Chain Of Death

CHAPTER XX SPOILS OF BATTLE

THE SHADOW’S first shot had alarmed Richard Glade, the white-shirt leader of a mobster crew. The Shadow’s second burst, coupled with the report from the revolver of his victim, had roused the ship.

Echoing through the long passage, the shots had carried with surprising loudness. Above the throbbing of the liner’s pounding engines came shouts raised by those who had heard the gunfire.

Harry Vincent was listening at the door of his stateroom. In his right hand, Harry was holding Raoul Darchonne’s gun. The Frenchman still lay senseless on the floor. As he harkened, Harry could hear the aftermath of The Shadow’s first skirmish. Scurrying footsteps sounded past the stairway.

Another man was listening to the noises that came through the stateroom door. Raoul Darchonne, suddenly reviving, had risen to hands and knees. Blinking, the Frenchman saw Harry Vincent staring out into the passage.

With surprising recovery, Darchonne arose and crept forward. Then, with a sudden leap, he precipitated himself toward the man at the door. Harry Vincent swung just in time to meet him. Turning at the sound of Darchonne’s approach, The Shadow’s agent met the Frenchman just within the door.

Before Harry had a chance to fire, Darchonne delivered a clip to his chin. Harry staggered across the stateroom. He caught himself against the writing table. Darchonne’s intended knock-out had failed. The Frenchman, however, had gained a break. Before Harry could cover him with the revolver, Darchonne yanked open the door and reached the passage.

As Darchonne rounded the corner to the stairs, he ran squarely into a steward who had come from above. The man was holding a revolver. Darchonne pounced forward and swung a heavy fist. The steward crumpled. Darchonne seized the gun that fell from his hand.

Continuing onward, the Frenchman sped toward the companion way that would take him to 128. Knowing that his part in crime had been discovered, Darchonne sought to join the other rogues aboard the steamship.

Meanwhile, events were happening below. Glade and his men had gained their warning from the crook who had fled to the deck. Glade had ordered two of his men to guard the side passage. With Terry and another, the chief crook was hoisting the four-blocked trunks to the rail.

Shouts continued. People aboard had not located the source of the trouble; yet Glade knew that time was short. Bracing the trunks against a post that extended above the rail, Glade snarled an order to his men.

“Get him!” Glade’s words were ferocious. “There’s four of you! Get him! It’s your only out!”

The crooks understood. The ship was in a furore. They were in for desperate trouble, even without The Shadow. His presence made their plight hopeless. As Glade poised the large, but light trunks, the two men who stood beside him leaped to join the pair at the passage.

THE SHADOW had been waiting. He had known that an attack must come. He was in the passage by Elkin’s stateroom. Already, he could hear shouts at the further turn. He had deliberately waited, in order to bait Glade’s men to an attack. He could linger no longer.

Brandishing an automatic in each hand, The Shadow sprang to the passage that led on deck. He arrived there, just as the first pair of crooks were lunging inward. Flashing revolvers were in readiness. Fingers were pressing triggers.

It was a matter of split-seconds. These minions of crime were prepared for The Shadow’s thrust; the master fighter, in turn, was ready for them. Thin-gloved forefingers were on the triggers of the automatics.

Three shots crashed within the little passage. Two came from The Shadow’s guns. The third, an instant later, was from a crook’s revolver. The second of Glade’s henchmen never fired.

Fired at five-foot range, The Shadow’s bullets had found their mark. Crouching as he loosed the bullets, The Shadow had burnt a leaden slug into each lunging form before him.

One crook had fired also, almost at the moment when he staggered. His bullet, sped toward a dropping shape, whistled through the upturned collar of The Shadow’s cloak, barely singeing the hidden face within.

The Shadow’s form came up as gunmen’s bodies slumped. A terrifying laugh burst from The Shadow’s lips. Springing forward, this fierce fighter was on his way to deal with men outside. At the door to the deck, The Shadow encountered the second pair of henchmen.

One automatic jammed against a gangster’s jaw. The second gun came clashing down upon the other fellow’s wrist. As the first mobster sprawled, The Shadow seized the second to drag him back into the passage. This man was Terry.

There was strategy in The Shadow’s odd attack. He did not know the numbers of his foemen. Disposing of one, he had grabbed the other’s body as a shield. The move was wise.

Standing against the braced trunks, Richard Glade was holding a revolver. He was ready to down The Shadow if his minions failed. While The Shadow grappled with Terry, Glade could find no mark at which to aim.

All that Glade could see was a lunging form — Terry’s — as it swayed like a dummy figure in The Shadow’s clutch. Then, from beneath Terry’s arm, came the flame of an automatic. The shot was loosed toward Glade; only a slump of Terry’s body spoiled its direction. The Shadow’s bullet clipped a corner of a trunk beside Glade’s ear.

Wild shouts from within the ship. Glade hesitated no longer. Turning, the chief crook lunged upward against the trunks. The blocked boxes toppled outward into the ocean. Gripping the pillar, Glade launched himself forward into the water below.

His leap was just in time. The Shadow had hurled Terry helpless across the deck. With one fierce spring, he too, reached the rail. He turned as he gripped the pillar. His black form, outlined against clouded moonlight, formed a spectral target for a man who was leaping out from the passage.

IT was Raoul Darchonne. Wielding the steward’s revolver, the Frenchman aimed for the figure that he saw upon the rail. As Darchonne fired, an answering blast came from the blackened shape. It was the final shot from The Shadow’s left hand automatic.

