The Blue Sphinx

CHAPTER XX THE ESCAPE

THE SHADOW’S laugh brought shuddering quivers to the darkened anteroom. The tones seemed ominous, even to Clyde Burke and Cliff Marsland. Yet those agents of The Shadow knew that the weird mirth promised some prompt development.

Swishing through darkness, The Shadow opened the doors into the Sphinx Room. Staring into the moonlit vault, his agents saw him approach the huge Blue Sphinx. Serene upon its pedestal, the stone figure seemed to stare into the blackened room where the agents waited.

The Shadow was working swiftly. He was stooping at the sides of the pedestal which supported the Blue Sphinx, making a round of it that puzzled his watching agents.

Axlike blows were crashing at the doors from the outer hall. Konk and his men would soon break through. Yet The Shadow kept on with his circuit of the Blue Sphinx.

“You heard the blast?” questioned Cliff, speaking tensely to Clyde.

“Yes,” was the reply. “They blew the vault.”

“Where from?”

“The back of the museum.”

“The vault is under us?”

“Yes! Beneath the Blue Sphinx.”

The Shadow was returning. Something uncoiled behind him, along the floor of the Sphinx Room. It looked threadlike in the moonlight. Then, while terrific shocks bade fair to demolish the outer doors of the anteroom, The Shadow rejoined his agents and closed the inner doors behind him.

A tiny flame flickered suddenly in the darkness. A hiss and a sputter ran along the floor. It was the end of a fuse that The Shadow had lighted. The sparkling trail sizzled under the inner doors. Clyde and Cliff waited tensely.

At that instant, a crashing blow cleaved a portion of the brass-faced door. Light issued in from the front hall. An ax fell through the opening. A hand, with pineapple bomb clutched in it, appeared beyond.

An automatic roared in the anteroom, A man flopped from the opening, dropped by The Shadow’s shot.

A momentary silence. Then, from within the Sphinx Room came a terrific blast. The building seemed to rock. The stout inner doors of the anteroom crackled on their hinges. Then came the sound of shattering glass dropping in deluge from the dome above the Sphinx Room.

Stunning even to Cliff and Clyde, who had expected something of the sort, the explosion produced a tremendous stir beyond the front doors of the anteroom. It stopped Konk Zitz and his crew before they could begin a new attack.

Then, as shudders lulled, the sound of Konk’s snarling voice came through the ax-made opening. Konk was ordering a new bomb attack.

A hiss from The Shadow. As his agents turned, the cloaked fighter opened the inner doors and ordered them into the Sphinx Room. As the two men staggered there, The Shadow followed. He shut the inner doors and locked them, just as a gas-pineapple came through the outer break.

CLYDE BURKE was staring in amazement. So was Cliff Marsland. Before them, shattered into great chunks, lay the remains of the Blue Sphinx. Scattered about amidst the broken glass were portions of the pedestal on which the Sphinx had rested.

The Shadow had blown the whole structure loose. His fused charges, inserted in the holes that he had drilled, had totally demolished the pedestal and wrecked the statue with it.

The head of the Sphinx had toppled on its side. The face was staring with its blank eyes toward the doorway. The rear of the statue had rolled from the ruined pedestal, while the center section had broken in two halves that lay well apart.

Crash! Gas-masked invaders had beaten through the brass-faced doors. Closer strokes. They were attacking the inner entrance. Those inner doors were wood alone. They were already loosened by the blast that had shattered the Blue Sphinx. But that mattered no longer.

A yawning hole lay in the center of the demolished pedestal. The charge, spreading in all directions, had produced a yawning hole in the floor itself. Through the pungent room, The Shadow beckoned his agents to this outlet.

Clyde Burke noticed something as he followed Cliff down through the hole. The jagged cavity showed traces of a regular shape, as though there had been an opening through the ruined pedestal.

Cliff had dropped into the vault; Clyde followed. Then The Shadow swished beside them. His flashlight gleamed.

