Mox

CHAPTER III THE INVESTIGATION

“HERE’S the body, inspector.”

Joe Cardona grunted his response to the policeman who spoke the words. The officer had just swung open the door of the third-floor room. Cardona was staring at the form of Schuyler Harlew, spread upon the floor.

“We haven’t touched anything,” declared the policeman. “There’s the letter on the table.”

“All right,” growled Cardona. “Captain Mowry told me all about it. He’ll be up here in a minute.”

A heavy man in the uniform of a police captain came up the stairs a few moments after Cardona had spoken. He stopped at the door beside the detective, and stood silently while Cardona studied the body. This was Captain Mowry, in charge of the precinct where the murder had taken place.

Cardona entered the room. He noted the light still burning in the green-shaded lamp. He saw the little desk clock. He observed the note that lay on the desk. He began to read it.

He was reaching forward to pick up the paper when he heard the sound of new footsteps on the stairs. He swung inquiringly toward the captain.

“I left word no one was to come up,” announced the police officer. “Go ahead; I’ll see who it is.”

As the captain looked down the hall, Cardona stepped to the door. He saw the captain salute and step back a pace.

Peering from the room, Cardona saw the reason. The star detective repressed a scowl as he recognized Police Commissioner Ralph Weston.

“Hello, Cardona,” was the commissioner’s greeting. “Just heard from Inspector Klein that you were up here. You have met Mr. Cranston?”

Cardona nodded. He had met the prominent millionaire, and knew Cranston as a friend of Weston’s. Cardona submitted to the commissioner’s intervention with good grace. It paid to be friendly with Weston, as Cardona had learned, and now that the commissioner was here, there was nothing to do but accept the fact.

“Go right ahead, Cardona,” ordered Weston. “Don’t let us disturb you. Mr. Cranston and I are here purely as interested spectators.”

CARDONA resumed his study of the body. He received a sheet of notes from the captain. He referred to them as he crossed the room, and peered through the narrow space of the window. Carefully noting the exact position of the hinged sash, he opened it farther and thrust his head through. He peered down a sheer wall three stories to the street. Withdrawing his head, he closed the sash part way to its original position.

He went to the desk, read the page of notes that he held, then picked up the yellow sheet upon which Schuyler Harlew had written. Turning to Commissioner Weston, Cardona made his statement.

“This man was living here under an assumed name,” he said. “He called himself David Gurgler. His real name, according to this statement that he left, is Schuyler Harlew.”

“When was he murdered?” inquired Weston.

“He had been staying here for three days,” announced Cardona. “He was paid up for a week in advance. He called down the stairs for his meals; they were brought up to him. To-day, the landlady supposed that he had gone out for lunch. When dinner time arrived, she knocked at the door. It was locked. Harlew did not answer.

“The landlady — Mrs. Parsons — called for the police. The door was opened with a pass-key. Harlew was presumably slain last night. If this note is reliable, we can set the time at midnight.”

Cardona handed the note to Weston. The commissioner, holding the paper so that Cranston could see it, began to read. He stopped upon the second line. As Cardona had expected, an angry look appeared upon Weston’s face.

“Is this a hoax?” demanded the commissioner.

“I don’t know, sir,” responded Cardona. “I was informed at headquarters that the note was here on the desk. I was just reading it when you arrived.”

“Hm-m-m,” commented Weston. “The Shadow. Any document that refers to an imaginary being is worthless. If this man” — he pointed to Harlew’s body — “wrote the note, he was probably in a frenzied, irrational condition. If some one else wrote it, and placed it here, we can regard the message as a hoax.”

The commissioner continued to study the yellow paper, reading it over and over with an angry glare. Lamont Cranston, standing at Weston’s elbow, had carefully perused every word. The millionaire was studying Cardona, as the detective moved about the room.

Cardona looked at the key upon the floor, near the door. He consulted the notes which had been given him. He knelt beside the body, and carefully examined the handle of the knife. Wrapping a handkerchief about it, he slowly withdrew the weapon from Harlew’s body, and placed it upon a sheet of paper.

