The Road Of Crime

CHAPTER XI THE SHADOW SUSPECTS

DAYS had passed since Graham Wellerton’s arrival in Southwark. Days had drifted into weeks. Freed from the necessity of crime, Graham Wellerton had entered a period of restful recuperation. He had, through misfortune, gained security which he would not have known had he met The Shadow face to face.

Had Graham Wellerton been leader of the band which The Shadow had encountered in Grand Rapids, the depredations of the holdup gangs would have been ended. The Shadow, after his forced elimination of King Furzman, had dealt a terrific stroke against the foes of the law.

Yet crime had known only a brief interlude. New events had arisen in the Middle West, to inform the warring master that his final stroke had not been one of complete elimination. Facts, in the form of newspaper clippings, were proof that work still lay ahead.

In a high floor of a New York office building, a chubby-faced, lethargic man was sitting at a desk, studying newspapers that lay before him. This quiet individual, Rutledge Mann by name, was known to his friends as an investment broker. Actually, however, Mann served as contact agent for The Shadow and one of his duties was the assembling of printed crime news.

Clipping as he perused the out-of-town newspapers, Mann had assembled a small heap of items pertaining to successful raids made by bank robbers in small towns of the Middle West. As he put the clippings into an envelope, Mann leaned back in his chair and stared idly from the window.

The towers of Manhattan did not attract Mann’s eye. The investment broker was lost in thought. He was speculating on affairs which concerned The Shadow. This was a relaxation in which Mann seldom indulged; but recent events had caused him to wonder just what lay behind the present chain of circumstances.

By his constant reading of the newspapers, Mann had learned to detect the hidden presence of The Shadow in many instances. Of The Shadow himself, Rutledge Mann knew very little. The investment broker merely supplied information and handled detail work for his unknown master. But whenever Mann discovered the unusual in the news, he could sense that The Shadow had loosed his hand against those opposed to the law.

There had been bank robberies in New York. One raid had been shattered on the same day that another had succeeded. Then such raids had ceased in the East.

The next occurrence had been an attempted holdup in Grand Rapids — one which had been mysteriously foiled.

Mann, reading between the lines, decided that The Shadow had accomplished that deed and had terminated the outrages of successful robbers who had headed West from New York.

So far — good. But what of the intermittent robberies in small towns — the work of a few men — that had been occurring since?

Mann again picked out a reason. A few of the last gang must still be at large, committing depredations on a small and stealthy scale.

Shortly after sending the first notices of such robberies to The Shadow, Mann had received word to communicate with Harry Vincent, one of The Shadow’s active agents. Mann had given Harry a sealed envelope which had come by mail from The Shadow. Mann knew only that Harry was to go to a town called Southwark, to make certain investigations.

What did Southwark have to do with the bank robberies? Most of them were in the vicinity of that town — in fact, today’s clippings told of raiders breaking into a bank not more than fifty miles from the town where Harry Vincent was stationed.

But why had The Shadow singled out Southwark as a headquarters for his agent? That problem completely perplexed Rutledge Mann.

The investment broker sealed his envelope of clippings. He walked into an outer office. There, the stenographer handed him a letter which had just arrived in the mail. It bore the postmark of Southwark. Mann ripped open the envelope and found another envelope within. A special report from Harry Vincent.

Leaving his office, Mann went to the street and took a taxicab to Twenty-third Street. He entered a dilapidated building, ascended an old stairway and approached a battered door on a floor above the street.

This door had a grimy glass panel; on it was inscribed the name of “Jonas.”

Rutledge Mann poked the envelope of clippings through the mail chute; he followed it with Harry Vincent’s envelope. With a last glance at the cobwebbed glass panel, the investment broker departed.

This unusual office served as The Shadow’s letter box. Apparently, it had been vacant for some years. Mann, in all his visits, had never observed signs of occupancy. All letters which Mann placed there, however, eventually reached their desired recipient — The Shadow.

A FEW hours after Mann had made his visit to the office on Twenty-third Street, a click sounded in a pitch-black room. Light replaced darkness. The illumination came from a weird blue lamp that hung, shaded, above the polished surface of a table.

The rays of light seemed to fade as they encountered the thick darkness beyond that limited area. One luminous circle was all that pervaded this room. Heavy, gloomy atmosphere cast a dominating awe.

Out of darkness came two white, creeping objects. They were hands — human hands, lithe and long-fingered — that moved like detached creatures of life. They rested within the circle of light. Alike in formation, they differed in one point only.

From the third finger of the left hand gleamed a flaming jewel. Like a living coal of fire, it flashed glimmering sparkles upward from mysterious depths.

Somber maroon in its original color, the stone turned to a brilliant purple; then faded to a pale azure that sent forth leaping sparks of brilliant, uncanny light.

This gem was the token of The Shadow. It was a priceless girasol, a rare jewel unmatched in all the world. Its weird hues symbolized the mysterious personality of the amazing being who wore it. Moreover, the gem gained strange effects from the ghoulish light that shone from above.

