The Plot Master

CHAPTER XXI THE SHADOW’S FIGHT

AS soon as the arrivals had entered the cottage, Korsch went into a room on the right. Three men were lounging there. Korsch beckoned to them. Drawing his revolver, the hatchet-faced man buzzed instructions to these underlings.

Korsch led the group upstairs while Hildrow and Stollart were entering the little office. Still wearing the disguise that made him resemble Commander Joseph Dadren, Hildrow took a chair behind the desk. Producing a revolver, he laid it beside him. The pair waited.

Upstairs, Korsch and his squad were cautiously approaching a closed door, where a guard was on duty. Motioning this man aside, Korsch unlocked the door and opened it. He entered a somber room. Its windows were closed with shutters; only the lifted slats admitted light.

A figure stirred on a cot. Korsch studied a dim face. This prisoner looked like Dadren, but the light was too dim to be certain. Covering his quarry with the gun, Korsch ordered him into the hall.

The prisoner stepped squarely into the path of looming muzzles. Surprised, he raised his hands. Korsch tapped him for weapons and found none.

“March him downstairs,” he ordered. “Hold him outside the office until I go in.”

The prisoner was conducted to the ground floor. Korsch paused by the office door. These men of his had not seen Hildrow’s face. Korsch explained.

“You’ll see the chief behind the desk,” he stated, “but he won’t be wearing the beard. He’ll look like Dadren, just like this guy does. Keep the prisoner covered.”

Korsch entered. He took his stand by Hildrow. The plotter gripped his gun. Both he and Korsch were covering the door when the other man thrust the prisoner into view.

Hildrow stared at the blinking countenance of Commander Joseph Dadren. The light was full upon the prisoner’s face. Hildrow saw a puzzled look in Dadren’s eyes as the commander stared at him.

The prisoner knew that this was Hildrow. Korsch’s reference to the chief was proof of that. But the astonishment that showed on Dadren’s face was genuine. He had not expected Hildrow to be in this disguise.

RISING from his chair, Hildrow stared across the desk. He examined Dadren’s countenance at close range. The others stared in unrestrained interest. Like a man inspecting his own reflection, Hildrow was studying every detail of Dadren’s face.

“Guns down,” ordered Hildrow, lowering his own revolver. “There’s nothing to worry about. This is Commander Dadren, right enough. We still hold him” — a chuckle — “and Senator Releston will pay high to get him back.

“Take him upstairs, Korsch, and keep a double guard. We thought you had fooled us, Dadren. You made a good guess, Stollart” — without turning, Hildrow was speaking to the man in the obscure corner — “but your hunch was wrong. The Shadow never located this hideout—”

Hildrow paused abruptly. Dropping back from the desk, he turned. With him swerved Korsch and the other members of the crew. Commander Dadren, too, was staring with blinking, astonished eyes.

From the corner had come a hissing, warning laugh. Sinister mockery, it taunted men of crime. Turning to the source of that uncanny sound, Hildrow and his band found themselves faced by a pair of automatics in the hands of Stollart.

No longer was the secretary playing a timorous part. He was not Stollart. He was The Shadow. Though he wore the pointed countenance of Stollart, his real identity was plain. Burning eyes were focused upon the men who stood in the path of the big automatics.

NOT a gun hand rose. The Shadow’s laugh and his blazing optics were too great a threat. Cornered killers shook.

Then came the sneering, gibing whisper of The Shadow’s voice. Scornful words came from his disguised lips.

“This ends your game,” pronounced The Shadow. “Your plots are finished. The end began when I entered Releston’s, disguised as Commander Dadren. But that was only the first step.

“I knew that Stollart was your spy. Alone with him, I took him from the picture. He lies helpless, bound and gagged, in the closet of Senator Releston’s living room. Ten minutes was all that I required for a quick change.

“Make-up was in my suitcase. Stollart’s face was in front of me, staring up from the floor. I changed my disguise; instead of being Dadren, I became Stollart. I awaited your arrival.”

The Shadow was speaking straight to Hildrow. The master plotter stood half stunned by this revelation. He realized the supercraft of The Shadow.

As Stollart, The Shadow had deliberately argued Hildrow into a false belief. He had talked Hildrow into bringing him here. Thus had The Shadow reached the big shot of the game; through Hildrow himself he had found Commander Dadren and has performed a rescue.

Doom. Hildrow could see it. He expected no mercy from The Shadow. Hildrow, himself, had tried to murder The Shadow on Death Island. With tables turned, the crook knew that he was due to receive the punishment that he deserved.

Startled minions stood quivering. Hildrow could expect no aid from them. The Shadow’s laugh burst through the room; its triumphant mockery was ghastly amid those closed-in walls, where ghoulish voices hurled back echoes of the sardonic taunt.

Then the door swung open. Framed in the portal stood a staring man whose right hand held a flashing revolver. It was the odd member of Korsch’s crew, the fellow who had met Hildrow, that day in Washington.

Stationed off the island, the man had come here for instructions. He had heard the echoes of The Shadow’s laugh. Astonished, he had flung open the door. The leveled automatics told him who the enemy must be.

