Lingo

CHAPTER I. COUNCIL OF WAR

DRIZZLY night had gripped Manhattan. Swirling tentacles of gathering fog were suppressing the glow of the city’s lights. In districts of lesser brilliance, an insidious gloom seemed creeping in to smother the artificial illumination that counteracted night. In places where lights were ordinarily feeble, this evening had brought an even heavier blanket of oppressiveness.

Such spots were prevalent on the lower East Side. There, one particular thoroughfare was heavily enshrouded. Moist sidewalks lay black beneath the sullen walls of unlighted buildings. An elevated railway, wedged within the confines of the narrow street, provided an overbearing pall.

Occasional stragglers appeared within the feebly lighted areas of infrequent street lamps. These were shambling denizens of the underworld — dips, hopheads and other small fry — who used this thoroughfare in their shifty travels. But none lingered in this secluded block.

The reason became apparent when a flashlight appeared with intermittent blinks, coming southward from the spot where the elevated curved into view. A patrolman was covering his beat; he was inspecting isolated doorways and other lurking places.

The police had long since classed this block as a haven for suspicious characters. The law’s policy was to keep it clear.

Approaching wayfarers spied the blinking light. Skulkers ducked off to other streets, choosing new courses for their travels. The bluecoat’s inspection would be a double one: down one side of the street and up the other. While it was on, slinkers would stay away.

There was an exception. As the patrolman passed the mid-point of the block, a hunched figure chanced to arrive from a narrow alley. Quick eyes spied the blink of the flashlight. The stoop-shouldered owner of those optics crouched against the dingy front of an old building. He was on the near side of the street; the patrolman was across the way. Craftily, the newcomer waited.

The cop moved further down. The watching man shifted forward. Sliding through the drizzle, he reached an elevated pillar and lurked there. Then he made further progress, slinking over to the further curb. He was heading for another alleyway, opposite. He could make it, now that the flatfoot had passed.

The crafty wayfarer suppressed a chuckle as he lingered by a final pillar. Dodging patrolmen was a cinch for him. For this prowler was one who had a reputation in the bad lands. Many mobsters would have recognized the pasty, wizened face that showed against the blackness of the “el” pillar. Known as “Hawkeye” to his companions, this hunch-shouldered fellow was recognized as one of the smartest trailers in the underworld.

THE patrolman was crossing the street at the lower corner. The absence of flashlight blinks gave Hawkeye that cue. Quickly, the little man completed the last stage of his maneuver. Gaining the sidewalk, he did a perfect slink toward the yawning blackness of the alley.

Hawkeye stopped abruptly at his goal. With catlike speed, he flattened himself against a brick wall.

Huddled in the edge of darkness, he cocked his head to one side and listened. His ear had caught the low buzz of voices. They were coming from a doorway only a few feet from where Hawkeye stood.

“All right, Dunny,” came a gruff order, “spill it fast. What’s come along the grapevine?”

“Nothin’ much, Joe,” was the whiny response, “’cept that it looks worser for Rook Hollister. It’s goin’ aroun’ that Rook’s due to be rubbed out.”

“How soon?”

“No tellin’.”

A pause. Hawkeye grinned in darkness. He knew the owners of those voices. One of the men within the set-in doorway was Detective Joe Cardona, ace of the New York headquarters. The other was “Dunny” Sukes, a supposed hophead whom Hawkeye had long since branded as a stool pigeon.

Dunny had come down this street and sneaked into the doorway. The patrolman had purposely passed up that hiding place in making his inspection. For the harness bull had known that Dunny would be there.

Traveling in the bluecoat’s wake was Joe Cardona, on his way to a meeting with the stoolie.

The cleverness of the gag was the reason for Hawkeye’s grin. The patrolman’s inspection had driven prowlers from this terrain. None would return until after the bluecoat had finished.

