The Black Hush

CHAPTER XVII. THE POWER OF THE RAY

FROM the window high in the Judruth Tower, Hector Fawcett was again viewing the awesome ray that symbolized the hidden power of the black hush.

Bathed in darkness, the front of the New City Bank was a blank space among a mass of looming buildings. It was toward that single spot that Hector Fawcett was looking. In his intentness, the bespectacled man did not notice that the elevated trains were stopped.

“Time’s nearly up,” informed Fawcett.

“Good,” came the voice of Hobbs.

“Why?” questioned Fawcett.

“Because of the elevated,” was the reply. “The trains are stopped. It couldn’t be helped.”

Hector Fawcett laughed. He was sure that this phenomenon would add nothing to police investigations.

He was thinking only of what was going on within the bank.

“Time’s up,” exclaimed Fawcett, glancing at his watch. “Turn off the ray.”

Hobbs responded. His hand pressed the switch, Released from black bondage, the front of the New City Bank gleamed anew. Tiny trains began to move along the elevated.

IN the dwarfed cross section of Manhattan, which was suddenly restored to light, Hector Fawcett beheld odd signs of activity. He caught glimpses of tiny figures beside the bank building; he saw automobiles spurt forward. A sudden connection came to his mind.

“The police are there!” he exclaimed to Hobbs. “Those men who fled were our workers! Up the avenue — beyond the bank building—”

The man at the black-ray machine made no comment. Clicks indicated work that he was doing. The dark-faced projector was turning. It’s front surface was undergoing adjustment.

“There they are!” cried Fawcett.

In the gloom of the room, the bespectacled man tried to point out a car that was speeding along the avenue. He saw it at one cross street; immediately in back of it were pursuing vehicles that flashed into view. Fawcett thought that he could glimpse tiny figures about to wage battle.

The car turned; it took a side street, and suddenly swung into an avenue that led almost beneath the Judruth Tower.

The situation was plain now. The fleeing car was closely followed. Fawcett could see men on the running boards of police cars, firing as they chased.

Click!

The black ray was on again. Now its beam was slender, tapering out to a comparatively small circle.

Focused almost directly downward, Hobbs threw the shaft directly into the avenue behind the carload of escaping gangsters.

The pursuers shot into the gloom. Their cars did not reappear. Hobbs wavered the circle slowly forward, taking account of the momentum which the cars had acquired. Hector Fawcett laughed.

The new maneuver had paralyzed the pursuing police. Their cars were blotted out by darkness. Motors stalled, lights gone, the chase could not be continued!

The fleeing gangsters were gaining blocks, but a new menace to their flight had now appeared. They were coming to an important crossing. Swinging in behind from side streets were new pursuers, and from both directions on the wide cross street, other cars were converging!

It was too late now! Fawcett uttered an oath — for he fancied that more than men were in those cars. He did not know that the fleeing gangsters had failed to make their haul from the coffers of the New City Bank.

The mobsters would be captured surely, Fawcett thought, for cars were closing in ahead and from the rear. He expected Hobbs to widen the ray; to blanket the entire area with blackness, that the fleeing men might leave the car and run.

Fawcett added a groan to his oath as he saw that the clear avenue traffic was about to be interrupted by the cross-town flow. Total darkness would be the only resort now.

HOBBS did the unexpected. The circle of his ray swept forward with amazing speed, a veritable lever wielded from a distance of a thousand feet. It freed the stranded police cars that were now far behind. It stopped suddenly upon the important intersection toward which the gangster car was fleeing.

Spreading, the ray caught the cross traffic just as it was starting. No blocking car could reach the intersection.

It was a perfect maneuver, but Fawcett feared that it was futile. The police were stopped on the cross street, but the fleeing car was heading directly into the black circle with a trio of pursuers gaining on it, less than half a block behind! Those new chasers had come in from side streets!

Click!

Just as the gangster car reached the edge of the black circle, the huge spot disappeared. Traveling at a mile-a-minute clip, the fleeing automobile shot across the cleared intersection.

Click!

Hobbs resumed the ray. Clear of the further arc, the escaping car kept on — but the intersection was again bathed in blackness, which enveloped the police cars as they came into the range!

“Great work! Great work!” cried Fawcett. “Keep them there! They can’t follow now!”

“Not too long,” decide Hobbs.

The gangsters had gained half a dozen blocks. Both watchers saw the car swerve into a side street.

Hobbs pressed the switch. The black hush was ended at the intersection. It had been a matter of broken minutes. The police chase had begun anew, but now the law would have to guess which direction the escaped gangsters had disappeared.

The Shadow had won his fight tonight. He had driven back a horde of criminals. He had defeated the scheme of cunning brains. A handful of the thwarted raiders had escaped; but that fact marked an empty attainment for those who wielded the strange black ray.

It was the belief that Ping Slatterly was fleeing with a mass of stolen wealth that had caused Hector Fawcett’s anxiety to aid the speeding gangsters. Had Fawcett known that those in flight were traveling empty-handed without the leader, he would have ordered Hobbs to let them fall into the hands of the police.

Ping Slatterly was the only one who counted. He, alone, had controlled his henchmen. None of the underlings possessed an inkling regarding the source of the black hush. Ping’s contact with Goldy Tancred had been guarded, even from his own men.

Thus, The Shadow, by his strategy, had not only thwarted the power of the black hush. He had also caused the hidden malefactors — Fawcett and Hobbs — to take drastic action which had not been contemplated.

With their moving barrage of blackness, the men in the Judruth Tower had revealed new clues which would serve The Shadow well in his unceasing efforts to learn the source of the weird black hush!

The power of the ray had been demonstrated in a new way, but it had gained nothing for the men behind it.