Bells of Doom

CHAPTER IX DEATH DISCOVERED

Dong! — Dong! — Dong!—

There was rhythm in the funereal chime. Not one bell, but several, were forming a death medley as they clamored from the tower. Heard from a distance, the monotone was strangely musical; but as The Shadow neared the base of the tower, the closeness of the sound caused a jangle.

Discordantly, the reverberations clashed. The welling strokes seemed like rusty protests. Hideously, the bells were wrangling as their dongs no longer blended. Then, with a final crash, their knell ceased. Echoes alone throbbed from the belfry as The Shadow reached the metal-sheathed door.

To gain this point, The Shadow had been forced to circle the tower. Scarcely more than twenty seconds had elapsed since the clangs had ceased. The final impetus to the bells must have been given only a few seconds earlier.

His form outlined in the moonlight, The Shadow was gazing at the door. The entrance to the tower was closed. A clamped padlock was in view. Anyone who had left the tower must necessarily have locked the door behind him.

Where, then, was the intruder?

The Shadow’s eyes turned to survey the ground about. The tower stood away from trees. No one could have fled from the spot before The Shadow had gained the door. That, at least, was improbable.

It was possible that the intruder was still within. The closed padlock might have been shut by some accomplice. The bell ringer might be waiting inside, confident that the padlocked door would shunt investigators away.

There was no sign of a lurking person who might be here to aid anyone within the tower. A soft laugh came from The Shadow’s hidden lips. A gloved hand produced a picklike instrument. The Shadow wedged the prong into the snap of the padlock.

The device yielded. The Shadow fastened the padlock to the staple, after he had drawn the hasp. He opened the door and entered the tower. His flashlight showed the interior. The tower had a concrete base; its walls were finished smooth.

A circular stairway ran about the inside of the tower. This disappeared ten feet above, for the central portion was equipped, at that point, with a thin wooden floor. Evidently the tower had various levels.

Swiftly, The Shadow ascended. He reached the first floor and again played the light. Here was another section, some ten feet in height, with a floor above. Its cross-dimensions, however, were less, due to the taper of the tower.

Up another flight. Again, The Shadow studied a deserted floor of even smaller radius.

Then came a third floor, likewise empty when The Shadow flicked the light upon its interior. Estimating the height of the tower, The Shadow knew that the next flight would bring him to the belfry.

Cautiously, The Shadow crept upward through total darkness. He reached the belfry. An automatic came from beneath his cloak. The flashlight blinked close to the floor, then upward to the hanging bells. A brief inspection; but it sufficed.

The belfry was empty!

MOONLIGHT was coming through the slitted windows of the belfry. As The Shadow lingered, his eyes became adapted to the dull glow. Passing clouds brought better illumination. All was visible. The Shadow studied his surroundings.

The belfry was about eight feet high. The bells were comparatively small ones, lighter in weight than The Shadow had supposed. They hung from the roof of the belfry, which was absolutely level. Two cross beams supported the bells; the rest of the ceiling was formed of boards, like the floors that The Shadow had passed.

One feature that The Shadow had noted was the arrangement of the ropes. He had seen three ropes hanging through a hole in the ceiling at the bottom of the tower. He had traced these all the way upward. Now he observed them attached to the bells themselves.

A soft laugh whispered through the belfry. The situation intrigued The Shadow. Had he found someone lurking here, the result would have been a simple encounter. The total absence of any lurker gave The Shadow a new trail of mystery.

He had heard the bells ring; he had found the tower locked; but he had discovered no one in the belfry. The Shadow was searching for an explanation; his soft laugh indicated a determination to gain the answer to the riddle.

But before The Shadow could begin a further inspection of the bells, an interruption came from the ground below the tower.

Voices sounded. Peering through a slitted window, The Shadow made out the forms of men who had arrived. One was Sheriff Wheaton Locke. The official had found the opened door at the foot of the tower.

Conditions were reversed. The Shadow, stationed in the belfry, had no opportunity to descend the stairway — unless the sheriff and his squad decided to depart without an inspection. To them, the unlocked door might mean that someone had come and left in haste. It might also indicate that some person was still within the tower.

Half a minute passed. Then The Shadow saw the men enter the door below. It was plain that they intended to inspect the tower. The Shadow desired no encounter with these representatives of the law. Their discovery of the unlocked door had been a misleading episode. It was best that they, like The Shadow, should find the tower empty.

Choosing the side of the belfry that was away from the direction of the town, The Shadow thrust one arm through a slitlike window. His head followed; then his body. Despite the narrowness of the opening, The Shadow squeezed through in the fashion of a contortionist, until only his legs remained within.

Hat and cloak projected dizzily above the ground that lay forty feet beneath.

Then long arms reached upward and gripped the cornice of the cupola — a projection which extended down to the tops of the slitted windows.

Gaining a firm hold, The Shadow drew his legs through the window; then pulled himself straight upward. He clutched an ornamental facade that ran along the joint of two sloping sectors. With this grasp, The Shadow pulled himself to the top of the cupola and made his way to the highest point.

THE dome was much larger than it appeared to be when viewed from the ground. Its proportions were almost as large as those of the belfry beneath it. From this topheavy portion of the tower, The Shadow commanded a circling view of the countryside.

