who had managed to keep well clear of the law.
Like the others, Uke had no idea that he had ever been "mugged" for
future
reference. It happened that The Shadow's records listed many crooks not
included
in police archives.
In the shack, Uke and Rigger held a brisk. but pointed, conference.
"That feed line broke," gruffed Uke, "just like we figured it would when
she hit this detour. I loosened it before I left Richmond, last night."
"Got it fixed how?" questioned Rigger.
"Yeah. Only, the dame don't know it. She don't know either that I lifted
the dough she had in her handbag. I snagged it one-handed" - Uke made a deft
motion with thumb and fingers - "when I picked it off the floor of the car.
She
dropped the bag getting out here. Now, she thinks she lost it."
Rigger gave his leery grin. His colorless eyes stared reflectively from
the grimy window of the shack.
"She's the dame we're after," he mused. "Loretta Wyndon, whose old man
owns about half the copper in the State of Utah. Last seen in Richmond,
Virginia -"
"Driving to the South," added Uke. "Because nobody knows that she got
that
phony telegram asking her to visit friends in Knoxville, Tennessee. A trip out
of the way of her regular route South, and one that took her over this
detour."
Rigger seemed satisfied on that point; but he had another important
question.
"How about this joint?" he asked. "Did anybody look it over close, or
stop
for gas?"
"Nobody," returned Uke. "There's been cars along, but the detour worried
'em too much to stop. The most anybody could figure is that I was one of the
guys that used to run the dump, come back to see how business looked."
FROM the conversation, the two crooks revealed the clever measures by
which they were covering the trail of Loretta Wyndon, next candidate in the
growing list of kidnap victims. Once the girl disappeared, the hunt would go
astray somewhere in Virginia.
Even, by chance, if searchers did come to the neighborhood of Charleston,
they would again meet with a broken trail; for Uke and Rigger were adding
another tricky move.
Together, they stepped from the shack and approached the car where the
anxious girl awaited. By the glow of the dome light, Rigger gained his first
close look at Loretta Wyndon. He recognized her from photographs that he had
seen.
Those pictures, though excellent, had not done the girl justice. No
camera
could have caught the trusting gaze of those lovely hazel eyes. No posed photo
could have shown the stray wisps of light-brown hair that peeked cutely from
beneath her tan beret. Even the tilt of that headgear had an angle that added
to Loretta's charm.
Anxiety seemed to make the girl more lovely. When she looked at Uke, she
smiled; and he responded in a tone no longer gruff, but pleasant.
"Looks like we can help you out, lady." Uke was slowing his voice to a
drawl such as he had heard in West Virginia. "This here is my podner" - he
gestured toward Rigger - "and he's scared up some money while he was in town."
"Enough for bus fare, lady," added Rigger, stepping forward, hat in hand.
"We reckon it will see you clear to Knoxville, where you're going." Then
shyly:
"I'm sorry you lost your handbag."
Loretta's smile became a troubled one.
"I've never traveled by bus," she admitted. "Isn't there a train that I
could take from Charleston?"
There were headshakes from Uke and Rigger. Railroads ran from Charleston,
but not direct to Knoxville. Just when the trains left, the pretended natives
didn't know. People around these parts didn't travel by train any more.
Trains cost too much to ride. That was particularly applicable in
Loretta's case, Uke and Rigger argued. They'd scraped up just enough for her
to
make the bus trip; and to go by train, even if it could be arranged, would
require more cash than they had.
Both men were so apologetic that Loretta capitulated and hastened to
express her thanks, with a sincerity that would have softened almost anyone
except such criminals as Uke Flenn and Rigger Bayne. They merely counted out
the money, in one-dollar bills and change. They gave the cash to Loretta,
telling her that she could repay them when they delivered her car to her in
Knoxville, after they repaired it.
Uke invited Loretta into the car that Rigger had come in. They were
scarcely out of sight before Rigger drove the girl's coupe in the opposite
direction. Totally unconscious of that fraud, Loretta chatted lightly with
Uke,
until they reached the Charleston bus depot.
"I can't imagine where I lost my money," said Loretta, in parting. "But
I'll keep tight hold of this" - she gripped the cash that the crooks had given
her - "until I get my bus ticket."
"And hold onto the ticket," chuckled Uke. "Don't forget that, lady."
AS soon as Loretta had entered the bus depot, Uke drove the car to a
parking space. Strolling back along the street, he saw Loretta in the waiting
room; then he looked into the window of a modernistic lunchroom. There, past
the chromium-plated tables, Uke saw the man he wanted, seated at the lunch
counter. The fellow was the swaggery bus driver who drove the nine-thirty
trip.
