Doom On The Hill

CHAPTER VII THE SHADOW AT WORK

ONE hour after The Shadow had received Harry Vincent’s verbal report, an autogiro came settling upon the lighted landing field at Laporte. The pilot alighted and strolled over to a place where cabs awaited passengers from planes. He entered one of these vehicles and ordered the driver to take him to the Laporte Hotel.

The rural taximan was garrulous. He began chatting with his passenger as he headed for the town. The arrival from the autogiro listened quietly to the driver’s gab.

“Seen that windmill of yours this mornin’, boss,” informed the taximan. “Say — them giros sure can drop down quiet, can’t they? Seen it again when you went up this afternoon. Say — you ought to use that ship to fly over Chanburg. I hear there was doin’s round that town.

“Lookin’ for a body over there, I hear. Finished up about three o’clock in the afternoon, I reckon. But they was talkin’ here at the air field about sendin’ a couple of planes over that way tomorrow. Guess they figure people could see things from above that they couldn’t see on the ground.”

The chugging sedan that passed for a taxi had reached the main street of Laporte. The town was a thriving one; its chief thoroughfare was well illuminated. Laporte boasted three hotels; the driver pulled up at the best, the Hotel Laporte.

When the pilot of the autogiro entered the lobby of the hotel, his features were plainly revealed for the first time. His face was firm and impassive, almost masklike. It gave no clew to his exact age. Brilliant eyes shone from either side of a hawklike nose.

Tall and sweeping of stride, the hawkish arrival entered an elevator and rode up to the fifth floor. There he entered a room which he had engaged that morning, under the name of Lamont Cranston. As soon as the door had closed behind him, Lamont Cranston assumed the role of The Shadow.

Though he had left his black garments stowed safely in the autogiro, The Shadow still possessed his gift of merging with the dark. He moved silently through the room. His whispering lips formed a soft laugh. A light clicked above a table in the corner. Its shade sent the rays downward; only white hands appeared beneath the glow.

THIS morning, The Shadow had brought his giro from the clearing. Late in the afternoon, he had taken off from the Laporte flying field, to travel high above the countryside which the sheriff’s men had searched. He had dropped into the clearing, paid his visit to Twinton’s and Breck’s. Then he had returned to Laporte.

The Shadow had accomplished the very thing that the taximan had said might be done tomorrow. He had viewed the terrain about Chanburg from the air. Brief though his inspection had been, the mysterious investigator had gained the results he wanted.

The hands unfolded a sheet of paper. It was a topographical survey map of the district about Chanburg. This government chart was excellent in detail. It showed houses, clumps of trees, contours and heights of hills. Then came a sheet of thin cardboard. It already bore a penciled enlargement of the topographical survey map. The Shadow’s hand began to supply additional markings that did not appear upon the printed chart.

A blue dot marked the spot where Harry Vincent had found the body in the road. The Shadow produced a drawing compass; he thrust the point into the blue dot and used the penciled end to trace a circle one mile in radius. This accomplished, he concentrated on the area within the circle.

It was possible to trace The Shadow’s thoughts from the motion of his right hand. Not only did that hand make light markings on the chart; it also put down time notations on the margin, to indicate the exact space of minutes that had passed between Harry Vincent’s discovery of the body and the arrival of the sheriff. The time period was less than half an hour.

The corpse had been removed during that interval. Where had the body been taken? That was the problem which The Shadow sought to answer. His first act was to run the pencil along the roads.

The Shadow was considering the theory that the body might have been carried away by automobile. That possibility could not be totally rejected. Yet it was unlikely. Had the murderer had a car available, he would probably have stowed the corpse therein immediately after the murder.

The pencil moved over to the railroad. This time, The Shadow’s hand indicated complete rejection. The body could not have been taken away by train, because of two reasons. First: the necessity of loading it aboard at the station; second, the schedule of the trains themselves. It was a long trek from the road to the station. The freight had gone through shortly after the discovery of the body. The local — the Limited — even the Dairy Express; none of these would have been suitable. Living men could have boarded them; but a corpse could not have been carried along.

The Shadow knew that the murderer could have kept the corpse by the tracks until the arrival of an early morning freight; but that would have meant a dangerous risk. No — The Shadow’s hand as it roved within the circle indicated the belief that the body was still somewhere in that area.

Pausing by the blue dot, The Shadow touched thin lines that he had made. These were the traces that he had discovered one night ago. To an ordinary student of crime, they might have signified the presence of one prowling enemy. To The Shadow, they meant more. Several persons had been near the scene of crime. While one, probably the leader, had slain the victim, the lines in the dried grass indicated that the killer had aids close at hand.

Harry Vincent’s arrival must have occurred shortly after the murder. The killer and his pals had taken to the cover of the bushes. The broken twigs; the bit of gray cloth on a bramble — these were indications of the lurkers. Probably the murderer had believed that Harry would pass by. When Harry had discovered the body, the killer had waited.

Harry’s departure had been fortunate. Had he waited too long, The Shadow’s agent might have become a second victim. But after Harry left, the lurking killer decided on prompt action. Aided by his pals, he had one logical thought; to stow the body in some place where it would lie unfound; then to make a get-away.

THOUGH the killer might still be near Chanburg, it was plain that his aids had gone. The search by the sheriff’s men had revealed no suspicious strangers. The Shadow’s pencil followed the course of the railroad track. Ruffians — the kind that a killer had at his heels — could well have hopped the Dairy Express, somewhere along the line.

What of the body? The Shadow’s hand kept hovering above the circle. It touched one tiny black square that was just within the circle. That square was located near the railroad, between the station and the grade crossing.

