The Killer

CHAPTER XI THE POISONED PIN

IT was exactly eight o’clock when Harry Vincent left the lobby of the Hotel Goliath after his futile effort to follow the trail of Harland Mullrick. At fifteen minutes past the hour, a telephone operator, answering a call registered on the hotel switchboard, was startled to hear the gasping of a man’s voice.

“Merk — Merk” — this was the inarticulate cry that reached the girl’s ears. “Merk—”

The gasp ended in a choke. There was the sound of the telephone tumbling to the floor. Hastily, the girl called the desk.

“Something has happened in thirteen seventy-eight,” she informed. “It sounds — it sounds like a man was dying!”

The nervous clerk looked about the lobby. He grabbed a bell boy by the arm, and sent him after the house detective, who was at the other side of the floor. The sleuth arrived; he heard the clerk’s statement. He hurried up to the thirteenth floor, the bell boy with him.

The door of Room 1378 had a spring lock. The house detective opened it with a pass key. He and the bellhop stood aghast after they had entered. In the corner, by the telephone table, a man was lying on the floor, the telephone beside him. His face was twisted in a hideous expression

The man was dead.

The house dick called detective headquarters. The response was prompt. Ten minutes later, Detective Joe Cardona and a police surgeon were in the room where death had struck. Cardona was gazing at the full, fat face of a short, rotund man, who appeared to be the victim of a murderer’s hand.

“He’s registered as H. J. Pelley, Columbus, Ohio,” informed the house detective. “I don’t think that’s his real name, though.”

“Why not?” questioned Cardona.

“Look in his suitcase,” said the house dick. “It was open; I didn’t touch anything in it, but I saw the top letter on a stack. It’s addressed, to Burton Blissip, Buffalo, New York.”

Cardona looked in the suitcase. He found a small stack of letters. Each was addressed to Burton Blissip. Cardona ran through them hastily. They consisted of bills and notices; mail which Blissip had evidently brought with him at the last minute before leaving Buffalo.

The swarthy sleuth went back to the corner of the room. The police surgeon was making his examination. He looked up as Cardona approached.

“The man has been poisoned,” he announced.

“How?”

“Evidently by an injection. Some virulent poison. I shall try to find the exact means.”

Cardona nodded. He looked at the table where the telephone had been. He noted a map spread out. It rested upon a big blotting pad, and it was studded with white-headed pins. The map showed the country of Mexico.

THE detective noticed that the pins were chiefly at the left of the map, indicating spots near the Pacific Ocean. Looking more closely, he observed that they ran along the range of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

Some of the pins were tilted at an angle. It was obvious that someone had been touching them with finger tips, moving the pins from point to point. Tiny holes punched in the surface of the map were proof of the latter fact.

Metatitos — Papasquiaro — Chavarria — Xoconostle — Huejuquilla — Cardona read these unfamiliar names of towns that were indicated, going southward from a spot in a state called Durango. Then his eye moved farther south, to the large city of Guadalajara. Here Cardona stopped

The head of the pin that marked Guadalajara was different from the others. It was white; but it was pressed flat. It was evidently formed of a soft clay, a putty used instead of harder substance. Someone had pressed that pin head. The gleam of metal showed through the white.

“Any signs of an injection mark?” questioned Cardona, turning to the police surgeon.

“None,” was the reply.

“Look on the victim’s right forefinger, doctor,” suggested the detective.

A moment later an exclamation came from the surgeon. He had discovered the mark.

“A puncture!” he declared. “On the tip of the right forefinger! Quite plain. It appears to be the cause of death.”

Cardona turned to the house detective.

“Go down to the lobby,” he ordered. “I expect Inspector Klein at any moment. Tell him where I am. Also warn the operators to intercept any telephone calls for this room.”

When the house detective reached the lobby, he saw a red-faced man standing near the desk. With him was a quietly dressed man of medium height. The house man decided that the first was Inspector Timothy Klein; the second another detective from headquarters. He was right. When he spoke to Klein, the inspector introduced him to Detective Jim Clausey.

