Shadow 001 - The Living Shadow

CHAPTER XXIII ENGLISH JOHNNY’S GAME

BIG, bluff English Johnny arrived at his uptown residence, still fuming because the pretending taxi driver had eluded him. He and the policeman had followed Harry Vincent in the other cab, but had given up the chase after a few blocks, for their quarry had gained too great a start.

Furthermore, they had not detected the license number of the fleeing cab. It had been well down the street before they had made any effort to note the license plate.

English Johnny, however, had remembered Harry’s face. Some day, he said to himself, he would encounter him, and would square accounts.

English Johnny had continued home in the other cab, but had given the driver a false address, and had dismissed the vehicle some distance from the house where he lived. He then walked up the street to an unpretentious building, unlocked the door of the house, and entered.

He climbed the steps to an upstairs room of the simple two-story house. There he opened a letter which he had found in the mail box.

The beefy-faced man whistled as he read. He was evidently pleased by the message he had received.

He tore the letter into pieces, dropped the fragments in a large ash tray, and burned them. After scattering the ashes from the window, he drew down the shade, and took a seat at a table in the corner of the room.

Half aloud, he repeated the information that he had gathered from the letter:

“Expect to complete matters tonight. We will meet away out on Saturday night, at eight o’clock. If plans are changed, you will hear by Saturday morning.”

It was now Thursday night. The meeting was to take place in two days.

“That’s good,” mumbled English Johnny. “The old boy is getting busy at last. Eight o’clock. That will get me back to Wang Foo’s by eleven.”

English Johnny took pen and paper, and penned a brief reply:

“Glad that work will be done soon. Will see you as stated. Have made all arrangements with my representative, and am anxious to obtain action.”

That was the content of the letter, but much of the spelling was incorrect. Even this short note, which bore no greeting and no signature, was something of a labor for English Johnny.

He sealed the letter in an envelope, scrawled an address, and affixed a stamp. He left the house and mailed the letter at the corner. Then he returned; locked the front door and went upstairs. There he sat in meditation.

“Bad business with that cab driver,” he mused. “Wonder who the fellow was. Wonder if he did forget this address. I’m laying low out here, and it ain’t good for nobody to know about it. Well, I’ll be careful until after Saturday night. You won’t poke your nose out of this place for two days, Johnny, old boy.

“Wang Foo is a wise chink. All the tips he gives are good. ‘Be careful’ is what he says. He’s right, Johnny. He’s right. It’s been good business with him in the past, and this job is going to be the best of all. Yes, sir. Play safe, Johnny.”

The big man listened intently for a moment. He fancied he had heard a click at the front door. He arose and went downstairs. The hall was very dim, for there was no light there; but he could see his way from the illumination in the street, for the two doors of the vestibule had glass panels.

Noises seldom annoyed English Johnny. But this slight sound, coming in upon his thoughts of danger, needed investigation.

He entered the vestibule. The outer door was locked as he had left it.

“Locked all right,” he said, “but the lock ain’t worth much. Old-fashioned. A smart guy could open it with a hairpin.”

The vestibule was shadowy - almost black.

English Johnny went into the hall and shut the inner door of the vestibule. He locked this, also. There was something in that pale gloom that troubled him. He sensed a difference in the hallway as he walked toward the stairs.

This was unusual, for English Johnny was not an imaginative man, susceptible to vague impressions. But he was keen and alert when his mind was centered upon anything important. As his heavy footfalls made the floor creak, he formed the definite belief that some one - or something - was following him.

He took advantage of the landing in the stairs to cast a sidelong glance down the passage he had just left.

The hall was a mass of shadows, and from his higher elevation, English Johnny was positive that he detected a motion in the blackness on the floor.

Yet he made no action that might betray his thoughts. English Johnny reasoned coldly. He knew that if any one had entered the house to do him bodily harm, the attack would have landed after he had closed the inner door of the vestibule. The dark hallway would have been the ideal spot.

The unseen visitor - if real, as Johnny now believed - could have no purpose other than to steal, or spy. The big man with the underslung jaw could laugh at a thief in the security of his lighted room. He considered himself a match for any one. As for a spy, well, that would be different. Give a spy the opportunity and he would betray his presence.

So Johnny entered his room and closed the door. He sat at the table in the corner, with his back toward the entrance, so that he would be plainly visible through the keyhole. He lighted a long black stogie, and began to whistle softly, while he scrawled meaningless words upon a sheet of paper.

His whistling became abrupt. Every now and then the man at the table became silent, as though some thought had made him forget his tune for the moment. It was during one of these lulls that English Johnny fancied he heard an almost imperceptible noise.

