The Triple Trail

CHAPTER XXIV THE LAST STROKE

LUCK had come to Dale Jurling. His lucky clip to Cardona’s chin; his metallic slash at Verne; now the great opportunity. Pure chance had given him a bead upon the enemy who had brought end to his evil plans.

Death to The Shadow. That was Dale Jurling’s thought as he held his revolver steady, at full arm’s length. Half crouched, he formed a fiendish figure with the leer he wore. And dangling from his aiming wrist was the symbol of frustrated capture; that handcuff which had been clamped in vain.

The Shadow, swinging in from the door, had automatics in his fists. He had launched all but a single bullet in that torrent of scattered shots along the corridor. He had reserved one slug for a pinch; yet the emergency had caught him at a disadvantage.

For Dale Jurling had The Shadow covered; and Jurling was out to kill. Upon the floor lay Montague Verne, half-unconscious, while Joe Cardona had come to his feet beside the wardrobe trunk. Jurling would take care of him after The Shadow.

To Joe Cardona, the scene was one of dire circumstance. Jurling on the point of pressing trigger, glaring with a venom that told he would not miss. The Shadow, squarely in the center of the doorway; too far in to fade back, not near enough to spring upon his foe; with automatic too low to cover before Jurling fired.

The Shadow, more than once, had brought aid to Joe Cardona. He had saved the detective’s life tonight; but that favor was no more than a repetition of previous deeds of rescue. It was Joe’s instinctive knowledge of all he owed The Shadow that brought about the amazing stroke that followed.

Joe was swinging up as Jurling aimed. Half dazed from Jurling’s fist, the detective was acting in mechanical fashion. While his eyes were viewing the conflict that threatened death to The Shadow, Joe’s limbs were hurling him forward in a wild effort to stay Jurling’s shot.

Jurling had not forgotten that Cardona might be in the game. With finger on trigger, the crook shifted his body, but not his aiming hand. With the shift he dropped straight backward, holding the perfect level of his gun. Cardona’s leap was straight into an empty space. Moreover, it was short.

But as Jurling’s finger snapped the trigger, Cardona performed the frantic action of a man bound on a futile plunge. He shot his right hand upward to grab the only object that he saw. Too short to grip Jurling’s arm; Cardona’s stretch was long enough to seize a mass of metal that sparkled before his bleary eyes.

The detective caught the dangling bracelet of the handcuff. He clutched it with a grip that death alone could have loosed. And with that grab, Cardona went sprawling headlong to the floor.

JURLING’S revolver barked. His shot came hard upon Cardona’s grab. The crook’s right wrist was jostled. His shot, wide and low, sizzled through a space no more than two inches in width — the gap between The Shadow’s body and the right side of the doorway.

As he fired, Jurling went spinning to the floor, carried along by the weight of Cardona’s heavy-set body. The two men were whirled in an amazing dive that came as The Shadow fired. Like Jurling, The Shadow missed. His aim, coming up toward the spot where Jurling was, found space where the sprawling crook had been.

That was not all. Neither Jurling nor Cardona had yielded grip. While Joe still clutched the handcuffs, Jurling retained the gun. The two rolled into the wall; grappling, they came up to their feet and staggered in a lopsided lurch toward the far end of the room.

The Shadow sprang forward to end the fray. A table was in the way. He seized it and swung it crashing to the wall. As the fighters whirled toward the wardrobe trunk, The Shadow picked his spot. Sweeping forward, he shot his gloved hands straight for Jurling’s neck.

Again, luck saved the desperate crook. Verne, coming to his feet, was almost in The Shadow’s path. As the cloaked rescuer swept to Cardona’s aid, Verne stumbled forward. His body blocked The Shadow’s drive.

Half-sprawling, The Shadow went staggering to the wall.

He had dropped his automatics beneath his cloak while watching the first action of the grapple between Cardona and Jurling. Unencumbered, The Shadow spun about to make a new leap for the crook. But Joe and Jurling had missed the big trunk; instead of striking it, they went plunging into the inner room of the suite.

The Shadow followed, seeking surging forms in darkness. He could see the splash of shining metal — gun and handcuffs — as the sweeping objects caught glimmering light from the living room. Then came a crash. Together, the two men drove head-on against the connecting door that The Shadow had left open to the farther suite. Cardona’s head took the blow against the barrier. The detective slumped from the thump; his fingers lost the bracelet that they had clung to with such fierce tenacity.

Jurling, free and with gun, went driving on, while The Shadow followed, half a room’s length behind.

Jurling was dashing through the empty suite. The Shadow, leaping over Cardona, saw the crook swing into the door beyond. There, as Jurling plunged forward with high-raised gun, a man came up to meet him. It was Harry Vincent, stationed here to guard The Shadow’s exit.

HARRY held an automatic. He swung it hard for Jurling’s shining gun — all that he could distinguish in the darkness of this outer living room. Metal clicked metal. Then came a new and furious grapple, with Jurling battling in renewed frenzy.

The Shadow, close upon the fray, could not distinguish which spinning man to take. A revolver shot burst the darkness; its stabbing flame directed upward. Jurling had fired. His bullet, deflected by Harry’s clutch upon his wrist, found lodgment in the ceiling.

Then came an avalanche of blackness. The Shadow, like the thickness of the room itself, sprang forward in one gigantic leap that brought him squarely upon the shoulders of the struggling pair. Men slumped downward; then, as their bodies shifted, both Harry and Jurling reeled headlong to the darkened floor, The Shadow coming with them.

