Chain Of Death

CHAPTER XVII THE SHADOW SOLVES

A LIGHT was burning in The Shadow’s sanctum. Those bluish rays had been glaring steadily for a space of many hours. Hands, unwearied despite their constant task, were inscribing characters upon a sheet of paper.

The Shadow, like Doctor Lucas Mather, had struck a Tartar in the block-formed message. He knew, through experience, why the cryptogram expert had been willing to admit that the strange symbols might be meaningless.

The Shadow, himself, might have accepted that very conclusion had he not been present in Devine’s room when the old professor had received the message. To Devine, this page had been quite readable.

The Shadow was sure that the solution of the code depended upon some simple key. Yet the vital point was absent.

The pencil poised above the scrawled sheet. Keen eyes focused themselves beyond, to the center of the table, where the photostatic message lay blue-tinged beneath the light. The Shadow’s hand reverted to the simple circled code which Doctor Mather had so easily deciphered. The pencil, moved by steady fingers, inscribed a blank circle.

Spaces! This blocked message, like the circled one, was solid. There must be some allowance for space between the words. That might prove the one point of similarity between the easy code and this difficult one.

The Shadow had looked for characters that might mean spaces. He had found none; but he was thinking of spaces in a different light. Why characters for spaces when spaces already existed? If certain spaces in this coded message could be designated as blanks, they would serve their natural use.

With his thought, The Shadow began to study the message between the symbols, instead of viewing the actual characters themselves. He was looking for some little touch that would point to separations. He was comparing each character with the one that followed it. Suddenly, he struck the point he wanted.

Wherever a character showed a projecting line at the bottom, on the right, the one that followed it showed a projecting tab to the left. These coincidences occurred at intervals through the message, in a manner that could well signify spaces.

It was from this clue that The Shadow commenced a reasoning process that brought him to an amazing deduction. One point gained, he forged ahead until he discovered the weak spot in the code — a detail which the writer had never realized as an existing weakness.

The Shadow had begun by studying what he believed was a sample word.

At the left was a symbol with a lower tab to the left. At the right was a symbol with a lower tab to the right. There were seven characters in all. Did the lower tabs, alone, represent space indications, thus leaving a word of seven letters; or did the end characters depend entirely upon their tabs, thus being total blanks with five letters between?

The Shadow sought the answer in the code itself. He found a combination that intrigued him.

Each of these four characters, according to The Shadow’s belief, had a space indication. Therefore the entire symbols could not be spaces. Two spacers might come together; one at the end of a word; the next at the beginning of a word; but not four.

Therefore, The Shadow reasoned, each symbol must be a letter. The tabs alone were the pointers to spaces. In brief, the two central characters were the letters of a two-letter word.

It was then that The Shadow’s hand poised above the paper. A full minute passed. From hidden lips came a soft, whispered laugh of understanding. The Shadow had struck upon a factor that another might have overlooked.

SUPPOSING that the two central symbols constituted the letters of a two-letter word, each with a space-pointing tab, what would the writer have done had he chosen to inscribe a word of only one letter? Where could it have gone? Only in one spot — between those central characters.

That, however, would force the existing characters into being nothing more than ordinary spaces — something which The Shadow had already reasoned they could not be. The Shadow’s eyes burned toward the blank spot between the tantalizing symbols. The laugh that followed was the final answer.

The space itself bore the message! Such was The Shadow’s verdict. Letters depended upon the relationship of one character to the next. These block — like figures were doubled symbols.

The Shadow’s eyes gazed steadily upon the coded photostat while his hand inscribed the first four characters as they actually appeared.

Then The Shadow rewrote those same symbols in a new formation; he spread them apart to make their meaning plain.

The first character — a lone half at the left — was merely a blank indication. The second and third were each halves of the original blocks that had stood at one and two. They represented a letter.

The same with the next pair of symbols; and the next; until the isolated half character that stood alone, its bottom tab pointing to the right. It was a spacer.