The hand moved upward. It stopped upon another black square close by the indicated home of Ezekiel Twinton. That was within the limits of the circle. The hand rested there a few moments; then made another move.

This time it touched a black square near the home of Grantham Breck. The Shadow’s whisper formed a sinister laugh. He had found a logical answer to his problem. Of three places, he was eliminating two.

If the railroad had been the means of departure for the pals of the killer, they would not have left the body near the tracks. A trip up toward Ezekiel Twinton’s had its drawbacks. First: the lugging of the body uphill. Second: a march away from the railroad. Third: the necessity of crossing the hill road on the return journey, unless the men made a long, roundabout detour over Twinton’s hill. This, according to the topographical map, would have meant the crossing of marsh land and intervening creeks.

Toward Breck’s. A downhill trip. Then a cut over to the railroad. There was only one objection. Harry Vincent had stopped at Breck’s and had brought the sheriff there. But that was pure chance. The killer had probably thought that the motorist would keep straight into the town of Chanburg.

A faint, almost inaudible buzz sounded from beside the table. The Shadow’s hands moved into darkness. They opened a square suitcase. Fingers turned a knob. The Shadow whispered. A response came through earphones that he was placing on his head.

“Burbank speaking.”

“Report.”

A voice clicked through the shortwave set. The Shadow ended the conversation with short, cryptic words. Earphones went back into the suitcase. A soft laugh sounded in the hotel room.

Word from New York. Work there on the morrow. A new battle with unfinished crime. The Shadow must leave this vicinity for the time. That fact was not alarming. For The Shadow, though he was convinced that a dangerous master of evil lurked near Chanburg, was also sure that the hand of crime lay in temporary abeyance.

The Shadow was positive that the enemy relied upon a crew of workers who had departed. The killer would lay back now that his mob was gone. Should crime require a repetition, the evil chief would again summon his cohorts.

Such was the basis of The Shadow’s deductions. Yet the master sleuth had not yet placed his finger upon the arch criminal, nor had he divined the motive for murder. The Shadow scented hidden purposes. He knew that he must force them to the light.

So far, Sheriff Tim Forey, Craven the butler, Ezekiel Twinton and young Elbert Breck had bobbed up like puppets before The Shadow’s view. The Shadow suspected that these were not all concerned in the complications that mysterious murder had produced. He still had time for further investigation; he intended to use it before his forced departure for New York.

More important than living men was a dead one. That, at least, was the case for the present. To fight criminals, The Shadow chose to bring them into action. Before he left for Manhattan, The Shadow intended to perform one definite task: namely, to locate the corpse that Forey and his men had failed to find after prolonged search. A whispered laugh, timed to the extinguishing of the light, was proof that The Shadow knew he could gain the result that he desired.

LATER that evening, Lamont Cranston checked out of the Laporte Hotel. He took a cab to the airport. His luggage was loaded aboard the autogiro. He took off — presumably for New York — and the windmilled ship climbed skyward.

Dull starlight gave some visibility of the ground below. The Shadow’s ship moved high above the town of Chanburg. The motor stilled; the giro descended like a silent monster from the heavens. It came to rest in the clearing which The Shadow had first chosen for a landing place.

A phantom form reappeared upon the hill near the house of Ezekiel Twinton. The building was dark when The Shadow encircled it. Faithful watch dogs, sleeping by their kennels, were undisturbed by the gliding figure that passed with less sound than the rippling breeze.

The Shadow reached the little spring house. Its closed door was sheathed with iron. Rusted nails, showing beneath the glimmer of the tiny flashlight, were proof that this place had not been entered. The Shadow moved away.

Later, his form appeared in the vicinity of the railroad. The Shadow reached the spot that had shown as a tiny square on his map. Passing through a thicket of furzelike bushes, he came to an abandoned shack. A simple clamp held the door shut; The Shadow opened it and entered.

Empty bottles, a few old newspapers — these were the objects that the little flashlight revealed upon the wooden floor. Small, dirty-encrusted windows were tightly closed. The Shadow moved out into darkness. He reached the railroad tracks. Here he paused.

Someone was puffing up the side of the embankment. Silent, The Shadow could trace the motion of a form that took to the ties, heading in the direction of the railroad station. The man’s pace was hasty. His stocky form was barely visible. The Shadow took up the trail.

The sound of a train approaching from far in the opposite direction spurred the prowler to more rapid stride. Close to the station, the man cut over behind a trio of side-tracked freight cars. He clambered in through one of the opened doors and waited. The Shadow merged with the darkened side of the car.

The roar of a train; a clanging bell. The Union Limited came blazing down the rails to halt at the little station. Its headlights, however, did not reveal either the prowler or The Shadow. Both were out of range. The Limited chugged away.

It was then that the chunky prowler dropped from an open door on the side of the car toward the station. The Shadow circled the end of the freight car and remained unseen. Zach Hoyler was on the lighted platform, preparing to push a baggage truck back to the station.

The squatty prowler paused; then clambered over the rails. He reached the platform just as Hoyler was unlocking the outside door of the baggage room. The Shadow, too, had moved forward. He had gained the shelter of a bush not a dozen feet from the baggage-room door.

The Shadow saw Zach Hoyler turn in momentary alarm at the sound of thudding footsteps. Then he observed the relieved grin that appeared upon the agent’s face. Zach had recognized the squatty, muffled prowler as the man stepped into the light.

The Shadow, too, saw the visage of the stranger; but his keen eyes viewed that square, pudgy-lipped countenance for the first time. The man whom The Shadow had followed was Perry Nubin, the railroad detective.