Zemba

CHAPTER XIII THE THREE MEET

WHILE taxicabs were rolling from the Hotel Princesse toward the heights of the Montmartre, a pedestrian was entering the lobby of the Hotel Talleyrand. This man was Eric Delka. He was on his way to visit a guest named Perquigray, whom Delka, however, knew better by the name of Etienne Robeq.

Unannounced, Delka went up to the fourth floor and rapped upon the door of a corner room. He heard a guarded query; he responded in a low tone. The door opened; Delka stepped into a room that was illuminated by a single table lamp. He smiled as he saw the square-jawed face of Robeq, topped by its black hair. He shook hands and received a firm, viselike grip.

“You have arrived in time, Delka,” greeted Robeq. “I hoped that you received the message that I sent to Sergeant Rusanne. Sit down a few minutes. We cannot start until I hear from Rusanne.”

“He told me that we might be going somewhere,” nodded Delka. “What is it? A trail to Gaspard Zemba?”

“It may be,” returned Robeq, grimly. “Last night, two sergents de ville thought they saw him near the Cafe Poisson. This evening, there is a report of suspicious characters close to the Cabaret du Diable, in the Montmartre.”

“Zemba again?”

“We cannot tell. Any one may be Zemba to a sergent de ville. The order, however, is to keep only the regular patrol in the Montmartre.”

“So that Zemba will suspect nothing, if he is there?”

“Exactly. I intend to go there and look for him. I need some one else who is not known, particularly in case we have to summon aid. That is why I wanted you with me.”

Delka smiled. The choice suited him. Before Robeq could speak further, the telephone bell buzzed. The Frenchman answered it. Delka heard him speak in concise phrases.

“Rusanne,” informed Robeq, after completing the call. “All orders are understood. Come. Let us be on our way.”

They entered a station of the Metropolitan Railway, near the hotel. Robeq squandered two francs and thirty centimes buying first-class tickets. They entered the first-class coach in the middle of the train, and as they settled into the cushions, Robeq spoke in English, tinged with French.

“Ah, le Metropolitain,” he chuckled. “It takes one anywhere. Provided one understands its many devious ways. Which reminds me” — he studied the ticket stubs — “we must consult this hachette and learn the proper correspondance. Junction, you understand.”

“We have to change to reach the Montmartre,” recalled Delka, who was somewhat familiar with the Metro. “I don’t know where, though.”

“Here it is,” decided Robeq. “The junction that I thought. I have to be careful when riding on the Metro, because new lines have been added since the days when I lived in Paris. Quite a contrast, this noisy underground, to the soundless wastes of the Sahara Desert.”

THEY changed cars at the proper correspondance and while they were riding alone in another first-class compartment, Robeq produced a new theme.

“The Cabaret du Diable,” he mused, “is close to the Allee des Bijoux. A bad pitfall, the latter, as I remember it. Rusanne mentioned the alley in his last telephone call.”

“A blind alley?” inquired Delka. “Many of them are, in Paris.”

“The city abounds with them. The Allee du Diable is one of the worst. One would be unwise to enter it, even with a squad of agents at his heels.”

“The kind of place that Zemba would choose.”

“I know it. That is why we shall watch the outside, at a respectable distance. I shall have you summon a few officers when we near there. Our best plan would be to trap the fox when he has ventured from his den.”

Finishing their subway journey, Robeq and Delka came above ground and approached the drizzle-blurred lights of the Montmartre. Blinking, red bulbs proclaimed the Cabaret du Diable. Robeq edged Delka into an alleyway at one side; then mumbled angrily at his mistake.

“Bah! I am wrong!” he ejaculated. “The Allee des Bijoux is reached from the other side. Come, Monsieur Delka.”

They skirted the cabaret and entered a narrow, gloomy street. Robeq stopped his companion; they paused, pretending to light cigarettes while two Apaches slouched past.

“They may be going into the alley,” whispered Robeq. “It is right behind the cabaret. Go. Find the nearest agents and tell them that you are from Sergeant Rusanne. Mention that you have a friend waiting here. If they should guess that one of us is Robeq, it is better that they should believe that you were he.

“I would prefer to pass for some dandy visiting the Montmartre. My attire indicates it. Meanwhile, I shall be prepared. It would be best to mention that your friend is armed.”

Delka had noted Robeq’s attire. The detective had been dressed for the street from the time that Delka had seen him. He was wearing a fashionable Derby hat, a light waterproof raincoat, and a pair of smooth-fitting kid gloves. As he mentioned that he was prepared, Robeq peeled the glove from his right hand and held it in his left while he dipped his right and into his coat pocket to bring a stub-nosed revolver into view. Delka tapped his own pocket to indicate that he was armed. After that, he hurried to locate the agents.

FARTHER UP the little street, two men were already stationed at the mouth of the Allee des Bijoux. Harry and Cliff were on duty. Unnoticed, they had watched the two Apaches shuffle past and enter the alley. Cliff whispered to Harry.

“That makes four—”

“The Shadow will know,” interposed Harry, his tone as low as Cliff’s. “He has calculated the odds.”

“But when will he be here?”

