The Unseen Killer

CHAPTER XIII. NORGAN SPEAKS

MIDNIGHT. Commissioner Wainwright Barth was standing in Amboy’s living room. He was surveying a group of men who had come here at his call. Findlay Warlock, Marryat Darring, Wallace Norgan; last of all, Lamont Cranston.

“I’m glad you happened to call the club, Cranston,” Barth was saying. “I reached Warlock at his home; Darring in the grille room of his hotel. Norgan, of course, was at his home, with Cardona guarding him.

“But I didn’t know where to reach you. That is why I left the message at the Cobalt Club. Because I wanted you to be here also. Every one who was present at Warlock’s should be here to learn the details of this new outrage by the Unseen Killer.”

Barth paused as Joe Cardona entered. The detective had come from the death room at the end of the hall. Joe nodded to indicate that everything was ready. They formed a procession down to Amboy’s study. They passed detectives in the narrow hall.

When they reached the death room, they saw Amboy’s body lying on the floor. Markham and a police surgeon were on duty.

“I want you all to hear the reports,” declared Barth. “Tell us exactly what happened, Markham.”

The detective sergeant gave the details as he knew them. When he had finished, Barth mentioned another matter — the fact that Markham had failed to cover the door after Amboy’s death.

“I muffed it, commissioner,” admitted the detective sergeant. “I remembered what you’d told me. We’ve got to figure that this Unseen Killer is around even when we can’t see him. I figured wrong. That’s all.

“Amboy had been jittery. Hadn’t been out of my sight all evening. Perked up some, just before he came in here. Then boom! — the shot comes all of a sudden. When I saw nobody in here, I thought that maybe it was suicide.

“It wasn’t till after I looked for a gun that I knew I was wrong. By that time, the squad had come in; I’d been away from the door. The Unseen Killer could easy have made his get-away.”

“Your frankness is commendable, Markham,” declared Barth. “Well, gentlemen, you see before you the evidence of a crime more startling than the murder of Nathaniel Hildon. Here, the Unseen Killer committed crime almost under the eyes of watching detectives.

“Look about. I want you to fully realize the difficulty that he must have encountered. Here is this room, just as it was when Peters Amboy was slain. There is the body. Let us hear the surgeon’s statement.”

“Would it be all right, commissioner, if I moved one of these floor lamps?” The question came from the police surgeon. “If I can get it closer to the body, I can show the wound more effectively.”

“Move one of the lamps if you choose.”

THE physician detached the cord of a lamp, pulling it from the floor plug. He carried the lamp to a spot only a few feet from the sprawled form of Peters Amboy. He carried the end of the cord to the wall switch.

There was a plug in the brass plate just beneath the switch. This plug was covered by a hinged brass disk, which the surgeon raised. He inserted the end of the lamp cord into the plug beneath. He turned on the lamp. A glow spread above Amboy’s body.

“The wound was just above the heart,” explained the doctor, in a methodical tone, stooping to indicate the body. “The range must have been about three feet. The man evidently staggered before he fell. It was impossible to tell exactly where he was standing when the killer fired.”

“I might indicate that, commissioner,” declared Markham. “But as the doctor says, it can’t be exact.”

“Show us,” suggested Barth.

“We’ll, he’d just turned on the light,” said Markham. “I don’t think the killer would have been mug enough to press the switch himself. So that puts Amboy here, to begin with.”

Markham went over and placed his right hand against the wall switch. He did not click it; instead, he stood there, facing the wall. He held up his left hand.

“I’ll give you the interval,” he said. “As near as I can remember it.”

He retained his position for a few moments; then lowered his left hand. Without turning, he spoke again.

“You see,” he said, “I turned on this light about a half hour before Amboy did. That was shortly after he and I got into the apartment. I was looking around the place. So I can figure sort of what a man might do after turning on the light.

“He’d either look around” — Markham turned his head to the left — “or he’d turn around.” He swung his body to the left. “This direction. Because he’d be coming into the room and the room is to the left.

“Now if he’d looked around, he couldn’t have got plugged while he was standing here, because the bullet’s in the front of him and he was facing the wall. Something would have had to make him swing. All right. Suppose we try it. I’ll look around.”

Markham stood in front of the switch. He swung his head to the left and began to blink his eyes.

“Suppose I’m Amboy,” he said. “I can’t see anything, because I can’t see the Unseen Killer. But maybe I hear something. That’s why I’m staring. I shy away” — Markham swung to the left and began to withdraw, toward the right — “and that lets him bump me through the heart.

“What happens then? Well, I stagger, but I’ve already got a start and like as not I’ll keep going back. Up against the door. But Amboy didn’t wind up against the door. So he didn’t turn his head, to begin with. He turned his body.”

“Logical,” asserted Barth. “But if he—”

“I know what you’re going to say, commissioner: If he turned his body, he’d have staggered back just the same. Well — he must have done more than turn his body. He must have turned and started away.”

Markham paused again. He turned and started to walk. “Like this, out here, and the shot. That finished him.”

Barth nodded and looked at Cardona. Joe gave his approval of Markham’s theory. It came rather unexpectedly, for Markham was not classed as an artist in deductive reasoning. Barth, however, could find no flaw.

“This comes within the time limit?” he questioned. “That is important, Markham.”

“It just gets inside it,” said the detective sergeant, “figuring that Amboy moved rather fast. He could have, because he was nervous. I think that clinches it, commissioner. I’ll tell you why.

“Because the only other way Amboy could have landed where he did was if he’d stayed facing the wall and gone back like this.” Markham went to the switch, stood there, then staggered back, stopping just before he reached the body. “But how could he have done that? The killer couldn’t have been between him and the wall.”

