The Death Giver

CHAPTER II. THE THIRD TRAGEDY

DETECTIVE JOE CARDONA stood upon the platform of the station at Felswood. His sharp, dark eyes were scanning the roadbed toward the curve near the station. The time was thirty five minutes past eight.

To all appearances, Cardona was merely one of the dozen or more commuters who thronged the station platform. But the detective was there with a more important purpose than that of a morning ride into Manhattan. He was the captain of a crew of able men who were here to study every detail that occurred when the eight thirty-eight arrived upon its westward journey.

A trackwalker was loitering on the curve. Standing aside, as though to await the train, the man was part of Cardona’s scheme. The supposed trackwalker was a detective.

Cardona turned idly and glanced in the opposite direction. Another pretended trackwalker was strolling along the tracks, slowly nearing the station platform.

As Cardona swung and faced the parking lot, he saw a pair of men engaged in conversation. One was at the wheel of a roadster; the other was alongside. Both were detectives, studying the situation as it existed there.

Another car drove up while Cardona watched. It was an old sedan, and the driver parked it in the ample space, drawing it alongside the other cars which rested parallel with the railroad track. A nervous commuter hurried from the car and walked rapidly toward the platform.

This man, Cardona decided, would be about the last to catch the train. These electrics ran close to schedule, and less than a minute remained.

The commuter was a well-dressed individual — a man of middle age, with trim Vandyke beard and broad fedora hat.

His face lightened as he saw the waiting crowd. The man appeared to be relieved because he was in time for the train. Joe Cardona laughed softly. A great worry — that of making the eight thirty-eight! Probably all that concerned these commuters in the morning!

Cardona turned his eyes toward the curve. He was just in time. A train of red cars was sliding into view, approaching with the stealthy speed typical of electric locomotion.

Cardona counted eight cars as each one swung around the bend; the rails were clicking, and the train was coming to a sharp stop. The fake trackwalker was swinging his arms in a signal that nothing had occurred.

Cardona, quickly noting the train, and then observing the commuters as they stepped aboard, could testify that nothing was amiss here. The detective glanced toward the parking lot. The two men at the roadster indicated that all was well in their field of observation.

Cardona grunted. He had hoped that something would happen at this station — some unusual incident that would serve as a clew to the strange accidents of the two preceding days. He watched the train, anxious for it to start so that he could observe what happened after the departure and get the report from the man waiting beyond. The train, however, did not start.

THE uniformed conductor, his face bewildered, came from one of the vestibules. With him was a man whom Cardona recognized instantly — Detective Sergeant Mayhew.

This police officer had been stationed on the third car of the train — the car in which both deaths had occurred. Mayhew’s face was excited. It became even more so when the detective sergeant spied Cardona. Mayhew beckoned wildly. Cardona hurried forward.

Mayhew stopped Cardona and pointed to an open window in the car. Staring in astonishment, Cardona saw the form of a man slumped in the seat by the window. The upturned face was ghastly. It was scarred and puckered with red marks. The eyes were bulging.

The man was dead.

“I was looking back through the car,” explained Mayhew. “I wasn’t expecting anything like this to happen. Just watching for whatever might be unusual. Then — I saw him here. It must have gotten him just before the train stopped.”

Joe Cardona grimly took charge of the situation. This mysterious death brooked extreme measures.

There were other detectives aboard the train. None reported any untoward events in the cars where they had been riding.

With all his men assembled, Cardona quarantined the death car. Detectives took names and addresses of commuters, quizzing all as they worked.

Cardona demanded the cooperation of the train crew, and he received it. The seriousness of the killing was highly impressive. A man slain, for the third consecutive day; this time while thorough vigil had been kept! It seemed unbelievable.

Railroad orders were received over the station telephone. A supervisor was riding on this train, and he arranged to have the death car detached. The train was broken; the one car was shunted to a siding; and the rest of the train went on. The delay tied up traffic back along the line.

The passengers from the car in which the man had died were herded into the little Felswood station.

There, one by one, they were allowed to leave, after being searched and quizzed.

