Shadowed Millions

CHAPTER XVII THE SHADOW’S PLANS

A LIGHT clicked in a darkened room. The glow of a lamp spread its circular spot upon a table top. White hands appeared beneath the glare. The Shadow was in his sanctuary.

The hands worked with pencil and paper. They were jotting down cryptic notations and important items. These were legible only to the man who wrote them.

A column of figures took on the appearance of a time-table. Events were being scheduled with accuracy. The hand paused, leaving its work but partly done. A mouthpiece and a set of earphones came into the light; then disappeared in the gloom. The voice of The Shadow spoke.

“Burbank.”

A pause. Then:

“Report in detail—”

The hand worked as the ears listened. More figures appeared in the tabulations. Then came an inquiry from The Shadow.

“Ballou?”

A voice clicked through the earphones. It asked a question.

“Report,” answered The Shadow, “as soon as Vincent tells you he has left the Hotel Oriental.”

A piece of paper dropped upon the table. It was the sheet that Perry Wallace had given to The Shadow. It bore the words:

This address had evidently been given to Burbank by The Shadow when the man in black had held that brief conversation over the phone in Legira’s home.

“Important instructions later,” spoke the whispered voice of The Shadow. “Stand ready.”

The earphones and mouthpiece were laid aside. From the tabulations, The Shadow’s hands began to form brief charts. One of these referred to Pete Ballou and his men.

This sheet of paper was pushed aside. The hand of The Shadow wrote:

Then, farther down, appeared notes concerning Alvarez Legira:

Back went the hand to the first sheet. Consulting the tabulations, The Shadow found another statement received from Burbank and added it to the notations on Ballou’s list:

Now, the hands held a map. It was an odd map of Manhattan, the streets lined with short dashes of red. These indicated the average distance covered in each five minutes of running time by automobile. In heavy trafficked areas, the lines were short; in others, they were long.

Using colored pushpins, the hands indicated various spots on the map. These were the locations of the apartment where John Hendrix had lived, the home of Alvarez Legira, the Baltham Trust Company and the Hotel Oriental.

Now, on a single sheet, The Shadow’s hand wrote the statement:

This denoted the time of The Shadow’s arrival in the room of death. It also indicated the last possible minute that the murderer could have been there; for the killer had been gone when The Shadow had arrived.

The Shadow, buried in darkness, considered these elements as he wrote them. The slender fingers made measurements upon the map. They added these comments:

Now came a revised statement:

As these varied tabulations lay upon the table, they spelled meanings that were evident. Regarding Alvarez Legira, they indicated that had the South American left the home of Hendrix before the arrival of Martin Powell, he could have reached the Baltham Trust Company, with thirty minutes to spare, before half past nine. Had Legira, however, returned to the apartment, he would have lacked five minutes in making the trip after the murders at ten minutes of nine.

In the first supposition, there was the question of Legira’s delay. In the second, there was the problem of possibility. On a forty-minute run, five minutes might have been cut off.

The Shadow checked the first comment on Legira: “8.15 — 9.30.” After the tabulation, the hand wrote the words:

Thus, with keen intuition, did The Shadow account for the extra thirty minutes — a half hour which Alvarez Legira would scarcely have spent in idleness, with ten million dollars awaiting him.

Now came the consideration of Ballou’s schedule. This man could have gone from Hendrix’s apartment to the Hotel Oriental in twenty minutes. The trip would have been average if he had left the place two or three minutes before the arrival of The Shadow.

If Ballou had left the room of death at ten minutes of nine — the approximate time of the murder — he would have reached the hotel with twenty-four minutes to spare.

The point of the pencil rested upon the statement:

It crossed out “9.14” and substituted “9.10.”

Now came a soft laugh from the dark. The Shadow, in his contemplation of the figure was considering a factor which even Joe Cardona had overlooked. The time of the murders had been set as eight fifty, for that was when the alarm had come from central. Yet the struggle — the evidence of which The Shadow had seen — indicated clearly that time had elapsed between the shots that had caused the killings.

The light clicked out. Usually, that was the sign for the departure of The Shadow. Tonight the man of mystery was waiting. Complete silence dominated the room, for a time. Then came a scarcely audible sound. The Shadow was writing in the dark.

THE noise ceased. Another lulling spell of silence. A tiny light shone through the darkness. Burbank was calling. The earphones clicked as they were carried across the table. The Shadow spoke.

“Report,” was his word.

The Shadow listened as Burbank relayed information from Harry Vincent, the operative who was watching Pete Ballou. When Burbank had concluded the report, the light clicked on above the desk. There, perfectly inscribed upon the sheet of paper, were the words which The Shadow had written.

“Orders.” The Shadow’s command was terse. “Have Marsland join with Burke and Vincent tomorrow. Duty on Long Island. Place indicated in next order. Vincent to maintain contact. Relieve until summoned.”

Burbank’s response denoted that the order had been checked.

“Listen for radio signals,” came the next order. “Yacht Cordova off Long Island. Code.”

Another click through the earphones. “Cover Legira home as usual,” was The Shadow’s final order. “Vincent to drop Ballou immediately. Relieved.”

Out went the light. The instruments clicked as they were placed across the table. Then, through the pitch darkness of the room came the tones of a long, mocking laugh. It was a shuddering laugh that was scarcely louder than a whisper; yet the very blackness of the room seemed to quiver with the sound and the walls hurled back ghoulish echoes that might have come from corridors of space.

The Shadow had planned new work. Burbank would remain at his post of duty. The active operatives were relieved from duty until the following day.

“Vincent to drop Ballou immediately. Relieved.”

There was a deep significance in that order. There was only one man to take the relief. That man was The Shadow. He was to carry on where Harry Vincent had left off. While his agents slept, awaiting the task of tomorrow, The Shadow would maintain the vigil.

The Shadow was a man who never slept when important events were developing. Unwearied by the adventure of this evening, he had set a new task for himself to perform. In Pete Ballou he had discovered a key to vicious plots that were reaching their culmination. Another mission called The Shadow now.

Again, the ghostly laugh crept through the inky room. Long, weird, and sinister, it clung to crevices that shouted back their strange reverberations as though a host of imps had cried with gibing mirth.

When the last sounds of that eerie peal had ended, deep silence pervaded The Shadow’s sanctuary — the silence that told the absence of a living being.

The Shadow had departed.