The House That Vanished

CHAPTER IX THE SHADOW’S FINDING

“THAT’S finished.”

Clyde Burke made the remark as he sealed a well-packed envelope. He placed it on the writing desk, where Harry Vincent was still engaged with fountain pen. A few minutes later, Harry ceased writing and folded his final paper. He tucked this sheet into a partly filled envelope. Like Clyde, Harry sealed the wrapper.

Harry had decided to room with Clyde. Uninstructed by The Shadow, the two agents had gone immediately to the hotel. There they had compiled individual reports.

“Of all places,” mused Clyde Burke, staring from the window, “this town of Sheffield is the last where I’d expect excitement. The only place that’s lighted is the courthouse; and that’s simply because of all this crime.”

“Quite a few street lamps,” observed Harry, strolling to the window. “That’s one help, Clyde.”

“Yes,” returned the reporter, “but what use are they? Ordinarily, nobody would be up after nine o’clock in this burg.”

“There’s someone now, coming from the courthouse.”

“Sure. From the courthouse. Probably some deputy. No — it’s Doctor Claig.”

“I thought he had started home.”

“Probably he got talking with Goodling. Claig likes to talk. He chatted with me for half an hour while we were waiting for you to come back.”

“What was his topic?”

“A lot of bunk about the swell sanitarium he used to run. It’s off on a hillside, about three miles north of town. I mentioned the place in my report.”

“He’s retired now, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Living alone amid the ruins of his former glory. Wants to sell the old place. But he can’t find a buyer.”

Claig had come across the street while the two men were talking. The physician had entered a coupe that was parked in a space beneath the side of the hotel. Clyde and Harry heard the starter; they saw the gleam of lights. The coupe pulled out and started northward.

Clyde had regained his hired coupe on the way into town. He had found it undisturbed in front of the traffic light. At present, it was parked at the rear of the hotel.

Claig’s car was the last that had been at the side of the hotel. To Harry and Clyde, the space seemed empty as they stared downward into the darkness.

THEY were wrong. There was a figure in that blackened space beside the old hotel. A shrouded form had arrived shortly before Doctor Claig. Silently, unseen, the shape was entering a side door of the hotel

Looking up from below, The Shadow had seen his agents at the window. He was coming to gain their reports. Yet neither Clyde nor Harry suspected the proximity of their invisible master.

“I hope we receive a call from Westbury,” remarked Clyde, in an undertone. “Of course, there’s a lot of dope we can’t give over the wire, even though we’re supposed to be working for the press.”

“That’s true,” agreed Harry, “but I’ve a hunch that we’ll gain different contact, Clyde. A closer interview. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I was out at the house on Dobson’s Road.”

“You mean you saw someone there?”

“No. But I’m sure Goodling was wrong on one point of his theory. His idea was sound about Kermal’s men being there to cover up; but—”

“That was Parrell’s idea.”

“One and the same. Goodling agreed with it. The fellows went from here after they shot down Yager. But it wasn’t Blissop’s pals who gave them trouble.”

“Then who were the men there?”

“Some more of the same bunch. Some came to cover the courthouse. Others went to search the old house. And then—”

Clyde nodded as Harry paused. The reporter understood. Harry had viewed the scene of the fray and had recognized that The Shadow must have battled alone against two groups of crooks. Those who had slain Yager had come to warn their fellows.

Both agents were thinking, picturing the lone fighter and his odds. Clyde’s face was serious. He was wondering if The Shadow had come unscathed from the fray. Harry’s face was troubled also. Both agents stared musingly from the window.

The door behind them opened. Without noise, almost imperceptibly at first. Then, into the dull light of the room came the living figure of their chief. Beneath the table lamp lay the sealed envelopes; near by were the keys of Clyde’s coupe

The Shadow approached. He picked up the envelopes and thrust them beneath his cloak. He detached one of the keys from the ring. His eyes viewed his agents by the window. Stealthily, The Shadow withdrew.

Unseen, unheard, the master sleuth had come and gone. But as token of his departure, he did not close the door as silently as he had opened it. From the hallway, The Shadow drew the door shut with a slight thump.

Harry and Clyde swung about, electrified by the sound. They saw the closed door. They stared at the table. They observed that the envelopes were gone. For a moment, Clyde showed alarm; then Harry’s chuckle made the reporter smile.

Someone had entered unnoticed to gain those envelopes. That same person could have departed just as silently. The click of the door had been a deliberate signal on the part of The Shadow. An act that told his agents that it was he who had removed their messages.

SHORTLY afterward, a light gleamed in a room on the same floor of the hotel. The Shadow had chosen an unoccupied room as a temporary sanctum. Blinds were drawn over windows. The glare came from a shaded table lamps, its rays centered downward upon the woodwork.

The Shadow was reading the reports of his agents. They were inked in code. Writing faded as The Shadow perused separately folded pages. But with pencil in an ungloved hand, The Shadow made notations as he continued his perusal. The reports finished, his hands brought a large sheet of paper into the light.