“How promptly did you arrive here?”

“As quick as I could make it. But I’m telling you something else, commissioner. I heard the shot. Then kind of a choke. After that, plop! So I know Amboy didn’t do a lot of staggering. He got places quick and by the shortest route.”

BARTH nodded approvingly. He motioned to the police surgeon, to indicate that the light was no longer needed.

The doctor turned off the lamp. Silent men watched him pull the cord from the wall. The little brass disk dropped shut with a click as it covered the plug in the wall plate. So hushed was the throng that the sound seemed loud.

Mechanically, eyes turned toward the body of Peters Amboy, that silent testimony to the power of the Unseen Killer. Only Lamont Cranston looked elsewhere. His gaze was toward the wall. His eyes, keen and burning, were the eyes of The Shadow.

Cardona and Markham questioned Barth; the commissioner gave them a nod. The body was to go to the morgue. That settled, Barth requested the other men to follow him. They went back to the living room.

“Peters Amboy is dead,” declared the commissioner. “His murder has given us another insight into the ways of the Unseen Killer. Until now, that fiend has apparently governed himself by a code of his own.

“To-night, however, his demand was met. He sought wealth; he received it. Yet he slew as he did before. There seems to be no explanation for his crime. Why — after that box was delivered — should he have sought the death of either Peters Amboy or Wallace Norgan?”

As he asked the question, Barth turned toward Norgan himself. Norgan’s face was pallid. It showed more than fear. It registered understanding. Norgan’s lips began to quiver.

A strange smile showed thinly on the features of Lamont Cranston. The eyes of The Shadow saw the answer.

Marryat Darring, too, was looking toward Wallace Norgan. Then Findlay Warlock stared at the last of the three men whom the Unseen Killer had threatened. Despite the fact that Hildon and Amboy were dead, Warlock could not forget the antagonism that he had held toward them.

In Norgan, Warlock saw the last of a trio whom he had defined as thieves. Perhaps that was why he — Warlock — was the first person to blurt out the question that his companions would soon have asked.

“Maybe you can tell us something, Norgan,” exclaimed Warlock. “Something that you failed to tell before. What was in that box that you left for the Unseen Killer?”

“I–I talked with Amboy” — Norgan’s sudden stammer broke — “and it was — well, both of us who decided—”

“Decided what?” quizzed Barth, suddenly.

“About the box,” gasped Norgan. “What we should put in it — before we took it to Warlock’s.”

“You mean the box contained no funds?”

Norgan nodded weakly.

“What was in it?” demanded Barth.

“Blank papers,” confessed Norgan. “The contents were worthless. We — we expected a trick—”

“So you worked one of your own — without informing me.”

“I know, commissioner. But — but we feared the Unseen Killer. He might have been listening when we talked to you—”

“Amboy is dead,” interposed Barth, solemnly. “We know now why he died. That, at least, brings us back to where we were.”

“My life is still in danger,” choked Norgan. “Hildon is gone. So is Amboy. If I—”

“We shall protect you — to the utmost. You will be guarded at your home. Do not worry, Norgan, at least not for the present. Your two associates have died. But now that you have given us the truth, I feel confident that you will be safe until a new threat arrives. After that—”

Barth paused speculatively. Then he called Cardona. He told the detective what had happened. He placed Norgan under Joe’s protection. Cardona called his squad together. Surrounding Norgan, they departed, taking Norgan to Long Island.

DETECTIVES remained in the apartment of Peters Amboy. Others were on duty in the corridor outside.

They kept up a patrol between there and the center hall where the elevators stopped. Hours passed while these men of the law maintained their vigil about the place where death had struck.

They were on duty should the Unseen Killer return. They were to report any unusual event that might occur upon this floor. Hours passed; but nothing disturbed the monotony of the watch. That, however, was because one sleuth failed in his duty.

Not long after Barth and the others had gone, a figure appeared mysteriously from a stairway on the fourteenth floor of the apartment building. A detective had just paced to the elevator shafts. He had turned to go back toward Amboy’s apartment.

It was then that a black-cloaked shape glided into plain view. Unseen by the detective, that phantom form moved past the elevators. The Shadow had returned, this time in his chosen guise of blackness.

It was not surprising that the dick failed to see The Shadow. For the mysterious visitant did not head toward Amboy’s apartment. Instead, he moved swiftly toward the corridor at the other side of the building. He reached an apartment at the end of a long hall.

There The Shadow’s key probed a lock. The spectral arrival entered an apartment that proved to be deserted. It was similar in layout to Amboy’s apartment; and The Shadow followed its hallway until he reached the last room. That chamber corresponded with the one wherein Peters Amboy had died.

A solid wall separated this apartment from Amboy’s. Hence The Shadow had no need to control the whispered mirth that he uttered while his flashlight blinked about the wall. Detectives in the next apartment could not hear that subdued mockery that bore a touch of grimness.

The little flashlight ended its blinks. The Shadow moved silently back along the hall. He left the apartment and made his way through the corridor. The space by the elevators was temporarily deserted. The Shadow reached the stairway and slowly descended.

Later, a laugh in the night. Traveling from the scene of crime, The Shadow found occasion for his mirth.

Peters Amboy had died through his own folly. By keeping secret the fact that the black box was stuffed, he and Wallace Norgan had made their great mistake.

Through that course they had not only lost the important protection of the law. They had also failed to keep the protection of The Shadow. That weird foe of crime had not met the Unseen Killer’s move purely because he had not expected a double game from Amboy and Norgan.

But The Shadow had scored to-night. As in the case of Melrose Lessep; as in the death of Nathaniel Hildon, he had once again gleaned facts that were bringing him closer to final combat with the Unseen Killer.