The Death Giver

CHAPTER XXI. THE MASTER OF DEATH

THE futile shots within the canopy had ended. The blanketed detectives were grimly trying to force their way from the green shroud which enveloped them. Behind the portal that guarded Thade’s chair-crowned dais, The Shadow was speaking sinister words to the helpless monster whom he had overpowered.

Away from the chair, his single automatic effectively covering Thade and the white-clad Nubians, the black-cloaked master of the night was proclaiming his triumph.

“Your crimes are at an end,” were The Shadow’s spectral words. “Your master stroke has failed. I have brought its undoing. You who gave death, now face it. You may live only that you may confess your crimes.”

“Never!” spat Thade.

“Remember!” The Shadow’s tones quivered with a weird laugh. “I have learned the truth. Harlan Treffin died last night — died by the device you gave him. I was there to see him die. When Paul Roderick came, he found Harlan Treffin — so he thought. It was I whom he encountered!”

Thade’s eye eyes were glowering in disbelief of The Shadow’s statement. The avenger of crime repeated his ghostly laugh.

“To-day,” resumed The Shadow, “Paul Roderick found Harlan Treffin awaiting him to aid in the scheme of destruction. The bubbles of death descended; they found their targets. Those bubbles were unnoticed.

For the false Harlan Treffin had disposed of your deadly poison.

“When Paul Roderick found that he faced The Shadow, he weakened and confessed his crime. He told the secret of this abode. In a futile fit of desperation, he struggled to defeat The Shadow. In that battle, he was killed when he tried to seize this very automatic.”

“Paul Roderick was here to-night,” hissed Thade.

“Not Paul Roderick,” corrected The Shadow. “You thought that Paul Roderick was here. Behold!”

The left hand raised the slouch hat; the collar of the cloak dropped away, and Thade found himself staring at the features of Paul Roderick!

The truth dawned. It was The Shadow who had come here. He had never left. The mission of bringing Treffin, the traitor, was subterfuge. The Shadow had waited in the anteroom. Thade had unwittingly admitted the police, thinking that Roderick was returning.

“Yes,” stated The Shadow, as though answering Thade’s thought, “Detective Cardona was acting under my instructions. I called him after Roderick was dead. I told him to be here, below — at an appointed hour.

“Since I brought him to this place, it is now my duty to rescue him. You, Lucius Olney” — Thade glowered as The Shadow pronounced the name — “can remain alive only upon promise to tell everything. I shall spare you because the law held you a few minutes ago; and the law can use you again. But should you attempt to balk my purpose—”

Thade threw back his head and uttered a ferocious laugh. His parched, evil lips of glowing green uttered chanting words in a strange language. With one accord, the two Nubians flung themselves between their master and The Shadow. These huge fighting men were determined to beat down the enemy of Thade!

THIS startling attack, in which The Death Giver deliberately sacrificed the men who were willing to protect him with their lives, left The Shadow no alternative. The onrush of the turbaned Nubians was swift. Their powerful bodies cleared the short space in a twinkling. The Shadow’s automatic was quicker.

It was unerring.

Two shots rang out; with each report, a white-clad body hurtled to the floor. The Shadow, to escape the falling Nubians, was forced to leap backward from the dais. The first servant dropped close by the chair; the second rolled to The Shadow’s feet.

In that capable defense, The Shadow had not lost his original purpose. At any cost, he was prepared to thwart Thade if The Death Giver tried to release the gas into the canopy which held the detectives. Had Thade remained to press the lever, he would have been doomed that very instant; for The Shadow’s automatic was leveled for a third quick shaft.

But Thade, recognizing the power of The Shadow, fled in the opposite direction. His robed form sprang with surprising agility, and disappeared through the green curtain beyond the lowered portal in front of the raised platform.

Pursuit was useless. Skirting the lowered canopy that more than half filled the room, Thade had clear passage to the anteroom beyond; and The Shadow, with the canopy between, could gain no opportunity to stay him with a shot. The Shadow, however, had an opportunity which Thade had not suspected.

Springing across the bodies of the Nubians, he reached the chair and pressed all but two of the switches that he saw upon the right.

The results were remarkable. The portal rose in front of the platform. The canopy began to lift; and in the floor beneath it, the carpet spread to show the glass-topped coffin, which now held the body of the victim who had been so slowly murdered.

The switches which The Shadow ignored were the two that he knew must control the dropping of the elevator and the lowering of the portal on this side of the anteroom. Leaping to the side of the rising canopy, The Shadow was thus able to glimpse the final flight of Thade. He saw The Death Giver, glancing backward as he ran, making a frantic effort to gain the elevator, with its protecting door.

BUT The Shadow saw what Thade did not see. The lift was rising! The Shadow had pressed the switch which sent it upward. The Shadow’s automatic spoke. The aim of that hand never erred. Had The Shadow chosen to kill Thade with the shot, he would have done so. But this bullet was a warning that whizzed beside The Death Giver’s evil face.

It was The Shadow’s offer to let Thade live, if the murderer chose to go back into the hands of the law.

The Death Giver emitted a gloating cry. He was at the elevator shaft, and he thought that The Shadow’s aim had failed. Not knowing that the lift had risen almost to the top of the door, Thade leaped to the spot where the elevator had been.

The Shadow saw a sickly look of horror come over the ghastly, green-hued face as the robed monster missed his footing. Where Thade had expected solid floor he found nothing. His cry became a long, piercing shriek that died away to nothingness as the evil fiend plunged to his doom.

From the top of the secret shaft to the bottom, the full height of the towering building — that was the sequel to Thade’s mad flight. The laugh of The Shadow sounded as a fitting knell to the end of the master villain.

The black-clad victor was in the anteroom. His tall figure was merging with the gloomy walls. Out of sight, The Shadow, enfolded behind curtains of green, had left the field to the rescued forces of the law.

With quick precision, The Shadow had counteracted the efforts of Thade and his Nubian servants. He had saved Cardona and the detectives from certain death. The Death Giver’s mad career of murder had come to a fitting end.

No more would mysterious death be rampant. No longer would the threat of terrible, unseen crime hang over unsuspecting victims. The Death Giver and his underlings had perished to a man; and the plotting monster had been the last to die.

Justice had triumphed over evil. In the encounter, The Death Giver had fallen before the might of the avenger who had sought and found him in his hidden abode.

That meeting had marked a villain’s end. The Shadow, not Thade, was now the master of death!