Right now, the patrolman was dawdling across the street, prolonging his inspection. By the time he had concluded it, Cardona would be gone. Afterward, Dunny would slink away, coming from this block like any other chance prowler.

“SO the finger’s on Rook, eh?” Cardona’s question caused Hawkeye to strain and listen further. “They want to chop him down like they did with the others that tried to be big shots?”

“That’s the idea, Joe,” agreed Dunny. “Rook wants to be a big guy — head man. You know what he promised ‘em. Said that when he got to the top he was goin’ to bring back the rackets. End this business of one mob musclin’ in on another. Well — he ain’t doin’ it. Somethin’ went flooie when he tried to hook up with the dock wallopers. Then he flivved when he was supposed to get a new milk racket started.”

“And now he’s gone sour with the laundry racket?”

“That’s it, Joe. They say that Blitz Schumbert was all ready to start it. Had it as good as swung. Rook, bein’ the big shot, sent a mob over to wreck that Brooklyn laundry. But they never got no chanct to heave their pineapples.

“Some other mob knocked ‘em off on the way there. The job wasn’t pulled. An’ the laundry owners handed Blitz the Bronx cheer. On account of him tellin’ ‘em trouble was comin’ when it didn’t.” Hawkeye heard Joe Cardona deliver a grunt of understanding. This was no news to the ace sleuth.

Dunny must have recognized it, for he put another statement in a hurry.

“Listen, Joe” — the stoolie’s voice was half a whisper — “there’s some mugs say it wasn’t no ordinary outfit that queered that job. They’ve been talkin’ about it, sayin’ maybe The Shadow was behind it.”

“Yeah?” Cardona’s gruff question struck Hawkeye as a feeler for further information. It came.

“That’s what they’re sayin’, Joe,” persisted Dunny. “But mostly, it’s figured as a bum guess. It ain’t The Shadow’s way to go aroun’ with a mob. An’ this ain’t the first time that some smart guys have knocked off Rook’s torpedoes. When he sent that crew of gorillas out on the bank job—”

“I know all about it,” put in Cardona, impatiently. “It was queered by another mob. But we never pinned the evidence on Rook, about sending the crew out to rob the bank. Forget that, Dunny. Tell me what they’re saying about The Shadow.”

“That’s what I’m gettin’ at, Joe. The bank job — the docks — the milk racket — now, this laundry job — well, it’s all bad for Rook, if he wants to rule the city. But who’s stoppin’ him? The mobs that are doin’ it ain’t big. That’s why the smart boys think they ain’t no mobs at all.

“They figure The Shadow’s crossin’ the dope, see? Workin’ with a picked crew. Makin’ it look like Rook ain’t got the mobs lined up, like he says he has. Makin’ Rook a palooka instead of a big shot.”

“Which means that Rook’s lieutenants want to get rid of him?”

“Sure! So they can put in a new big shot an’ start all over again. An’ the new guy will be another softy for The Shadow. The new guy won’t get nowhere either.

“But listen, Joe. I ain’t sayin’ all this is so, I’m only tellin’ what a few birds think. Most of ‘em figure that Rook just ain’t got the hold he says he has. That’s all.”

THE patrolman’s light was blinking from the opposite side of the street, near the upper corner. Cardona was noting its movements through the drizzle. He knew that the cop had stalled as long as he could.

“All right, Dunny,” commented Joe. “Keep finding out whatever else you can. It’s time for me to leave.” Hawkeye shrank into the alleyway, as the broad-shouldered figure of the detective came in view.

Cardona started up the street, keeping close to the shelter of the blackened elevated. Hawkeye had heard all that was to be said. He edged through the alley.

Tensely, the little man repressed a chuckle as he continued on his course. Reaching the end of the alleyway, Hawkeye picked a new thoroughfare and headed deeper into darkened districts. All the while, he was thinking of the conversation that he had heard.

