Shadow 001 - The Living Shadow

CHAPTER XXIX ENGLISH JOHNNY’S TRICK

ENGLISH JOHNNY stood at the doorway of his house and glared sullenly down the street. It was daytime - two o’clock in the afternoon - yet he was suspicious.

An old man, gaunt and weary-looking, was moving slowly along the opposite sidewalk, leaning heavily upon a stout cane. English Johnny had seen the old man earlier in the day, and he wondered why the fellow had returned to this street.

This was Saturday - an important day for English Johnny. He had an appointment to keep, and that appointment meant much to him. He was not due until eight o’clock at night, but many things could happen in the meantime.

For one thing, some one might follow English Johnny. A few days ago he would not have worried about such a situation; but the beefy-faced man had learned much to alarm him during the past forty-eight hours.

There had been that cab driver, for instance. English Johnny had given the fellow his address, and he had a hunch that the man had lied when he had said he forgot it. Then there was the suspected visitation of that sinister wraith - if such it was - The Shadow!

Last night’s happenings had wiped out all sense of security that English Johnny might have held to. Funny thing, that cab driver showing up in the lunch wagon.

Johnny had let it be known to several friends that he was going there; and the taxi driver had appeared also. Could there be a leak?

Perhaps that part of it had been coincidence; but it did not explain the presence of the mysterious man behind the counter - the man who had beaten a crew of gangsters and who had hurled English Johnny across the counter. Bill, the manager of that particular lunch wagon, did not even know the name of the substitute who had caused the trouble!

English Johnny sauntered down the street and turned the corner of the avenue. After closely regarding a cab that was standing there, assured, he entered the vehicle and gave an address to the driver.

The cab took him to a house that English Johnny knew was vacant. He rang the bell, waited a few minutes, then hailed another cab and told the driver to take him downtown.

English Johnny rubbed his tough jaw with pleasure as he considered this ruse. If the first cab had been planted there, with a spy at the wheel, the hounds would now be watching only an empty house.

Still he was not entirely positive of success. He turned to look behind, and saw another cab - a green one - following. Johnny thrust his head through the open panel and ordered the driver to turn up Eighty-sixth Street.

The cab in back aped the move.

The beefy-faced man barked a new command. The driver swung down the avenue and turned back along Eighty-fifth Street.

The other cab followed suit.

“Smart guys,” mumbled English Johnny. “Well, I’m just as wise.”

English Johnny dismissed his cab at Columbus Circle and went into a drugstore. One of the clerks was known to him; he chatted with the fellow for a while. Then he left the store and took the subway to Forty-second Street.

His next stop was an office building. He entered an elevator. Three or four others joined him in the car.

At the fifteenth floor he stepped out, another man did the same.

English Johnny looked about him, and suddenly decided that he had gotten off at the wrong floor.

He rang the bell for a descending elevator. He noted that the other man was going from door to door, as though searching for an office, the number of which he was uncertain.

The big, beefy-faced man stepped into the elevator and came down to the street floor. He hurried from the building, jumped into a cab, and rode a few blocks.

He chuckled as he alighted on a side street just off Broadway.

“Fooled the fellow that time,” Johnny said to himself. “Left him cold on the fifteenth floor!”

Then a sudden thought struck him, and he growled angrily.

“What if there was two of them? I never thought of that! One up and one downstairs, waiting for me, or what if there was just one guy wise enough not to go up?”

He walked back to Broadway and entered a cigar store, where he bought a supply of black stogies. He lighted one and puffed it thoughtfully. Then he was struck by an inspiration.

Entering the phone booth, Johnny called a number.

“Hello? That you, Kennedy? This is English Johnny… Yeah, I’m feelin’ fine. Goin’ out of town tonight. What?… Oh, up to Buffalo, to look at a lunch wagon. Won’t be back for a week… No, I don’t think I can make it, Kennedy… I’d like to, but I ain’t got time. Train leaves at eight… No, I ain’t bought my ticket yet… All right, I’ll go later; I’ll come on out now… Right now, yes… So long.”

English Johnny’s red face bore an air of satisfied confidence as he left the cigar store.