Uke entered the lunchroom and sat beside the uniformed driver, who gave
him a somewhat friendly nod. The two had become acquainted within the past
week. Folding his elbows on the counter, Uke called for a cup of coffee. The
fingers of his right hand, sneaking from beneath his left elbow, meanwhile
performed a crawl.
Deftly, they reached the cup of coffee that the bus driver had half
finished. Raising, Uke's first two fingers let a grayish pill drop into the
cup. The bus driver didn't notice that occurrence. He was taking another gulp
of coffee when Uke's order arrived.
Uke began a conversation that kept the bus driver interested. All the
while, he sidled glances toward the fellow's face. That knockout drop wouldn't
be long in accomplishing its work.
Gradually, the victim's face took on a grayish tinge that resembled the
color of the dissolved pills. His head was nodding slowly; he was scarcely
hearing what Uke said, until the crook drew him from his stool and started him
toward the rear door that led to the space where the busses were parked.
"You're looking kind of sick," undertoned Uke. "Maybe some air would do
you good."
The bus driver managed a nod.
"Uh-huh," he grunted. "I'm feeling sort of -"
His voice ended with a gulp as Uke guided him behind an empty bus. The
fellow stumbled in the darkness; the shove that Uke added was almost useless.
Within five seconds another man was beside Uke; together, they were lifting
the
stupefied victim into the empty bus.
Back in the terminal a loud-speaker was bawling the destinations of the
nine-thirty bus. Loretta caught a mention of the name "Knoxville." Picking up
a
small bag that she had brought with her, she followed a small group of
travelers
who were starting out to the bus.
Loretta didn't notice a stranger who was seated in the waiting room, his
calm eyes fixed upon her. His face was as immobile as his gaze, and it carried
a very slight trace of the hawkish features that characterized Lamont
Cranston.
Steady lips, fuller than those of Cranston, formed the slightest of
smiles
as Loretta passed. The steady eyes showed a momentary gleam. Of all the
passengers going on the nine-thirty bus, The Shadow had found the proper one
to
watch.
Rising he followed Loretta out to the platform. There, both were delayed
before they could board the bus. Two men, one rough-clad, the other in a bus
driver's uniform, were piloting a passenger between them, urging him in
through
the bus door.
Whether drunk or half asleep, the man was almost helpless. Once he was in
his seat, the two who had aided him came out together. The rough-clad man was
wiping his forehead with a big handkerchief, half obscuring his face. That was
why Loretta Wyndon failed to recognize the blunt features of Uke Flenn.
Politely, the bus driver helped the girl aboard then turned about as The
Shadow came up the step. Eyes met in a second meeting, but the man in driver's
uniform did not recognize the face of this final passenger. He had no idea
that
he had seen him before in the dining room of a Charleston hotel.
Small wonder. The Shadow's attire, like his face, was totally changed. No
longer did he wear evening clothes nor sport a monocle. But he recognized the
face of the man who wore a bus-driver's outfit; recognized those sallow
features topped by dark hair.
Whatever the man's ability, he didn't belong at the wheel of this bus. He
was an impostor who had acquired his uniform from the back of a helpless man
who had been thrust into a bus seat as a groggy passenger.
The Shadow's lips formed a smile as he took a seat halfway along the
aisle
and watched the fake bus driver close the door and take the wheel.
The Shadow was bound on an adventure that offered a first-hand study of
the methods used by crooks whose further trail he sought.
The driver of this over-mountain bus was Clip Rallin!
CHAPTER III
HIGH IN THE HILLS
How long the bus had traveled, Loretta couldn't guess. She had forgotten
to wind her wrist watch and the bus driver seemed too busy for her to even ask
the time. It was certainly past midnight, and during the passing hours of the
trip, the man at the big wheel had been piloting the bus over roads that
Loretta would not have liked to travel even in daylight.
Sometimes there were stretches of paved road that the bus seemed to
swallow as it rumbled ahead. Again there would be chunks of rocky cliffs that
loomed like threatening icebergs, until this "ship of the road" swung past
them.
Then the lights would blaze off into nowhere, over the depths of great
ravines where the bus seemed destined to finish its precarious trip. Each
time,
however, the huddled driver turned the big wheel, to curve the bus along a
roadway that the girl could not see.
Traffic, fortunately, was light among these West Virginia mountains. At
moments, pygmy headlights of automobiles met the glare from the bus. Each
time,
the great vehicle threatened to crush the midgets that so annoyed it, but,
somehow, they managed to scurry from its path and get by.
The other passengers - about a dozen of them - had gone to sleep. They
looked like veteran bus riders who were accustomed to leaving their worries to
the driver, along with their fate.
