Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 163 - Shadow Over Alcatraz

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SHADOW OVER ALCATRAZ
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in
The Shadow Magazine #163
December 1, 1938
A crime emperor of the future is buried with his vicious exploits of the
past--by The Shadow
CHAPTER I
CRIME'S CHANCE
The banquet was over. Affable men in evening clothes were strolling out
into the hotel lobby, shaking hands as they said good night. Not a large
crowd, but they represented wealth. That was one reason why they had banqueted
at this hotel, the swankiest in Denver.
A little group remained at the door of the banquet room. Center of the
cluster was a wheezy, stoopish man whose frail body seemed ill-proportioned,
especially to the old-fashioned dress suit that he was wearing.
He had the eye, the air of a fanatic. His voice rose to a hoarse pitch,
as quiet-mannered men tried to humor him.
"You are all crazy, here in Denver!" wheezed the frail man. "I tell you
that my invention was not at fault! Atmospheric conditions ruined the
demonstration!"
"We understand, Lanyon." Someone clapped a friendly hand upon the frail
man's shoulders. "But you'd better try it elsewhere. Afterward, we may be
interested."
"That's right," urged another of the group. "You're tired, Lanyon.
Over-strained. You'd better go up to your room. Don't forget that you're
leaving on the midnight limited."
They conducted the frail man to an elevator. Once he was aboard, with the
door shut behind him, the members of the group showed relief. Their handshakes
were a form of congratulation, as they parted in the lobby.
A hotel guest, standing near the desk, had observed the scene. He turned
to question the clerk:
"Who was the old nut?"
"Harvey Lanyon," replied the clerk, with a grin. "Calls himself the
Rainmaker. Thinks that a machine he's invented will end droughts. But he
hasn't been able to sell the idea."
Four men were lugging a bulky burden from the banquet room, out through a
side door of the lobby. The object looked like a large aquarium, for it was
oblong-shaped and its sides were large panes of glass.
The clerk pointed out that the glass walls were misty on the inside.
"That's all old Lanyon ever gets," he chuckled. "A lot of fog. No wonder he's
foggy in the bean! Unless he's a fake, which some people claim he is."
"If he gets fog, though," remarked the guest, "maybe he can bring rain.
What's his system, anyway?"
"He explodes some little puffballs inside the glass box," explained the
clerk. "He says that if an aviator dropped a lot of big ones a couple of miles
up, they would produce clouds, and that would mean rain."
A tall man, immaculate in well-fitted evening clothes, had strolled from
the banquet room. He paused to light a cigarette, while he watched a crew put
Lanyon's rain demonstrator aboard a truck.
There was something hawklike about the tall man's features, that went
with the keenness of his gaze. His face, however, was impassive as he stepped
toward an elevator. It had the inflexible mold of a stony Aztec god. "Kent
Allard," identified the clerk, in a whisper. "The famous aviator!" They say he
just happened to stop off in Denver during a transcontinental hop." But I've
got a hunch he wanted to get a look at Lanyon's goofy invention."
HIGH in a tenth-floor room, frail Harvey Lanyon was staring from a
window, glowering at the famous "mile-high" tower patterned after the
campanile in Venice. That sight didn't make Lanyon feel any better. It simply
made him mutter again his argument regarding atmospheric pressure. After all,
Denver had an altitude of approximately one mile above sea level. Maybe that
was why his tiny puffballs had produced nothing more than mist inside the
glass box.
Lanyon was forgetting arguments that he had used in other cities. In
Galveston, he had blamed salt air from the Gulf of Mexico. In Tulsa, he had
said that the experiment had been made too soon after a settling dust storm.
Why couldn't these Denver financiers recognize the truth? Lanyon's device
certainly produced fog. In turn, fog meant clouds. From clouds would come
rain.
Still scowling, Lanyon remembered the midnight limited. He began to pack
his suitcase. In it, he placed a metal box large enough that it could have
held three volumes of an encyclopedia. That box was loaded with a few dozen of
the inventor's precious puffballs.
