The Death Giver

CHAPTER IX. DEATH IN MANHATTAN

AT quarter past eight the next morning, a steady stream of people were passing through a short arcade that led to an uptown subway entrance. Among them was Harlan Treffin.

The man had recovered from his fright of the night before. At present, he was a trifle nervous; but he steadied himself as he stopped at a telephone that jutted from the wall.

Treffin jiggled the receiver with his right hand. His left, within his coat, came suddenly forth and pressed beneath the telephone box. It rested there; performed a slow twisting motion, and moved away.

Treffin stepped from the telephone. He almost bumped into a short, stocky man who stepped aside to avoid him. Treffin caught a glimpse of a heavy-jowled face, a bristling gray mustache, and a derby hat above.

Both men moved on. The throng continued to pass. Fully five minutes elapsed. Then something strange occurred. A young man passing through the arcade stopped short within a few feet of the wall telephone.

He pressed his hands against his chest. He drew a long, gasping breath and tottered. He fell to the floor before approaching persons could come to his rescue.

A crowd congregated within a few minutes. Wild voices called for a doctor, an ambulance, a policeman.

The last named was the first to arrive. A ruddy-faced officer pushed his way through the excited group, and leaned over the man upon the floor. The practiced eye of the policeman told instantly that the young chap was dead.

WHILE excitement still reigned in the arcade, and little groups of people were talking about the tragedy which had occurred, Harlan Treffin was entering the lobby of an office building on lower Broadway.

Twenty paces ahead of him was the heavy-jowled man with the derby hat. Treffin did not notice him. His watch concerned him more. It showed twenty minutes before ten.

Treffin stepped up to a telephone just inside the door. The instrument was at the left of the lobby.

Treffin’s arm was shielded by the wall. Quickly, the man performed the same operation that he had used in the arcade. He walked away from the telephone and left the building.

Five minutes later, a man came through the revolving door of the office building, faltered, and plunged headlong to the tiled floor. Two attendants rushed forward and lifted him to his feet. The man collapsed in their arms.

They carried him to a drug store that adjoined the lobby The pharmacist in charge expressed immediate concern. He believed that the man was dead. He sent a hurry call for an ambulance.

Meanwhile, on the twentieth floor of the skyscraper, the gray-mustached man had entered a luxurious suite of offices. Employees bowed and nodded as he went by. He opened a door that bore the name:

A stenographer greeted the stocky gentleman with a cheery “good morning.” Irwin Langhorne smiled.

“Good morning, Miss Price,” he said. “I am checking in, as usual. You may notify the executives that I shall return after my usual cup of coffee.”

Replacing his derby upon his head, the mustached man left the office and walked back through the suite.

Smiles were exchanged among the employees as he passed.

Every morning, Irwin Langhorne, millionaire importer, arrived at quarter of nine. He always came via subway. Immediately after his arrival, he invariably left to obtain a morning cup of coffee. This was accepted as a matter of office routine; but the early employees never failed to watch for Langhorne’s reappearance after he had entered his private office.

Descending to the lobby, Langhorne left the building by a side door, and walked to a little restaurant that was wedged in the side of a towering building. He seated himself at a table halfway back, and quietly ordered a cup of coffee.

He did not notice a man who was lounging by the door; nor did the other observe Irwin Langhorne. That man was Harlan Treffin, who had entered scarcely a minute before the millionaire. Treffin was waiting to use the telephone by the wall.

A woman left the phone, and Treffin fumbled with the receiver. He made a pretense of dropping a nickel in the slot. Leaning forward, he pressed his left hand beneath the box. Hanging up the receiver, he left the restaurant entirely unnoticed.

People were coming in and out. A middle-aged man in a checkered suit stopped directly across from the telephone and rattled a coin on the cigar counter. The cashier, busy making change several feet away, did not respond immediately. When he turned, he stared as he saw the peculiar expression which had appeared upon the face of the man at the counter.

The coin was no longer clicking. Its owner was slumping toward the floor. The cashier leaped to the rescue, but too late; the man in the checkered suit fell sidewise, and his head thudded when it struck the floor. Excitement reigned for several minutes; then the body was carried into the restaurant manager’s office.