What Dunny had told Cardona concerning The Shadow was, as yet, no more than rumor. That was the way with affairs that concerned The Shadow. A master fighter, his identity unknown, The Shadow was a mystery to the underworld itself. Criminals dreaded his might; they shuddered when his name was mentioned. Rumors were ever rife concerning The Shadow.

This rumor, like others, failed to gain full credence; but it happened — so Hawkeye knew — to be a correct one. For Hawkeye, himself, was a member of the small but chosen crew that The Shadow was at present using to confuse the underworld and bring disaster to the aims of “Rook” Hollister.

After a period of enforced inactivity, men of crime had banded in hope of reviving obliterated rackets.

Strong mobleaders had sought a suitable overlord. One after another, the czars whom they had chosen had failed. Now Rook Hollister was attempting to become the big shot — the overlord of all crime.

Though Hawkeye prided himself on his knowledge of the underworld and its ways, he knew that his own ability at spotting crime movements was trivial compared with that of The Shadow. Somehow, somewhere, The Shadow was managing to spot the coming activities of Rook and his lieutenants. So far, The Shadow had balked all of Rook’s best schemes.

More than that, The Shadow had found out something that Dunny, the stool pigeon, had done no more than suspect. The grapevine inkled that Rook’s lieutenants were chafing under the big shot’s regime. The Shadow, however, had learned that they were actually ready to end it.

Hawkeye, tonight, was on his way to do spy duty for The Shadow. His mysterious chief had learned of a most secluded rendezvous wherein lieutenants of crime were to hold secret cabal. The Shadow had ordered Hawkeye to look in on that meeting and had also discovered a way whereby the spying could be done with ease.

How The Shadow had managed this was a total mystery to Hawkeye, and the little agent was eager to reach his destination.

Quickening his footsteps, Hawkeye turned into a narrow, curving street that extended away from an elevated structure. He continued on through blackness; then as the street took a final angle, he slowed his pace.

Half a minute later Hawkeye reached a corner from which he could see a lurid, misty glow that pierced the drizzle.

HAWKEYE had reached the fringe of Chinatown. Thirty yards down this street, in the direction of the brilliance, were the quaint signs of Oriental shops that marked the beginning of the Chinese business district.

Peering craftily as he moved in that direction, Hawkeye noted one placard that bore a silver dragon. He edged to the brick front of a building and stopped just before he reached the shop.

A secluded doorway was on the right. Hawkeye slipped into it and tried the barrier. It opened; The Shadow’s agent stepped into a passage and closed the door behind him. The place was deserted; and Hawkeye found another door at the end of the passage. Looking about in the dim light of a single incandescent, Hawkeye made sure that no one was present, watching.

He pressed the lower hinge of the door. It jogged upward. He did the same with the other hinge. Then he tried the knob. The door opened; Hawkeye found a dim stone stairway and pulled the door shut behind him. He heard clicks as the hinges automatically relocked.

Descending the stairway, Hawkeye found a short passage that extended for a dozen yards. A single light guided him to the end, where he reached a narrow spiral stairway that seemed to spread upward like the leaves of a fan. These steps were blackened and Hawkeye had not taken a dozen upward before he was in complete gloom. The spiral shape of the stairway cut off the light from below.

Hawkeye was moving with the utmost caution, for this was to be his journey’s end. He groped along the wall feeling his way through the darkness until he discerned thin, slitted lines of light.

Hands extended, Hawkeye reached the topmost step and stopped against a solid wall. He peered eagerly through two slits. He became tense at the sight before him.

Hawkeye was looking down into an oddly paneled room wherein bizarre hangings adorned the walls.

The chamber was square and formed a perfect Oriental setting with its curious taborets that served as chairs and the carved teakwood table that occupied the center of the room.

A group was assembled in this rendezvous. But the members of the gathering were not Celestials.

Hawkeye saw hardened faces that he recognized. The Shadow’s agent was looking in on the meeting of Rook Hollister’s lieutenants.