There was a sucking sound from a corner of the room. Lanyon didn't notice
it, nor did he observe what happened along the floor. Particles of dust
stirring; they whisked into a hole drilled in the baseboard.
Nor did Lanyon recognize that this room was tight-closed, the locks of
the windows jammed in place; edges of carpet were poked tight beneath two
doors--one leading to the corridor, the other to a connecting room.
A vacuum device was sucking away air. It's suction was strong enough to
overcome any air that might enter through keyholes and smaller apertures.
As Lanyon started to close the suitcase, he felt his head swim. He
steadied himself against a chair. He thought it was just another of the
sickening spells that he had experienced, like many persons unused to the high
altitude of Denver.
This time, there was an added cause. The suction pipe was thinning
atmosphere that was already too rare to suit Harvey Lanyon.
The "Rainmaker's" ears were thrumming, but his hearing remained acute.
Despite the vertigo that gripped him, he suddenly tilted his head. He was
hearing a sound that he could actually notice, for he remembered it from twice
before.
Once in Galveston; again in Tulsa; the muffled buzz of a wireless set,
some where close by; signals coming through in a in a code that made no sense.
Lanyon knew Morse, and he recognized that the call must be a secret message,
like the others had been.
Head tilted lower, Lanyon listened for the signature. There it was! The
same that he had previously heard, but quite as mysterious as the message. For
the signature wasn't even a name. It was just a curious succession of dashes
and dots, that came in uniform procession.
Two dashes--three dots--two dashes--three dots--two dashes--three
dots--two dashes.
Harvey Lanyon lifted his head, gripped by instinctive alarm. Crawly
wiggles of black came before his eyes. The room was spinning; so were the
lights of Denver, shining, through the window. Then came a click; a puff of
reviving air. Viselike arms caught Lanyon, settled him in a chair.
Lanyon steadied, to recognize Kent Allard. The tall, hawk-faced rescuer
had come through the connecting doorway. He had unlocked the door just in time
to give Lanyon needed air.
NODDING in response to Lanyon's grateful mutters, Allard located the
sound of the vacuum pipe. He stepped across the room, stooped beside it. He
waited, timing the sucking sound by the long hand of a stop watch.
Five minutes ticked by. Allard's left hand showed an odd shake. His right
went to his forehead. Somehow, the air was thinning again, although he had
left the door open from the adjoining room, with a window raised beyond it.
The stop watch slid into Allard's pocket as he came to his feet. His head
swam as he whirled about. His eyes seemed to catch mere snatches of the
grotesque scene before him.
There, on hands and knees beside the suitcase, was Harvey Lanyon, a wild
light in his dull-gray eyes. The Rainmaker's lips were parted in a crazy grin,
but his extended tongue stopped the hiss that should have come from the
panting breaths that he sucked between his teeth.
Beyond Lanyon was the connecting door, tight shut. Lanyon, himself, had
closed it, less than a minute after Allard had placed him in the chair.
Mistrust had replaced gratitude, the moment that Lanyon revived. The
crack-brained inventor hadn't guessed that Allard was here to help him.
Befuddled over the radio message with its mysterious dash-dot signature,
Lanyon had done the worst thing possible.
Shutting off needed air, the Rainmaker had done more than nullify
Allard's work. Steady minutes had cut down the air pressure to a point below
where it had been when Allard entered.
Not only that; Lanyon, in his half-demented state, was blocking Allard
further. From the suitcase, the Rainmaker had tugged a small revolver. With
sheer nerve sustaining him, he was keeping Allard covered.
Lanyon mouthed an order. It was to the effect that a move by Allard would
mean immediate death. Despite his own dizziness, Allard waited coolly. The
suck of the vacuum pipe had suddenly become the factor on which he depended.
It was plain that Lanyon didn't know the situation. Soon, the Rainmaker
would do a fade-out, while Allard, accustomed to high altitudes, could
certainly outlast him.
