Fingers of Death

CHAPTER XXIII. DEATH TO THE DEAD!

WITH mad frenzy, Willard Saybrook leaped past Hurley Adams and flung himself upon Josiah Bartram.

The murderer was too astounded to meet the attack in time. Vainly, he tried to draw a revolver from his pocket as his young antagonist threw him toward the wall. Saybrook clutched Bartram’s wrist. Fingers of death had no opportunity now. Hurley Adams was on his feet. Harry Vincent was at the door. Neither tried to stop the unequal struggle. Willard Saybrook had a right to exact vengeance.

“Fingers of death’” screamed Saybrook. “Those were your words when you pretended to die. Words that would make people think you were a murderer’s victim, too. Fingers of death! Use them now! They belong to you!”

With one hand clutching Bartram’s wrist, Saybrook used his other fist to grapple the old man’s throat.

Bartram’s face was purple. His free hand clawed helplessly in the air. The murderer was caught by the victim who had been restored to living by The Shadow’s rescue.

Fortune suddenly came to Josiah Bartram’s rescue. Harry Vincent cried a warning as he saw the floor open. Up through the trapdoor came the dark face of Mahinda! Drawing his automatic, Harry leaped toward the Hindu. He had not reckoned with Mahinda’s amazing speed. The Hindu leaped from the steps and caught Harry before The Shadow’s agent had leveled his gun. With a twist, Mahinda sent Harry’s automatic to the floor.

With one arm flung about his adversary, Mahinda freed his other hand, and drew a wicked-looking knife.

Long, sharp-pointed, it was almost a short sword, resembling a Malayan kris. As the blade raised in the air, Willard Saybrook caught its gleam. Leaping away from the helpless form of Josiah Bartram, Saybrook sprang to Harry’s aid.

“Get Bartram!” he called to Hurley Adams.

The lawyer responded. With this fight in progress, he had ended all allegiance to the murderer. He sought to keep Bartram helpless while Saybrook wrenched the knife from Mahinda’s grasp.

The three allies were dealing with fiends. Mahinda, powerful and swift, was more than a match for Harry Vincent and Willard Saybrook. He rolled upon the floor with them, regained his knife, and brandished the long weapon in the air, ready to plunge it into the form of either adversary.

At the same moment, Josiah Bartram, with remarkable agility, caught Hurley Adams by the throat, and sent the lawyer spinning against the table in the corner. The murderer crawled to regain his gun.

With Harry Vincent flattened on the floor, Mahinda drove his knife toward Willard Saybrook. He expected to kill first one and then the other.

Saybrook saw the knife blade starting on its plunge. Then came salvation.

The report of a huge automatic cannonaded from the doorway. There stood The Shadow. The black-clad master had been watching from the darkness. His inflexible eyes gleamed steadily as his firm hand directed a perfect shot into Mahinda’s body.

SAYBROOK heard the terrific roar. The door was behind his back; he could not see the person who had fired it. The bullet whistled within two inches of Saybrook’s head, in its course toward Mahinda’s body.

The Hindu’s forward lunge became a sidewise topple. The long blade missed Saybrook and the knife, by a freakish twist, buried its point deep in the floor as it shot from Mahinda’s hand.

Josiah Bartram had regained his revolver. Hurley Adams, in an effort to stop the murderer, flung himself forward. No action could have been more damaging. Bartram, with prodigious strength in his left arm, gripped Adams and held his body as a shield, while with his right hand, he blazed swift shots toward the doorway.

The Shadow could not respond without shooting Adams. Moreover, the black-garbed fighter had just time to swing to safety beyond the doorway.

Bartram’s shots were well aimed, but they reached the spot where The Shadow had been a split second after The Shadow had left it.

With evil chortle, Josiah Bartram saw new opportunity to kill. He thought that The Shadow had fled; but he still gripped Hurley Adams as his protection. Extending his arm, he aimed at Willard Saybrook.

Both Saybrook and Harry Vincent would be easy prey. They could reach no weapons in time to save themselves. The death finger was on the trigger, when a new shot roared from the corner of the doorway.

The Shadow, under cover, had picked Bartram’s extended wrist as his mark.

The aim was true. The Shadow’s bullet struck before Bartram could shoot.

But the fiend was not yet through. Like a flash, he sprawled upon the floor with Hurley Adams grappling from above. His left hand seized the gun and sought to fire another shot.

The action was futile. As Bartram’s arm doubled beneath his body, The Shadow fired again and struck an unprotected shoulder. Hurley Adams fell free, and Harry Vincent, now grasping his automatic, delivered another shot that entered Bartram’s back.