Irwin Langhorne, who had been a witness of all this, stopped to pay his check at the cashier’s window.

He inquired about the man who had fallen.

“He’s dead,” said the cashier in a low voice. “It must have been a heart attack!”

IRWIN LANGHORNE was ill at ease as he went back to his office. He had reached a period in life when friends were dying at frequent intervals. He had known two who had succumbed to apoplexy. The thought of sudden death perturbed him. To witness it was a serious experience.

But there was another worry that now impressed itself upon Langhorne’s mind. That morning, the millionaire had received a strange, cryptic letter. With it had been clippings that pertained to three deaths upon Suburban trains, the passing of Henry Bellew, and two other deaths.

Death! It seemed to be in the air today. He had been reminded forcefully of it; now he had seen it strike!

Was this coincidence or fate?

In his private office, Langhorne managed to shake off the worries that beset him. He forgot about the unfortunate episode that had occurred in the restaurant.

THREE deaths had occurred that morning, each in a different place. All New York was to discuss those deaths before evening. New mystery perplexed the police by noon. Eager reporters took up the story.

Three deaths in public places were enough to start a police investigation; and when, in each instance, the surgeon’s report showed that gas poisoning was responsible, the result was high excitement at headquarters.

Late that afternoon, Detective Joe Cardona paid a visit to the office of Police Commissioner Ralph Weston. A stack of newspapers was piled upon the commissioner’s desk when Cardona entered. On this visit, there was very little ceremony. Weston eyed Cardona coldly, waved his hand toward the heap of journals, and asked a single-worded question:

“Well?”

Cardona sat wearily in a chair. His face was solemn. It showed that he was beaten. In despair, the detective came out with the facts as he had found them.

“I don’t know anything,” he confessed. “It looks like the railway stuff all over again. There were three killed there, commissioner. Three here in New York. Poison on the trains; gas this time. But we haven’t found a single clew.”

The commissioner stared through the window and thoughtfully thrummed the desk. When he faced Cardona, there was a new expression on his countenance.

“Cardona,” he declared, “you’re up against something big. When you couldn’t get any evidence on those train killings, I was considerably disappointed. But when I went over your reports, I became convinced that you had taken every step that was humanly possible.

“There were other deaths out there. Henry Bellew looked like an accident. His butler dying was a mystery. This fellow, Vernon Quinley, bombed in a garage, looked like something different. You didn’t connect the three with the train murders, nor did I.

“But now I’m convinced that there was a connection. One man is back of the whole shebang. These three deaths in Manhattan show that he is at work again. A master schemer. That’s evident.”

“I agree with you, commissioner,” said Cardona.

Weston arose and paced the floor.

“The newspapers are on it heavy,” he remarked. “It means that you’re on the spot, so far as they are concerned. But I’m with you this time, Cardona, and I’ll tell you why. The way that you went after the Suburban trains was proof that you were on the job. Frankly, Cardona, it’s too much for you. But there isn’t a man at headquarters who could do half what you have done.

“I’m in your boots now. Working on hunches. That’s all we appear to have. I can only hope that you will get a hunch that works. But I’m warning you in advance” — Weston paused emphatically — “when I tell you that your hunch had better be a quick one. This talk of a hidden fiend whose ways are beyond detection is going to raise havoc all the way up the line. You’ll be the first to feel it if it brings a shake-up. You’re on the spot, Cardona!”

“I know it,” said Cardona grimly.

WESTON resumed his chair. For the first time, a real understanding had been gained between the commissioner and the ace detective. When Ralph Weston spoke again, it was in a quiet, meditative tone.

“What have you learned?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Cardona admitted. “It looks like the hit-or-miss racket again; We’ve searched high and dry for bombs and suspicious characters. We can’t find either. My men have gone over every inch, commissioner.”

“Can you find any possible reason why the deaths should have occurred at those particular spots?”

“Not one,” responded Cardona. “I’ve caught a glimmer on the Felswood mess. Quinley was a commuter; so was Bellew. Maybe the aim was to get them. But here are three men — all unimportant, as before — and I can’t figure why three of them were bumped in one day.”

