Spoils of the Shadow

CHAPTER XX ENEMIES SPEAK

“FOOLS!” Hubert Bexler snarled the epithet. “If you had stayed away from here to-night, you could have kept your precious treasures. I sought them; but I lost them. I do not need them any longer.”

The gray-haired speaker paused, a fiendish glare upon his face. Usually benign, Bexler had no further reason to mask his expression. He seemed to enjoy the privilege of showing himself as he was.

“Four robberies,” sneered Bexler. “Actually there were to have been five, in my scheme to gain a million. Aided by a clever man — Mark Tyrell — and these other henchmen, I engineered my work.

“We robbed you, Dutton. Tyrell snatched the tapestry from beneath your door. Your screens, Brockthorpe, were slid out between the bars on the windows of your strongroom. Gault’s Buddha was removed through a secret panel. Tyrell failed, however, when he sought the diamond tiara owned by Powers Jordan.

“My throne? Its theft was a bluff. My henchmen knew the combination of my vault. They entered and opened it, to remove the throne unmolested. It looked like a robbery. Unfortunately” — Bexler scowled — “the nests had been robbed before. The treasures that we gained were false — even my throne. A person called The Shadow had taken the genuine objects and left imitations in their places. He is the one who returned them.”

Gasps of astonishment came from the men who faced the guns. Bexler laughed scornfully. He continued.

“I would have shipped my throne abroad with the other treasures,” he declared. “It would have brought its value with the rest. One million dollars would have been my gain.

“Failure merely forced me to a quicker but more dangerous course. I ordered the robbery at Grolier’s. I planned it one night when Tyrell visited me. That crime was successful.

“I shall tell you why these men are here to-night. They have come to put Grolier’s relics in the safest of all places — my vault. From there I could ship them abroad, unsuspected. However, since you gentlemen have formed an obstacle, the relics will go back to their former hiding place.”

Bexler paused to chuckle while he schemed. His face was merciless as he proposed his fiendish plan.

“There will be a fight here to-night,” he announced. “Four of you will die. Cuthbert and I shall survive. Our story will be that crooks came again to take the Persian throne. Outnumbered, we resisted. In fact, I shall let the throne go for good measure.”

Commissioner Ralph Weston clenched his fists. Detective Joe Cardona glowered. Unlike Sebastian Dutton and Rudolph Brockthorpe, who were pale-faced, these men of the law did not cower. Yet they realized that any attempt to start a battle would mean their instant death.

“Tyrell got The Shadow,” growled Slug Bracken, as he stood beside Hubert Bexler. “Down at Foon Koo’s.”

“So I presumed,” replied the gray-haired man, with a gloating chuckle. “Your presence here is proof of it, Bracken.”

FACING the helpless men before him, Bexler spoke louder, in a tone of finality. His savage words were warning that the victims soon would die.

“The Shadow!” sneered Bexler. “He spoiled my original game. He was shrewd — The Shadow. He offered no active resistance while he knew I held innocent lives in my hands. He saw the working of my schemes.

“The Shadow played a cunning part. I believe that he was clever enough to recognize me as the master hand. I think that he restored the Persian throne to blind me to the fact that he knew my part in this game.

“But The Shadow is a menace no longer. He cannot save you. His counter-schemes are ended. The Shadow is dead — slain by Mark Tyrell.”

A pause; then Bexler rasped an order to Slug Bracken. That word was the beginning of the last step.

“Summon your henchmen,” commanded Bexler. “We shall waste no more time. We are ready for the slaughter.”

Slug Bracken nodded to the gorilla who stood beside him. The mobsman shifted out into the hall, hastening to bring in the rest of the crew. With Hubert Bexler and Cuthbert steadily covering the group of four helpless men, Slug lowered his gun carelessly as he added a growled command to the departing gorilla.

“Three mugs in through the front” — Slug shifted half into the hall — “and the rest in this way—”

Weston and Cardona, faced by death, were like hounds on leash. They wanted to leap at Bexler and Cuthbert. Unfortunately, those fiends had their guns placed squarely. Bexler was covering Cardona; Cuthbert held Weston at bay. Dutton and Brockthorpe were quivering with dread.

“Death awaits you,” scoffed Bexler. “We shall make it swift. I have consideration for your feelings, gentlemen, and—”

The gray-haired man’s sentence ended. With Cuthbert, he swung instinctively as a startling sound issued from the front door of the room. Like a whisper from limitless space came the sudden shudder of a fierce, sneering laugh!