“We don’t know. But if Zemba is already in there—”

A sibilant hiss sounded almost beside the speakers. Then came the sound of a slight swish in the rain. The agents realized that a cloaked figure had come close to them, creeping in from the rear end of this street. That was the direction which they had expected The Shadow to come from.

“Remain posted.”

The whispered warning was all. Then The Shadow had moved into the solid blackness of the Allee des Bijoux. Both agents huddled tense. They knew the danger that lay there. Any one of the lurking spots at the side of the alley might hold a full quota of Apaches. Zemba himself would be lurking within the innermost recess.

Then, like an open challenge to all men of evil came a whispered tone of mockery. It rose to a shuddering, sinister taunt. The laugh of The Shadow, delivered from the very heart of the alley. A token of a master battler who had entered the stronghold of his foe.

The tone startled the waiting agents. They heard it answered by a hollow echo. That told them the elusiveness of the eerie laugh. No one — not even the Apaches close at hand — could have guessed the exact source of the sound.

Again the laugh; this time with rising, eerie crescendo. A shivering tone more evasive than the first. A mocking thrust that brought cries of venom. Tricked, the Apaches responded as The Shadow had planned. In a trice, they turned the tables on themselves.

Electric torches glimmered everywhere, sweeping about the alleyway to reveal the stone walls of the cul-de-sac. The lights glittered from the tops of steps that emerged from cellar dens.

The beams spread; one glimmering ray shone suddenly upon a weaving figure that stopped like a frozen statue. Burning eyes glittered in the light. Again the laugh resounded.

With it came the burst of automatics. Big guns tongued blasts of flame from black-gloved fists. Bullets zimmed for the Apache with the telltale flashlight Instantly, that beam dropped to the ground. The Shadow was gone again, in darkness.

Apaches were springing forward, yelling their defiance, spinning their flashlights as they fired revolvers toward the end wall of the blind alley. Knives clattered against stones. Like bullets, they found nothingness. The Shadow had whirled away; his own guns roared their welcome.

LIGHTS went clattering. Yells turned to groans. The Apaches were The Shadow’s targets. Their lights made them his prey. Cursing, howling, they sprawled upon the paving of the alley while a living turret blasted slugs into their midst.

Transfixed by the amazing fray, Harry and Cliff came suddenly to their senses. They heard shouts behind them. They realized that the battle in the alley was but the beginning of the fray. Apaches were surging in from the street. Quickly, The Shadow’s agents turned to meet the attack.

Pumping hastily with their automatics, Harry and Cliff were suddenly bathed in the glare of new torches. For a moment, they were rooted. They dropped back instinctively, just as guns boomed and bullets sizzled past them.

Again they fired. From up the street came other shots; some Apaches swung in that direction. Then shots from the other direction, by the Cabaret du Diable. Those diverting blasts made up for the lapse of The Shadow’s agents.

Besides, the surge of Apaches hurtling toward them were men with knives; close-range fighters who were following the searchlight’s path. Harry and Cliff aimed valiantly; as they did, a form arrived between them. It was The Shadow.

An automatic roared its thunderous tenor, close to the ears of Harry and Cliff. Shattering glass — a howl — and the searchlight was gone. Sweeping arms hurtled Harry and Cliff aside. A cloaked shape sprang squarely into the cluster of knife-bearing Apaches. The agents could hear the thuds as automatics met blocking skulls.

Another flashlight glimmered. It showed a black shape twisting from grasping arms. A knife slashed. It cleaved a huge stretch of cloth. Clawing hands gripped The Shadow. Then Harry saw a diving form go rolling from the cloak.

An automatic stabbed upward as The Shadow struck the ground. An Apache howled, dropped his knife and fell. Then another shot boomed from beside Harry’s ear. The new light went out.

Cliff had used The Shadow’s method. He had picked off the Apache with that glimmering torch. But the fight had become a general melee. Men were everywhere, firing up and down the street. New flashlights were glimmering. The law had arrived. Delka was back with the agents, to rejoin Robeq.

AS Harry and Cliff sprang forward, the sweeping beams gave flickering flashes of amazing scenes. Just away from them, twisting to reach the far end of the narrow streets, Harry and Cliff saw the tall form of Herbert Balliol, an expected sight, since they had witnessed the loss of the cloak and hat.

They sprang to aid, bashing down Apaches who blocked their way. Then, as they grappled with mad fighters, they saw another figure across the street. An aiming, glaring fighter, whose face they knew, though they had never seen such a countenance before.

The countenance of Gaspard Zemba, leering above a gun muzzle that pointed toward the spot where Balliol was struggling. Once those fighters broke that gun would bark. Harry and Cliff were hopelessly unable to prevent it; for they were struggling too completely with their own adversaries.

But in that moment of terrific combat came a break. Leaping forward, recklessly sweeping in front of the police flashlights came another whose identity neither Harry nor Cliff could guess. His was a square-jawed face, with black hair above. A struggling Apache gasped the name:

“Robeq!”

The twisted figure of Herbert Balliol, stretched amid grapplers whom he was driving off with the pounding swing of one gun. The snarling, gloating watcher beyond, swinging suddenly to meet the new invasion of a square-jawed man who was on the forward move.

All three were face to face each in a situation of his own. The Shadow, Etienne Robeq, who battled for right, confronted by their enemy, Gaspard Zemba!