The Silent Death

CHAPTER XXIII. THE STORY

CLYDE BURKE wrote the story for the Classic. The reporter received it in detail from Detective Joe Cardona. The so-called suicide of Professor Folcroft Urlich created a great sensation in the columns of the New York newspaper.

The public learned that schemes of terrible death had failed except on one occasion — that was when Thomas Jocelyn had died. Thrice had planted snares gone wrong: with Alfred Sartain, Wesley Barnsworth, and Gardner Joyce.

When Thomas Jocelyn had died by subtle poisoning, with his servant, Grewson, by his side, Joe Cardona had already been upon the trail of the murderers. Slips Harbeck, quizzed, had named Larry Ricordo. The gang lord, shot down in the Grand Central Terminal, had squealed on Professor Folcroft Urlich.

Pictures portrayed the laboratory where Cardona and his men had gone. There, the scientist, apparently choosing his own killing current in preference to that of the electric chair, had swung a suicide switch to take his own life before the very eyes of the men who had come to capture him.

It had taken some time to find the outside wire that had supplied the power for the big machine. When that had been cut off, the detectives had invaded the floor above the pit. There they had encountered two foreigners evidently aids of the dead professor. The battle that had followed brought death to Sanoja and Rasch, and wounds to two detectives.

A point over which Cardona passed lightly was the fact that the servants of Professor Urlich must have been bound at the time the police had arrived. Possibly the scientist had overpowered them so that they would not deter his suicide escape.

The trapped men had managed to loose their bonds before the detectives had accosted them. Remnants of cords upon the floor accounted for the fact. But they had been unable to escape because the detectives had barred the one way to safety.

Clyde Burke smiled as he wrote the story. Nothing was known of two prisoners whom the fiendish scientist had doomed to die. No mention had been made of the part played by an unknown visitor from the night.

There were other facts that Clyde did not know, yet which he, with his extra knowledge, suspected. All these were summed in one tremendous point that the public would never know — a scoop that the Classic would never print.

The hand of The Shadow! Hidden, invisible, but never failing, it was the power that had struck down the master of silent death.

The Shadow had turned the tide of doom to sweep aside the villainous fiend, Professor Folcroft Urlich.

Unseen by the detectives, he had silently followed his rescued agents into the darkness of the night.

The truth of the monster’s end must remain unknown to the world. But the story would be found, preserved for posterity, in the secret archives of The Shadow!