The Banshee Murders

CHAPTER VIII

CENTRAL PARK boasts perhaps a dozen miles of driveways which form what has been termed an informal pattern.

If Phil Harley had heard the term “informal” thus applied, he could well have regarded it a synonym for “confusing” because the pattern became exactly such.

All the drives were winding affairs that had a habit of being one-way, though they seemed too broad for that. Hence cars were passing one another in a puzzling and unorthodox fashion, at least from the stranger’s viewpoint.

There were traffic lights at places where none seemed needed; these were to let pedestrians or horse-back riders cross the drives, though Phil didn’t realize it. Mixed with the stream of automobiles were occasional carriages or hacks, forming part of the general procession.

Keeping track of direction was impossible, particularly at night. The passing scene was frequently blacked out by slopes, even cliffs that flanked the drive, with plenty of attendant trees. Emerging after a long curve, Phil could not tell on what side of the park the various tall buildings were located when he saw them again.

Not only the lights in Central Park, but those around it became a kaleidoscopic whirl and as for tracing things by watching the crossings of the driveways, that was impossible too. Many of the drives forked apart or flowed into one another and they crossed the underpasses on bridges that couldn’t be distinguished in the dark.

One thing, however, was certain.

Phil’s cab was getting the runaround.

“That friend of yours,” the driver growled. “He can’t seem to make up his mind. Where is he going - to the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Station, or back to Grand Central?”

“Neither,” replied Phil. “He said he was going to the Pennsylvania Station.”

“He’s more likely to wind up at the Jersey Central Ferry,” the driver decided. “Unless” - Phil could see narrowed eyes in the front seat mirror - “unless maybe he doesn’t want you to tag along.”

Before Phil could answer that one, the cab ahead took an unexpected spurt. It was gone around the next curve like a whippet and if Phil’s driver hadn’t answered the challenge automatically, he would have been left far behind. As it was, the pickup of Phil’s cab was a trifle too late, or would have been, but for an added factor.

As they took the bend, Phil saw an odd thing ahead. The cab containing Ames was performing badly on an S-turn, as though its speed had thrown it out of the driver’s control. It looked as though it had careened clear from the road on to a slant of hard-baked open ground, only to come ricocheting back to the driveway.

The cab was completing its gyration when Phil spotted it and that would have ended the episode, but for the added factor. Whizzing up beside Phil’s cab and passing it came The Shadow’s speed-built job with Shrevvy at the wheel. The Shadow too wanted to see what was happening beyond the bend and in passing Phil’s cab, Shrevvy revealed an added item of the scene.

Shrevvy’s headlights slanted across the sun-baked terrace and momentarily picked out a ghost cab that practically evaporated under the glow!

Phil would have considered it an optical illusion produced by a peculiar reflection of Shrevvy’s headlamps. The Shadow, however, did not think in those terms, even though the sight was fleeting. He spoke an order to Shrevvy, who promptly cut across the path of Phil’s cab and hit the hardest soil.

Shrevvy calculated that swerve down to a matter of inches. If Phil’s driver had gauged as well, he would have kept straight ahead, clearing Shrevvy’s rear bumper cleanly. Only Phil’s driver didn’t see it that way, so he did the instinctive thing. Cutting his wheel he swerved hard, letting the cross-clipping cab drive him from the road, so that side by side the two vehicles went lurching over the hardened ground like a scene from an ancient chariot race.

Thus began a series of complications.

It happened that The Shadow was aiming after the ghost cab. By rights, Phil should have continued the chase of the cab that had gyrated and then continued along the driveway, whether it still contained Ames or not.

As a matter of fact, it didn’t contain Ames, because it wasn’t his cab at all. Ames was in the cab that had disappeared across the terrace, namely the ghost cab. The other was a substitute cab that had purposely scooted from some lurking spot to replace the original and carry on a blank trail.

But Phil didn’t believe in ghosts, particularly when they took the shape of cabs. He presumed that Shrevvy had run him off the road just so he couldn’t keep after Ames. Thus, as Phil’s cab halted at a clump of trees right beside The Shadow’s, Phil was not only ready, but literally aching for action.

Not knowing that Shrevvy’s cab contained a passenger, Phil sprang out to grab the only person that he saw, the driver. Even Shrevvy, a quick, darty chap by nature, wasn’t able to get clear of Phil’s clutching hands. With the expert precision of his army training, Phil hauled Shrevvy out from behind the wheel and would have started choking information from him if something hadn’t intervened.

The something was solid blackness that came with the speed of a whirlwind, the impact of a battering-ram. Phil Harley had met The Shadow.

When Phil rubbed his head, his own cabby was propping him and speaking across his shoulder.

“You must’ve run into a tree or something,” the fellow said. “You just kinda bounced right back.”

Looking around, Phil saw that the other cab had pulled back to the drive and was starting away. Phil’s own cabby decided to do the same and invited Phil to get inside. Phil would have, if the cabby hadn’t dropped a remark.

“This place reminds me of that banshee talk,” the cabby said. “Only when a taxicab does banshee stuff, I’m not the guy to believe it.”

“What taxicab?” demanded Phil.

“The one that was rolling in here ahead of both of us,” the man explained. “The blackness sorta swallowed it up and when we got here to the trees, it was gone. I still don’t believe it, but the thing was spooky.”

Phil still couldn’t swear that it hadn’t been an optical illusion but this testimony, coupled with his own recollection, made him decide the thing was real. Stepping half into the cab, he hopped out again and slammed the door as the driver was backing to the drive.

Then, with his own cab departing by the same route as Shrevvy’s, both far behind the trail that a third cab had taken on the one-way drive, Phil stole back toward the darkness of those thick-clumped trees. He moved rapidly but cautiously for he didn’t want to run into the living figure of blackness that had sprawled him not long before.

Maybe he’d have to fight that invisible foe again, but first Phil wanted to find what he erroneously supposed The Shadow was protecting, namely the thing that Phil had first mistaken for a ghost cab.

For now Phil Harley was confident that the wayward cab was real; that it was actually the one that he had seen leave the Parkside House; that most important of all, a missing man named Winslow Ames had been spirited away in that very vehicle!