Spoils of the Shadow

CHAPTER XVI IN THE TRAP

“STAY around the house, Cranston. Your shoulder needs the rest.”

Doctor Rupert Sayre was speaking. The physician — a keen-eyed, brisk practitioner — was talking to his patient in the living room of Cranston’s New Jersey home. It was the third night after the affray at Grolier’s.

“You were fortunate,” added Sayre, “that the wound was not more serious. You seem to bear a charmed life, Cranston. A bullet from a .38 is not a pleasing sort of souvenir.”

“Perhaps not,” came Cranston’s smiling response. “However, Rupert, you are second to none in the extraction of such troublesome objects.”

“Thank you for the compliment. At the same time, consider yourself lucky that the slug did not come from a .45.”

There was a rap at the door. Cranston issued a summons to enter. A servant appeared.

“What is it, Richards?” asked the wounded man.

“Mr. Burbank is on the wire, sir,” explained the servant. “He insists that he must talk to you.”

“More chatter about my sending station,” came Cranston’s chuckle. “That chap Burbank is a wireless expert. I’ve had him out here working on the apparatus that I have in the third floor. Burbank is always calling up when he knows that I am at home.”

Cranston reached for an extension telephone. Doctor Sayre sat quietly by while his patient talked to Burbank.

“Hello…” Cranston’s tone was calm. “Yes…Yes… I have a guest, Burbank, but I can talk a short while…Go ahead…

“I understand… Certainly,… They should both go along with the arrangements… I shall attend to the other matter… What’s that, Burbank? To-night? Of course. That will be all right…”

“You do not intend to go out this evening?” questioned Doctor Sayre, as Lamont Cranston hung up the receiver. “Remember my instructions.”

“Burbank may be coming here,” was the quiet rejoinder. “He has been getting advice on trouble that we have had with my sending station. He thinks that he can fix it.”

“Watch him while he works, then,” remarked Sayre, as he arose to leave. “No heavy exercise, Cranston. You might throw too much strain on that left shoulder.”

“I shall remember.”

The physician departed. Lamont Cranston returned to the living room. He sat down beside a table and picked up a book. Though apparently reading, he was listening to the throb of Sayre’s motor. He heard the physician’s car roll from the driveway. He summoned Richards.

“Tell Stanley to have the limousine ready,” was Cranston’s quiet order. “I am going into New York, Richards. Should any one call, tell them I am in the radio room and cannot be disturbed.”

“Very well, sir.”

Lamont Cranston strolled upstairs. Richards ordered the car. The servant went about his duties, expecting to hear his master come down to the ground floor. As he stood in the living room, fifteen minutes later, Richards did not observe the phantom, black-cloaked shape that emerged from the gloom of the stairway and crossed the hall to the front door.

The Shadow had chosen to don his sable-fitted garb before he departed from the house. Hence Richards was astonished when he ascended to the second floor to find Lamont Cranston missing from his room. An opened door was all that the servant encountered.

Stanley, at the wheel of the limousine, was also puzzled when he heard Lamont Cranston’s voice through the speaking tube. His master was ordering him to drive into New York. Usually, Cranston stepped openly into the car when he left his home. This time, Stanley had not heard him enter.

HALF an hour later, Lamont Cranston’s limousine was completing a speedy journey along the New Jersey skyway, rolling toward the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. Stanley was at the wheel; his master was resting easily in the back seat, his right shoulder bearing his weight against the side of the car.

Word had been received from Harry Vincent and Cliff Marsland. Both reports to Burbank had told a coinciding story. The agents were going to an old garage in the neighborhood of Tenth Avenue. From there, they were to travel to an old house that was to serve Mark Tyrell no longer.

Neither Cliff nor Harry had voiced any suspicion regarding the facts that they had received. Hence Burbank’s report had been quite methodical. It had carried no indication of danger to either of The Shadow’s workers. Hence The Shadow was doing exactly as Mark Tyrell had hoped. He was traveling to the old house of Foon Koo.

The limousine reached the seclusion of a street on the upper East Side. Stanley nodded as he heard Cranston’s voice — through the speaking tube — instructing him to wait at this parking spot. The chauffeur did not see the black-cloaked form that emerged from the back of the car. He merely heard the closing of the door that announced the departure of his master.

FIVE minutes later, the Shadow had reached the side of the old house where Foon Koo guarded the swag. His gloved right hand unscrewed the knob of the door. A finger pressed the hidden bell five times. The Shadow replaced the knob.

The door opened this time. The Shadow arrived in total darkness. The door closed behind him. He ascended the little steps to the first floor. A brilliant flashlight, its ray no larger than a silver dollar, revealed the path along the floor.

The Shadow’s light uncovered a door that led into a hall. The barrier yielded to pressure. But The Shadow did not step forward. Instead, he pressed the door completely open and let his flashlight glimmer downward.

The floor had opened also. Silently, a trap had dropped. The glimmer showed a tube of polished metal, curving downward, like a chute. The Shadow’s hidden lips emitted a soft laugh. The Shadow had uncovered the first of Foon Koo’s snares.

The eerie visitant proceeded in another direction. He found a door that led into another room. His light showed smudges on the woodwork. Again, a trap opened with the door; this time, The Shadow gave a forward spring and cleared it. From the next room he found his way into the hall.