A silent figure had issued from the door. Unseen by any — not even by the doomed men — The Shadow had arrived through the front door of the house. His hands were raised before him. Each fist clenched a bulging automatic. One .45 was aimed toward Bexler; the other toward Cuthbert.

WILDLY, the master criminal and his servant forgot the doomed men before them as they wheeled to fire at this foe who had come from the dead. They were pitifully late in their attempt. The Shadow gave no quarter to these murderous fiends. His automatics spoke together.

Cuthbert collapsed while Bexler staggered. Toppling forward, Bexler tried to rise and aim — not at The Shadow — but toward the group of four men whom he had picked for victims. The Shadow laughed as Joe Cardona pounced upon the fiend and knocked the gun from Bexler’s dying grasp.

For The Shadow had other work. At the sound of the automatics, Slug Bracken had sprung back into the room. Livid with wild fury, the mobleader aimed for the black-garbed avenger. Slug’s revolver delivered its first quick spat as a simultaneous bark came from an automatic.

Slug’s whistling bullet mushroomed in the wall. The Shadow’s missile found its mark. The mobleader followed the course that Bexler and Cuthbert had taken. With a gasp, he sank dying to the floor, his revolver dropping from his numbed fingers.

Shouts in the hall. The Shadow’s automatic roared a warning to other comers. But it was not the master fighter who sprang to the inner doorway. Weston and Cardona, ready to aid, had produced revolvers. They were pounding forward to resist invaders from the inner hall.

Police revolvers barked at startled gorillas as the commissioner and the detective aimed at an angle through the doorway. Dutton and Brockthorpe, responding to a hissed warning from The Shadow, dropped to the floor just as The Shadow swirled suddenly and disappeared through the front door of the room.

Crash!

Gorillas from outside were firing at the windows. Bullets smashed glass and riddled shades. They found no targets. Dutton and Brockthorpe were crouched below the level of the sills. Cardona and Weston were fighting down the inner hall. The Shadow was at the front door of the house.

His move was well timed. Gorillas were heading for this entrance. The Shadow’s automatics roared. One man staggered on the front steps. Another made a lucky dive for safety in the outer darkness.

The Shadow’s laugh rose eerily from the doorway. Mobsmen were in flight. From the veranda, as he reached it, The Shadow could spy the scattered remnants of Bexler’s band as they dashed toward the hedge, he could hear the shouts of Weston and Cardona.

Singularly, The Shadow made no move. He seemed to be expecting some new action. It came as the fleeing gorillas neared the hedge. From beyond, out of the darkness of the cars that the mobsters had left, flashed the flame from bursting automatics.

While The Shadow had entered Bexler’s house, Cliff Marsland and Harry Vincent had advanced along the hedge. They had laid their ambush after the departure of the last gorillas.

Gangsters toppled on the lawn before the hedge. Two managed to turn and raise their weapons back toward the house. Prompt shots came from Weston and Cardona, who aimed at the revolvers. The last pair of gorillas rolled prostrate on the turf.

Cliff Marsland and Harry Vincent were away from the parked cars before Weston and Cardona arrived. They gained the front of the hedge and scrambled into the rear of the sedan that had brought them. Whispered words of commendation came from a shrouded figure at the wheel. The Shadow had arrived before his agents.

The motor purred. The car pulled away. Joe Cardona, standing by the touring car in the lane, stopped short. Commissioner Weston was standing beside the detective. Cardona had a flashlight glimmering on the bags that contained a million dollars’ worth of recovered relics.

“Another car!” growled Cardona.

“More mobsters?” queried Weston.

The negative answer did not come from Joe Cardona. It was uttered from the car that detective and commissioner had heard. As the tail light of the moving sedan glimmered faintly past the entrance of the lane, a weird farewell betokened the departure of the master who had conquered crime.

It rose like a shuddering wail — the laugh of The Shadow. Sardonic mockery gained a swift crescendo. It burst into shivering, chilling echoes that seemed to cling amid the darkened air.

Ralph Weston and Joe Cardona stood motionless. Though the shuddering, taunting merriment had come from a friend, they could not shake off the quivering effect that it produced.

Such was the triumph laugh of The Shadow!