Timing his breathing, Allard became steadier. His hawkish gaze was fixed
upon Lanyon's wild eyes. The inventor's tongue was drawn in again; his wheezy
breathing was as loud as the sucking of the vacuum pipe, but Lanyon was
satisfied, so long as Allard did not stir.
Lanyon's head swayed. His hand, too, was wavering. Seeing those symptoms,
Allard gave a sudden lunge from the wall. Lanyon saw it, tried to steady. The
very effort floored him. He coiled; in flattening, he tried to tug the gun
trigger.
Allard stopped that effort. Rolling the frail Rainmaker a dozen feet
across the floor, he saw the revolver scud from Lanyon's grasp. Rising, Allard
clutched the chair where the suitcase lay. All he needed was a few moments to
shake off the exhaustion from his hard charge.
Those moments were not given.
There was a muffled puff from the chair. The suitcase ripped apart.
Bursting open, the steel box flung its heavy lid straight to Allard's jaw.
Taking a long sprawl backward, the hawk-faced aviator stretched senseless near
the window.
The decreased air pressure had exploded the thin-shelled puffballs. The
lot had gone in a single puff.
A CURIOUS, smoky mist enveloped the room above the motionless forms of
Allard and Lanyon. It thinned as the vacuum pipe sucked the atmosphere. Wisps
of man-made fog remained, however, when the harsh suck of the pipe came to an
abrupt halt.
The door from the corridor opened cautiously. Two husky men poked into
sight, adjusting handkerchief masks across their eyes. They exchanged mutters
when they saw two bodies instead of one.
Drawing a revolver, one of the invader's leveled it toward Allard. The
other stopped him with a harsh snarl.
"Whatta you want to do?" he demanded. "Make more noise? There was enough
already, from that funny puff we heard!"
The first man pocketed his gun. His companion saw the connecting door,
tried it and discovered that it was unlocked. He nudged his thumb toward
Allard, with the comment:
"The guy belongs in the next room. That's where we'll leave him."
They hoisted Allard's senseless form, carried it to a bed in the
adjoining room. Returning, the pair locked the connecting door. While one was
gathering up the debris from Lanyon's suitcase, the other screwed a
perfect-fitting plug into the vacuum pipe.
Lanyon's frail body was nothing of a burden for those huskies. They
lugged the unconscious Rainmaker out through the corridor and down an obscure
stairway, that brought them to an alley.
A truck was waiting there, its motor throbbing. The men put Lanyon in it,
stretching him on a mattress. The Rainmaker's huge, coffin-shaped tank was
already in the truck. Lanyon's captors opened the lid and lowered the
Rainmaker inside, mattress with him.
"A setup!" chuckled on of Lanyon's captors, as the pair clambered into
the front of the truck. "Just like the chief said it would be. They'll think
that Lanyon took the midnight limited, like he was supposed to."
"Except for the guy we left upstairs," gruffed the other husky, as he
pocketed his mask. "Suppose he makes a squawk?"
"They'll think he's goofy, if he does. The chief has fixed things to make
it look like Lanyon is still hopping around trying to peddle his invention. So
we can forget the guy--"
The rest was drowned by the truck's rumble. Abductors were on their way,
their job completed. Crime's chance, postponed in Galveston and Tulsa, had
come at last in Denver.
None the less, these lesser lights of crime had missed an opportunity
that their chief would have regarded as far more important than the capture of
the Rainmaker, Harvey Lanyon.
With a single well-placed bullet, they could have disposed of crimeland's
greatest foe, a mysterious being known as The Shadow, who alone was capable of
gaining the trail of Harvey Lanyon and whatever lay beyond it.
For Kent Allard, regarded by those crooks as unimportant, was none other
than The Shadow!
CHAPTER II
CALL OF CRIME
The pilot of the transcontinental plane was feeling rather proud. He had
flown many notables over the Sierras, but the fact had never impressed him as
anything to talk about.
They were passengers; that was all. But the man who was on the ship
tonight was more than a passenger.
He was Kent Allard.
