Atoms of Death

CHAPTER XVIII AGENTS CHOOSE

MORNING journals blasted big news of the Reisert robbery. Huge headlines gloated in their proclamations. The criminal activities of the unknown dynamiters had become a news sensation. The evening sheets were planning extra editions to keep pace with any new developments.

Detective Joe Cardona was fuming at headquarters. Deluged with reporters, the ace sleuth was at his wit’s end. The acting police commissioner had shoved the newshawks in his direction. Cardona was beating off the pests as fast as they arrived.

Worst of all, from Cardona’s standpoint, the reporters had been harping on one question. Did Cardona intend to use the dragnet? Joe had given no reply; but he knew that the afternoon newspapers would predict the use of that weapon. There had been a gang fight near the Bowery, last night. The dragnet would be heralded as the logical bet.

Actually, Joe Cardona did intend to put the dragnet into operation. That was the chief reason why he fumed. To suit his best advantages, he was withholding his orders to scour the underworld. He wanted to spring the net tonight. Meanwhile, the newspapers were practically tipping off the mobs to what was coming; and there was no way to muzzle the press.

WHILE Cardona was having his difficulties, two men were discussing the same problems that perplexed the detective. Their meeting place, however, was far from detective headquarters. These two were seated in an office high in the towering Badger Building, near Times Square.

One was Harry Vincent, sober-faced and thoughtful. The other was a rotund, lethargic man who sat behind the desk. This was Rutledge Mann, chubby-faced investment broker whose real work was to serve as contact agent for The Shadow. The meeting place was Mann’s office.

Reaching in a dark drawer, Mann extracted an envelope and passed it to Harry Vincent. The visitor opened it, read a coded note, and nodded. The writing vanished after Harry’s perusal. It was a message from The Shadow.

“I am ready,” declared Harry, decisively.

“You recognize the risk?” inquired Mann.

“Certainly,” responded Harry. “Cliff Marsland’s life is at stake. The only way to save him is to find out where he is.”

“Marsland may already be dead.”

“And if he is—”

“It will mean death for you also.”

Harry smiled.

“It’s a fifty-fifty chance, Mann,” he declared. “If they’re holding Cliff to make him talk, they will hold me also. I am ready to risk it. I shall give you my own message, stating that I have started on the venture.”

“One moment,” interposed Mann, with a slight drawl. “Are you sure you read the message exactly?”

“Certainly,” returned Harry. “It said that someone was needed to take the risk that might save Cliff. That I was to decide if I was ready for such a quest. Whatever my decision, I was to discuss the matter with you.”

“Precisely,” declared Mann. “The message, however, did not name you as the specific person to undertake the job.”

“I inferred that it meant me.”

“It did, Vincent; but not you alone, I received a message of my own. It was probably the same as yours.”

“You mean that you—”

“I was offered the same privilege. The message referred to ‘someone,’ and that is why we must talk the matter over.”

Harry smiled. This was unusual. Dangerous duties usually evolved upon the active agents. On this occasion, however, The Shadow had given Rutledge Mann the same status as Harry Vincent.

“You see,” affirmed the investment broker, thoughtfully, “whichever of us takes up this duty is a matter of equal choice. The purpose is to begin a trail. Do you remember, Vincent, when we were boys: how if we lost a marble, we used to toss another on the ground to see if it rolled to the first one?”

“I certainly do,” laughed Harry, “and the odd part about it was that it generally worked.”

“It is likely to do so in this case, Vincent. We are marbles. Another, marble, namely Marsland, has been lost. Our question is: which of us is to be tossed.”

“And the decision is up to us?”

“Obviously. And since I am as ready to go as you are, we must come to some choice between us.”

HARRY pondered the matter.

“Perhaps,” he said, at length, “to be fair about it, we ought to decide who will be the more useful. I mean by that, which of us is the one who should resign from the quest. Take yourself, for instance. You have this office, with its duties—”

“There is no choice, Vincent,” interrupted Mann. “If one were better for the mission than the other, one of us would have been designated.”

“But our activities are widely different. We are pieces in the same game of—”

“A good analogy, Vincent. You are familiar with the game of chess, are you not?”

Harry nodded.

“Very well,” smiled Mann, “we know that the different pieces of the chess board have varying moves. A queen is more valuable than a castle; in turn, a castle is more valuable than a knight or a bishop.”

“Yes,” agreed Harry. “And the pawns are least of all.”