Had he turned suddenly he might have seen the doorknob turning. But English Johnny did not care to turn. He was playing another game.

He imagined that the door was opening - slowly and by small degrees. Opening, perhaps, twelve inches; then closing again. At the instant, English Johnny pictured the door as shut again; he fancied that he heard the slightest sound imaginable.

He still remained at the table; then, with an angry, impatient snort, crossed out everything that he had written.

With a loud, prolonged cough, he pushed his chair back from the table and began to pace about the center of the room. His eyes followed the walls, but they took in the situation at the corner of the room by the door.

English Johnny had tossed his overcoat and hat upon a chair in a corner. That corner of the room was dark and shadowy, for the light was on the table, diagonally opposite. There was space enough for a person to be hidden between the chair and the wall, behind the shelter of the coat.

English Johnny let his eyes roam along the wall above the chair. Not the slightest trace of interest appeared upon his poker face as he observed the shadow that appeared on the wall. It was a larger shadow than that which his coat would cast!

Shadows frightened some people, English Johnny knew. To others, they were laughing matters. But to English Johnny, a shadow might mean the presence of a person.

He had seen proof at Wang Foo’s, when his eyes had noted the long shadow of Ling Chow. Furthermore, he recalled a name that had been whispered among some crooks who had visited his lunch wagon.

“The Shadow!”

Those were the words that came back to English Johnny. And those were the words which a crook named Croaker had screamed and gasped the night that his fellow gangsters had killed him.

English Johnny strolled back to his chair at the table, puffing his cigar in speculation.

The table was a heavy one; to the left of it was an unoccupied space, and then the bed. A good place to hide, that space - because the edge of the table obscured all light.

English Johnny moved his chair back, and, with feigned carelessness, let his pencil drop to the floor. As he leaned to pick it up, he noted the shadow from the space beside him, and calculated the exact distance that it extended from the wall. This was an innocent shadow - a shadow with a straight-edged ending.

Dropping the pencil on the desk, English Johnny took the pen and wrote another letter, to this effect:

DEAR SIR: Your letter came tonight. I am surprised that you will want another week at least, and maybe more, and that you say I must not come to your house until one week from tonight. On that account I will leave town tomorrow or Saturday, and go up State. I will come back next Thursday and will be here at my house on that day.

The writer paused and scratched his head with both hands, as if thinking of something else to say. He walked to the window, raised shade and sash, and peered out in the darkness.

After three minutes he returned to the table. His eyes darted furtively to the floor.

The shadow beside the table had altered! It extended farther away from the wall, and its edge was irregular!

Without looking toward the hiding place that he suspected, English Johnny added a postscript to his note:

I have seen my representative and will not communicate with him until I hear from you. I will spend all my time attending to lunch wagons. JOHNNY HARMON.

Again, English Johnny arose and went to the window. He pulled down the sash and drew the blind. He regarded the wall when he returned. The irregular shadow was still there!

English Johnny sat, while seconds went by, staring at the letter. He was evidently engaged in thought. His mind appeared to be puzzling over some complication.

Finally, he pulled a plain envelope from a pile on the table. He affixed a stamp; then walked beyond the window, carrying the pen. There he hastily addressed the envelope, standing so that anyone beside the table might have observed his action, without being able to see the writing. A chiffonier was beyond the window, and English Johnny used its high surface as a writing desk.

He thrust the envelope in his pocket, went to the door, and put on his coat and hat. Then he left the room, went down the stairs and out into the street. He walked to the mail box and drew a letter from his pocket. He dropped the letter in the box.

The shadows of the houses seemed ominous as he returned from his trip to the corner. Each shadow appeared as a lurking place - a vantage spot from which invisible eyes might be peering. English Johnny sensed this; but when he reached the shelter of his own hall, the feeling had left him.

He locked the doors and walked slowly up the stairs, confident that he alone was in the house.

In his room, he made an inspection behind the drawn window shade. He placed his hat and coat on their customary chair, and studied the shadow which they cast. He inspected the space beyond the chair, he observed that the shadow from the wall was no longer irregular.

“The Shadow!” he said in an undertone. “Perhaps there is such. Perhaps he was here. Perhaps he read my second letter.”

He chuckled.

“I hope he did,” he added. “If he knew where it was going, so much the better. If he didn’t know, he won’t find out.”

From the inside pocket of his coat, English Johnny drew out the envelope that he had placed there a few minutes before. He tore it into shreds, letter and all, and burned the remnants in the ash tray. He turned out the light, raised the window, and scattered the ashes to the wind.

English Johnny was a rather clever fellow. He had dropped another letter in the mail box - an unimportant letter to a manufacturer of lunch wagons - a letter that he had forgotten to mail on his previous trip to the corner!