The Embassy Murders

CHAPTER VIII ON THE SPEEDWAY

CLYDE BURKE was alone in the booth at the Club Rivoli. Logan had strolled away to play roulette. Clyde had dropped the curtain. He had been listening intently to the conversation which he had heard from the adjoining booth.

“So sorry, Lito.” The woman’s voice was speaking. “I thought we could stay here for a few hours longer. I haven’t played a single chip at the roulette table!”

“It is nearly eleven,” came Carraza’s reply. “I must go to the legation. I was told to be there by ten. It is important, senorita. I have papers—”

“Can you leave them there?”

“Si, senorita. They were to have been copied. I shall have to say that I did not have time.”

“And then?”

“The papers will be placed in the safe. Perhaps I shall be told to continue my copying tomorrow. Perhaps the work will be intrusted to another. I cannot tell.”

“Can’t you return here?” Anita’s tone was urging. “Leave the papers, senor. Come back to see me. I shall play at roulette while you are absent.”

“Very well.” Carraza’s tone was one of agreement. “But I must go quite soon. A few turns of roulette; then I shall leave, senorita.”

Clyde Burke rose from his seat. He opened the curtain and strolled toward a roulette table. He realized that a prompt report to The Shadow would be essential. The clock in the gaming room showed five minutes before eleven. If only The Shadow would be outside by the veranda at the end of his half hour!

THUS thinking, Clyde swung from the table and moved toward the outer door. An attendant was talking in a telephone booth; the man dropped the receiver and turned toward the roulette tables. At the same moment, he spied Clyde Burke.

“Ah!” exclaimed the attendant. “Mr. Burke! A call for you, sir, from the newspaper office.”

“Thanks,” returned Clyde. Entering the booth, he picked up the receiver.

“This is Burke speaking,” he informed.

“Report.” The word came in a weird, whispered tone. Clyde knew that this was not the voice that the attendant had heard. Used expressly for Clyde’s benefit, this eerie tone was a token of identity. Clyde knew that The Shadow was on the other end of the wire.

“The roulette player left,” began Clyde, in a low voice. “He was followed by Marquette—”

“The others.”

“They have just left their booth. The man is Lito Carraza, attache of a South American legation. The woman’s name is Anita.”

“Where are they now?”

“At the roulette table.”

“Watch them.” The Shadow’s monotone was an order. “Tell me what is happening. Look all about. Report.”

Clyde obeyed, half wondering. Suddenly, he caught the import of The Shadow’s order. Something was happening within the roulette room — something which Clyde Burke alone observed.

Whistler Ingliss had strolled from the doorway at the side of the room. Clyde could see the gambler’s lips pursed as they trilled a tune. Events of another night were undergoing repetition. Clyde was quick to whisper what he saw.

“Whistler is giving a signal,” he informed. “Men are coming from the side booths. The same men that I saw here before. Two — four of them.”

“Watch Whistler.”

“He is looking toward the roulette table. He has caught Anita’s eye. She is talking to Lito Carraza. The man is preparing to leave—”

“Report received. Off duty.”

Clyde Burke stood dumfounded as he heard the click of the receiver at the other end. He hung up his own receiver and stepped from the booth. The reason for The Shadow’s quick termination of the telephone call was dawning on Clyde Burke.

Lito Carraza, heading into Washington, was to become the prey of mobsters! Anita had lured the South American attache into a trap. Whistler Ingliss, receiving a sign from the woman, had ordered thugs to action!

The Shadow must have called from the city. That fact seemed obvious to Clyde. Could he reach here before Lito Carraza had left? That seemed impossible. The young South American was already on his way to the front door of the Club Rivoli.

Clyde watched Carraza’s departure. The attache seemed a trifle anxious; Clyde knew that his expression was brought about purely by the thought of the reprimand that might be awaiting him at the legation.

The door closed. Whistler Ingliss had retired to his office. The woman with whom Carraza had dined, was playing roulette. The attache’s departure had been observed by no one except Clyde Burke. The Shadow’s agent alone had seen a man start forth to doom!

OFF duty!

Such had been The Shadow’s order. Yet Clyde felt worried. Following Carraza’s path, he reached the veranda at the front of the Club Rivoli. The lights of a large, foreign roadster had been turned on; a man at the wheel was pressing the starter. It was Carraza, leaving. Clyde was tempted to leap forward and warn the man to stop. His confidence in The Shadow prevented him.

As Carraza’s car began to roll away, Clyde realized a new angle to the situation. Men had been dispatched to attack the South American, but they would certainly avoid an encounter in the neighborhood of the Club Rivoli. They would try to get Carraza between here and his legation.

The Shadow had foreseen that fact! There lay the reason for his prompt action. The idea brought quick decision to Clyde Burke. Off duty, The Shadow’s agent had become a news seeker. He would follow into Washington.

Clyde called to the driver of a cab. The taxi rolled to the steps. Entering the vehicle, Clyde told the man to take him into the city. He added that he was in a hurry. The jehu grinned.

“Wait’ll we hit the speedway, boss,” he said. “I’ll show you some fast time.”

“All right,” agreed Clyde. “I’d like to see it.”

The Shadow’s agent knew that speed would be necessary to keep up with the pace that Lito Carraza could make in his foreign roadster. In this surmise, Clyde was correct. Carraza, leaving the Club Rivoli, had stepped on the gas with a vengeance.

Heading toward the broad speedway, the South American attache was counting on a clear road for his quick trip back to the legation. The glow from the dashboard of his roadster showed his fuming lips. Carraza was annoyed because he had lingered so long at the Club Rivoli.

The roadster swerved as it reached the speedway. As Carraza pressed the accelerator, another car shot out from a side road. It was a rakish touring car. It took up Carraza’s trail. From a hundred feet behind, the pursuing car began to lose ground as Carraza piloted his roadster at a speed of eighty miles an hour.