The Shadow had discovered a three-letter word. He did not pause with it for the present. His keen, deductive brain was working upon a clue which he had gained at Professor Langwood Devine’s — the name in the sailing list which The Shadow had so readily observed.

Running through the code with great rapidity, The Shadow found the symbols that he wanted. He did this, by looking for two words, each with nine letters that were side by side. He inscribed one above the other.

That done, The Shadow broke the symbols in his own fashion. He wrote them in revised form; in the spaces between each proper pair, he wrote the letters that he knew they must represent. His finished task appeared.

The game was won! The letter S, appearing twice in the upper word coincided with the final symbol of the lower S. The letter I in ‘Steamship’ was properly duplicated in ‘Mauritius’. T and U proved themselves to be the correct letters. The letter A was right.

With this start on the alphabet, The Shadow had passed the final obstacle. His hands, moving with amazing swiftness, seized a fresh sheet of paper; the pencil inscribed the photostatic message in broken form.

WHEN he had completed this, The Shadow was prompt in his deciphering of the message. On a new piece of paper, his hand wrote out the final solution:

The Shadow laughed. He could see the workings of a hidden chain. This message had been sent to Professor Langwood Devine, who in turn had sent it along to some one else. The request must have reached some person who could aid. A reply would therefore have come back along the line.

Yet no coded letters had been delivered to Professor Devine’s empty box at the Hotel Salamanca. The Shadow, in two nights that had followed his visit to Joe Cardona, had made cleverly-faked long distance calls from Chicago, pretending to be Mynheer Hansel Vaart. Cardona, assured of the Hollander’s sincere interest in solving the troublesome code, would certainly have mentioned it if new messages had been gained.

The Shadow realized that the chain of crime-workers had closed. The gap made by Devine’s death had been bridged. The Shadow also saw that crooks would not be intimidated because of Devine’s elimination. The message had gone through. Cardona had suppressed the news regarding his finding of the codes.

Some hidden crook had make a fatal mistake by referring to himself as “I” in the message that he had forwarded through the band. That was not all. He had left a clue to his identity in this genuine message.

That signified that the crook had come from Europe. He had not come from England; for he refereed to a potential victim who was returning to that land. The Shadow divined that the author of the plot to steal the valued paintings must be a foreigner; while the man whom he intended to point out would be an Englishman.

The Shadow’s hand began a methodical inscription. It was tabulating the alphabet. Letters J, Q, X and Z were missing in the translated message; noting a formula, The Shadow promptly supplied the first three and added a possible Z; finally, the symbol that signified a space.

A weird laugh broke through the sanctum as the bluish light went out. Paper rustled in the darkness. Strident echoes shivered back their response to The Shadow’s burst of mirthful triumph.

The Shadow’s task was ended. He had gained the cipher that he needed. He had solved one of the most unique methods of cryptic writing that had ever been devised.

Spaces, not the solid symbols between them, had told the final story. Through long hours of ceaseless activity, The Shadow had discovered the secret method of writing originally devised by Barton Talbor — the system which the crafty old crook believed to be invulnerable.

Stillness reigned in The Shadow’s sanctum. Hollow, soundless blackness announced the departure of the master who inhabited this strange abode. The Shadow had departed to deal with crime. With him, ready for future use, he was carrying the deciphered code of Crime Incorporated!

Dusk lay over Manhattan, as a gliding figure of blackness moved westward along a narrow street. Evening was approaching, bringing a night that was to prove eventful. For at ten o’clock this evening, the Steamship Mauritius was scheduled to sail from its North River pier.

Criminals — potential murderers — would be aboard that liner. Their sole purpose would be to rob and kill a helpless victim. But crooks, alone, would not be on the scene.

The Shadow, master of vengeance would be aboard the Steamship Mauritius, ready to thwart the evil scheme of which he, too, had learned!