Across the aisle, a few seats behind the bus driver, was a man who had
solved the riddle of traveling comfortably by bus. He was slanted across the
double seat, his head tucked out of sight of everyone except Loretta. With one
hand tilted up behind his shoulder, his arm formed a buffer between his head
and the curtained window.
He looked to be asleep, yet his face was alert. In the dimmed lights, his
features had a hawkish aspect that would not have shown in a sharper glow.
Indeed, Loretta might not have noticed that characteristic, except for the
silhouette that the man's profile cast against the pillowy whiteness that
backed the reclining seat.
The silhouette, more than the face itself, produced the hawklike effect.
Interested in that passenger, Loretta looked toward his right hand, that lay
beside his knee. She saw long, tapered fingers that rested loosely about the
handle of a black briefcase. That added to the impression that the man was
vigilant even in sleep.
Five hours from Charleston to Bluefield, a matter of some hundred and
thirty miles. That didn't seem so very slow, however, when Loretta considered
the road that the bus was traveling.
Somewhere past Bluefield was a town that served as a junction point.
There, at a time when people ought to be asleep, Loretta would leave this bus
and wait for another that would carry her to Knoxville.
She had spent all her dollar bills on the bus ticket, but her handbag
contained a collection of quarters and dimes that the kindly men who ran the
detour service station had given her. Loretta decided that she could afford to
buy a breakfast when they reached the junction point.
SINCE no one else was awake, Loretta glanced at the bus driver. For the
first time, she noticed that his face wore traces of worry that, she wondered
why, he had not previously shown during this over-mountain journey.
Clip Rallin had caught the girl's glance in the mirror. In his role of
bus
driver, he had placed Loretta where he could watch her whenever he chose. Had
Loretta gone to sleep, Clip would somehow have managed to awaken her; for that
was part of his game. Loretta had obligingly remained awake for the climax
that
was almost due.
Clip began to apply the brakes. The bus swung past a jagged cliff edge,
which Clip identified by the white-painted remnants of an advertisement
plastered against a smooth surface of rock. Swinging the curve, Clip coasted
the bus to a stop on a downward slope.
Turning about, he looked at Loretta and grinned as though pleased to find
someone else awake. He leaned over and confided the trouble in a low, purry
tone that didn't rouse the other passengers.
"Pulling too hard to the right," he told Loretta. "Maybe a tire is going
flat. I hate to trouble you, miss, but if you'd hold this flashlight while I
take a look -"
Clip didn't have to finish. Loretta obliged by taking the flashlight. The
fake bus driver opened the door, helped the girl to the ground. It was foggy
here, not drizzly, as it had been a while back. To the right was a high
embankment; from the left, across the road, Loretta could hear the faint roar
of a stream deep in a mountain gorge.
Loretta picked her way beside the bus, following Clip toward the front
wheel. She found she couldn't make the flashlight work. Clip took it, pressed
the button.
"The bulb's burned out," he grunted. "Lucky I got a spare one in the bus.
If you want to get it for me -"
Turning, for a moment the girl couldn't make out the lighted door of the
bus, for it seemed blurred by a blackness that faded outward. She blinked; the
door was clear again. That was when Clip plucked her sleeve.
"I'd better get the bulb," he decided, smoothly. "It won't take me long
to
find it."
He moved toward the step; Loretta followed slowly, not liking the
darkness
around her. Clip stepped briskly through the door, took a quick shrewd glance
along the aisle. He counted heads that he had noted before; the ones that
stuck
above the seat tops.
Those passengers were still asleep. With a twist, Clip dropped behind the
wheel, yanking the lever that controlled the door. The motor was still
throbbing; a yank of the gear shift, a foot on the throttle, the bus was away
down the slope.
TO Loretta, the whole thing happened before she could even gasp. The bus
whipped clear almost with the closing of the door, and she found herself
staring at an array of tail-lights below the dim rear windows, as the big
vehicle took the next bend.
She was in utter darkness, thicker than any that she had ever realized
could exist, so black that even the white wraiths of drifting fog were lost.
It
was fearful here, alone on a forgotten mountainside, with nothing but that
steady roar of the creek that pounded through the deep gorge below.
Despite the nerve that she possessed, Loretta was gripped with real
horror
at her plight. The action of the treacherous bus driver stirred her with vague
fears of something more to come. Then, for a moment, her terror was forgotten,
as a light swept from the upper bend. Another car was coming down the lonely
highway, feeling its way past the curve.
With a glad cry, Loretta sprang out to the middle of the road and waved
her arms, just as the automobile rounded the bend.
The car came to a sudden stop. Even that didn't surprise Loretta; she
simply thought that the driver had caught her signal. What did puzzle her, was
the clatter of three doors opening at once. The noise was explained when a
trio
of men sprang suddenly into the path of the headlights, bound in Loretta's
direction.