As the color-changing girasol told the identity of its wearer, so did the bluish light from the lamp reveal the place where the master of mystery now was stationed.

The Shadow was in his sanctum — an unknown abode somewhere in Manhattan — a mysterious room of blackness where no other than himself had ever been!

One hand moved away. It returned and dropped envelopes upon the table. Some had been opened previously.

From them now came clippings — accumulated references supplied by Rutledge Mann. Two sealed envelopes were torn open by the strong but slender fingers. These were the envelopes which Rutledge Mann had so recently placed in the mail chute of the office on Twenty-third Street.

The eyes of The Shadow — eyes hidden in darkness beyond the lamp — studied the clippings. The hands added them to the former items.

Then came Harry Vincent’s report sheet. It was a concise message, written in code. The Shadow read the inked words as rapidly as if they had been in ordinary writing.

Hardly had the invisible eyes completed their perusal before the written words began to fade one by one.

This was an expected phenomenon. In all communications to and from The Shadow, the agents were used to a special type of ink which vanished shortly after being exposed to the air. Through its agency, all messages were automatically destroyed. Any that fell into wrong hands would be gone before they could be deciphered.

A low laugh sounded from the gloom. The Shadow was considering the message from his agent. Harry Vincent had done well in Southwark. Yet his findings had produced a problem which even The Shadow had not anticipated!

THE SHADOW, in his trip to Grand Rapids, had struck a powerful blow against a band of raiders supposedly led by Graham Wellerton. The Shadow knew that the leader — and a few men with him — had managed to escape purely by staying in the background while the main body invaded.

Summoned back to New York by important errands there, The Shadow had been awaiting developments, knowing that the missing crooks would bob up somewhere. Minor bank raids had come of evidence of their activity this side of Grand Rapids.

The Shadow had ordered Harry Vincent to the territory, to glean preliminary information. Not long ago, The Shadow had heard Graham Wellerton tell Carma that he would never go back to the town of Southwark. That had been when Graham was on the crest of successful crime. Now, with circumstances altered, Graham might deliberately have changed his former decision. Southwark, of all places, might best serve as a temporary refuge.

Here was the report from Harry Vincent. The Shadow’s agent had discovered Graham Wellerton in Southwark. But in his careful inquiry — Harry was an ace when it came to getting information in strange towns — he had learned that Graham had arrived there the night before the Michigan bank raid had been foiled by The Shadow!

This was the reason for The Shadow’s laugh. Weird mockery seemed to hover within that black-walled room. Ghoulish echoes persisted even after hidden lips had ceased their mirthful utterance.

The Shadow had corroborated a suspicion which had been lurking in his intuitive brain — namely that Graham Wellerton had not been with the bank robbers at Grand Rapids!

What was Graham Wellerton’s purpose? How and why had the gentleman of crime parted from his men? Why was he no longer engaged in robbery?

These were questions which The Shadow was resolved to answer.

Hands reached across the table. Earphones came into view. A tiny bulb lighted, showing that The Shadow had formed a connection. His weird voice spoke in a whisper. Across the wire came a quiet reply:

“Burbank speaking.”

Burbank was The Shadow’s hidden contact man — the one who kept in touch with agents when they were at work. He was always accessible by telephone, to relay messages through to The Shadow.

“Report from Marsland,” ordered The Shadow.

Burbank gave a brief reply. Cliff Marsland, The Shadow’s agent who played the part of an underworld mobsman, had gained no trace of Wolf Daggert. He had been unable to find any clew to a hide-out where the skulking gang leader might be staying.

“Report from Burke,” demanded The Shadow.

Another reply. Burbank had heard from Clyde Burke, the newspaper reporter on the New York Classic who was in The Shadow’s service.

Burke had been deputed to keep track of Carma Wellerton. He learned that she was living under the name of Carma Urstead, and that she was still in New York.

Communication ended with his contact agent, The Shadow performed a new action. His hands produced a large map and spread it on the table. The fingers placed tiny pins upon towns marked there — the places where small bank robberies had been attempted.

PROMINENT on the map was the town of Southwark. The trail was closing near that point. This one town would be a likely spot for another raid, if the robbers were still in that vicinity.

Was this of Graham Wellerton’s making; or was the former leader free from crime — with chance bringing his henchmen to that district?

Whatever the case might be, The Shadow could see a trail as plainly as if it had been marked on the map. A hundred miles away from Grand Rapids, it formed a zigzag eastward. Southwark might well be in its path. Defeated marauders, beating their course back toward New York, were trying to glean profits by minor depredations.

The pins were drawn away. The map was folded by the hands. The bluish light went out with a resounding click. Through the pitch-black room came the sinister tones of a hollow laugh. Sneering tones of mirth broke into a jibing peal that changed to shuddering whispers.

Back came the eerie mirth in ghostly echoes from the walls. Again and again the reverberations answered, as though a goblin horde had cried to its master from the depths of unseen corridors.

When the last sibilant jeers had faded away, deep, heavy silence was all-pervading. The sanctum was empty. The Shadow had departed. The master of the night had left upon his errand to stamp out the last vestiges of broken crime.