The Unseen Killer

CHAPTER XII. DEATH FOLLOWS

ONE hour later. Findlay Warlock’s home was deserted, save for the presence of the owner and his servant, Cluett. Flabbergasted, Commissioner Wainwright Barth had drawn off the bloodhounds of the law. He had departed, sulking because of the Unseen Killer’s triumph.

Peters Amboy and Wallace Norgan had bewailed their loss. They had cried for further protection. Barth had granted it. Not only had he sent three detectives to guard each man, but he had put Joe Cardona in charge of Norgan’s guards and Detective Sergeant Markham at the head of Amboy’s.

Thus had Findlay Warlock’s old-fashioned residence returned to its obscurity. It was no more than any other brownstone house. For Commissioner Barth was trailing the Unseen Killer; he could see no merit in keeping watch on places where the untraceable crook had been and gone.

Yet there was one who still found interest in Warlock’s house. That one was The Shadow. As Lamont Cranston, he had spent very little time in taking leave of Commissioner Barth. After that, he had assumed his garb of black. Now he was returning to the scene of the Unseen Killer’s triumph.

Warlock’s house had high steps that showed a slight glisten in a street lamp’s glare. The Shadow had avoided that betraying means of entrance. All Warlock’s doors were fitted with old-fashioned locks. Any one would do. So The Shadow chose an entrance to the basement, under the shelter of the steps themselves.

A black blob against the dull color of the door, The Shadow worked briefly with a special key. The door yielded. He entered and closed the door behind him. He found a flight of stairs that led up to the first floor.

At the top, The Shadow used his glimmering flashlight. He saw a flight of back stairs that went to the second floor. They terminated, The Shadow knew, in the little hall just behind Warlock’s study.

The Shadow entered a room that led through to the living room. His light went out. Silently, through darkness, The Shadow neared the rear door of the living room. He paused. Slight sounds reached his ears.

Some one was in the darkened living room. Some one, prowling there. The intruder was trying to remain unheard. Only the keen ears of The Shadow could have detected the man’s presence — until an accident occurred.

A chair scraped and slid against the wall as the man in the living room made a blunder. There was momentary silence; then some cautious footsteps moving into the hall. The Shadow moved into the living room. He could hear the steps creaking toward the back of the hall.

Here was easy prey for The Shadow. In his silent fashion he could track the man who was lost in the darkness. He did not need to see a living form. Sound — motion — those were sufficient. But as The Shadow reached the door of the living room, he was forced to stop.

Some one was coming down the front stairway. To follow the man who had moved to the back of the house, The Shadow would have to step squarely into this arrival’s path. The Shadow waited. The man from upstairs arrived, fumbled for a light switch and pressed it.

Peering from behind a curtain at the living room door, The Shadow saw Cluett. The servant’s face looked anxious. Cluett must have heard the blundering sound in the living room. The Shadow saw him look along the hall. Cluett was too late. The first man had moved away.

Cluett stepped toward the living room. The Shadow faded swiftly. He whirled back into the rear room; then cut through to the back stairway to the second floor, just as Cluett turned on the living room lights.

The Shadow, however, had lost his opportunity to trail the real intruder. The man had gained a lucky break through Cluett’s chance arrival. The Shadow decided to ascend the back stairs. He reached the little hall at the top. Listening at the rear door of the study, he could hear some one moving about within.

Cluett’s footsteps came from the front stairs. The Shadow heard the man in the study pace across toward the side door. The Shadow moved to the turn in the hall. He saw Cluett arrive in the dim light of the second-floor hall. Then the side door of the study opened. Findlay Warlock appeared, attired in dressing gown.

“What are you doing, Cluett?” quizzed Warlock. “Were you downstairs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“I thought I heard some one in the living room. While I was going into my own room, sir.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I tapped at the door of the study, sir. But you did not respond.”

“Humph. That must have been while I was in the front bedroom.”

“I suppose so, sir. I didn’t rap too hard; I feared that the sound might carry downstairs.”

“You did not knock loudly enough to attract my attention, that is certain. What did you find in the living room?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“I supposed that. Well, Cluett, curb your imagination after this.”

WARLOCK went back into the study; Cluett to his own room.

The Shadow listened a few minutes; then moved to the rear door of the study, opened it and entered.

The room was dark. Warlock had retired to the front bedroom. He had closed the door behind him.

The little flashlight blinked. Its tiny ray cleaved the darkness and settled on Warlock’s wall safe. The Shadow approached. His gloved hand worked the combination. The front of the safe opened. The Shadow inspected the interior. The safe contained a few odd papers that Warlock had evidently replaced.

The light went out. The Shadow left the study and glided down the front stairs. He reached the living room. There, his light blinked intermittently as The Shadow moved along the wall. The light went out; The Shadow remained a full two minutes in the darkness. Then he moved away.

For his exit, The Shadow chose the rear door of the first floor. It opened from a kitchen. The door was locked, the key was hanging beside it. The Shadow used a skeleton key of his own. He unlocked the door, went through and locked the barrier behind him.