Cardona was in charge; Mayhew remained in the sidetracked car. The car became Cardona’s destination as soon as he had made certain that the examination of the passengers was being properly handled by his carefully selected subordinates.

Mayhew had learned the identity of the dead man. A search of his pockets had brought forth papers that showed him to be Danby Grayson, a public accountant with a Broadway firm. Identification cards gave his address as the town of Duxbury, several stations east of Felswood.

Grayson was a man of about fifty years of age. Cardona stared solemnly at the body. The appearance of the face, with its scarred cheek, was identical with the others that the detective had observed on the two preceding days.

“It looks like another useless death,” volunteered Mayhew. “This man — by appearance and occupation — doesn’t look like somebody a murderer would be out to get.”

“We’ll find out about that later,” growled Cardona. “Have you searched the car?”

“Yes,” responded Mayhew. “Nothing here.”

Cardona went to work. He looked everywhere for clews. He could discover none. Leaving Mayhew in charge, the detective went out to the roadbed to talk with the subordinates who were searching there.

They, too, reported no trace of any missile.

Commuters’ trains, delayed by the hold-up which the death had caused, were coming into the station at close intervals; and Cardona watched the passengers from the death car continue their trip to Manhattan as rapidly as the police released them. There had not been a shred of evidence sufficient to hold a single person.

After ordering one of his men to obtain a complete report on Danby Grayson, Joe Cardona went over to the parking lot to confer with the men who had been watching from that point. They had made a thorough search of the premises, but had not found any one hiding there. Every automobile had been entered, to no avail.

THE events of the next few hours were trying to Joe Cardona.

A report received concerning Danby Grayson served to back up Mayhew’s belief. The accountant was described as a widower who lived with two sons at Duxbury. News of his death had come as a great shock both to his employers and his family. There seemed no possible reason why Grayson should have been the victim of a murderer.

On top of that, Inspector Timothy Klein arrived with a police surgeon. In their wake came a tribe of newspaper reporters seeking details of the new death. Photographers aimed their cameras at the sidetracked car; and throngs of curious bystanders began to assemble.

Cardona put a curb to these activities. The reporters received terse, begrudged details. The camera men wisely cleared out, and the curiosity seekers were dispersed. Detectives saw to it that only persons who were prospective train passengers could approach and leave the station.

What was the menace that lay at this spot? Why had death struck only when a certain train approached, always killing a person in the same car?

Cardona, grim-faced and low-voiced, discussed the important problem with Inspector Klein. Although he growled of a hidden murder, Cardona was forced to admit that the deaths might be the result of some amazing accident. Until clews were gained, that must be accepted as the natural theory. Nevertheless, both mystery and menace remained as great as ever.

While Cardona was discoursing thus, a powerful roadster coasted up to the parking lot, and a tall man alighted. With a long, easy stride, this arrival walked toward the station platform. There he stood, apparently waiting for a train.

Cardona became suddenly aware of the man’s presence, and turned to stare at him. The man’s eyes met those of the detective. Cardona found himself gazing at a firm, calm face that was almost masklike in its expression. From the sides of a sharp, hawkish nose, gleaming optics sparkled with strange, uncanny gaze.

The appearance of the stranger was impressive. Cardona sensed a hypnotic power in those eyes.

Instinctively, the detective was sure that this man had overheard his remarks to Inspector Klein.

But the detective was loath to make a move. This man was here to take a train; he had come hours after the death aboard the eight thirty-eight. Cardona could see no connection between this individual and the case at hand.

Inspector Klein did not notice the man toward whom Cardona was looking. The inspector was watching up the track; and now, at a moment when the stranger could hear, Klein made definite remarks without turning his head in Cardona’s direction.

“Stick here until three o’clock, Joe,” ordered the inspector. “If you haven’t landed anything by then, there’s no use wasting your time. You can leave a couple of men on duty; let them stay all night and watch for the same train in the morning.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow morning,” promised Cardona.

AN approaching train, coming around the bend, ended the conversation. Cardona, glancing toward the hawk-faced stranger, noted that the man was watching the train intently.

The stranger stepped aboard, and that was the last Cardona saw of him. Yet, all during the remainder of his fruitless investigation, Cardona could not help but recall the remarkable appearance of the man whom he had seen upon the platform.