“We’ll go up,” announced Klein.

As Klein and Clausey stalked away, the house dick watched them. Neither he nor the headquarters men saw another person who was interested in their actions. A stranger, tall and dignified, had entered through the revolving door while they were talking. His keen eyes sparkled as he watched the headquarters men go toward the elevators.

As the house dick turned away, the tall stranger followed after Klein and Clausey. To all appearances, he was merely a guest at the Goliath. But there was something in his manner and appearance that marked him as unusual.

DRESSED in black, wearing a dark soft hat, he made a somber figure as he strode easily but rapidly toward the elevators. His face was a masklike countenance. From it peered two vivid eyes. The principal feature of his visage was an aquiline nose that gave him a hawklike look.

This personage stepped aboard the same car with the inspector and the detective. He was holding what appeared to be a coat over his arm. Closer inspection would have shown it to be a black cloak. No one in the car, however, gave particular note to the stranger. He stood quietly in a corner, behind the other passengers.

Klein and Clausey were engaged in a low-pitched conversation. They stepped off at the thirteenth floor. The solemn stranger followed them. Klein pointed to the open door of 1378, a short way along the corridor. He and Clausey headed in that direction.

The black-suited stranger followed them with easy, noiseless paces. He stopped one door short. As Inspector Klein and Detective Clausey entered Room 1378, the tall visitor drew a thin steel instrument from a pocket. He inserted it in the lock of 1376. The door opened noiselessly.

There was a glimmer of a flashing stone upon the stranger’s left hand. Sparks seemed to leap as the tall form disappeared into the darkness of the adjoining room. The gleam of that jewel told the identity of the visitor.

The Shadow had come to the Hotel Goliath!

The room which The Shadow had so smoothly entered was empty. A darkened transom above it had indicated the fact. When the door closed, complete blackness swallowed the visitant. A flashlight twinkled; its rays went out. In the fraction of a second, The Shadow had seen a closed door that marked the connection between this room and 1378.

The Shadow listened at the door. He could hear the buzz of voices on the other side. He distinguished words. Oddly, Inspector Klein was talking about the very door which now concealed The Shadow from those on the other side!

“These doors are no longer used as connections,” Cardona was explaining. “Besides that, this writing table hasn’t been moved; it blocks the door. The house detective told me about it; and we looked through the next room as soon as I arrived.”

“Very good,” approved Inspector Klein. “What have you uncovered?”

“The cause of death!” returned Cardona grimly. “This man, Burton Blissip, alias H. J. Pelley, was poisoned by an injection from a pin with a dummy head. Look, inspector.”

Cardona removed the poisoned pin, taking it carefully by the base. He held it up to the light. The inspector could see that the pin widened just below the putty head, to form a hollow container.

“Whoever was in here,” declared Cardona, “planted that pin on the map. Maybe he brought all the pins along with him. We don’t know. Anyway, the poisoned one was set here, right on this town marked Gwad — Gwad — read it for yourself, inspector.”

Cardona replaced the poisoned pin upon the city of Guadalajara. Klein stared at the map. So did Clausey. Both nodded.

Two men, discussing districts of Mexico, had been using pins to point out certain places. One, who had planted a poisoned pin among the others, had been pressing pinheads in hope that the other would follow his example.

Thus had Burton Blissip died. Unwittingly, he had pressed the pin that rested upon Guadalajara. He had received the poisoned charge. It was hardly conceivable that this could have happened had Blissip been consulting the map alone.

PEOPLE appeared at the door. The house detective entered, excited. He strode up to Joe Cardona. He pointed to those who had come with him. They were hotel employees.

“Here’s the girl who received the call,” announced the hotel dick. “Miss Ewens is her name. She can tell you what she heard.”

“I heard a man gasping,” said the girl. “He was saying something like ‘Merk.’ He was repeating the name—”

“The name of his enemy!” interposed Inspector Klein. “Get the phone book, Joe! Look up any names that begin with M, and have a sound like K.”