The pilot turned his head away to hide a pleased grin, for Allard was
seated beside him, enjoying special privileges. Maybe Allard was thinking it
funny, watching someone else handle the controls.
Funny, even, to have anyone else in the same plane with him, for Kent
Allard was noted as an intrepid master of long, lone hops.
What also impressed the pilot was the odd accident that Allard had
experienced, back in Denver. Entering his hotel room, he had tripped over a
telephone cord in the dark and cracked his jaw against a radiator. He'd been
unconscious when they found him, and a physician had advised him to finish his
trip to the coast in a passenger plane, instead of flying his own ship.
That was the way it went. A real ace like Allard could crack up half a
dozen ships and come out without a scratch. But a place like a hotel room was
different. It offered chances of really getting hurt.
Bad weather tonight. Coming into San Francisco wasn't much fun, during
this season. The beam was working, though, and the pilot would soon be
following it right into the airport. Meanwhile, there would be radio reports.
Suddenly, the pilot nudged Allard. "Listen! There it is again!"
The same signal that had come before. The sort that the pilot had heard a
few days ago, over Denver. Last night, also and tonight, only a half hour ago.
The stuff that the government wanted pilots to pick up and report: those
crazy calls that always started with the same dash-dot identification.
Allard was jotting it down, in dashes and dots. There it stood, in a
single line:
--...--...--...--
More was coming through in curious, irregular code, that seemed to
register some fanciful thoughts on the part of the dispatcher. It was tricky,
the sort of stuff that no one could decipher.
Allard was copying it, the pilot observed, and that was something of a
help. It wouldn't matter, though, if a thousand people put those messages on
paper.
They were always garbled, always varied. Sometimes words had been made
out of them, but even then, the messages had no sense. Sort of a code within a
code, as the pilot had been told.
The message ended. Following it, the identification arrived--the same as
before, with its doubles of dashes, its triplets of dots. This time, the pilot
wasn't watching Allard. Thereby, he missed the unusual.
As he marked those dashes and dots, Kent Allard let spaces come at
intervals between them:
--.. .- -. .. --. . .--
Thus broken into letters, the line spelled a name, which Allard's pencil
wrote in capital letters, almost as though his hand inscribed the name from
habit:
ZANIGEW
Those letters represented the usual international code. The name, at
least, was translatable, although no one but The Shadow had cracked it apart.
Everyone else had simply regarded it as a mere identification, because of the
regularity in which the dashes and dots occurred. Then, again, they had been
most concerned with trying to decode the actual messages.
ZANIGEW!
There were times, in the past, when The Shadow had heard the name spoken.
Certain crooks had mentioned it, in the same hushed tone that they used when
referring to The Shadow. To them, Zanigew was also a mysterious being.
There had been periods, during The Shadow's many campaigns against crime,
when an unseen hand had seemingly stirred from far beneath the surface. There
were depths below the underworld and it was there that Zanigew began his
machinations.
One question, however, had always remained unanswered. Even The Shadow
had been unable to learn if such a person as Zanigew existed. That name,
spoken by the lips of dying crooks, could have been no more than a myth.
Until one week ago.
That marked the beginning of the strange wireless signals with the label
that The Shadow knew for Zanigew's. The government had tried to locate the
unlicensed senders, but without success. Direction finders had led
investigators to barren spots.
Zanigew's broadcasting apparatus, though powerful, was evidently of a
portable sort. He, or his agents, had ways of decamping without a trace.
The Shadow had left that quest to others, while he took a different
trail.
Right now, unnoticed by the pilot of the big plane, Allard's hand was
building a complicated pyramid of letters that looked like a mystic
abracadabra. Zigzagging lines between those letters, he gave potential
meanings to dots and dashes in the body of Zanigew's message.
There were other portions of the message that The Shadow crossed off, for
a definite reason. He had detected a slight change of speed in their
transmission, a common characteristic in all of Zanigew's messages.