Coughing upon the floor, with lips flecked with foam, Josiah Bartram had reached the end of his murderous career. The Shadow’s voice sounded the knell of doom.

“Josiah Bartram!” The words came in a weird whisper. “I learned the part that you were playing early in your run of crime. You managed to kill Ernest Risbey in spite of my agent’s presence. I had planned to protect that man against you.

“Julius Selwick signed his own death warrant when he refused to hear my terms. I was forced to leave him to your hands. Howard Grady died through his own folly.

“Had Felton Shores used discretion, he would be alive to-day. I left him to protect himself. He failed to do so. The ones who have died were men whose hands were not clean. I have protected those who did no harm. Grady alone died innocently.

“It was I who rescued Willard Saybrook from his tomb. I watched Hurley Adams because I knew that he sought to make amends. You wanted wealth — all for yourself. You found it. You pretended death, and therefore you deserved it. It is yours at present. Death to the dead!”

The Shadow’s presaging tones ended in a low, eerie laugh that reverberated strangely through that narrow room. As the hideous echoes threw back a ghoulish, dwindling cry, Josiah Bartram flattened on the floor dead.

EVER since his arrival in Holmsford, The Shadow had trailed the murderous course laid by fingers of death. His keen deduction had enabled him to judge men by their worth. He had known that Hurley Adams was no murderer. He had picked Julius Selwick as a man who sought safety through protection.

He had seen in Felton Shores nothing more than a man who would stoop to the folly of minor crime — not murder.

He had known that the importance of the secret shared by six had protected the secret itself. One of those conspirators was surely the man of murder. If no living man could have been the one, the only course was to choose from among the dead!

The Shadow had waited for the culmination of Josiah Bartram’s scheme. As Harry Vincent had supposed, The Shadow had learned the secret of the monument by sheer deduction. Knowing the final scene that Josiah Bartram had planned for his amazing drama, The Shadow had arrived to draw the curtain.

Harry Vincent, at a signal from The Shadow, departed from this room, where death had struck. He was needed no longer. Hurley Adams and Willard Saybrook could do the rest. The trapdoor lay below.

Beyond it was a barrier; but that meant nothing now, since these men knew that there was a tunnel leading to the mausoleum.

The stolen wealth that had been kept for twenty years would now be restored. Josiah Bartram had come from his chosen grave. The millions would come from there, also. Hurley Adams looked at Willard Saybrook. The young man gripped the lawyer’s hand.

“Bartram takes the blame,” announced Saybrook. “Forget the past. We have uncovered Bartram’s crime. He was the man who stole the gold. No one will ever know you shared the secret.”

Hurley Adams thankfully mumbled his understanding. The lawyer’s burden of worry was ended. The dread of twenty years — his vow never to betray those who had conspired — no longer held him, now that none remained but himself.

“Come,” said Saybrook. “We will call the police. Let them uncover the way to the mausoleum. It is obvious that Josiah Bartram came from there.”

THE two left the ghastly room of death. But the spot did not long remain devoid of human presence. A tall, black-cloaked figure entered after Saybrook and Adams had gone. The Shadow, invincible, stood silent and observant.

His sparkling eyes gleamed upon the bodies on the floor. Mahinda had served his master, even though it had meant murder; nevertheless, the Hindu had deserved the death which he received. Josiah Bartram, the superfiend, was the one whom death should have conquered long ago. Better far that his pretended death had been a real one!

That could not be rectified. The man had met the doom that belonged to him. Another master mind of crime had failed before The Shadow’s might.

Spread crazily upon the floor, Josiah Bartram lay with extended arms. His clawlike hands were out before him, each with widespread digits.

Fingers of death!

They were dead fingers now. Their work of murder was ended. Never again would they move to slay.

The Shadow’s laugh came as a weird epitaph. It sounded loud and terrible amid that silent room. It was a mirthless, solemn laugh, chilling in its fantastic tones.

The echoes of that laugh were heard by Hurley Adams and Willard Saybrook as they returned to the room where the bodies lay. The two men paused beyond the passage, waiting for the heart-stopping sound to end before they dared advance.

A grim, whispered echo seemed to persist even after they had come to the doorway of the room. Yet they saw no living presence there. The Shadow had departed through the door which had been Josiah Bartram’s secret.

A fleeting blot against the white wall of the mausoleum. That alone, marked the passage of The Shadow.

He had been there before, knowing that the silent building must be the abode of Josiah Bartram; knowing that a murderer lay safely within the protection of his tomb.

The murderer had come forth to gloat in triumph to meet Hurley Adams and ridicule the lawyer whose code of honor had been warped, but bound by oath.

Fingers of death would move no more!

Fingers of death had met The Shadow!

The Shadow was triumphant!