He walked down Broadway at an indifferent pace, past Forty-second Street, and on to Thirty-third. He entered the station of the Hudson Tubes and bought a ticket to Newark.

The car was nearly full, and the big man gazed curiously at the other passengers, as though he suspected that at least one of them was an enemy.

English Johnny was a keen observer. He eliminated most of those in the car. There were only three or four others who impressed him as possible trailers, and he looked these over carefully.

“Wonder who’s in on this game,” he said to himself. “It can’t be the bulls. They ain’t wise. Maybe some other crooks - but who?”

The Shadow! This name puzzled him. He had heard talk of a Shadow - but no one had seemed to know who the man might be. The name was scarcely more than a myth among gangsters. Only a few had spoken of it; and they had said very little.

There were those, of course, who claimed that they had heard his voice coming through the spaceless ether over the radio. But at the broadcasting studio, The Shadow’s identity had been carefully guarded. He was said to have been allotted a special room, hung with curtains of heavy, black velvet, along a twisting corridor. There he faced the unseeing microphone, masked and robed.

The underworld had gone so far as to make determined effort to unravel The Shadow’s identity - if it were truly The Shadow whose sinister voice the radio public knew; for there were doubters who maintained the voice was but that of an actor representing The Shadow. But all crookdom had reason to be interested; those without the law had to make sure.

So watchers were posted at the entrance to the broadcasting chain’s building. Many walked in and out; none could be labeled as The Shadow. In desperation, a clever crook whose specialty was wiretapping applied for and secured a position as a radiotrician. Yet questioning of his fellow workers brought nothing but guesses to light. Around the studio The Shadow was almost as much a myth as on the outside. Only his voice was known.

Every Thursday night the spy from crookdom would contrive to be in the twisting corridor - watching the door of the room that was supposed to be The Shadow’s. Yet no one ever entered that room!

Could it be, then, that The Shadow broadcast by remote control - that his voice was conveyed to the studio by private wire? No one knew. He and his fear-striking laugh had been heard - that was all.

English Johnny’s train duly arrived at Newark. There he hired a cab which drove him to the airport.

The afternoon was waning. He hurried over to a hangar. An aviator came out to greet him.

“Howdy, Kennedy,” exclaimed English Johnny.

“Hello, Johnny.”

“Well, I’m here. Like I promised. Thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“I sure am. You’re just in time to take a little hop.”

“How much? I might try it.”

“Nothing to you, Johnny.”

The beefy-faced man darted a look toward the group of idlers who were standing near the hangars. None of them resembled the men he had suspected in the Tube. Nevertheless, Johnny was going on with the game he had planned.

“All right, Kennedy. Let’s go.”

The two climbed into a speedy cabin job.

“I’ll take you up for about ten minutes, Johnny,” said the aviator.

The mechanic spun the propeller, the motor revved smoothly, and the plane took off and circled above the field. When the ship was in the air, English Johnny leaned forward to tap the pilot on the back. By means of an emphatic finger and with gestures, English Johnny made his wants known. Kennedy must have understood him, for the pilot nodded.

Although the group of idlers down on the field knew nothing of what passed between English Johnny and the birdman, the consequence was not unnoticed.

“That’s funny,” observed one of the hangers-on. “Kennedy must have changed his mind about that ten-minute trip. Looks mighty like he’s going some place, and in a hurry, too.”

The plane had settled to an arrow-straight course. Headed toward the north, its hum grew fainter and fainter to the neck craners at the airport.

As the monoplane became but a dot against the dusking sky, a stranger in a long overcoat quit the hangar. Only the tip of his nose showed from behind the upturned collar of his overcoat. He strode along most rapidly, weirdly laughing to himself.

Night had fallen; the hour was at hand when shadows come to life. The Shadow had clung tenaciously to English Johnny’s trail, only to lose it. Yet he still had reason for mirth.

For The Shadow, keen in every intuition, believed that the odds favored Harry Vincent’s trailing of Ezekiel Bingham. Where English Johnny had been oversuspicious, Bingham had proven disdainful.

The two, The Shadow knew, would find a common meeting point. Relying upon Harry to locate that spot, The Shadow was already making plans that could be executed promptly should Harry’s report come through.