That had been a clue for Zanigew's own listeners, and The Shadow had
caught its significance. Those speedier transmission, the parts that most
persons would regard as highly important, were dummy letters introduced to
complicate the code.
Another pyramid was building up from Allard's pencil. This message would
soon be cracked to perfection. In the first that he had deciphered, The Shadow
had made out the name of Galveston. The second had given him Tulsa, and a
date.
By that time, The Shadow had seen a link to Harvey Lanyon. In solving a
third message, he had worked with that name and had gained Denver, the day,
and the hour. Ill luck had allowed Lanyon's abduction, but The Shadow intended
to remedy that misfortune.
The new message stood decoded. Out of its many jumbled letters, The
Shadow had the kernel:
DANSELL FRISCO FOURTH TWENTY TWO HQ
The name "Dansell" meant much to The Shadow. He had heard of James
Dansell, a chemist and inventor, who rated highly within the war department.
Dansell posed as a retired manufacturer, but his actual work was creating
improvements in various forms of armament.
Dansell traveled much along the Pacific coast, hence "Frisco" indicated
that Zanigew had located him in San Francisco, where the inventor had a
penthouse residence. From "fourth", The Shadow knew that Zanigew had reference
to this very day--not the fourth of the month, but Wednesday, the fourth day
of the present week.
The word "twenty-two" was an hour, figured on a scale of twenty-four;
namely ten o'clock. Looking for the significance in the letters "HQ", The
Shadow could interpret only the abbreviation "headquarters", signifying that
Zanigew had himself dispatched the message. The symbol "HQ" had been in
previous messages.
The transport plane was looming down toward the San Francisco airport,
which cast its brilliant lights high through a slight drizzle. The clock on
the broad instrument panel showed half past eight, Pacific Time.
The Shadow calculated a forty-minute trip to Dansell's penthouse. He
could arrive there almost a full hour before the time mentioned in Zanigew's
message.
Busy with his landing, the pilot did not hear the whispered tone that
came from the unmoving lips of Kent Allard. It was like an echo, that sibilant
throb of mirth; a mere shadow of a laugh, if such could be.
The laugh of The Shadow!
CHAPTER III.
FOG COMES TO FRISCO.
A BEEFY man was standing in a tiny entry thumbing a nickel-plated watch
that showed five minutes of nine. Behind him was the open door of a small
elevator. Glowing distant in the drizzle, the man could see the
twenty-two-foot dial of the great clock in the Ferry Building tower.
Five minutes of nine. The elevator man snorted. For once, his old watch
was right. That wouldn't save the old turnip, though. Tomorrow, he was going
to chuck it in the Bay and buy himself a swell gold ticker, with a chain to
match.
After tomorrow, he wouldn't be running this private elevator on an
all-night shift between the street and the penthouse. His pocket was full of
cash; he could feel it crunch every time he poked it.
Five hundred dollars, with a duplicate amount to come. All he had to do
was to ignore calls from the penthouse, and swear, if questioned later, that
there had been no signals. There was another duty, also; but that was part of
his regular job.
The operator was to admit no one to the elevator, except those persons
who belonged in the penthouse. At present, all such persons were up there.
Poking his nose out from the entry, the operator looked upward toward the
penthouse lights. Odd, he couldn't see them; odder still, the reason why. Fog
was shrouding in from the roof of the building next door, wrapping all about
penthouse. That wasn't the case with other tall buildings, close by, nor the
Ferry tower.
Shrugging, the elevator man went back into his entry. Maybe fogs didn't
come with drizzles; maybe they did. Anyway, he'd keep his trap shut regarding
it, the same as with anything else that happened here tonight.
HIGH up in the penthouse, a sallow, rat-eyed man was crouched on the
window seat of a living room, watching that fog wreathe closer. It was thicker
than ordinary fog, and already it had formed an impenetrable blanket.
That pleased the rat-eyed croucher. Too many buildings loomed close to
this one: skyscrapers with windows that remained lighted at night, spots from
which people could see what happened in the penthouse.
