The Black Hush

CHAPTER XX. THE DEPARTURE

DOWN in the lobby of the Hotel Marathon, Clyde Burke remarked to Joe Cardona that he would have to put in a call to the Classic office.

“Don’t say anything about this,” warned the detective. “I’ve promised Goldy—”

“Not a word about it,” returned Clyde.

In a telephone booth, the reporter called Burbank. As the Shadow’s agent, he gave a terse account of the happenings in Goldy Tancred’s apartment.

Burbank had already heard the conversation up to Goldy’s plea for aid in his flight. Then the dictograph connection had been broken when Goldy had torn the microphones from the wall.

“Report received,” was Burbank’s comment.

That meant that word would be given to The Shadow. Clyde Burke left the booth and returned to Cardona and Markham.

It developed that Cardona had also made a call while Clyde Burke was phoning. An unimportant man from headquarters had been designated to meet Goldy at the station gate, and accompany him aboard the train.

Markham was watching the elevator steadily. After a quarter hour of waiting, the detective sergeant spoke to his companions.

“Here comes Goldy now.”

A stocky form was emerging from the elevator. The man was wearing a heavy overcoat. The collar was raised about his chin, a gray hat pressed down upon the man’s forehead.

As the man walked through the lobby, his gleaming grin showed between the peaks of the overcoat collar. The watching men caught that characteristic expression that so plainly denoted Goldy Tancred.

The man went out through the lobby door. The detectives and the reporter followed. They saw the supposed Goldy enter a taxicab and drive away. Cardona hailed another vehicle, and the trio followed.

At the Pennsylvania Station, they watched Goldy get his ticket, and hand another one to the detective Cardona had assigned to cover Goldy’s trip to Florida. The pair walked down the steps together as Cardona remarked that the big shot was on his way to hide in the Everglades!

CARDONA’S firm belief was a far cry from the truth. While the detective still stood near the train gate, Goldy Tancred, in the flesh, was riding up Fifth Avenue in a taxicab, with Bowser Riggins beside him.

“It worked great, Bowser,” Goldy was saying. “I pulled the stall about some tough guys being after me. Cardona fell for it. So did that news hound, Burke.”

“You ought to knock off that bimbo,” asserted Bowser.

“Burke doesn’t mean anything now,” returned Goldy, “Let him ride. Say, Bowser, when Curry was all rigged up and showed his grin, he was a dead ringer for me. Here’s another laugh. Cardona has put a dumb dick on Curry’s train — to make sure that I get to Florida.”

“That’s good,” laughed Bowser. “Meanwhile, you ducked out through the service elevator. But say — what was the good of having Cardona send the dick along?”

“I’ll tell you,” growled Goldy. “There was a second dictograph hook-up in my living room — under the radiator. It’s lucky I didn’t make any phone calls lately. I’m going to make one right now, though.”

“There’s a big job right ahead, and I’ll be in on this one, Bowser. You’ll be with me. I’m not taking any chances. I was glad to pay that bonehead’s expenses for a soft trip down to Florida along with Curry.

“That dick will be an alibi, Bowser! Whatever happens, I won’t be known in it. Those dictographs have got me worried. We’re up against some foxy game. So I’m playing it safe; and if Mr. Cardona is in back of some smart plan to trap me, he won’t get anywhere. He thinks I’m yellow, Bowser! Let him think that — let him have me trailed to Florida!”

Glistening gold teeth reflected the glare of a traffic light. The cab stopped. Goldy and Bowser alighted and went into a dingy hotel not far from the corner where their trip had ended.

“I’m going to make some phone calls,” remarked Goldy. “Stick here. Bowser. I’m taking a room upstairs. Hang around the lobby until I join you again.”

GOLDY TANCRED was gloating over his own cleverness. Just as Joe Cardona had laughed at what he thought was the big shot’s departure, so did Goldy chuckle over the sleuth’s mistake. No one, Goldy thought, could possibly have suspected Curry’s make-up.

But there was another observer at the station, a man whose presence none of the others had noticed. A tall personage, whose keen eyes gleamed from either side of a hawk-like nose, had witnessed the entire scene.

Merely one of various persons clustered by the gate, this shrewd spectator had gained a close look at the face which Joe Cardona and the others had mistaken for Goldy Tancred’s. The tall personage’s observant eyes had spotted a strained expression in the flashing smile that had come from the peaks of the overcoat collar.

This observer was The Shadow. Guised as a chance visitor to the railroad terminal, he had followed up the report relayed to him by Burbank. He, like the trio headed by Cardona, had come to witness Goldy Tancred’s departure.

The Shadow knew what the others did not know. An impostor had left in the big shot’s stead. The disguise of the masquerading Curry had deceived other eyes, but not those of The Shadow.

Goldy Tancred was still in New York. The big shot had gone into cover. With Ping Slatterly no longer alive to perform desired missions, Goldy was taking up the work himself. New crime was impending, and with it, the insidious menace of the black hush.

A soft, weird whisper came from the lips of that observer who now stood alone by the deserted train gate. The laugh of The Shadow, it betokened grim warfare against the menace that still existed.

The Shadow had one mission now, that was to meet the minds of crime with a method that they did not expect, to locate the source of the black hush.

The Shadow knew!