“Sure. Runnin’ that bootleg gas ain’t no cinch, since the Feds has been makin’ it hot. Nicky’s goin’ to be glad to hear from me.”
“All right. Hop along then. But don’t call him from too close to here. Head across the island. Ten miles, anyway.”
Pete chose the coupe. As he started the motor, Louie unlatched a sliding door. The lid of the rumble seat closed imperceptibly. The coupe backed out. Once again The Shadow was undergoing the inconvenience of a well-cramped ride.
Pete found a good road and traveled for about fifteen minutes. The coupe stopped; The Shadow heard the driver get out. Peering from his compartment, The Shadow saw Louie enter a fair-sized drug store that stood on the fringe of a lighted district. Further on, were the lights of a railway station.
Straight back was the road by which they had come. It paralleled the railway and came directly in from the darkened spaces of the countryside. The Shadow eased down into the compartment. Three minutes more and Pete was back in the car.
The mobster turned the coupe around. He headed along the road beside the railway. Pete was whistling to himself as he drove. Evidently he had made the required contact with Nicky. But Pete, as he watched the road, never realized what was happening in back.
The top of the rumble seat was coming up by inches. Long black hands were probing from the space provided. Pete could not see them in the mirror; for they were below the ledge of that opened rear window. The Shadow had particularly noted, back at the store, that Pete had not closed the glass panel.
One thing else. Coming in, The Shadow had noted a turn and a jounce where Pete had slowed almost to a standstill. He had learned its meaning. The coupe had gone over a railway crossing. That was the spot for which The Shadow was waiting.
It came. Pete applied the brakes and swung the car slowly to the right, shifting into second. It was then that The Shadow rose. The top of the rumble seat was heaved up by hoisting shoulders. The gloved hands shot through the opened window. Like claws of steel, they clutched Pete’s throat.
The mobster struggled, raising his hands from the wheel to fight off the attack. His body writhed, while the coupe, almost stopped, encountered the rise to the crossing and stalled. In gear, it did not coast back. The Shadow’s grip, meanwhile, never lessened. Pete’s body became limp.
LEAVING the rumble seat The Shadow dropped to the ground. He entered by the driver’s side, pushed Pete into the other half of the seat, started the motor and went over the crossing.
He followed the road along the other side of the railway. He came to a small, darkened station.
Here The Shadow pulled the car into a sheltered spot and extinguished the lights. He bound Pete’s hands and feet; then flicked the rays of a flashlight squarely in the fellow’s face. He studied Pete’s features carefully, to find that he had recollected them perfectly from the previous time he had seen the man.
Pete opened his eyes and started to make an outcry. A gloved hand covered his mouth. The Shadow whisked a handkerchief from the pocket of Pete’s coat and used it to gag the mobster. Prior to the binding, The Shadow had pulled that coat from Pete’s limp body. It was conveniently on the steering wheel when The Shadow needed the bandanna.
Pete’s only gun was in the coat also. The Shadow hoisted the unarmed mobster from the coupe, carried him back and sprawled him in the rumble seat. The lid down, The Shadow went toward the little station. He found it locked.
Entering required only a few minutes. Inside, The Shadow found a little ticket office and a pay telephone booth. He chose the latter and put in a call to Burbank. Referring to a road map that he had taken from a side pocket of the car, The Shadow gave instructions.
The map was unmarked; moreover, it was one of several, all showing different states. The Shadow had no clue from the map itself. But he had seen the name Almeda on the station at the town; and he was making this call from a station called Shawlawn. Finding those spots on the map, The Shadow had all he needed.
Back in the garage, he had checked the mileage on the coupe’s speedometer while opening the rear window. He had estimated nine miles as the distance between the new headquarters and Almeda, deducting approximately for the return distance from Almeda to this next station, Shawlawn.
The map showed only one paved road running out in this direction. The Shadow knew that the headquarters was a sizable house within a woods, about one mile from the highway. He gave Burbank the direction.
After other instructions, The Shadow returned to the coupe. Turning on the dome light, he spied a package on the floor. Pete had brought it from the drug store; opening the package, The Shadow found four boxes of cigars, evidently supplies for the mob at the house.
Turning out the dome light, The Shadow removed his cloak. He folded it, pried open the cigar boxes and dumped their contents one by one, through the rear window and down into the rumble seat which he raised for this purpose.
Two hundred cigars formed clusters about Pete’s huddled form. Then The Shadow ripped off the lids of the boxes, broke out the fronts and threw the discarded portions in with his prisoner. He closed the top of the rumble seat.
Using the boxes as shells, The Shadow formed a large container for his cloak. He wrapped the four boxes in the paper and tied the strings. The package was the same as it had been before. The Shadow laid it on the floor; then donned Pete’s coat.
There were objects on the seat beside The Shadow — automatics that he had taken from the folds of his cloak; other items, and a flattened box. The Shadow tucked the guns in a belt that he was wearing. He opened the flat box and turned on a flashlight.
The Shadow was looking straight into a mirror that formed the interior of the box lid. His right-hand glove was off. With fingers obscuring his face, The Shadow was applying make-up from the box. His task half done, his features looked rough and ill-formed.
Then The Shadow turned on the dome light to complete his task. Both hands were working nimbly. Little by little, the features changed until they began to resemble those of The Shadow’s prisoner, Pete.
Hastily, The Shadow applied finishing touches. He turned out the dome light, tucked the make-up box in an inside pocket of Pete’s coat and clicked the front lights of the car.
RETURNING toward the house, The Shadow had no trouble gauging his direction. His directions to Burbank were proving amazingly accurate. His headlights showed several dirt roads veering off to the right. He kept past four, until he found the one that seemed correct.
The coupe’s wheels jounced through jagged ruts; over a little bridge. Points that The Shadow remembered. One mile in, The Shadow came to a drive that led to the left. His sense of direction told him that this was where he should leave the road. He drove a hundred yards on, until the car passed between two stone gates.
The Shadow stopped and extinguished the lights. He crept along through trees for another fifty yards; then reached a clearing. Boughs were creaking overhead. Rising wind was dispelling the clouded sky that had marked the early evening.
Straggling moonlight, increasing in intensity, revealed the stone walls of the house wherein men lay prisoners. Evidently an old lodge of some sort, this building had been acquired by crooks as headquarters for crime.
The building was two stories high. All the lower windows were iron shuttered; the upper ones were barred. But the building had a broad, flat roof, a fact which brought a soft laugh from The Shadow.
There were lights in the upper windows. That second floor was where The Shadow would find both crooks and prisoners. The garage, The Shadow noted, was a one-story extension to the right of the building proper.
Softly, The Shadow moved back into the gloom of the trees. He was returning to the coupe, there to make final plans for his disguised entry into this house of evil.