The Condor

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CONDOR’S THRUST

STEALTHY figures again were creeping through the night. This time, the attackers were coming from the confines of Mountview Lodge. Spread across the darkness of the broad lawn, The Condor and his tribe were converging toward the outer gate of the lodge

Eyes perceived those dim figures as they left the whiteness of the veranda. The Shadow, peering from the back of the coupe, laughed in whispered fashion at the success of his ruse.

Softly, his figure emerged from its hiding place. The Shadow, too, took to the lawn at the rear of creeping men. Another surprise attack was due to be heralded, too, soon; this time by The Shadow.

Figures had neared the gate. The Shadow was thirty yards behind them. His tall form rose in darkness.

His leveled automatics picked out the approximate spot where villains crouched. The Shadow pressed triggers. Flames jabbed the darkness.

Snarls came from rising crooks as bullets whistled past them. The Shadow’s blind shots had not found targets; but they had accomplished the result that he desired.

Flashlights glared from all along the fence. Glaring rays burrowed paths through darkness. A score of deputies were ready. They had The Condor and his compact crew within their focus. Revolvers crackled.

Crooks fired back; then wavered. Husky deputies came hurtling the fence to cut in from the flanks, no longer caring if the alarms were sent off. Motors roared from down the road. At the sound of gunfire, a score of reserves came into motion.

The hillside roared with gunfire. Crooks were scattering, shooting wildly. Shouting deputies were dropping them like scurrying rabbits. The Shadow’s alarm had placed murderers in a hopeless trap.

The Shadow had wheeled in the darkness. Beyond the range of flashlights, he was driving toward the house. As he neared there, bells began to ring within. The tampered fence wires were causing the alarm.

As The Shadow reached the porch, a light glared suddenly above the door. The Shadow dived for the door itself and hurled the portal open. He came face to face with Trossler. The servant fired as the door swung wide.

But The Shadow had entered with a sidestep, dropping for the wall with the same movement that he had used to fling the door upon its hinges. Trossler’s bullets sizzled past a cloaked shoulder.

An automatic barked from The Shadow’s fist.

Trossler wavered; then slumped. Within the darkened hall, The Shadow delivered a laugh of challenge. It rose with unearthly shudders; it shivered into mocking echoes. Strange silence followed it; then came an answering cry.

CLIFF MARSLAND had heard The Shadow’s taunt. He knew that the fortress had fallen.

The Shadow located the sound; then reached the door of his agent’s prison. In hissed tones, he gave brief orders. Cliff acknowledged from the opened transom.

The Shadow saw the lighted study. He entered to find Lieth’s body on the floor. He recognized who the man must be. His weird, lowered laugh was a knell above the dead form of a traitor whose fate had been deserved.

The Shadow knew that all but Trossler had fared forth. By now, The Condor and his band should have been eliminated. Cliff, as a prisoner, would be released; Harry would vouch for him to Vic Marquette.

The Shadow had a duty elsewhere; one that he alone had recognized. Well had he divined The Condor’s craft. He knew that already some measure might have been taken to balk the triumph of the law.

Reaching the veranda, The Shadow dived from the light. Reaching the edge, he skirted the lodge, heading for a deserted portion of the rear fence.

Already, flashlight-bearing deputies were converging toward the house. The Shadow saw lights reach the porch. He knew that men were entering. Off through the trees beyond the fence, The Shadow took the path for Table Rock.

A car had reached the lodge. From it sprang Brock, Marquette and Harry. They were among the first to enter the opened door. Pounding from within a door attracted their attention. The sheriff crashed the panel with the butt of his revolver. He drove his shoulder against the broken barrier. With Vic and Harry aiding, he demolished the door — to release Cliff Marsland.

A prisoner within this den was entitled to respect. That was a fact that The Shadow had foreseen. But before Cliff had time to begin an explanation, shots from the front door caused all four to swing in that direction.

A deputy sprawled. Another lost his grip upon a fiercely twisting man who dived across the hall. Cliff cried a warning as he recognized the wild invader. Griscom Treft!

The Condor alone had survived the withering fire of the sheriff’s deputies. Unscathed by bullets, he had fled for the lodge. Plunging out of darkness, he had beaten his way into his own lost fortress.

Luck served The Condor still. As Brock and Marquette fired at his dashing form, Treft kept on and reached the passage that led past his study. Hasty bullets had gone wide.

“The strong room!” cried Cliff. “That’s where he’s heading! That’s Treft — The Condor — the chief crook of all!”

BROCK and Marquette took up the chase; Cliff followed with Harry. Behind them surged a deluge of deputies. They reached the cellar stairs and dashed madly to the bottom. There Cliff pointed the way to the strong room.