The attache, eager to get back to headquarters, had figured that his position would serve him should traffic police observe his speed. The road ahead was clear. Beyond the bright lights that lined the Potomac was the glow of the city, dominated by brilliance that showed the capitol building and the monument.

Carraza slackened slightly for a long turn. Then, as he pressed the accelerator for a straight stretch, he muttered angrily. An old sedan was backing crosswise to block the speedway. Its erratic motion, in the path of Carraza’s blinding lights, was a signal for immediate caution.

There was time to avoid a collision, even at the speed with which the roadster was traveling. Carraza stepped on the brake. His lunging car swerved, but held to the road as it came to a rapid stop. Intuitively, the South American turned the wheel so that the nose of his car pointed at an angle behind the balking sedan.

A TONGUE of flame spat from the sedan. A bullet zimmed against the windshield of Carraza’s roadster. The glass cracked, but did not shatter. Another flash of flame. Carraza flung open the door beside the driver’s seat and leaped to the speedway, on the side away from the stalled sedan. His eyes opened wide with fright.

Looming down from the direction which he had come was a rakish touring car. Its headlights showed Carraza plainly. From the side of the approaching automobile came an opening shot that missed its mark, but battered the side of the roadster.

Caught between two fires, Carraza leaped frantically to the front of his car. As his cowering form clutched the radiator, another shot came from the sedan. Certain doom awaited the attache. It would be but a matter of seconds.

Then came the interruption that neither Carraza nor his pursuers had expected. The roar of a powerful motor surged from the bend just ahead of the sedan. With terrific speed, a roadster of greater power than Carraza’s came hurtling down upon the sedan.

Gunmen, about to aim at their prey, turned to see this arriving car. The roadster, bearing down at ninety, seemed driverless! Behind its wheel loomed a spectral shape that seemed like a monstrous creature of the night!

Death was the driver of that car. Death, in the person of The Shadow! The bark of a huge automatic was the answer to the gunmen’s challenge. The puny spats of revolver fire, directed at a hurtling target were wild attempts to meet the power of the automatic.

Hot lead seared into the midst of crouching mobsters. Hoarse screams were the replies as useless revolvers clattered to the concrete of the speedway. As deadly as a crushing Juggernaut, The Shadow had hurled vengeance into the ranks of men who were here to murder.

As The Shadow’s car swerved past the front of the sedan, men in the touring car opened new and closer fire upon Lito Carraza. The attache screamed as a bullet clipped his shoulder. Blindly, he plunged forward, staggering directly toward the blocking sedan.

But for The Shadow’s quick and precise action, Carraza’s course would have led him to sure death. A few seconds before, the sedan had contained four men whose hands were ready with revolvers. That circumstance had changed. The Shadows perfect shots had done their work. Not a single hand could rise to shoot down the victim who came staggering into the death trap.

The touring car had stopped. Gangsters, leaping from its doors, were on Carraza’s trail. They swung as The Shadow’s car swerved past Carraza’s roadster. Blindly, they fired into the glare as jamming breaks brought the car of vengeance to a stop.

Revolver bullets spattered against the windshield. They might as well have driven against steel as that thick, bulletproof barrier with which The Shadow’s speedy car was equipped.

With left hand on the wheel, The Shadow answered with his right. His automatic, thrust from beside the windshield, picked out the ruffians who snarled before the brilliance of The Shadow’s headlights.

One ugly faced ruffian sprawled. A second, firing vain shots, staggered as a bullet reached him. Another gangster crumpled. Two who remained took to flight.

They were too late. A timely bullet clipped the first as he dodged beyond Carraza’s roadster. A second shot caught the second man as he sought to clamber back into the roadster. On the step, the gangster screamed, threw out his arms and toppled backward to the concrete of the speedway.

Only one of the would-be assassins found opportunity to escape. He was the leader of the two-car mob — the man at the wheel of the touring car. “Bugs” Ritler, trusted henchman of Darvin Rochelle, had sensed the presence of a mighty menace as he had seen his squirming minions fall.

Springing from the wheel, Bugs went through the door on the left as The Shadow was dropping the last pair of snarling rats. Without pausing to fire a single shot, Bugs took a flying leap over a fence at the side of the speedway and gained shelter amid a clump of trees.

To the ears of the terrified gang leader came the strident sound of a taunting laugh. It was a weird cry that sounded like a knell when it broke the silence which had followed the stilling of gunfire.

The laugh of The Shadow!

SINISTER, mocking mirth, it rang out as the token of swift triumph. In quick, emphatic seconds, The Shadow had spelled doom to men of crime. Single-handed, he had turned the odds in his own behalf.

From the wheel of his powerful roadster, The Shadow could see Lito Carraza. The attache whose life The Shadow had saved, was clutching his wounded shoulder as he stood, white-faced, close by the sedan where bullet-riddled mobsters lay.

Carraza was safe. No one remained to make a new attempt upon his life. The Shadow, turning his gaze along the speedway, spied the lights of a taxicab approaching from the direction in which Carraza had come.

The big roadster moved backward. Its rear wheels gripped the dirt that edged the far side of the speedway. The car roared forward. Swerving a foot from the rear of Carraza’s stalled car, it shot along the broad road, back toward Washington.

Above the roaring throb of the powerful motor came a final burst of mockery. The laugh was repeated, like a distant echo, as the big roadster took the bend. The tail-light twinkled from sight, just as the taxicab rolled up to the spot where three driverless cars were stretched across the speedway.

The Shadow’s hand had struck. His strident laugh had marked his victory. Triumphant, The Shadow had departed into the darkness from which he had emerged!