Mox

CHAPTER XI WEIRD VISITORS

AS soon as he had reached the Darport Inn, Clyde Burke made a telephone call. It was not to the Classic office. The call was made to Burbank. Clyde reported his observation of a distorted, long-limbed creature in the neighborhood of Tharbel’s home.

The call put Burke off duty. Nevertheless, The Shadow’s agent could not shake off the thoughts that the sight of the monstrosity had given him. Clyde Burke, like Joe Cardona, was puzzled by events which had occurred in Darport.

As a matter of routine — serving both The Shadow and the Classic — Burke took a ride in his coupe and rolled past the old house where State police were on guard. His headlights, as they swerved, cut a swath of light across the front of the rambling mansion.

This time, the headlights revealed nothing. Yet they had actually uncovered a figure which Clyde Burke did not see.

After the reporter’s car had rolled away, a soft, whispered tone of mockery sounded near the wall of the house. It was the laugh of The Shadow!

The master who solved crime had returned. His invisible shape edged toward the wall. It moved up the stone surface. It reached the window of the living room. One hand — The Shadow’s right — raised the sash to form a narrow crevice.

Peering eyes saw the flicker of a fire in the grate. A State policeman was standing in the living room. As The Shadow watched, the officer strode away and went down the corridor.

The window opened farther. The Shadow entered. His sharp gaze turned toward the cupboard in the corner. Sulu’s former abode had been opened by searchers. The door was wide; the cupboard was empty.

The Shadow, as he moved toward the corridor, showed the same swift precision that he had exhibited on his first visit to this house. As he sidled toward the wall, his right hand was at the front of his cloak; his left moved — rather slowly — at his side.

The Shadow had evidently recovered from the effects of the knife wound in his left arm, but he was also careful not to use too great effort. He reached the corridor and approached the panels at the side of the wall. The State policeman had gone downstairs.

THE SHADOW tried the panels. He raised one. His flashlight flickered through the long, narrow secret room. The Shadow threw the beams along the thick wall at the left. Then the light turned to the low ceiling just above his head. It remained there.

Returning to the corridor, The Shadow closed the panel. He ran his light along the corridor wall, past the next panel, then to the third. He opened this one. He entered the second secret room — the long, low, narrow chamber which was the counterpart of the first.

Again, the searching rays of the flashlight enabled The Shadow to make a thorough study of this room. A soft laugh resounded as The Shadow stepped back to the corridor and closed the secret panel. Slowly, with measured stride, he covered paces toward the first panel which he had opened. He stopped.

Some one was thumping up the stairs. With a swift whirl, The Shadow started for the living room. He arrived there just as a State policeman, on a tour of inspection, appeared at the head of the stairs.

When the officer arrived in the living room, The Shadow was no longer there. The master of darkness had returned into the depths of night. His presence, however, still remained in the neighborhood of the rambling mansion.

A swish — almost inaudible in the cool night air — announced The Shadow’s arrival at the rear of the house. The Shadow paused beside the shed which served as a garage. Beneath the heavy branches of a tree, the black-clad phantom climbed to the top of the outlying building.

From that spot, he gained the sloping roof of the mansion. Dull moonlight showed his form as a moving blot as it crept upward and reached the blackened side of the chimney. Clouds obscured the moon. Stygian darkness kept The Shadow unrevealed.

Half an hour passed. The Shadow’s return was announced by a sighing whisper that came from the roof of the shed.

The Shadow had regained that spot after his unseen investigation. Silently, invisibly, the figure in black glided toward the side of the house. A State trooper, standing at the opened door of the mansion, was staring into the night. He did not see The Shadow.

The master of darkness had departed. His mission to the old house had been fulfilled. The Shadow, like Junius Tharbel, was playing a waiting game. He knew — The Shadow — that Mox, whoever he might be, still contemplated mischief.

ONE hour after The Shadow’s mysterious departure, one of the State policemen heard a sound as he stood by the opened door. The noise seemed to come from the shed at the rear of the mansion.

The officer closed the door behind him. Cautiously, he stalked through the darkness. He heard the noise again — a grating on the roof of the shed.