The Shadow compiled a column of notations, that read as follows:

The Shadow paused. Instead of continuing the column, he started a new sequence at the other side of the paper. This second column stated:

What Harry Vincent had guessed, The Shadow knew. The band that had come to the abandoned house were on their way to contact those already there. Both groups had joined in battle with The Shadow.

But Harry had not even guessed at one fact which The Shadow had definitely noted. That was the sudden break which had come in the sequence of events. That break explained the reason why The Shadow had formed two columns instead of only one.

Events that concerned Taussig Kermal had begun with craft and strategy. Blissop had been slain; but the death of that servant had not been an open one. Only the chance arrival of Goodling and Lanford had made Blissop’s death a fact known to the law.

Goodling and Lanford could easily have been murdered in the old house. Instead, they had been doped and removed. That showed that Kermal still preferred craft; that he was confident that his trail would not be followed.

Upon that point, The Shadow made side notations; this time in ink, that dried, then faded. Thoughts that The Shadow gave in brief consideration; then dropped in order to return to his main theme.

His references were to Goodling and Lanford. Kermal could not have known that the pair had met Turner on the road from Sheffield. Goodling and Lanford had been found in the prosecutor’s coupe, on the very edge of Roaring Creek.

Had Kermal seen necessity for their death, he could have seen to it that the coupe was rolled into the creek, with the motor running. The doped men would have perished. Their deaths would have been classed as accidental — without Turner’s testimony, which Kermal could not have anticipated.

Kermal had been confident that his new hideout would not be discovered. He had deliberately allowed Goodling and Lanford to live, despite the testimony that they would later give concerning the body of Blissop.

Moreover, Kermal had allowed Croy to travel from the hideout on this very night. Encountering Lanford and Clyde Burke, Croy had captured the former and shaken off the latter. Up to that point, Kermal and his aids had persisted in their policy of avoiding unnecessary killings.

Then came the break. Yager, murdered under the very nose of half a dozen witnesses. Why had the policy been changed? Yager could have been seized as readily as Lanford. Unless Yager’s contact with Blissop had been unknown to Kermal. In that case, there would have been no use in watching the courthouse at all.

The prowlers at the house showed the next step in this new and perplexing policy. Since Croy had ventured from the new hideout, why had Kermal not sent him alone to the old house?

Last of all, the arrival of the murderers there. Since the mystery of the house stood as Kermal’s strongest protection; since its supposed evanishment left no beginning from which to pick up the lawyer’s trail, why had he not warned Yager’s murderers to stay clear of it after delivering death?

Obviously, they had gone to warn the men who were already there. Why, again, had that been a necessary move? Yager had not named the location of the house.

Goodling and the others were heading for Yager’s cabin, two miles beyond the house. The prowlers who had come in place of Croy could easily have finished their search and departed with the trunk.

Confusion on the part of Yager’s murderers was no explanation. Men who fired point-blank through the window of a prosecutor’s office were too hardened to become stampeded after a simple get-away.

THE SHADOW’S finding was definite. The capture of Lanford, by Croy, constituted the final step in a policy of craft and strategy. The murder of Yager, very shortly after Lanford’s capture, began a policy of open defiance; a series of bold moves that nullified all the cunning measures that had preceded it.

Taussig Kermal had become a hunted man. The murder of Yager had aroused the law to a high pitch of action. The trail to the house that he had left had cleared all mystery. The law had not even stopped to analyze the sudden change of action.

Only The Shadow was making such analysis. He could see the reason behind the bold murder of Yager and the flight of killers to the mystery house. His answer was a whispered laugh that spoke of hidden knowledge. His long fist crumpled the paper that bore the written columns.

A NEW matter concerned The Shadow. That of Kermal’s present hideout. Quick comments appeared upon new paper; these were inscribed in vivid blue ink.

A pause. The last word faded. Then, in vivid letters, The Shadow wrote a name upon the paper:

A whispered laugh sounded as the name faded, letter by letter. Again, The Shadow had pieced important points. Daggart had been wounded. Clyde’s report stated that Lanford had spoken of his paleness; the freshness of the bandages.

All pointed to skilled medical attention. Someone at the mystery house had tended the wounded secretary in capable fashion. Goodling and Lanford had been treated with a hypodermic needle. A likely item in the kit of a medical practitioner, on hand because of a wounded patient.

Claig had thrust himself straight into the investigation. It was he who had examined Goodling and Lanford after their experience. As an informant for Kermal, none could be better than Claig.

The doctor’s old sanitarium could fill the bill as the new hideout in this emergency. Croy’s quick seizure of Fred Lanford at the traffic light proved that the servant did not have far to go.

Searchers were already on the job. They would scour the countryside for abandoned houses. They would pass up Claig’s house as a matter of course. The physician had worked himself into the affairs of the law.

The Shadow, however, remained undeceived. The light clicked out; a cloak swished in darkness. A few minutes later, Clyde Burke’s coupe rolled from its parking space behind the Weatherby Hotel.

The Shadow was on his way to pay an unseen visit to the country residence of Doctor Leo Claig.