It was with apparent purpose that The Shadow kept to the darkness as he traveled away from Findlay Warlock’s. Had he found some trail left by an outer visitor who had come to the old house? Or had some lurker waited there, to leave later by the rear door that The Shadow had taken?

Or had Findlay Warlock been the man in the living room? He could easily have reached the upstairs study before the arrival of either Cluett or The Shadow. This aftermath was odd, coming only an hour following the strange disappearance of the black box that had been placed in the upstairs safe.

A soft laugh in the darkness. It indicated that The Shadow, moving stealthily in his passage from Warlock’s, had some destination known to himself alone. His course led southward after he was clear from the vicinity of the brownstone house. The Shadow was traveling in the direction of Times Square.

Mystery had fallen to-night — mystery to others, not to The Shadow. He had seen an aftermath to the delivery of the wealth in the black box. He had traced some cross-current in the scheming of the Unseen Killer.

EVIDENTLY, The Shadow had decided that the invisible crook’s work had been performed. The acquisition of certain funds was unquestionably the Unseen Killer’s aim. He had gained what he wanted.

Death no longer remained as a present motive.

But there was one man in Manhattan who did not share The Shadow’s opinion. Up in his apartment, Peters Amboy was talking to Detective Sergeant Markham. In his discourse, Amboy babbled his fear of death.

Amboy lived in a high-class apartment known as Surinam Hall; and Markham had felt secure as soon as they had reached the place. Amboy’s apartment was on the fourteenth floor. Stepping from the elevators, they had turned left; then right; and followed clear to the end of the corridor. There they had entered the last apartment on the right.

Markham had posted two detectives in the corridor. He and Amboy were seated in the living room, the third dick with them.

“He said he was going to kill one of us,” Amboy was telling the detective sergeant. “One of us to die — like Hildon died — before morning. It worries me.

“You delivered your cash,” reminded Markham. “That’s what this Unseen Killer wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. But he may still be vicious. He can go anywhere he wishes. Invisibly. Perhaps—”

“He won’t come here. Just the same, I’ll take a look at the place. Then you can turn in and get some sleep. That’s what you need, Mr. Amboy.”

Markham made an inspection. The apartment was situated at the rear of the building. All the rooms had windows in the rear wall. First was the living room. From it extended a windowless hall.

Off the hall Markham saw a bedroom. Then a bath; finally, at the very end of the hall, a door to the left.

Markham stepped in there and pressed a light switch set in the far wall. The room was half study, half bedroom.

“My own quarters,” explained Amboy. “This is where I intend to sleep.”

“Only the one door,” observed Markham.

“Yes,” replied Amboy. “This is the end of the apartment.”

“Why don’t they have a window in this end wall then?”

“Because this is only one half of the building. There’s another apartment beyond. Similar to this one.”

“I see. Reached from the other side of the house, eh?”

“Yes.”

Markham looked about. He asked Amboy to make sure that nothing in the room was disturbed. That established, both men left, Markham turning out the light. They went into the living room. There they sat and chatted.

Peters Amboy became less nervous during the progress of a half hour. Finally he decided to turn in.

Markham agreed to sleep in the empty bedroom, leaving the dicks in the living room. He walked along the hall with Amboy. He stopped, turned on the bedroom light and looked around.

Amboy kept on. When Markham reached the hall, the man was just stepping into the study at the end of the hall. Markham saw the door swing shut; it did not quite close. Hence the detective saw the light from the room when Amboy turned on the switch.

The detective sergeant turned to go back to the living room. Then he came to a startled stop. From beyond that partly closed door of the study came the boom of a gun shot. As Markham stood rooted, he heard a gasping choke; then the thump of a falling body.

MARKHAM sprang along the lighted hall. The dick from the living room came dashing up to join him.

Together, they reached the study. Markham pushed the door open. He stared at the floor. There, five feet away, lay the sprawled form of Peters Amboy.

Markham advanced and stopped above the body. Amboy was dead. Looking about, Markham could see no one. The detective sergeant had drawn a gun. He spoke to the dick beside him, ordering the fellow to bring in the other detectives from the hall.

The dick hurried away. Rising, Markham moved slowly toward the door; then stood with revolver in hand. Two minutes later, the three-man squad joined him. Posting his aids, Markham stalked across the room and yanked open a closet door. The closet was empty.

Space showed beneath the couchlike single bed. No spot where a man could be concealed. Markham stepped over to Amboy’s body. He thought he had the solution. Suicide. Amboy had been nervous. He looked for a gun, beside or beneath the body. He found none.

Blinking, Detective Sergeant Markham arose and stared at the dumfounded dicks. Like Markham, the members of the squad were wearing whitened faces. They formed a group that could swear to astounding murder.

Every man — even the pair in the hall — had heard the fatal shot. All had arrived through the only door whereby an exit could have been gained. Yet they had found no trace of the murderer nor any sign of the weapon he had used.

Again, the Unseen Killer had delivered amazing death!