There was a radio close by. Eagerly, the man thumbed to the lowest number
on the dial. He tuned the instrument to a slight pitch. Faintly, a wireless
call came through, a series of double dashes and triple dots. The sallow man's
leer became a prefect match for his ugly eyes.
Zanigew's call.
A voice boomed from somewhere in the penthouse. It roared a name in an
angry tone:
"Querlon! Where are you?"
Instantly, the sallow man changed manner. His eyes opened into a simple,
placid stare. His lips dropped their leer, becoming solemn, almost nervous.
His voice had a plaintive tone as he called back:
"Yes, Mr. Dansell! I'm here, in the living room! I'm coming out there
right away--"
Heavy footsteps interrupted. Into the living room strode James Dansell, a
burly man with a heavy, thickset face. He was brandishing a big envelope. It
crinkled as he shoved his fist inside, to show that the envelope was empty.
"Who got into my private files?" demanded Dansell. "Who even had a right
inside the room where they are kept?"
"Why I--I--" Querlon's stammer was almost a give-away. "How should I know
sir?"
"Because you, as my secretary, knew what this envelope contained!"
stormed Dansell. "My formulas, my correspondence! All are items that meant
nothing when separated, but everything when together.
"And you, Querlon"--Dansell was closer--"are the only man who even knew
the purpose of my latest experiments. You have known it for weeks, for months!
And now!"
Dansell flung the envelope to the floor, to grab Querlon by the shoulder.
Dragging the sallow secretary to the wall, the burly man began to shove the
button that would bring the elevator, while he shouted:
"Freeman! Jerome! I want both of you!"
There were other buttons, to signal the servants, and Dansell began to
jab them, in case his shouts were not heard. A very bull in strength, he had
Querlon's arms pinned in back of him, toward the left, so that the fellow
could hardly budge.
A clock on the mantel was striking nine, its tinkles scarcely audible
through Dansell's shouting and the clatter of the arriving servants.
Querlon, however, caught the tone. With a gasp, he twisted his head and
managed to dart a look at a watch that was on his wrist. Despite his
predicament, his eyes took on their rattish squint.
The wrist watch also showed the hour, but not the same as Dansell's
clock. Querlon's timepiece pointed to exactly ten o'clock.
THE servants had arrived. Jerome and Freeman were brawny fellows, of
Dansell's own type. They were the sort who could worry an admission of guilt
from a human rat like Querlon. Whatever glee the secretary felt, he
temporarily forgot it when Dansell pitched him hard across the floor into the
clutches of the servants.
Querlon spilled so violently that his wrist watch ripped loose and sailed
ahead of him, while loose change, keys, pencils, and other articles clattered
from his pockets. Hauled to his feet, Querlon was twisted about in Dansell's
direction, to answer accusations.
Despite that first taste of rough treatment, Querlon managed to gather
his wits. Staring past Dansell, the secretary saw something that pleased him.
Head tilting back, he emitted a snarling chuckle.
The utterance was no signal, but it produced the same result. French
windows flung open. A wave of fog poured inward, like thick soup from an
over-tilted bowl. With that swirl came sweatered figures, revolvers glittering
from their fists.
They overwhelmed Dansell, clubbed him to submission with short-slugged
blows. Past those attackers came others, surging for the servants. Flinging
Querlon aside, Freeman and Jerome grabbed chairs to use as cudgels.
There was no chance to use those improvised weapons. Their foemen were
upon them, pushing them back against the wall with gun muzzles, growling
threats that savored of death. The servants let the chairs drop, raised their
hands submissively, to stare stolidly at the stunned form of James Dansell.
From a corner crawled Querlon, drawing a stubby revolver that had been
shoved tightly into his hip pocket. With an apish grin, the crooked secretary
was taking matters over in behalf of the master that he really served.
That master was Zanigew!
CHAPTER IV.
UNFINISHED CRIME.
MERE minutes had given victory to criminals. Men from the fog were in
full control, awaiting Querlon's orders. The briskness with which the
secretary gave them was proof that the present situation had been foreseen.