A spot of light moved up the stairs. It was the only indication of The Shadow’s presence. It uncovered each step to the hidden eyes above it. Suddenly, The Shadow stopped. His keen gaze had noted a tiny crack at the bottom of a step. Swinging the light upward, The Shadow observed a corresponding mark above.

Three steps were ready to give should he tread upon any one of them. The Shadow’s light swung toward the banister. His hand reached forward and pressed the rail. A section dropped with his touch. Had he used it to support him while crossing the steps, he would have fallen.

The Shadow let the rail rise automatically as he released it. The posts had sunk into the floor under pressure. The flashlight clicked out. The Shadow’s cloak swished as its wearer made a long, upward dive, twisting so that his right shoulder struck an upper step.

The trick steps opened beneath The Shadow’s weight; but their action was useless. The gloved right hand had caught a post past the loose section of the rail. The steps moved upward into place as The Shadow drew himself to the safety above.

In the labyrinth of the second floor, The Shadow weaved a cunning course. The traps were different here. In one spot, The Shadow encountered a delayed opening. A click suddenly told him that the floor that seemed solid was about to swallow him. His quick hand caught the top of an opened door. The Shadow clung there while the flashlight showed the trap break downward; then rise and click solidly back in place. He resumed his journey.

The steps to the third floor were untrapped. The Shadow reached the last stage of his journey. Burbank had mentioned that the swag was in a top room of the house. The Shadow, as he weaved safely through the final maze, was coming close to his goal.

He arrived at the door of the anteroom. It was locked. There was no keyhole. The Shadow probed panels with his fingers. He found one that began to yield. He laughed softly. His hand stopped as his foot tapped the floor.

Pressure of that panel, which any searcher could easily have found, would have meant the release of another trap. The Shadow knew that the crafty designer of this door would not have resorted to so simple an artifice. He knew that this was not the actual one that controlled the door.

It took The Shadow three minutes to solve this Chinese puzzle. At last, he delivered a twisting inward pressure to the left. Something clicked. The door swung open. The Shadow stood peering into the dimly lighted anteroom.

THERE was no sign of Foon Koo. The Chinaman was probably inside the inner room. The phantom visitant could see the closed door ahead. His eyes spied something else: the switch upon the wall. The Shadow entered the anteroom and let the door swing shut behind him.

The laugh that came from beneath the umbra of the hat brim was soft and whispered. The Shadow had reached the switch. He had divined its purpose. He knew that no one had been expected to pass the traps below. This was the control that rendered the devices safe for welcome visitors to pass.

By pressing that switch, The Shadow could nullify the snares that he had passed. That meant that his retreat would be prepared, should he desire it. This was the proper action to perform before seeking entry to the final lair, where an enemy must be lurking. His laugh still quivering, The Shadow pressed the switch.

It was then that he learned the greatest subtlety of Foon Koo. The Shadow’s conjecture had been correct. The switch was the one that locked the lower traps. It served a double purpose, however, when Foon Koo so arranged it.

As the switch clicked under The Shadow’s pressure, the floor of the anteroom dropped downward in two sections. The only portions that remained firm were those where broken chairs were resting. The Shadow was too far from solid floor to grasp it.

Out went the lights. Downward shot The Shadow, into a mammoth funnel. His cloaked figure whizzed twisting through a polished tube of metal, like those that he had previously avoided.

Sliding helplessly at breakneck speed, The Shadow sped past the openings of other tubes. All led into the same main artery. Gloved fingers could gain no hold at any place along the slippery route. Only the curve near the bottom of the main chute sufficed to slow The Shadow’s breath-taking skid.

The end was reached as speed slackened. The Shadow was precipitated through a vertical stretch of tubing. He reached the end of the course just as he had come into Grolier’s relic room — with a thudding tumble to a solid floor.

The drop was more dangerous than at Grolier’s; but it was broken by the padding that covered the stone floor. Slumped, half-stunned by the thump, The Shadow was in the middle of the cell room at the bottom of the house. He was trapped within the snare that had awaited him.

GLOATING eyes were peering into the padded room. Slug Bracken and his mobsters were staring through the bullet-proof glass. Before them lay the archenemy of crime: The Shadow. Eager fingers trembled upon the triggers of guns that were thrust through loopholes.

Slug knew the temper of his mob. He also had instructions from Tyrell — orders that he intended to obey. He growled a command to wait.

“Don’t plug him!” warned the mobleader. “Hold it, unless he tries to make trouble. I’m boss here. Watch him — that’s all.”

The Shadow was rising. He stood with shoulders stooped and head bowed, recovering from the force of the fall. Vicious gorillas waited his next move. Slug Bracken was most tense of all.

Slug half expected The Shadow to try some incredible attempt at escape; he half expected him to offer a futile challenge. The mobleader, however, was totally unprepared for the action which came.

The Shadow’s eyes turned upward. Their glow was hidden by the hat brim and the fact that they did not face the light. Hands deliberately peeled away black gloves and let them drop to the floor. The right arm raised and loosed the sable-hued cloak. It fell to reveal a tall form clad in evening clothes. The right hand swept upward and sent the slouch hat tumbling back.

Slug Bracken gasped as he recognized the face that he saw through the glass. A suave smile showed upon lips that were topped by a short-clipped mustache. In an astonished tone, Slug Bracken identified the prisoner who stood within the cell:

“Mark Tyrell!”