Spying eyes could not see him from below, for he was above the edge of the cupola. From a distance, the moonlight might have shown his figure as a dark splotch on one section of the eight-sided dome. That, however, was the reason why The Shadow had chosen the side toward the summit of the hill. He knew that no one would be viewing the tower from that direction.

Temporarily forgetting the presence of the sheriff, The Shadow gazed from his lofty perch. He noted the town of Torburg; then looked in other directions. By the increased moonlight he could make out the thin thread of a railroad a few miles away. Then his keen gaze picked spots where stretches of roads appeared upon the hillsides.

Hawklike, The Shadow was using this opportunity to search for prey. He caught the glitter of automobile lights and followed the course of a car as it sped into a wooded patch. Then, despite the clouding of the moonlight, he kept his turning gaze upon every sweep of clear space that the view afforded.

There were muffled sounds from the belfry. The Shadow did not heed them. The sheriff and his men had arrived; The Shadow knew that they would soon depart. Still making the most of his temporary observation post, The Shadow continued to survey the terrain below.

Then came a discovery. Nearly a mile away, near the bottom of the far slope of the hill, The Shadow had noted a curving road that broke in spots where wooded stretches intervened. He caught the tiny glimmer of automobile lights as they appeared upon that road. A car, its speed increasing, was driving away from Torburg.

Blink — the lights disappeared in a wooded stretch. They shone again; then blinked. The Shadow saw them reappear upon what was evidently the right fork of a road. Then the car dipped beneath the contour of a hill and its course was lost.

Yet The Shadow still watched. He was looking far beyond, waiting for some trace of the automobile.

Minutes passed. No sign reappeared.

Voices at the foot of the tower. The sheriff and his men had gone down from the belfry. They had departed; and they had locked the door behind them.

The Shadow made no move; he was still watching for the reappearance of that car, estimating the time that it would take to arrive upon an open stretch of road. At last, The Shadow laughed softly.

That car, in a sense, had come from nowhere. Specifically, The Shadow had observed two stretches of open road near the bottom of the hill. The car had not appeared upon the first; yet The Shadow had observed it on the second stretch.

That meant that the car had either been parked off the road, or had come from some byway that connected with the highway. After that, the car had disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. Lost by the contour of the hill, it had evidently gone to some secret destination within five miles of Torburg.

The time element figured. It meant that while The Shadow had been ascending the tower, while he had been gaining his post upon the cupola, some unknown person had been traveling afoot to a spot where a car was waiting.

From then on, the evidence indicated that the unknown person had driven away to a secluded place well outside the town limits, yet within easy approach of Torburg. A considerable area was involved; yet a well-managed search should surely produce results.

WITH this clue in mind, The Shadow eased downward from the cupola. Swinging from the facade to the cornice, he swung his tall form until he gained a foothold in a slitted window. Dropping one hand, he grasped the opening in the belfry.

The bottom door had been locked from the outside. Hence The Shadow did not reenter the tower. Instead, he began a descent down the outer wall. It was a precarious task, yet one which The Shadow performed with comparative ease.

Often, The Shadow used rubber suction cups in maneuvers of this sort. He did not employ them, however, when he made the descent from the tower belfry. The rough — hewn stones that formed the surface of the tower were all that he needed in this downward trip.

With the skill of a human fly, The Shadow reached the ground and stood at the base of the tower.

Harry Vincent had given The Shadow complete details regarding the location of certain houses in Torburg. In cutting back to the tower, The Shadow had considerably reversed his course. He was approximately half a mile from the home of Milton Claverly. Much closer, yet in the opposite direction, was another house that interested him. That was the home of Stuart Hosker, the politician.

Others whom The Shadow regarded as important made their residences in more distant parts of Torburg. Thus it was merely a matter of situation that caused The Shadow to consider a visit to Hosker’s. The place was close by; a quick trip there could be followed by a journey along the far side of the hill which would make a shortcut to Claverly’s.

FOUR minutes after he had left the bell-tower, The Shadow arrived outside a stone house that showed a surface covered by vines of ivy. A dull light glimmered through a shaded window on the second floor. The Shadow gripped the vines and moved upward.

The window was unlocked. Noiselessly, The Shadow raised the sash. He lifted the lower edge of the curtain to view the interior of the room. The light was coming from a bed lamp clamped to the top of a big bed.

The foot of the bed was toward the window. High and solid, it prevented further view. The window shade rose slowly. The Shadow moved inward from the night. His tall form materialized into its cloaked proportions. With one swift stride, The Shadow advanced and reached the foot of the bed.

Standing like a strange specter from space, The Shadow turned his burning gaze upon a figure that lay sprawled on the bed. He saw a man past middle-age, pajama-clad, with outstretched arms and upturned face.

It was Stuart Hosker. The man’s face was rigid in death. The front of his pajama jacket was stained with crimson, where the bullet from an assassin’s gun had tapped the victim’s heart blood.

Death had again struck in Torburg. Alone in this house, Stuart Hosker had been slain by the same hand that had murdered Maurice Dunwell. The shot had not been heard by outside ears. Crime — until now — had remained undiscovered.

The Shadow’s whispered laugh was solemn. Sinister, it bore no mirth. It was a grim token of new purpose to track down some fiend of evil. That laugh bespoke the knowledge that, on the morrow, would be spread throughout the town of Torburg.

The Shadow knew why bells of doom had tolled. Last night they had been a knell for Maurice Dunwell. Tonight, they had clanged a dirge to mark the death of Stuart Hosker.