An instant later, The Shadow caught sound of another car. This one was approaching. It was Moe’s cab, wheeling around from the side street, Hawkeye on the running board. Moe had spotted Hawkeye backing from the corner out front. He had driven up, snatched the little fighter aboard and kept on coming to contact The Shadow.
Hissing an order, The Shadow shoved Hawkeye in through the door that Moe opened. Following aboard, The Shadow dropped to the rear seat. Right arm thrust from an opened window, bearing his full weight on that side, The Shadow directed the pursuit of Cliff Marsland’s captors.
Moe spied the other car; but could not gain on it. The chase kept on; Louie was threading a wild course with many turns that kept Moe a full two blocks behind. The course led northward, into a district where the whine of sirens became suddenly audible.
The fleeing car sped across an avenue. Moe, driving up, jammed on his brakes at a crossing one block behind. Quickly, the cab driver turned off the cross street. A police car had cut in from the avenue. It was heading straight for the cab.
Chance of pursuit was ended. Luck had again tricked The Shadow. The dynamite had blown beneath the street in back of the Reisert mansion. The Shadow’s chase had led through a district to which police cars were converging.
Moe’s get-away was easy. The cabby nodded as he heard a wearied order from his chief. With no further opportunity of rescuing Cliff, The Shadow was giving thought to himself. Soon he would leave this cab, letting Moe and Hawkeye go their way.
For Doctor Rupert Sayre was due to meet an emergency patient. As Henry Arnaud, friend of Lamont Cranston, The Shadow would soon introduce himself to the physician whose door was always open.
CHAPTER XVIII
AGENTS CHOOSE
MORNING journals blasted big news of the Reisert robbery. Huge headlines gloated in their proclamations. The criminal activities of the unknown dynamiters had become a news sensation. The evening sheets were planning extra editions to keep pace with any new developments.
Detective Joe Cardona was fuming at headquarters. Deluged with reporters, the ace sleuth was at his wit’s end. The acting police commissioner had shoved the newshawks in his direction. Cardona was beating off the pests as fast as they arrived.
Worst of all, from Cardona’s standpoint, the reporters had been harping on one question. Did Cardona intend to use the dragnet? Joe had given no reply; but he knew that the afternoon newspapers would predict the use of that weapon. There had been a gang fight near the Bowery, last night. The dragnet would be heralded as the logical bet.
Actually, Joe Cardona did intend to put the dragnet into operation. That was the chief reason why he fumed. To suit his best advantages, he was withholding his orders to scour the underworld. He wanted to spring the net tonight. Meanwhile, the newspapers were practically tipping off the mobs to what was coming; and there was no way to muzzle the press.
WHILE Cardona was having his difficulties, two men were discussing the same problems that perplexed the detective. Their meeting place, however, was far from detective headquarters. These two were seated in an office high in the towering Badger Building, near Times Square.
One was Harry Vincent, sober-faced and thoughtful. The other was a rotund, lethargic man who sat behind the desk. This was Rutledge Mann, chubby-faced investment broker whose real work was to serve as contact agent for The Shadow. The meeting place was Mann’s office.
Reaching in a dark drawer, Mann extracted an envelope and passed it to Harry Vincent. The visitor opened it, read a coded note, and nodded. The writing vanished after Harry’s perusal. It was a message from The Shadow.
“I am ready,” declared Harry, decisively.
“You recognize the risk?” inquired Mann.
“Certainly,” responded Harry. “Cliff Marsland’s life is at stake. The only way to save him is to find out where he is.”
“Marsland may already be dead.”
“And if he is—”
“It will mean death for you also.”
Harry smiled.
“It’s a fifty-fifty chance, Mann,” he declared. “If they’re holding Cliff to make him talk, they will hold me also. I am ready to risk it. I shall give you my own message, stating that I have started on the venture.”
“One moment,” interposed Mann, with a slight drawl. “Are you sure you read the message exactly?”
“Certainly,” returned Harry. “It said that someone was needed to take the risk that might save Cliff. That I was to decide if I was ready for such a quest. Whatever my decision, I was to discuss the matter with you.”
“Precisely,” declared Mann. “The message, however, did not name you as the specific person to undertake the job.”
“I inferred that it meant me.”
“It did, Vincent; but not you alone, I received a message of my own. It was probably the same as yours.”
“You mean that you—”
“I was offered the same privilege. The message referred to ‘someone,’ and that is why we must talk the matter over.”
Harry smiled. This was unusual. Dangerous duties usually evolved upon the active agents. On this occasion, however, The Shadow had given Rutledge Mann the same status as Harry Vincent.
“You see,” affirmed the investment broker, thoughtfully, “whichever of us takes up this duty is a matter of equal choice. The purpose is to begin a trail. Do you remember, Vincent, when we were boys: how if we lost a marble, we used to toss another on the ground to see if it rolled to the first one?”
“I certainly do,” laughed Harry, “and the odd part about it was that it generally worked.”
“It is likely to do so in this case, Vincent. We are marbles. Another, marble, namely Marsland, has been lost. Our question is: which of us is to be tossed.”
“And the decision is up to us?”
“Obviously. And since I am as ready to go as you are, we must come to some choice between us.”
HARRY pondered the matter.
“Perhaps,” he said, at length, “to be fair about it, we ought to decide who will be the more useful. I mean by that, which of us is the one who should resign from the quest. Take yourself, for instance. You have this office, with its duties—”
“There is no choice, Vincent,” interrupted Mann. “If one were better for the mission than the other, one of us would have been designated.”
“But our activities are widely different. We are pieces in the same game of—”
“A good analogy, Vincent. You are familiar with the game of chess, are you not?”
Harry nodded.
“Very well,” smiled Mann, “we know that the different pieces of the chess board have varying moves. A queen is more valuable than a castle; in turn, a castle is more valuable than a knight or a bishop.”
“Yes,” agreed Harry. “And the pawns are least of all.”
“We are not quite down to the pawn level,” chuckled Mann, in his leisurely fashion. “Let us stop with the knight and the bishop. Consider yourself as the knight, Vincent. You can be moved to any spot on the board, used in attack or defense. I, however, am in the position of the bishop.
“There are distinct limitations in my case. The bishop is confined to only one half of the squares on the board. Yet there are times when the bishop can be moved to marvelous advantage; particularly when the player seeks to check his opponent.
“Chess experts have decided that the knight and the bishop are practically equal in value. If one must be sacrificed, or placed in danger, it is largely a matter of the player’s choice. Do you grasp the analogy, Vincent?”