Querlon ordered Dansell's prompt removal. The burly man was carried to
the roof-terrace edge; there, he was shoved out into space. The carriers
followed him, managing in some strange fashion to bridge the space to the roof
of the building opposite.
Looking at Jerome and Freeman, Querlon saw perplexity on their faces. It
was nothing to the expressions that they soon would show. As yet, the
secretary was not quite ready.
He swung the windows shut to hold out the heavy fog. There was another
reason also, as Querlon's grimace told. Closed windows would prevent certain
sounds from reaching the outdoor world that was so completely lost from sight.
Querlon tuned the radio higher. Still carrying his gun, he used his left
hand to pick up various articles that had spilled from his pocket. He had
gathered some of them, when he heard an expected sound.
It was Zanigew's call, flashing again, rapid and imperative, over the
air. Querlon faced promptly toward the center of the room.
Four men were covering Freeman and Jerome. The gunners knew what
Zanigew's signal meant; they were waiting for Querlon to corroborate it. The
rattish man pointed his gun hand upward, preparing for the downward sweep that
would order the squad to fire.
Something clanged from beyond the living room's wide door. Querlon's hand
remained poised, his eyes took on a startled glaze. Gunners shifted to look
with him. They saw the opened door of an elevator, a bulky operator moving
clumsily from it.
Halfway to the living room; that figure took a forward sprawl. The man's
thud told that he had been senseless all the while. Someone had been
supporting him, shoving the stunned man forward. Above the flopped form stood
a shape in black.
Diving for cover, Querlon yelled as he pumped his gun toward the cloaked
foeman who had materialized as amazingly as the fog. It was his own excitement
that caused Querlon to fire wide, but the fellow thought that he was shooting
through a substanceless target.
So did the four men who composed the gun squad, until they heard the
chill challenge of a mocking laugh. With it arrived a cloaked fighter, who had
no regard for the scattered bullets that sprayed from Querlon's shaky gun.
Crooks knew those eyes that blazed from beneath a slouch hat brim.
The eyes of The Shadow!
The black-cloaked fighter was almost in their midst. They flung
themselves upon him, two taking hurried aim, the other pair resorting to the
slugging tactics that had served so well with Dansell. Guns roared from the
milling cluster, while gun hands slashed downward.
Perhaps that concerted effort would have floored The Shadow, had no aid
come with it. He was supported, however, by two allies who acted as rapidly as
his opponents. Jerome from one corner, Freeman from another--the two were
flinging themselves upon the gunners, hoping to impede their attack.
Querlon scrambled for the windows to yank them inward. Over his shoulder,
he saw figures fling apart. One sweatered man was prone and silent, dead; two
others were grappling individually with Freeman and Jerome. The last had lost
his gun, but he was clutching for The Shadow's throat.
Headlong, Querlon went straight through the window. Shots sounded from
beyond, whistling inward above the secretary's head. Jerome and Freeman tried
to drag their opponents toward the sides of the room. The Shadow flung his
adversary to the floor.
Amid the gunshots came a sharp zinging from the radio.
Double-dash--triple dot--double-dash--Zanigew's signal!
Maddened thugs broke from Dansell's servants, making for the window as
the outside gunshots ceased. The Shadow sent his own opponent rolling; from
hands and knees, he tongued shots at the escaping crooks.
One man blocked those bullets and lost his life. As he flattened short of
the window, the other rushed across the terrace, and leaped into space like
Querlon!
Up like a wild rabbit came the thug who had battled The Shadow. He didn't
seem to realize that Zanigew's call had ended. The servants tried to halt him;
closing behind the fellow, they prevented The Shadow's fire. With a sweep, The
Shadow reached them, thrusting a long arm forward to club the last crook's
skull.
Just then, the fugitive squirmed free with the lurch of a leaping fish.
Out from clutching fists, away from beneath The Shadow's sledging gun hand,
over the terrace's low wall, into--nothingness!
