The Crime Crypt

CHAPTER XXI. LIVING AND DEAD

MIDNIGHT. Duke Larrin sat in the center of the crime crypt. Grouped about him were the privileged crooks who had come to this underground vault.

Brodie Brodan sat with gloating face and bristling eyebrows. Fingers Keefel wore a malicious smile upon his crafty face. Bozo Griffin and Fritz Fursch were standing in a corner of the crypt. Seated on the floor between this pair of thugs were the three prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs.

Joe Cardona — Handley Matson — Cliff Marsland. The trio found no pleasure in their company. Each knew that he was facing doom and that two others were due to perish with him.

The crime crypt harbored another person: Cecil Armsbury. He was standing behind his nephew, grinning as sponsor of insidious crime. To him, this crypt was a legacy which he had given to a deserving heir.

Cecil Armsbury was proud of the power which Martin Havelock, alias Duke Larrin, had come to wield.

“Where is Croaker?”

This was the question with which Havelock opened the proceedings.

“Not here yet,” asserted Fingers Mannick. “He’ll be through. No reason why he should be on time tonight.”

Brodie Brodan chuckled at the jest.

“Shall I bring in Sinker Hargun?” he questioned.

“Yes,” affirmed Havelock. “He is one of us. Let the mob remain on guard. We shall talk with them later. They are to play their part in future crime.”

Brodie Brodan went to the door to the corridor. He opened it and summoned Sinker Hargun. The gang lieutenant joined the criminal assemblage.

“You all know me,” announced Martin Havelock, his voice resounding through the crypt. “I’m Duke Larrin. That’s the name I go under. This crypt is my headquarters. From here we have put through successful crime. There is more to be done.

“No dumb dicks are going to cross us. Neither are any stools that work for The Shadow. We’re going to blot out the ones we’ve already got — and a third man with them. That’s settled. When Croaker Mannick arrives, we’ll let him do the wiping, like he did with three others.”

Havelock turned toward Cardona as he spoke. His lips snarled the names of the three men whom the fiends of the crime crypt had marked for death.

“Perry Trappe. Tyler Bogart. Brisbane Calbot.” Havelock laughed. “They’re the ones we blotted out — and you three are due to follow.”

He turned and faced his henchmen. Rising, Havelock waved his arm toward his uncle. Cecil Armsbury’s countenance was a gloating one.

“This,” stated Havelock, “is the silent partner. Cecil Armsbury. The man who built this crypt. The one who planned our crimes. He has reclaimed articles which might have exposed his past. Through his cunning, we have also gained fabulous wealth. He is the man who showed the way to obtain the mummy case of Senwosri, which is worth—”

Havelock paused. Armsbury’s chuckle took up the tale.

“A quarter of a million,” was the old man’s statement.

Eager gasps came from the crooks as they heard these astounding words. Duke Larrin’s aids were beginning to realize the mammoth proportions of this crime ring. Martin Havelock, however, maintained a calm demeanor. He knew the truth. Cecil Armsbury had not told one half the reputed value contained within the mummy case of Senwosri.

“The jeweled Vishnu from Hyderabad.” Cecil Armsbury was checking as he spoke to Fingers Keefel.

“The golden panel from the Temple of Heaven. The sacred scroll from the Kaaba in Mecca. Those were fakes which needed to be destroyed. You performed that work, I am told. You have my thanks.

“With the mummy case of Senwosri came the antiquities which I once sold to the Egyptian Museum. That was your work” — Armsbury had turned to Brodie Brodan and Sinker Hargun — “and it was well done. Those antiquities were fakes — clever ones, but liable to detection. They are to be destroyed.”

“I placed them in the treasure room,” reminded Martin Havelock, in an undertone. He meant the compartment at the end of the crypt.

Cecil Armsbury nodded. The old man was gloating as he looked toward Handley Matson. The curator of the Egyptian Museum was aghast at the news which he had just heard.

“Living men have obstructed our path,” resumed Armsbury. “Some of them have died. Others still live. Three of them are here before us.” He pointed to the prisoners. “They shall die — all three. Living shall be dead!”

THE old man’s chuckle resounded in hollow tones through the vault. It was a fiendish sign of an evildoer.

The prisoners who heard it knew that they could expect no mercy from this cruel captor.

“Living men have brought us trouble,” continued Armsbury, in a dramatic voice. “Therefore they shall die. The dead mean more to us than the living. The dead can bring us wealth!”

He turned to approach the huge mummy case. While the others watched, Armsbury clawed away the loose straps which bound the huge Egyptian casket.

“Wealth from the dead!” exclaimed Armsbury, turning to face his listeners. “Senwosri, the son of Amenemhe, brings us his gifts! The living have deserved to die. The dead deserve to live. Had I the power, I would restore life to Senwosri.

“That cannot be.” The old man’s tone seemed regretful. “So we must accept Senwosri as dead. Let us look upon his wealth. Feast your eyes, my friends, upon the splendor that will glitter from within this casket!”

As he completed his statement, Cecil Armsbury seized the front of the mummy case and pulled it open.

The powerful wrench brought him alongside the casket, facing the men who thronged the crime crypt.

That was as Cecil Armsbury had intended. A showman in his ways of crime, he wanted to see the effect upon the members of Duke Larrin’s band.

Cecil Armsbury stared at faces that showed grotesquely in the crime crypt. He had noted eager eyes; he expected to hear gasps of elation. Instead, he was amazed by the sight of frozen faces.

Brodie Brodan’s eyes were bulging. Fingers Keefel was sinking as his legs trembled beneath him. Bozo Griffin — Fritz Fursch — Sinker Hargun — these redoubtable lieutenants were wavering. Armsbury stared at Martin Havelock.

The crook who called himself Duke Larrin was as rigid as a statue. A look of horror showed upon his whitened face. His gaze was centered upon the opened mummy case. Something within it had petrified the international crook.

With a snarl, Cecil Armsbury sprang forward. He wheeled and gazed in the same direction of the others — toward the opened front of the mummy case. His snarl died. He, too, stood astounded.

The figure that loomed within the mummy case was not the dead body of Senwosri, son of Amenemhe.

Instead of a white-wrapped mummy, Cecil Armsbury gazed upon a living form in black. A tall, spectral being was surveying the crime crypt crooks with burning eyes. That penetrating gaze brought terror.

Black from head to foot. Eyes, alone, of the features that were hidden beneath the projecting brim of a slouch hat. A form shrouded with a cloak of sable hue. Such was the terrible figure that Cecil Armsbury and the others saw. They also viewed the threats that this living creature carried — a pair of mammoth automatics that bulged from black-gloved fists!

“The Shadow!”

Cecil Armsbury gasped the name that others dared not utter. In answer came a token from the opened mummy case of Senwosri. It was a strange, weird burst of whispered mirth that rose to a crescendo within the hollowness of the crypt; then faded to leave taunting echoes that seemed voiced by a myriad of invisible, impish tongues!

The laugh of The Shadow! To the startled crooks who heard it, that strident mockery came as a prophecy of doom!