“GET him, Pete!” blurted Korsch.

Pete fired as The Shadow spun back into the corner. A bullet buried itself in the wall. Flame spurted from an automatic. The Shadow’s answer found its mark. Pete slumped. But those shots brought conflict.

Hildrow and Korsch came up with guns. The Shadow whirled toward the door as Hildrow fired. A bullet zimmed past The Shadow’s shoulder. Before The Shadow could respond, before Hildrow could fire again, a form came flinging forward.

Ferociously, Commander Dadren threw himself upon the arch-crook. He caught Hildrow’s gun hand. The commander had cleared the desk with a headlong dive. His forceful attack bore Hildrow against the wall. The two men plunged to the floor, grappling.

Korsch’s shot came simultaneously with a spurt from The Shadow’s left-hand automatic. A bullet whined through the doorway, passing an inch above The Shadow’s head.

The Shadow’s aim, however, had not failed. Korsch staggered, clipped by the leaden missive from the .45.

The other men, four in number, were clustered by a corner near the door. They, of all present, had been least ready. Unlike Hildrow and Korsch, they had not seen Pete arrive. Events had happened with split-second rapidity, too swift for them to follow.

They were wheeling toward the door, however, when The Shadow neared it. Had the master fighter kept on through the opening, swinging guns might have found him for a target. But The Shadow, thoughts working with lightning speed, countered with the unexpected.

Abruptly ending his mad whirl, he doubled his tracks. Like a human juggernaut, he hurled himself straight into the group of gunmen. With arms that swung like steel pistons, he used his automatics like a brace of cudgels.

One weapon cracked the skull of an aiming foeman; another lost his revolver as a swinging automatic smashed his wrist. A third, aiming, dodged instinctively as he fired. His bullet buried itself in the ceiling.

The fourth fighter, balked of aim as The Shadow came upon him, made a wild effort to grapple with this powerful foe. With the upward sweep of a powerful forearm, The Shadow hoisted this fighter from the floor and sent him spinning upon the fellow who had dodged.

The man with the numbed arm dove for the door, unable to regain his gun. Of the two whom The Shadow had sent sprawling, one rolled over and took hasty aim. As his gun was coming up, one of the automatics was swinging down. The Shadow, moreover, was fading to the floor.

Revolver and automatic loosed their belching tongues of flame. The two shots roared together. As a bullet singed the surface of The Shadow’s shoulder, a big slug found the crook’s heart. The Shadow, dropping clear to the floor, was face to face with the last of the four.

The man pounced toward him. They gripped and rolled in a struggle that rivaled the fight between Hildrow and Dadren, over by the further wall. They came to a deadlock. The Shadow had dropped one automatic. The other, still held tight in his right fist, was beneath his foeman’s arm.

BLOOD was flowing from The Shadow’s wounded shoulder. His adversary was powerful. The Shadow, for the time, could not fling him free. Staring over his enemy’s shoulder, The Shadow saw Hildrow and Dadren come staggering from behind the desk.

Faces that looked alike; yet The Shadow could tell the real from the false. He saw Hildrow twist partly free, then send Dadren crashing against the wall. The commander sank halfway to the floor. Hildrow aimed to kill.

With a mighty effort, The Shadow twisted the body of the man with whom he fought. As he swung the foeman as a shield, he pressed the trigger of his automatic. A bullet skimmed past Hildrow’s neck.

The plotter spun about. The involuntary move saved him. The Shadow, loosing another shot, could not turn his wedged gun soon enough to follow the moving target. But the bullet splintered woodwork less than a foot from the big shot’s body.

Hildrow sprang for the door to escape that moving gun muzzle. His only target was the body of his own henchman. He could not reach The Shadow. But the automatic, thrust past a human rampart, was dangerous.

The Shadow fired again as Hildrow neared the door. With that effort, he twisted free from the man who grappled him. Hildrow had paused for an instant. A sizzling bullet; sight of The Shadow’s burning eyes and a glimpse of the rising form — these were too much. Hildrow sped for safety.

Turning quickly, The Shadow swung toward the man whom he had spilled, expecting final trouble from that foe. The crook, coming up from the floor, was aiming while he leered. The Shadow sought to beat him to the shot.

A race that was almost instantaneous. One of those hazards which The Shadow had risked time and again. A contest that depended upon the last instant. Such was the quick, grim drama that came to an unexpected end.

Commander Dadren, crawling from the wall, had plucked up a loose revolver. Resting on one arm, the commander had aimed for the rising gunman. Dadren’s shot came in that tiny interval of time that yet remained.

As the revolver flashed, the crook hunched. His gun arm wavered and his snarling face dropped. The flame from The Shadow’s automatic stabbed through the pungent smoke that filled the room. The bullet sizzled just above the crook’s drooping head.

No need for another shot. The last foeman was plopping to the floor. Plucking up his second automatic, The Shadow wheeled toward Dadren, who was rising with a firm clutch on his smoking automatic.

Nodding, the commander came to his feet. As The Shadow headed through the doorway, Dadren followed. The Shadow and the man whom he had rescued were hot on the trail of Eric Hildrow.