Whatever had saved Querlon and the others, it was no longer there when
the last crook dived. His elated shout turned to a trailing shriek, as he
plunged between the wide-spaced buildings.
From the window, The Shadow heard the sharp crack of a skull upon cement,
muffled partly by the distance. That last fugitive had overtimed his stay.
Fog was vanishing, as the swift drizzle flayed it. The Shadow caught one
glimpse of a dangling object whipping over the parapet of the opposite roof.
It was a rod supporting the end of a double-wire track.
That told how the invaders had arrived. They had thrust a long, thin pole
across from the other roof, to hook the cross-rod on two studs that projected
from the terrace. Querlon, probably, had first placed those studs as future
supports for the wire track.
Fog, provided by Harvey Lanyon's mist-producing puffballs, had been the
cover for that action as well as the passage of the men who had come later. At
Zanigew's bidding, crooks had used one man's invention to abduct another
captive that Zanigew needed.
A truck was rumbling far below, out of sight beyond the next building.
Pursuit was useless. Dansell's captors had made a quick trip downward and were
on their way. The Shadow turned to the servants, and shot quick-hissed
questions that they answered as best they could.
They knew that James Dansell had developed some new and valuable
creation, but they had no idea what it might be. All that they could furnish
were the details of Querlon's treachery. They told how Dansell had ordered
them to seize the fellow.
SPYING Querlon's wrist watch, The Shadow picked it up. It was still
ticking, and the time it gave brought a reflective laugh from The Shadow's
lips. He found a new interpretation for the term "HQ" in Zanigew's message.
It had reference to the time of the attack. It meant that Zanigew's
followers were to operate on the same time as headquarters. Evidently,
Zanigew's headquarters lay east of the Sierras, in the zone of Mountain Time,
not Pacific. That time was an hour earlier. Ten o'clock, to Zanigew and
Querlon, was only nine o'clock in San Francisco. The careful secretary had
kept his own watch an hour ahead, to avoid any mistake.
Another object glimmered from the floor. It was a key, that neither
Jerome nor Freeman recognized. A key from Querlon's pocket; a large, flat key
bearing the number 308.
Pocketing the clue, The Shadow told Jerome to try the telephone. Jerome
did, only to find it out of order. It was a simple matter, however, for him to
summon the police. The Shadow pointed him to the window. Looking out, Jerome
saw lights below.
Persons had heard the landing of the last thug. Officers had found the
body. They were wondering, too, about reported gunfire, for they were flashing
their lights up into the fog-cleared space.
Ordering Jerome to hold his call for one full minute, The Shadow beckoned
Freeman to the elevator. They rode down to the entry; there, The Shadow told
the servant to wait. Hardly had The Shadow stepped from the entry, before
Freeman heard shouts.
Officers arrived, blinking flashlights as they came, to find Freeman
staring dumbly toward the street. It took them half a dozen seconds to rouse
the servant into speech. Even then, the fellow blinked.
To Freeman, it seemed that The Shadow had vanished like a ghost into the
San Francisco drizzle!
CHAPTER V.
ZANIGEW REWARDS.
A LARGE, flat key bearing the number 308. A hand tapping that key against
a window sill, while a face peered through the pane into the darkness of
another Frisco night.
That hand was not The Shadow's, nor was the face. The key was not the one
that he had found at Dansell's. It was a duplicate of that key.
The man at the window was Querlon.
The rat-faced traitor had much to grin about. He was in a secure
hide-out--a room in a small, obscure San Francisco hotel. He was registered
under another name; there didn't seem a chance that anyone could trace him.
A two-day hunt had been under way for Querlon. He was wanted for
摘要：

SHADOWOVERALCATRAZbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedinTheShadowMagazine#163December1,1938Acrimeemperorofthefutureisburiedwithhisviciousexploitsofthepast--byTheShadowCHAPTERICRIME'SCHANCEThebanquetwasover.Affablemenineveningclotheswerestrollingoutintothehotellobby,shakinghandsastheysaidgoodnight.Not...

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