The detective had not noticed the stranger’s arrival. He did not know that the powerful roadster belonged to that man. When Cardona had hunches, he did not hesitate to follow them; but in this instance, Cardona had no hunch. He was simply impressed by a chance observation; and he reasoned with himself that he should forget this detail which had no apparent bearing on the death that struck at Felswood. Hence Cardona did not inquire if any one had noted the stranger arrive.

It was shortly after three o’clock when Cardona reluctantly boarded a westbound train for Manhattan.

Extreme measures had brought no result. Grayson’s body had been removed from the death car; and the car itself was to be shunted from the siding.

Riding toward New York, Cardona mulled over the police surgeon’s report, which corresponded exactly with those on the two previous deaths. Grayson’s system had shown traces of a poison. There must be something odd and unexplainable about the unfound missile that had brought such immediate death.

As the train dipped into the tube beneath the East River, Cardona had a last thought of the stranger on the station platform. He decided that the man must be merely a resident of Felswood — some late morning commuter. He wondered what time the man would be returning to the local station.

Cardona was sorry that he had not waited at Felswood; but he knew that it would be a great mistake to go against Inspector Klein’s instructions because of a blind quest.

When the train pulled into the New York station, Cardona’s thoughts were back at Felswood. Singularly enough, a train was just then stopping at the way station out on Long Island, and from it was alighting the very man who had been so definitely in Cardona’s mind!

There was nothing suspicious in the man’s carriage; indeed, his bearing and important appearance certified him as a person of influence. Cardona had merely noted the man particularly because he had chanced to come within earshot of the conversation between detective and inspector.

The hawk-faced stranger went directly to the expensive roadster and took his place behind the wheel.

But he did not drive away.

Two men were still on duty; they did not pay special attention to this returning commuter. Hence the man sat unobserved, well back in the deep seat within the shelter of the blind sides of the long, heavy car. At times, he peered intently forth; and his sharp eyes were keenly observant.

Parked directly alongside of the roadster was the sedan which Cardona had seen come to the parking lot just before the eight thirty-eight had arrived at Felswood. The hawk-faced stranger was noting the position of that car; the fact that it was no more than forty feet from the railroad track; and that it rested parallel to the right of way, its position differing to some degree from that of other parked cars.

HALF an hour went by; another train arrived from New York. Several commuters stepped off, among them the nervous man with the Vandyke, who had just made the eight thirty-eight that morning. The man went to the sedan. He did not notice the eyes that were watching him from the roadster.

The sedan backed from the parking lot and turned up the road that led from the station. The motor of the heavy roadster now purred rhythmically but softly. The powerful car swung away and moved in the direction that the sedan had taken.

As the roadster came into a side street half a mile from the station, the sedan was turning up a driveway beside a new house. The driver of the roadster, leaning over the wheel, saw the sedan move into a garage. The roadster kept on along the street.

A block away, a strange, low sound came from the interior of the roadster. The whispered tones of a mocking laugh emerged from the lips below the hawklike nose. That laugh was one of understanding — a weird, mirthless cry that carried a chilling note.

Had Joe Cardona been there to hear that sinister burst of irony, he would have recognized the author of the weird laughter. He would have known then why he had been impressed by the tall, hawk-nosed stranger at the station.

For the eerie cry was the laugh of The Shadow — the strange, shuddering note of doom that had spread terror through every bailiwick of the underworld. The laugh of a superbeing, it betokened the power of that unknown personage called The Shadow.

To-day, Joe Cardona had failed. A third tragedy had occurred at Felswood station, under the very eyes of the ace detective. A squad of sleuths had failed to find the inkling of a clew.

But The Shadow had not failed. He had arrived after the crime had been committed; but, nevertheless, he had shrewdly traced a connection between the deaths and an individual.

A man with a Vandyke beard who lived half a mile from Felswood station — a commuter who drove a large sedan, and left it parked on the lot beside the tracks. This was the man whom The Shadow had placed under observation.

Death would not strike again at Felswood. The Shadow, arrived from afar, would be there to prevent it!