The Death Triangle

CHAPTER XIII THE SHADOW’S SEARCH

LONG minutes had passed since Miles Vorber had followed Howard Wycliff and Paul Marchelle up the stairs. Complete silence reigned throughout the darkness of the Wycliff mansion. A light suddenly glimmered in the lower hall.

The rays of a tiny flashlight centered themselves upon the library door. Something swished softly in the darkness as The Shadow approached the barrier. The invisible investigator — his presence revealed only by his light — listened intently before he began operations on the lock.

The lock was a formidable one. The Shadow, however, attacked it with skill that was equaled only by the amazing silence with which he worked. While a hidden hand held the little flashlight, gloved fingers crept into view. They carried a projecting pick of blackened metal.

With this instrument, The Shadow probed the lock. His sensitive hand seemed to feel the hidden tumblers. A tiny click came forth, its sound muffled. Another click.

The Shadow wedged the pick in a new position. The light focused downward. The visible hand moved to the knob. The door of the library opened.

The Shadow paused before entering. His flashlight was out. His keen ears were listening. Any sound within that mansion would have been audible to The Shadow. Satisfied that no one was about, the black-garbed being entered. The pick came from the lock. The door closed.

The Shadow was in the shuttered library. Nevertheless, he did not turn on the light. He preferred the rays of his electric torch. This search was to be a concentrated one.

The beam of the flashlight enlarged. The Shadow approached a heavy table.

The drawers of this piece of furniture had been searched. Yet The Shadow was not satisfied. Noiselessly, he opened each drawer. The light showed the interiors. The Shadow’s hand made quick and effective tests.

This was not the blundering type of search that had been made by Howard Wycliff and his companions. The Shadow, using the skillful methods of one who knew every trick of concealment, looked for double bottoms and false backs.

Despite the thoroughness of The Shadow’s search, his work was accomplished with surprising rapidity. The Shadow possessed the uncanny faculty of rejecting useless spots. He picked only those which might be of importance to him.

Within fifteen minutes after he had begun the search, The Shadow was finished with the chosen objects of furniture. His flashlight described a sweeping arc about the room, toward the bookcases with their rows of volumes. These were likely objects; they would follow the furniture after the searchers began their work upon the morrow.

THE SHADOW, however, left the bookcases for the moment. His flashlight gleamed upon the end of the room where the discarded furniture stood. Beyond those pieces was a shuttered window. The Shadow went in that direction.

The iron shutters were formidable. Drawn together, they were held in place by the simple expedient of a hinged bar that swung from one shutter into a receiving arm upon the other. The shutters overlapped; it would have required remarkable ability to open them from the outside.

The Shadow turned back toward the room. He let the rays of the torch fall upon the miscellaneous collection of discarded articles which had been placed near the window. The light fell upon chairs, book rack, and tables. It turned downward, and its rays passed directly between the legs of the two light tables.

Stepping forward, The Shadow carefully moved the tables apart, using one hand on each. His flashlight seemed to dwindle as it dropped to the floor. It went out. A soft laugh whispered uncannily through the room.

In darkness, The Shadow was investigating. His actions were invisible; yet they must have been important, for the soft laugh was repeated. Here, in this end of the blackened room, The Shadow was engaged in some discovery. Light taps sounded from the floor, with the weirdness of raps heard at a spirit seance.

Did those knocks have significance? Their sound might well have indicated communication with the dead. Indeed, the parallel was a significant one. The light, weird noises could have signified that The Shadow was en rapport with dead Cyril Wycliff; for this master investigator was learning facts which only the murdered master of the mansion had known!

The rappings ceased. The whispered laugh was scarcely audible in the gloom. The light came on, rising upward. Suddenly it disappeared. A cloak swished in the darkness. The Shadow had gained a warning.

It came more clearly than when the phantom listener had first heard it — a slight click beyond the door of the room. The turning of the knob; the squeaking of the hinges — these were sounds which The Shadow had avoided in making his entry, but which the new arrival could not eliminate.

The door was open. A slight wisp of air entered the room. Then came the muffled sound of the closing door. Two living persons were now within the library. One was The Shadow; the other, an undeclared visitor.

FOR a full minute, the arrival waited tensely in the darkness. The Shadow had left no token of his presence, yet the ominous atmosphere of this large apartment was evidently having its effect upon the prowler who had entered. The breathing of the visitor could be heard; there was no sound, however, that proved The Shadow was here.

A man moved across the floor. He stumbled against the desk and stopped his progress. His breathing indicated that he was returning to the wall beside the door. He waited there, his breathing stifled, apparently intent to learn if the sound of his motion could have been heard outside the library.

The light switch clicked. Ceiling lamps brought illumination which showed the turned figure of a man clad in a dressing gown, still listening at the door. To all appearances, he was the only occupant of the room, this person whose back alone was in view.

The Shadow had completely disappeared. Yet he had not entirely destroyed evidence of his whereabouts. In the light, there was a sign which betokened The Shadow’s presence — a long streak of blackness that lay across the floor. Though motionless, that strip of darkness was traceable to its source. Between the end of a bookcase and the wall at the windowed end of the room, a phantom figure was standing in a spot well chosen to escape observation.

The Shadow, his form no more than the solid blackness which could have been cast by the end of the bookcase, was watching the man beside the door. Blazing eyes were upon the new intruder. Those eyes, alone, gave visible token of the actual figure of The Shadow. Those eyes, however, were ready to be shrouded in the darkness cast by the wide brim of the slouch hat that projected above them.

The Shadow watched. He saw the man at the door step backward, then turn. That action was the final revealment of the identity which The Shadow had already guessed. The secret visitor, a duplicate key gleaming in his scrawny fist, was Miles Vorber, the old servant!