THE knife was like a stiletto. It had a symmetry that was immediately apparent. The blade was rounded; it came to a long, tapering point. The handle was cylindrical.

Detective Cardona arose from beside the body.

“The window,” he said, as he turned to Weston, “is inaccessible. No one could come up that wall without being seen. There are lights below, on the sidewalk. This key, however” — Cardona pointed to the floor — “gives us an answer to how the murderer entered. There is no evidence whatever that the door was locked.”

“You mean before the murder?” asked Weston.

“Yes,” returned Cardona. “Harlew was probably seated in that chair. The murderer entered. Harlew jumped up and saw him. As they grappled, the murderer stabbed him in the back.

“Before he left the room, the killer may have opened the window — or left it open. He took the key, closed the door behind him, and locked it from the outside. He shoved the key under the door, so it would look as though Harlew was trying to unlock the door when he died.”

“Very good,” agreed Weston. “You feel rather certain in that conclusion?”

“It looks logical, commissioner.”

“Then” — Weston’s tone was triumphant — “there is no doubt about this note. It is a hoax. A trick to deceive us.”

Cardona looked up quickly. He saw the point of the commissioner’s argument. He nodded promptly, and voiced his agreement, although his words held a tinge of doubt.

“Yes,” he said, “the murderer would have seen the note and destroyed it. But by planting the note, the murderer could put us off the track. There’s only one way to figure it different.”

“How is that?”

“By supposing that the murderer never got inside the room. If anybody can show me how that would be possible, I’d like to see it.”

“Very good, Cardona,” prompted Weston. “You can keep this note as evidence. It may incriminate the murderer when we apprehend him. But you are missing one point.”

“What is that?”

“The murderer who wrote the note would scarcely have used the dead man’s correct name.”

Weston smiled triumphantly as he spoke. Cardona, however, came back with a prompt reply, referring to the notes as he made his remarks.

“There is a man named Schuyler Harlew,” he declared, “who has an apartment about two miles from here. One of the men from the precinct checked up on him while I was on my way. Harlew has not been seen for three days. He answers this man’s description.”

“Ah! That is puzzling.”

“I don’t think so, commissioner,” declared Cardona seriously. “It fits in perfectly. The murderer would figure that we would learn the dead man’s identity. By putting Harlew’s real name on the note, he makes it look like Harlew actually wrote it.”

“Right,” admitted Weston, throwing a quick glance toward Cranston, who had said nothing. “Very keen, Cardona. Very keen.”

Weston caught Cranston’s eye, and gave a slight nod as though to indicate that the millionaire had just heard a gem of deductive reasoning. Cardona rated highly in the commissioner’s opinion. Now that the matter of the note to The Shadow had been settled as a hoax, all tension was relieved.

“We can go down to Harlew’s place,” suggested Cardona. “That’s what I intended to do as soon as I had gotten a line on the murder situation. I’ve got a police car outside—”

“I shall go down there,” interposed Weston. “Would you like to come?” He put the question to Cranston.

“Certainly,” replied the millionaire.

BEFORE departing, Weston took the police notations from Cardona and began to study the statements with which the detective had been working. Cardona watched him. The two stood alone, except for Cranston. Neither noted what the millionaire was doing.

While his tall form cast its mysterious silhouette across the dead body of Schuyler Harlew, the keen eyes of The Shadow were at work. It was amazing, the way they traveled from spot to spot.

A watch appeared in Cranston’s hand. It slipped back into his pocket. With that action, The Shadow had checked the time upon the desk. A thin, knowing smile showed on the lips of Lamont Cranston. The Shadow had observed that Harlew’s clock was fast.

Every detail of Harlew’s antemortem statement was affixed in the keen brain of The Shadow. This master of deduction had observed points that had not occurred to either Cardona or Weston. They had read the note only word for word.

But to The Shadow, the one for whom that message was intended, the note was a revelation of Harlew’s terror of an unknown foe. The Shadow knew that no murderer could have prepared such a document of human expression to lay upon that desk.