Clicking his flashlight, the policeman raised his gun. The glare of the electric torch revealed a creature poised between the roof of the shed and the roof of the house.

Never before had the officer seen such an ugly monstrosity. The crooked dwarf, spread-eagled between the roofs, snarled furiously as the light showed his brownish face.

Writhing almost in mid-air, he shot back to the roof of the shed, just as the policeman fired his revolver. Sulu, unhit, disappeared over the other side of the shed.

The policeman ran around the low structure. He flashed his light in every direction. He saw no sign of the hideous monster.

Another policeman came running up. As he inquired what had happened, the first officer turned his flashlight upward as he heard a creaking limb. Poised upon the branch of the big tree was Sulu, about to attack the men below.

As the glare again disclosed his contorted form, the dwarf sprang downward, back toward the shed. Two revolvers thundered.

The intervening tree trunk saved Sulu as the shots were deflected. The long-limbed dwarf gained the shed; he bounded over its top and dropped between the small building and the house, while the officers again fired vain shots.

The policemen started in pursuit. Sulu, however, had gained the start. They arrived beside the house in time to discover the dwarf nearly a hundred feet away, making for a cluster of trees in a vacant patch of land.

Quick shots went wide. Sulu gained the safety spot he sought.

“Stay here,” said one policeman, to his mate. “I’m going over to the nearest house and call the county detective.”

PEOPLE in the neighborhood had been aroused by the shots. Seeing the policeman beside the old house, in the glare from the now-opened door, they subsided. It was several minutes before the first officer returned.

“What did Tharbel have to say?” his companion inquired.

“That guy beats me,” responded the officer who had telephoned. “He says he’s not worried about prowlers. He also says that because we uncovered this funny-looking bird, we don’t need another man on the job. He said that this afternoon; now he takes the attitude that this has proved it.”

“Maybe he’s right — but if that bimbo had plugged one of us from the tree, it wouldn’t have looked so good.”

“You bet it wouldn’t!”

The State policemen continued their patrol. Keyed by the episode, they watched for a return of the prowler. The dwarf, however, did not appear near the house.

The watchers would have been amazed had they known that Mox’s creature was not the first mysterious visitant who had been here this night. They had no inkling whatever to The Shadow’s visit.

Where Sulu had been unsuccessful, spotted almost at the moment of his arrival, The Shadow had gained the objective which he sought. Yet Sulu, as well as the officers, was in ignorance of The Shadow’s investigation.

Why had The Shadow come here tonight? What had brought Sulu to the premises, from which he had previously fled with Mox?

A partial answer to this question came later — in The Shadow’s sanctum.

LOCATED in his hidden abode, a black-walled apartment somewhere in Manhattan, The Shadow placed his long white hands beneath the bluish glare of the lamp that shone upon the polished table.

The Shadow held no trophy as a token of his trip to the old house in Darport. A sheet of paper — a pen — the sparkling girasol with its vivid flashes that turned from deep crimson to pure ultramarine — these were all that showed with The Shadow’s hands.

The Shadow, however, had discovered something. It was locked within his brain. He was about to place his findings into words. The right hand raised the pen; upon the sheet of paper it inscribed two names:

To date, neither of these men had figured in any of the reports that The Shadow had considered. There was nothing to show that they were henchmen of the fiend, or that they might be other missing inventors.

The names glared in vivid blue; then faded as though erased by an unseen hand. These were names which The Shadow had learned through his visit to the deserted home of Mox.

There was premonition in The Shadow’s action. Although the names had disappeared, the men whom they represented were not forgotten. The Shadow had presaged their entry into the amazing case that involved Mox, the superfiend.

The light clicked out. A laugh resounded in the gloom. Sardonic tones of merriment awoke taunting echoes that whispered sibilant notes from buried depths of blackness.

When the last gibe had ended, deep silence pervaded The Shadow’s sanctum. The master of darkness had gone. His departure foretold the beginning of new and startling episodes.

The scheming of Mox had not yet ended. The Shadow had simply called the villain’s next turn; and with it, The Shadow had marked the counterstroke which he — The Shadow — would deliver!