The pursuers were too late. The massive iron door was swinging shut as Vic and the sheriff opened new fire. The Singhalese had admitted their hard-pressed master.

It was Cliff who supplied inspiration for a further chase. As Brock and Marquette stood with smoking guns, Cliff gave them new proof that he was a real ally, here within The Condor’s domain. Cliff had recalled a fact that Treft had told him.

“There’s dynamite here in the cellar!” he exclaimed. “Treft used it to excavate his strong-room. He blasted the old cabin with it. There’s some here yet.”

Deputies scurried to make search. They found the remainder of the store. One deputy, a quarryman, came forward as technical expert. He studied the iron door; then picked a quantity of dynamite. He ordered the others outside, with the rest of the explosive in their possession.

A few minutes after the raiders had reached the veranda, the blast-setter came hurrying out to join them.

He had found fuses; the charge was properly placed and timed. He explained that a crevice in the rock beneath the door had given him a chance to plant the explosive without drilling.

A shivering blast shook the lodge. Rumbled echoes ended; the quarryman nodded to the sheriff. Brock led a new advance. The invaders reached the fume-filled cellar. Coughing their way through smoke, they found the huge door broken from its hinges.

The lights in the rock-walled corridor were banished. Flashlights showed the door ahead. The sheriff growled his disappointment; Cliff explained that the inner barrier was no obstacle. Its outside bar was loose; the sheriff swung the door wide.

THE invaders stared as they saw the grotto. The lights of the tinted cavern had not been extinguished by the blast. An iron bar, inside the door, showed that effort had been made to barricade this bulwark which The Condor had neglected to provide with inner fastenings.

“Look out—”

As Cliff exclaimed the warning, the two Singhalese sprang from hiding places by the walls. Like mighty jinns guarding a treasure trove, they hurled themselves upon Brock and Marquette. Cliff and Harry leaped to aid. A dozen deputies piled in with vengeance.

Guns boomed. Bullets clipped hanging stalactites and ricocheted from the cavern walls. Salyuk collapsed, wounded by a shot that Marquette had managed to discharge with accuracy. Six deputies dragged Toklar from the sheriff; the Singhalese went down beneath the combined force of the husky rescuers.

Cliff was dashing up ahead. Forgetful that he had no gun, he sought to show the way to The Condor’s treasure niche. Cliff stopped short when he reached the spot. He stared at scattered teakwood boxes.

All had been emptied.

Cliff dashed on toward the underground lake — the deepest spot to which The Condor could have fled.

As he reached the sloping roof, he saw Treft. The master crook was hurling metal cylinders into the outlet of the underground channel.

He had reached the end of his task; he chucked the last of the smaller cylinders as Cliff arrived. Beside Treft was the six-foot cylinder that Cliff had described as a blunt-nosed torpedo. It was leaning against the wall.

The Condor swung suddenly, to spy Cliff. With a venomous snarl, he yanked a revolver from his pocket.

Cliff dived beyond a projecting ledge of flowstone. The Condor’s single shot was too late; it clipped the edge of the rock.

Cliff shouted for Harry and the others. He heard the clatter of arriving footsteps. The Condor snarled hoarse defiance; then raised himself upon the rock and dropped his wiry body into the big cylinder.

His hands shot out to seize the cap, which stood on a ledge beside the tube. Harry saw the master crook’s head and arms; he fired rapid shots that sizzled within inches of Treft’s hands. Then the top of the cylinder clamped down; Treft had yanked it by an inside bar.

Marquette and Brock were here. Cliff was springing forward with Harry. Four men were out to capture The Condor in his tubelike nest. Before they retached the cylinder, it lurched; Treft had toppled it by jolting with his body.

Falling, the cylinder bounded from the rocky floor. It careened into the outlet at the end of the pool. For seconds, it wavered there; clutching hands of the invaders made snatches at its slippery surface.

Then the big cylinder swung end upward. Caught by the surge of the water, it jounced over the edge of the natural dam, through a central channel of the outlet. An instant later, The Condor’s submarine device was gone from sight.

Frustrated men stood gaping, their prey swallowed into the stream that roared to the depths within the sloping hillside.

No one had remained outside the captured lodge. Hence there was none to see the strange manifestation that occurred above ground while strange episodes were taking place below.

A flare had gone up from Table Rock. In answer to the signal, two lights were hovering from the darkness of the sky. Green and red, those glimmers settled to the ledge that had become The Shadow’s goal.

The Condor had escaped a host of pursuers. There was one, however, who had not given up the chase.

The Shadow, taking to the air by an arriving autogyro, was following The Condor, even though the fiend had chosen subterranean depths!