CHAPTER VII THE SHADOW HEARS

MIDNIGHT had arrived. Amid the turmoil of Manhattan, quiet existed in a little room. A pitiful figure lay upon a cot. His eyes staring upward, Sparkles Lorskin was breathing out his life.

Other crooks had died as Sparkles was dying. Evil, wasted lives had reached an end when they had been used for crime in opposition to The Shadow. This was but the aftermath of a battle in which justice had gained a grim triumph.

Yet Lorskin’s useless life was still to play a part in affairs of crime. Unwittingly, the dying crook was to reveal an evil deed which another had accomplished in his stead. Ignorant of all save his own hopeless condition, Sparkles Lorskin was about to state a fact that would lead to immediate consequences.

Two men were standing by Lorskin’s bedside. One was Joe Cardona, ace detective of the New York force. The other was Clyde Burke, police reporter of the New York Classic. Cardona was here in the interests of the law: to learn what little he might glean concerning the affray at Lorskin’s apartment. Burke, presumably, was on the job to get a story for his newspaper readers.

Yet Burke, as he stood watching Cardona and the dying crook, held another purpose in his mind. A keen-faced journalist, a man who could keep confidences, Clyde Burke had a greater duty than the one which he owed his newspaper.

Clyde Burke was a secret agent of The Shadow. Tonight, he was performing a function which was part of his routine. It was his work to keep tabs on those who had failed before The Shadow’s power, that he might report back to his unseen chief any added details which pertained to crime.

Joe Cardona, his swarthy countenance steady, was speaking in a slow, monotonous tone that drummed into Sparkles Lorskin’s dying brain. With cool, effective effort, the star detective was seeking an answer to certain speculative questions.

“We’ve got the stuff you stole, Lorskin,” Cardona was declaring. “Mitts Cordy is dead. So is his mob. Tell us what you know about them.”

Sparkles Lorskin stared. He did not speak.

“You’re dying, Lorskin,” reminded Cardona. “Dying — do you hear me? Come clean — before you die. Square yourself. Tell us what you know about Mitts Cordy and the rest.”

“Mitts Cordy!” The name came in a gasp from Lorskin. “Mitts Cordy. Where is he?”

Delirium showed as the dying crook turned his eyes toward the detective.

“Mitts got his,” informed Cardona. “He’s dead, Lorskin. Dead, like you will be—”

“Mitts was my pal!” coughed Lorskin. “My pal — he’s dead. Some — somebody got him. Somebody got me.”

“You were working together, eh?”

“The old doctor!” gulped the crook. “What — what happened to him? Where — where is he?”

“What doctor?” quizzed Cardona.

“Arberg,” said Sparkles Lorskin, in a weary tone. “Johan Arberg — at my apartment — to buy — to buy the stuff that—”

“Doctor Johan Arberg,” declared Cardona slowly. “Tell me how he figured in this, Lorskin.”

“Money!” blurted Sparkles, lifting his hands to claw in the air. “Money! He brought it with him! He came from the hotel — from the Imperator! He had the money with him. He wanted to buy gems — I wanted his money!”

The crook was staring wildly at the ceiling. His hands dropped heavily upon his chest. Blood trickled from his lips as he coughed huskily. A doctor entered and stood beside the bed. Lorskin’s head rolled wearily to one side. The physician turned to Joe Cardona.

“Dead,” was the single word the doctor uttered.


JOE CARDONA pondered as he strolled out into the corridor, with Clyde Burke at his elbow. The detective stared at the reporter, his eyes mirroring the deep concentration in his mind.

“I’ve got the idea now, Burke,” remarked Cardona. “It looked phony to me — a fight between Sparkles Lorskin and Mitts Cordy. With the two working together, though, it gets different. Who is this Doctor Johan Arberg? Did you ever hear anything of him or his work?”

“A blood specialist,” said the reporter, recalling a news item that he had read. “A big fellow from Copenhagen. Came to New York from Chicago. It seems to me I read something about him being a gem collector.”

“Ah!” A glimmer of understanding appeared upon Cardona’s face. “That tells us the story. Those jewels in Lorskin’s place were all stolen goods. They’re being traced now. Lorskin had a wise stunt — getting a foreign gem collector to buy them.

“From what Lorskin said, the old doctor must have been in the apartment. I see the game. Mitts Cordy there to grab him. It’s like the guy had a big roll with him — the way Lorskin mentioned money just now. Doctor Arberg must have managed to get away. That doesn’t explain it, though.”

“Explain what?” questioned Clyde Burke, in a tone of pretended curiosity.

“Explain how all that shooting started,” answered Cardona. “It doesn’t tell what happened to Doctor Johan Arberg, either.”

“There’s a story in back of this!” exclaimed Clyde enthusiastically.

“You just finding that out?” laughed Cardona. “Well, you’re Johnny on the spot, Burke. Come along. We’ll get the story all right.”

“Where?”

“Over at the Hotel Imperator. Come along — it’s only a few minutes from here.”


SHORTLY afterward, Detective Joe Cardona entered the lobby of the Imperator. Clyde Burke accompanied the sleuth. Cardona strode to the desk and asked for Doctor Johan Arberg. He showed his badge as he spoke. The clerk stared.

“Doctor Arberg is in his room,” he stated. “He has been there since” — the clerk turned to check a record — “since ten minutes after ten.”