Weston nodded.

“I read the newspaper accounts,” he said, picking the uppermost paper from the pile. “Guy Bradley, a cigar-store clerk. Harold Egglesworth, a life insurance salesman. Peter Blossom, a wholesale poultry dealer. I can’t see why any one would be the victim of a widespread plot.”

“Something’s bound to follow,” remarked Cardona. “That’s the only hunch I’ve had so far. I’ve got men watching the places where the victims dropped dead — but it won’t do any good.”

“Why not?”

“Because the whole system has changed. At Felswood, there were deaths one a day, all at the same place under the same conditions Now it’s three in one day at different spots. I’m looking for one man in back of it all, but he’s foxier than before. It’s a muddle, commissioner; a real muddle.”

“Stick to it, Cardona,” said Weston tersely.

THE detective left the office. He started wearily along the street, glancing at headlines as he passed the frequent news stands. Death— death— death! That was all Cardona saw. What could be done to stop it?

The Shadow!

Cardona shrugged his shoulders. Here was crime that should surely lure the mysterious phantom who battled with the lawless. Yet so far — to Cardona’s way of thinking — the hand of The Shadow had not appeared.

Cardona was weary as he made his rounds. He went from one place to another, to talk with the men who were on watch.

Starting from the little arcade uptown, he rode by subway to the office building; then went to the little restaurant in the wall of the skyscraper. All places seemed barren of clews.

But while Cardona was going through this hopeless formality, another man was following the same trail.

A tall, hawk-nosed individual paused in the uptown arcade to light his brier pipe. As he lingered there, his sharp eyes looked everywhere. The only object that seemed conspicuous to them was the telephone box extending from the wall.

The tall man put in a telephone call. His long left hand, upon which glowed a strange, color-changing gem, moved along the side of the box, and then beneath. It emerged as the man completed his call.

Walking through the arcade, the tall man descended to the subway. He glanced at his left hand. A long streak of gluey substance had made a slight impression upon his palm. Quietly, the man drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the mark.

He made another telephone call in the lobby of the building, where the second death had occurred. As he strolled through and headed for the side entrance, he again wiped a line of gum from his left hand. The man’s last stop was in the little restaurant where Irwin Langhorne had seen the stroke of death.

Another telephone call. The sharp-eyed investigator went to the back of the restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. While he awaited it, he picked up a paper napkin and carefully wiped a third smudge from his hand.

An hour later, a light clicked in a darkened room. A bluish glare was reflected above the top of a polished table. Those same hands appeared beneath the glow. The strange, changing gem, The Shadow’s girasol, sparkled its iridescent hues.

The Shadow was in his sanctum. His hands were at work. To-day, The Shadow had solved one factor in the mystery. He had discovered a new weapon in The Death Giver’s armory.

The right hand wrote beneath the blue light:

A pause; then the hand added:

The final notations were:

The writing was in ink. Letter by letter, these notations began to disappear. That was the way when The Shadow inscribed his thoughts. The ink that he used was a chemical fluid that evaporated in the air.

A final remark appeared upon the blank sheet:

The writing glared blue; then faded. The light clicked out. A tiny spot of illumination appeared as a set of ear phones were drawn across the table. Burbank’s quiet voice came over the wire.

The Shadow spoke instructions. Burbank’s responses followed. The conversation ended. The little signal disappeared. A swish came through the darkness as The Shadow moved across the sanctum.

Then came the laugh. A strange, sinister shudder awoke reverberations throughout that silent room. The laugh rose to a strident, mocking cry. Invisible walls threw back the eerie sound. When the quivering mirth had ended with a myriad of ghoulish echoes, The Shadow was gone.

Tomorrow. The Shadow had planned. Tomorrow, his amazing mind would meet the challenge of The Death Giver!

Where Joe Cardona had placed useless watchers, seeking for a needle in a haystack, The Shadow would use scientific skill.

Tomorrow, he would trace the man over whom the threat of death was impending. Through that man, The Shadow would follow the trail back to Thade, The Death Giver!