Then came the amazing climax. As Darchonne clumped heavily to the deck, a venomous groan came from his lips. His eyes, bulging downward, did not see what happened to The Shadow, although his ears heard a strange, outlandish sound.

With Darchonne’s shot, The Shadow’s figure hovered outward. As though timed to the slight swell of the sea below, the black-garbed figure lost its hold upon the post beside the rail. Outward, in a weird, spreading dive, The Shadow curved head foremost into the deep.

A trailing laugh, fading like a weird reminder of his prowess, was the sound that marked The Shadow’s departure overboard. The throb of the ship, the shouts of arriving men — these drowned any sound of the splash that must have followed.

With dying eyes, Raoul Darchonne looked upward. Flat upon the deck, the insidious Frenchman glimpsed the post where The Shadow had been. He recalled the black-garbed shape at which he had fired. He remembered that it had loomed, tall and bulky, upon the rail. That shape was gone.

Men were raising Darchonne’s body. Their excited voices were loud upon the deck. But Raoul Darchonne did not hear them. The triumphant grin that had formed upon his evil lips was an expression fixed by death.

Raoul Darchonne had died without a murmur. His passing thought had been a flash of evil victory; the realization that he had gained a chance to deliver death to the enemy whose bullet had spelled curtains for himself.

Passengers and members of the crew had arrived upon the deck. Terry and his gangster pal were overpowered before they could put up a groggy fight. Darchonne’s body was carried into the ship, along with those of the two gangsters in the passage.

A cry marked the discovery of chaos in 128. Hank’s body was found dead upon the floor. Wesley Elkin, still unconscious from the gash aside his head, was carried to the ship’s hospital.

THE Mauritius was plodding onward at a twelve knot speed through the easy, rising swell. Certain of the passengers managed to remain upon the deck where strife had been rampant. Among them was Harry Vincent. The Shadow’s agent wore a face that was glum and solemn.

There had been no cry of man overboard. Yet Richard Glade — whom Harry knew only as the leader of the crooks — was missing. Moreover — and this was the factor that left Harry morose — there was no sign of The Shadow.

People had arrived from all directions, less than a half minute after the final shots. Harry had been among the first. He was sure that he, at least, would have spied The Shadow.

Harry felt helpless aboard this moving boat. He could not order the stopping of the ship. That might prove the worst step possible, for it would connect Harry — agent of The Shadow — with the ended battle. Harry could only hope that The Shadow was still on board. Yet Harry was gripped by a terrible belief that The Shadow had gone over the vessel’s side.

Moving toward the rail, Harry noted scarred marks along the top. The same indications showed upon the post. These were the marks made by the blocked trunks that Richard Glade had followed overboard.

Higher, Harry found another mark that made his face turn grim. It was the long nick of a bullet that had skimmed the edge of the supporting post. Instinctively, Harry knew that The Shadow had been the target for that shot.

Sadly, The Shadow’s agent went inboard. He appeared later, upon a high rear deck. Looking backward, Harry viewed the swelling ocean, streaked with shadowy blackness from the clouds that dimmed the struggling moon.

No speck was visible upon the surface. The ship had traveled several miles since the conflict had ended on the lower deck. Again, Harry sought surcease of melancholy in the hope that The Shadow had miraculously gained some hidden spot within the boat.

FAR back on the horizon which Harry Vincent had viewed, a cubical float was bobbing in the easy swell. Glade’s four trunks, water-tight with their precious spoils inside, were no longer within sight of the Mauritius.

Clinging to one side of his well-formed buoy, Glade was drawing up the little box that bobbed at the end of the connecting wire. The moonlight showed a pleased grin on the crook’s dripping face. Peering outward from a rising swell, Glade could no longer see the distant lights of the Steamship Mauritius.

The man’s gaze turned first to one side, then to the other, timed by the periods when the floating trunks were raised by the sea’s motion. Off to the right, almost parallel with his position, he spied the object of his search. It was the low, flat hulk of a moving boat.

Glade wrenched at the covers of the little box. The water-tight lid came off; the box rested on top of the trunks. Glade drew forth a tapered object. A click sounded from his hand. With the hiss of a Roman candle, a flare splashed a deluge of crimson flame from the crook’s hand.

Almost immediately, sparkles glimmered from the moving boat. The beam of a searchlight came now, across the water. As the buoy neared the high point of another swell, Glade set off a second flare. This time, the searchlight’s rays picked up the floating trunks.

Lights formed a moving circle on the water as the purr of a motor sounded across the space between the boat and Glade’s improvised buoy. The eye of the searchlight wavered, but again picked its mark. Glade was on the near side of the trunks, waving one arm as a signal.

The boat slowed as it came alongside the trunks. It was a trim motor launch; lights aboard showed three men leaning over the side. A line splashed in the water. Glade seized it; willing arms drew the boxes to the side of the thirty-five-foot craft.

Glade grabbed the side. He was hoisted aboard. Two men caught the ropes that bound the trunks. The burden came up easily until it was halfway out of the water; then the men levered it on the motorboat’s side. Glade and the other man joined it. With a yank, they tumbled the resisting burden down into the cockpit.

“Head for port,” puffed Glade. “There’s no more to do—”

A sudden sound froze the words on the crook’s lips. A weird echo had broken at the side of the boat; from the very spot where the trunks had stopped on their way aboard. Glade leaped up as the sound broke into the tones of a chilling laugh.

Revealed by the glimmering lights aboard the launch was a looming figure in black, poised upon the side. Like a spirit of vengeance from the deep, The Shadow had come to settle scores with Richard Glade!