It was The Shadow’s only course to end the fray. He had picked both combatants — his agent and his foe — as one.

In the roll, The Shadow was pinioned at the bottom of the heap. His swift fist caught a gun and clutched it. Twisting, The Shadow heaved upward and sent the two men staggering in opposite directions.

On hands and knees, The Shadow clutched the gun that he had grabbed. He felt the flat side of an automatic. The snatch had given him Harry Vincent’s weapon. Gripping the handle with a swift move, The Shadow swung about. Off toward the end of the room, he saw two forms silhouetted against the row of windows in the wall.

Reflected glow of Manhattan lights showed two stubborn combatants leaping forward for new fight. And from beneath the wide slashing arm of the rising figure on the left was dangling the telltale clue: the handcuffs that Dale Jurling was still wearing.

Coming in with fiendish zest to kill, Jurling was pouncing upon Harry Vincent. The Shadow’s agent, game to the finish, was springing up to meet him. Alike in the darkness, the only quick guess to which was which lay in Jurling’s telltale bracelet.

THE SHADOW fired a split-second before the two men met. His aim was for the wrist above the dangling metal; a shot intended to cripple Jurling’s gun hand. The Shadow’s aim was true.

A sizzling slug found metal. Jurling’s arm went sweeping up. He sprawled to the floor with Harry upon him — losing his gun as he fell, regaining it as he groped madly on the floor. Felled by the force of The Shadow’s shot and Harry’s lunge, Jurling still had chance to use his gun.

For The Shadow’s bullet had struck the one spot of protection upon Jurling’s wrist. It had ricocheted from the band of steel that formed the bracelet of the handcuff.

Jurling’s rolling twist had swung him to one side. Harry was fighting to bear him down. Jurling, half free, aimed across the room, knowing where The Shadow was located. He fired a blind shot.

In answer came the flame of the automatic. Harry and Jurling were upon the floor, below the level of the window. The Shadow’s answering bullet was purposely high. It clipped a windowpane and delivered a shattered shower of glass to the courtyard many floors below.

Jurling fired at the spot where he had seen the first flash. The Shadow’s response came from another location. A second window shattered. Jurling, fighting away from Harry, fired again. Then, with elation, the crook was free.

Harry Vincent had released him. Those window-shattering shots had been a message from The Shadow. For Harry, brought to reason by the clatter of the broken glass, knew suddenly that The Shadow would not normally fire high.

The Shadow wanted to know that Harry was clear of danger. That was the reason for his strange, misguided aim. And Harry, diving for the shelter of a table, was quick with his return cue. He spilled the table to the floor, just as Jurling’s revolver delivered another chance jab of flame.

The Shadow responded on the instant. Jurling’s shot from one side of the windows; the crash of the table falling at the other end were proofs that the combatants lay far apart. The automatic blazed from the inner darkness. Jurling, with a wild cry fired madly at the stab of light. The automatic barked again, four feet distant from the previous shot.

A brief pause. Then came another spurt of Jurling’s revolver; almost with it, the flash of The Shadow’s automatic. Echoes died. Something clattered to the floor by the window. A groan was followed by a cough.

The duel in the dark was finished. Dale Jurling had tempted luck too long. His random shots, delivered at an ever-shifting target, had proven hopeless thrusts, but The Shadow’s bursts had been promptly given.

The first shots, warning Harry to roll clear, had served as bait as well. They had beckoned Jurling into the final fray. He had even thought the odds were in his favor. The result had given him the doom that he deserved.

HARRY VINCENT, rising from behind the toppled table, was prompt at the sound of a hissed order. He headed for the door of the suite. Reaching the corridor, he dashed in the direction of a fire tower that lay down a passage close by.

Harry, like Cliff and Hawkeye, was clearing the vicinity, knowing that The Shadow would follow.

Some seconds after his agent’s departure, The Shadow appeared at the door to the corridor. No one was in sight. People coming from below had naturally headed toward Suite 1472.

The Shadow stepped into the corridor. From his hidden lips came a rising laugh that finished with a shudder. Then The Shadow was gone, following Harry Vincent’s course.

Through the corridor came the answer to that strident mirth; ghoulish whispers from the ends of the long, deserted hall. Walls had caught and held The Shadow’s triumph laugh.

Joe Cardona heard those whispers as he arrived through from Verne’s suite. As the final echoes faded, the ace detective pressed the light switch. He looked about. He saw Montague Verne, pale and shaky, coming in to join him. Then Tully Kelk, released from his bonds by house detectives.

Looking across the floor, the arrivals saw the prone form of the murderer who had fought and lost. Sprawled beneath the shattered window was Dale Jurling, the killer who had gained just death for himself.

Beside him lay the empty revolver; before him were his outstretched hands. Joe Cardona smiled grimly as he saw the murderer’s wrists. One bracelet was no longer dangling. It was clamped to Jurling’s left wrist.

The justice of it came home to Joe Cardona. First, Tully Kelk had worn those handcuffs tonight. Then the clamps had gone on Montague Verne. Both had been marked for death by Jurling.

But now the bracelets had clicked where they belonged. In gloom-enshrouded fight, The Shadow had been forced to deliver death to a killer. But he had remained long enough to complete the significant attachment of those handcuffs: the completion of a duty which Joe Cardona had begun.

To the detective, those handcuffs were a symbol. Clamped to dead wrists, they stood as a reminder that The Shadow would remember the timely aid that Joe had given in the moment when a master of crime had risen to victory’s verge.

Detective Joe Cardona had received a parting tribute from The Shadow.