“We are not quite down to the pawn level,” chuckled Mann, in his leisurely fashion. “Let us stop with the knight and the bishop. Consider yourself as the knight, Vincent. You can be moved to any spot on the board, used in attack or defense. I, however, am in the position of the bishop.

“There are distinct limitations in my case. The bishop is confined to only one half of the squares on the board. Yet there are times when the bishop can be moved to marvelous advantage; particularly when the player seeks to check his opponent.

“Chess experts have decided that the knight and the bishop are practically equal in value. If one must be sacrificed, or placed in danger, it is largely a matter of the player’s choice. Do you grasp the analogy, Vincent?”

“Perfectly,” nodded Harry. “You have put it very clearly, Mann. I have been moved into many unexpected squares, like the knight on a chess board. Yet there have often been times when you were never moved into play, just like a chess bishop on the squares of the wrong color.”

“Yet I,” remarked Mann, “have been quite as desirous of difficult assignments as have you. I should like my turn; nevertheless, I hate to deprive you of the opportunity. By the way, Vincent” — Mann glanced at his watch — “we have plenty of time to talk this over. It is only half past eleven. We have until two for our decision. Suppose we go over to the Cobalt Club for lunch.”

Harry suspected that Mann was working out some plan of choice. Therefore, he willingly accepted the invitation. The two left the office and rode by cab to the Cobalt Club. They chatted a while on other subjects; then went to the grillroom for lunch.

It was nearly one o’clock when the agents arose from their table. With a smiling glance at Harry, Mann put an unexpected question:

“Just how good a chess player are you, Vincent?”

“Not bad at all,” laughed Harry. “Out home in Michigan, I was picked as the best player in St. Joe’s county. And they play real chess, out there. They have plenty of spare time in the winters, between the mint crops.”

“Good,” said Mann, decisively. “Let us go up to the library. I want you to see the corner nook.”

THE spot to which Mann referred was a quiet corner where a chess table stood with the quaint pieces all set up ready on their squares. Mann flipped a coin; Harry called heads. The coin fell heads.

“White,” chose Harry, as Mann motioned to the table.

Harry took the white side of the board; Mann the black. As they studied the pieces, Mann leaned forward and spoke quietly:

“The stake in this game—”

“I understand,” nodded Harry. “Knight or bishop.”

Harry used the Ruy Lopez opening. Mann met it with a customary defense. The game progressed; both players forgot their surroundings in the slow tenseness of the play. Pawns were sacrificed; other pieces were exchanged.

Harry saw himself the coming victor. His pieces were well clustered about his king. Mann’s queen was across the board. Harry moved a pawn to threaten it. Deliberately, Mann placed his fingers on a black bishop and moved it in to take an unguarded white knight that was on a square diagonal from Harry’s king.

“The bishop takes the knight,” asserted Mann, significantly. “Check, and Mate. Bishop wins from knight.”

Mann’s queen was covering the bishop that the round-faced broker had moved. Except for his king, Harry had no piece that could eliminate the bishop. The game belonged to Rutledge Mann.

“Quarter of two,” remarked the investment broker, as they shook hands across the board. “I must be going, Vincent. You will attend to Twenty-third Street?”

Harry nodded his agreement. Mann had reference to an office in an old building where messages to The Shadow were deposited. That was usually Mann’s task. Under the circumstances, it would be Harry’s.

When they parted at the entrance of the club, Mann took a cab and ordered the driver to travel to Times Square. Riding in that direction, the investment broker considered well the part he was about to play. For Rutledge Mann had banked on winning his game with Harry Vincent.

As a friend of Bruce Duncan, Harry would have had one opening for the coming duty. Mann, as an investment broker, had another. But in his inside pocket, Mann had the object that he needed — a letter, addressed to himself, from Bruce Duncan. The Shadow had included it with the morning messages.

Mann had another letter also. One from Bruce to Harry, which he was to have given Harry, had the latter needed it. Mann had carried it along, in case Harry won the match. Since Mann was the winner, this second letter was no longer needed.

Drawing the extra letter from his pocket, Mann tore it to shreds between his chubby hands and let the tiny fragments scatter at intervals from the window of the moving cab.

The taxi reached Times Square. Mann alighted and paid the driver.

Then, with a quiet air of confidence, the investment broker set out afoot in the direction of the Lambreth Building. As a first step in this special duty for The Shadow, Rutledge Mann was paying a visit to the office of Basil Tellert.