“Mexico,” said Cardona, in a depreciating tone, pointing to the map. “That’s what he was trying to say. It doesn’t mean a thing more than we’ve already found.”

Inspector Klein nodded. He had a great respect for Cardona’s quick decisions. The house detective grinned sheepishly.

“Guess I’m dumb,” he said. “I thought we had a real clew. But here’s one — this fellow—”

He turned to a young man who wore a bell boy’s uniform. Behind him was another; evidently an elevator operator.

“Tell them, Mark,” encouraged the house detective.

“I–I was waitin’ here on the thirteenth floor,” stammered the bellhop. “Goin’ down. See? A guy gets off the elevator comin’ up. He kinda brushes past me an’ stops at this door. I turn aroun’ an’ see him knockin’. Then some guy opens the door an’ he steps in.”

“I seen him, too,” offered the elevator operator. “I only noticed the guy when he got off. I seen him almost bump into Mark. When I gets higher up, I comes down, an’ Mark, he gets on the car with me. I kids him about gettin’ in the way of guests.”

“What did the man look like?” quizzed Cardona sharply.

“Didn’t see his face,” admitted Mark.

“How about you, Willicks?” the house dick asked the elevator man.

“I didn’t see his face, neither,” agreed Willicks. “Leastwise, so I could remember it. But he was a tall guy, with stooped shoulders, when I seen him from the back. Wearin’ a soft gray hat—”

“A gray hat?”

“Yeah!” broke in Mark. “Stuck kinda on the side of his head. That’s what he was wearin’.”

Joe Cardona looked at Jim Clausey. The other detective nodded. Cardona swung to Inspector Timothy Klein.

“Inspector,” he asserted, “there’s a connection between this death and the killing of Roy Selbrig. We’ve got two links. I found out that Selbrig used to be in Mexico. Here’s Blissip, dead — and he had some interest in Mexico, which is evident by the map.

“But the real shot is this same man in both cases. We’ve got to locate him — the tall fellow with the stoop, who wears a gray fedora. When we get him, inspector, we’ll know who was responsible for the death of Roy Selbrig. We’ll know how Burton Blissip died!”

THOSE in the room of death formed a silent, nodding group. There were voices at the door; Cardona turned to see that reporters had arrived. Among them he recognized Clyde Burke, reporter for the New York Classic.

“Give them the story,” decided Inspector Klein.

The group broke up. Arrangements were made for the removal of Burton Blissip’s body. When the hall was temporarily cleared, a tall figure emerged from Room 1376. Quietly, in his guise of a calm-faced individual in black, The Shadow departed.

Clyde Burke, a secret agent of The Shadow, was on the job. He would get Joe Cardona’s story of Burton Blissip’s death. It would contain nothing more than that which The Shadow had already heard.

Tonight, The Shadow had listened to Cardona blunder. He had heard the ace detective deliberately pass up a clew. For The Shadow knew that Burton Blissip, dying, had not tried to say the word Mexico. His endeavor had been to pronounce the name of a man. His feeble gasps of “Merk” had been an effort to say “Mullrick.”

On the other point, however, Cardona was right. The star sleuth wanted to find the man who had worn the gray fedora. That man, he believed, knew much about the deaths of Selbrig and Blissip.

A murderer — a man who had come from Mexico — the one who had worn the gray hat. Here were three leads, which Cardona believed would culminate in a complete discovery of identity. Hopeless though his present prospects might seem, Cardona had a chance of gaining his desired end.

That chance lay through The Shadow’s aid. When The Shadow was ready, Cardona would reach the end of his quest. For the present, however, Cardona, with his partner Clausey, would have to work blind.

The Shadow, knowing that two more men might be involved, preferred to work alone. The time was not yet ripe for the affairs of Mullrick to be known.

Unknown death had been the lot of Luis Santo. Known death had befallen Roy Selbrig and Burton Blissip. Thrice had The Shadow viewed the results of treachery and crime. The Shadow was awaiting the next attempt at murder before he would loose his striking hand!