With a gasp, the girl understood. This car hadn't arrived by chance. It
had been lurking somewhere, waiting for the bus to pass. These men had known
that the bus driver was going to strand her; it was their job to grab her
before she recovered from her bewilderment.
Loretta gave a frantic look in one direction, then the other. She saw the
guard rail of the ravine, with uncertain depths beyond it; then the
embankment.
studded with scraggly bushes and trees that offered opportunity for a frenzied
climb. She ran for the steep-pitched slope.
On the way, she stumbled, rolling into a tiny gully that she hadn't
noticed. The black ditch seemed to enfold her as she fell. Her head glanced a
mossy stone; with the daze that gripped her, Loretta heard the murmur of the
mountain creek fade.
Prone in the gully, the helpless girl could not hear the clatter of
footsteps upon the highway. Her would-be captors were almost at the spot where
Loretta had fallen. A few seconds more, they would have had her in their
clutch. It seemed that only the impossible could intervene.
The impossible came - a note of fierce challenge that rose strident above
the roar from the ravine. A peal of fierce laugher that reached Loretta in her
stupor; mirth so weird that it seemed the culmination of all her fears. But
that sardonic mirth foretold no ill to Loretta Wyndon.
The challenge was meant for the girl's persecutors; and with it, hardened
men of crime stopped short, trying blankly to locate the source of that mighty
mockery.
It was their turn to meet the unexpected in the midst of these forsaken
hills. They screamed out their challenger's name. They had heard the laugh of
The Shadow!
CHAPTER IV
THE NEEDED LINK
LIKE moving pistons, grimy hands sped to hip pockets as three gunmen
reached for their revolvers. Where The Shadow was, how he had arrived here,
these thugs couldn't guess; but they knew they were in for battle. Given a
break, they'd get The Shadow. So, at least, they thought.
One of the three was leader of the mob. He shouted a raucous command to
two others, who had remained in the halted car. Immediately, a spotlight
burned; it began a long sweep back and forth across the road, to finish at a
spot near the embankment.
Shots came from the crooks, as they aimed their ready guns. There, caught
like a mammoth moth in the lights of a brilliant flame, was the figure that
they wanted. It was The Shadow, cloaked in black garb that he had brought from
his briefcase.
Crooks saw the outline of a slouch hat above the cloaked shoulders. They
didn't sight the guns that were, in The Shadow's fists. Those automatics, like
the thin gloves that he wore, were black. But the guns made themselves evident
an instant later.
Timed to the spurts from thuggish revolvers came answering tongues of
flame. But The Shadow's gun stabs had a feature that the other lacked. The
Shadow's shots were accurate. He had aimed before the spotlight revealed him.
He was shooting straight, while crooks were opening a hasty, ill-aimed fire.
One mobster hit the highway. Another took a stagger; made a frenzied dive
back toward the halted car. Only the leader stood intact, for he had been
behind the others. His gun had swung straight for the cloaked fighter ahead.
He
intended to do more than shoot it out with The Shadow; he expected to drop
that
being in black.
Guns spoke together. Singularly, both shots were wide. The mobleader's
bullet pinged through space, for The Shadow had faded a split second before
the
fellow fired. The Shadow's shot happened to be wide because he was starting a
rapid move.
The fade that he made was more than a mere drop. It turned to a long leap
across the little ditch; transformed from that into a whirl that carried him
to
the other side of the road. During that speedy spin, guns gave staccato barks.
The men in the car were firing along with their leader, who stood in the road;
but all their shots were belated.
The Shadow ended his swift whirl by a stop against the guard rail. With
it, he came squarely into position. His left hand jabbed a shot straight for
the aiming mobleader. The slug from the .45 jolted the crook like a blow of a
sledge hammer.
The men in the car were shooting beyond their mark, for they hadn't
expected The Shadow's sudden halt. Before they could aim again, he was coming
their direction, seeking the shelter of the car front below the level of their
guns.
There were three men in that car: the driver, a marksman beside him, and
the crippled thug who had crawled in from the road. It was the last named who
screamed a warning to the other two:
"Get him! Get The Shadow before he climbs over the front and gets you!"
THE words brought an instant response, though the two men in front chose
different measures. The driver lurched the car forward, starting it down the
摘要：

REALMOFDOOMbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"February1,1939.Thelast"finger"fallsfromTheHand,asTheShadowcleaveswideopentheRealmofDoom.CHAPTERICRIME'SAPPOINTMENTTwomenwerestandingnearthecenterofthehotellobby,watchingthebellboybringtheirsuitcasesfromtheelevator.Toallappearances,t...

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