The doomed man’s plea for aid rang true. The threat of death — the monster who wielded it — the hour of midnight — the suggestion of flight — the hesitancy about revealing the name — all were evidences of sincere statements.

Harlew’s very suggestions that his thoughts were wild, that they would not settle until after the dead line of midnight, alone convinced The Shadow that the murdered man had inscribed the message to the one who he believed could meet and conquer the superfiend who had planned this death.

Why, then, if Harlew had written the note, had not the murderer taken it with him? Hasty flight on the murderer’s part could not be the answer to his question. Cardona’s theory included the deliberate locking of the door; the thrusting of the key beneath.

The Shadow saw the answer. It was one that Cardona had himself given, yet one which the star detective had rejected as impossible. The Shadow knew that Schuyler Harlew’s murderer had never entered the room!

STROLLING toward the window, The Shadow stood directly before the desk, at the very spot where Harlew had half risen from his chair. Staring through the crevice of the half-opened window, The Shadow, still wearing the thin smile of Lamont Cranston, saw an object at an angle across the street.

Cranston’s limousine was parked beside it — a tall telephone pole that bore a thick grouping of wires upon its lofty cross bars. A pole of unusual height, the top of this pole was above the level of Harlew’s window. The pole was barely visible against the evening sky.

“We are going, Cranston,” remarked Commissioner Weston.

The burning of The Shadow’s eyes had vanished as Cranston’s tall figure turned from the window. That blaze reappeared for an instant as the same eyes focused themselves upon the stiletto that Cardona had placed upon the paper.

Outside the room of death, Commissioner Weston turned to look at the body as he had first viewed it. Cardona was beside him. The policeman was ready to close the door. Cranston, behind the group, was watching.

“Odd,” remarked the commissioner, “the position of those hands. One over the other; fingers thrust out on the left; the right hand clenched, as though to fight the assailant.”

“I noticed it,” replied Cardona. “First thing when I came in. It’s just one of those peculiar positions that you see with a lot of murdered bodies.”

“Let’s go along,” suggested Weston. “And as for that note, Cardona” — he paused to tap the yellow paper which the detective held — “don’t let it fool you. If this man whom we believe is Harlew had a name to give, why didn’t he give it?”

“It looks fakey enough,” agreed Cardona.

Lamont Cranston was still standing at the door as the commissioner and the detective started for the stairs. He, too, had noted the position of Schuyler Harlew’s hands when he had entered the room. The eyes of The Shadow were keen. They were steadily fixed upon the dead hands when the policeman closed the door.

A whispered laugh, no more than a soft echo, sounded from thin lips as Cranston walked along the hall to overtake the men who were descending the stairs. That was the laugh of The Shadow, given sotto voce, that none might hear. It was The Shadow’s answer to questions which both Weston and Cardona had rejected as of minor consequence.

SCHUYLER HARLEW had received his knife thrust at the desk. He had staggered away from the window; he had sprawled upon the floor. He had lost his opportunity — at the crucial instant — to inscribe the name of the man whose wrath he feared.

Dying, Harlew had tried to make amends for negligence. With the name of his enemy upon his lips, he had done his best to leave some trace of his final thought. Crossed wrists; three extended fingers; a loose fist. As The Shadow had viewed them from the door, they told a story.

Weston had not seen it. Cardona had not seen it. The Shadow, however, knew. From Schuyler Harlew’s death-stilled hands, the master investigator had gained a vital clew to the identity of the monster who had doomed his minion to die!

With motionless lips, the lips of Lamont Cranston, The Shadow pronounced a single word that came as a startling aftermath to his solution of Schuyler Harlew’s desperate effort to reveal a villain’s name.

The left hand — three fingers spread with tips toward the door, denoted the letter “M.” The right hand, with its loosely circled fist, gave the letter “O.” The crossed wrists, placed with a final effort, stood for “X.”

These were the letters which formed the name The Shadow uttered — a barely sibilant word that ended in a whispered hiss:

“Mox!”