“That’s about two hours ago,” remarked Cardona. “Well, we’re going up to see him.”

“Here is the house detective,” informed the clerk, as a stocky man came up to join the group. “Our new man.”

“Detective Cardona, from headquarters,” said Joe, introducing himself. “There was some shooting in an apartment over on the East Side. A dying man said that it was a game to grab some dough from Doctor Johan Arberg.

“I want to find out what the doctor knows. Apparently, he was to be a victim. The crook was delirious when he croaked. I couldn’t tell whether or not Arberg had been over to his place when—”

“What time was the shooting?” questioned the clerk.

“Shortly before nine,” replied Cardona.

“Doctor Arberg was here then,” stated the clerk, looking at his record. “He received a telephone call just before nine; one a few minutes afterward. He went out at nine twenty, and returned at ten ten.”

“Hm-m-m,” grunted Cardona. “Well, that means he wasn’t over at the apartment. I’d been thinking that, anyway. He couldn’t have gotten away from that place very well. I want to talk to him, though. Here’s the way we’ll work it.

“We’ll go upstairs, the three of us” — Cardona indicated himself, Clyde Burke, and the house detective — “before you call the room from the desk. When Arberg answers, tell him a visitor has gone up. We’ll rap on the door right after that.”

“All right,” agreed the clerk.

The trio ascended. They reached the twenty-second floor. They waited outside of Doctor Arberg’s room. The telephone began to ring. No one answered it. The ringing continued.

“Sounds like he isn’t in,” declared Cardona, in a low tone. “That noise ought to have wakened him up by now.”

“The lights are on,” declared the hotel detective, peering at the bottom of the door from the opposite side of the corridor.

“Let’s have the pass key,” ordered Cardona.

To his surprise, the detective found the door unlocked. He opened the barrier and stood upon the threshold of the room. There, Cardona stared at the crumpled form of Doctor Johan Arberg.

“Dead!” exclaimed Cardona, advancing into the room. “Stand back, men. Don’t disturb a thing! This is murder!”


THE ace sleuth did not even approach the telephone. He stationed Clyde Burke beside the door. He ordered the hotel detective to unlock another room and call the desk. When this had been done, Cardona hastened to the telephone in the other room, and called headquarters. He returned to find Clyde and the house man standing exactly where he had left them.

“The police surgeon is on the way,” announced Cardona. “Inspector Timothy Klein is coming up. You’re sure that dead man is Doctor Arberg?”

“Positively,” responded the house detective.

Clyde Burke strolled toward the corridor. Cardona stopped him.

“Where are you going, Burke?” he questioned.

“Out,” responded Clyde weakly. “This sort of hit me, Joe, seeing a dead man all of a sudden. I’ve looked at plenty of them in the morgue — but unexpectedly, like this—”

“You’re not calling the newspaper?” questioned Cardona.

“Not a bit of it, Joe,” assured Clyde. “There’s no story yet. They’d only tell me to get more details.”

“O.K.,” agreed Cardona. “After the inspector gets here, with the surgeon, you can shoot the works.”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” assured Clyde. “I just want to steady up a bit — that’s all.”

Clyde walked toward the elevator. The hotel detective snorted.

“Kind of weak around the gills,” he remarked. “Funny, for a police reporter to get that way.”

“Not at all,” returned Cardona. “It’s liable to hit anybody at times.”


CLYDE BURKE, when he reached the lobby, showed complete recovery from the faintness which had struck him. He hurried to an outside telephone and dialed a number. A quiet response came over the wire.

“Burbank speaking,” said the voice.

“Report from Burke,” declared Clyde. “Doctor Johan Arberg murdered in his room at the Hotel Imperator.”

“Await reply,” returned Burbank.

Clyde gave the number of the pay telephone and waited in the booth. Burbank, the man whom he had just called, was the contact agent of The Shadow. A call to Burbank meant that word would be relayed to The Shadow himself.

Clyde Burke, like other active agents of The Shadow, knew virtually nothing concerning the whereabouts of the mysterious chief. Through Burbank, however, they could always reach The Shadow in an emergency.

The telephone rang. Clyde lifted the receiver. He again heard Burbank’s quiet tones. The message was terse.

“Report forwarded,” assured the contact man. “Cover the murder as a regular story for the Classic.”

Clyde Burke reflected as he strode back toward the Hotel Imperator. Burbank’s message meant exactly one thing: that The Shadow, himself, intended to investigate the murder of Doctor Johan Arberg.

Clyde Burke complimented himself upon the speed with which he had sent word to The Shadow. He was sure that the master of darkness, when he arrived, would be able to trace the murderer of the Danish specialist.

Sparkles Lorskin had been a link to Doctor Johan Arberg. The dead Dane would, in turn, point the way to some other person, once The Shadow arrived upon the scene. Perhaps, by that time, Clyde might be able to learn something from Joe Cardona’s study of the case.

Clyde Burke would have been amazed had he known the insidious truth that lay behind the death of Doctor Johan Arberg. His thoughts were speculations on the possible identity of an unknown murderer — not on other deeds of crime.

A problem for The Shadow — the tracking of a fiend. Such were Clyde’s Burke’s thoughts. Yet even while the reporter speculated; even while The Shadow was heading for the scene of crime, new and more insidious murder was reaching its completion elsewhere!

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