Again, Clyde stared. The vault was entirely empty. How had the other crooks managed to remove the treasure so quickly? Only a dozen minutes had elapsed since the first blast that had told of the entry through the bricked rear wall.

Moonlight showed through the rear barrier. At The Shadow’s command, Clyde and Cliff squeezed through. The Shadow followed, just as smashing from above announced that Konk’s outfit had crashed through to the Sphinx Room.

Clyde was looking vainly for the trucks that had come for the swag. He saw no signs of them. He could not understand how they had been loaded for so quick a getaway. Then a thought occurred to him. He turned to speak to The Shadow. A hiss commanded silence.

Swiftly, The Shadow swung toward the far corner of the museum, his agents close behind him. Pausing near the front, The Shadow, weird in the moonlight, pointed off toward a clump of trees. Cliff and Clyde headed in that direction.

A shout from the front of the museum. Shots blazed toward the running men. The Shadow’s agents kept on. From behind them, they heard the sudden burst of a strident, gibing laugh that rose like a mighty challenge through the clear night air.

CROOKS heard it, too. They wheeled to see The Shadow standing in the moonlight. Viciously, they opened fire, just as The Shadow began to weave a circling course away from the museum. He was drawing the fire from the foe.

Automatics loomed in gloved fists. Those weapons barked their sharp response to enemy guns. Crooks were shooting wild, at long range. Not so The Shadow. Using the white face of the museum, he picked out his living targets against that perfect background. Thugs staggered, firing vainly at the figure which seemed to fade and appear again between the moonlight and the blackness of the trees. Again that mocking laugh came ringing to their ears. Men dived for the open doorway of the museum. A gas-masked figure appeared there.

The Shadow fired.

The masked crook staggered back into the building. The others followed, ready to brave the last fumes of the tear gas rather than meet The Shadow. Then new foemen came into view, rounding the corner at the rear of the museum.

Like The Shadow and his agents, this group had dropped through the hole in the floor of the Sphinx Room and made an exit through the break that crooks had blasted at the rear of the vault. But these new enemies, arriving, could find no target at which to open distant fire.

The Shadow had glided to the trees. There, he reached his hidden coupe, where his two agents were already aboard. His hiss came from the darkness, questioning in tone. It brought a quick response from Clyde, for it concerned the very matter that was on the reporter’s mind.

“Drury was with them,” informed Clyde. “They’d have to take the road to Larkton. The only shortcut without hitting Latuna. Drury was acting as their leader. It was Drury who brought me here, by a phone call.”

A hissed order from The Shadow. Cliff Marsland, at the wheel, pressed the starter. The motor roared. Clyde, breathless, added one more comment:

“About Drury — he acted as if he wanted to kill me. But I saw his revolver when he threatened. No bullets in it—”

Shouts from near the museum. The crooks had heard the car.

A hiss of understanding from The Shadow. A reply from Cliff. The coupe shot away, clearing for the road before Konk and his outfit could intercept it.

Three minutes later, a lone gorilla, an outpost, guarding a parked sedan, was conscious of a slight swish beside him. Turning, with gun in hand, he faced the blazing eyes of The Shadow. Before the gorilla could fire, a gloved hand swept upward and clipped the crook just beneath his square-set chin.

The gorilla gave an odd gargle as he slumped to the ground.

A figure entered the car. The motor roared. The sedan shot out from the trees. Foemen heard it and turned from their chase of the coupe. Konk Zitz’s yell ordered them to open fire. The cry came too late. The sedan was jouncing off along a rocky road.

Then, as raging desperadoes came running toward the trees, the air reverberated with the sound of a parting taunt. The laugh of The Shadow rang out with all its mockery. The Shadow, like his agents, was departing.

Konk Zitz laughed hoarsely. Though half his crew had been crippled, he had put The Shadow on the run. So thought the big shot as he ordered his scattered henchmen to the remaining cars.

But Konk’s shreds of triumph were ill-founded. He was wrong when he thought The Shadow was in flight. By that swift departure, The Shadow was planning to ruin schemes that Konk thought were beyond the master fighter’s reach.