IT was Clyde Burke who heard Joe Cardona’s version of the fray at the Hotel Grammont. At headquarters, the next morning, the detective recounted the discovery that had followed the annihilation of Crime Incorporated.
“We’ve got the full details of the meeting,” declared Cardona. “The guy that tipped us off — we don’t know who it was — sure pulled a complete job. The place was wired with a dictograph.
“Up on the floor above, two stenographers were taking notes. Do you know who was with them — who hired them? I’ll tell you. Howard Norwyn!
“He’d been hiding somewhere. He got word from an unknown friend to be on deck. From the reports, it appears that a guy named Richard Glade double-crossed the rest of the crew. It was when he told them ‘I am the menace’ that Glade cut off the connection, acting on instructions from his friend.”
“What became of Glade?” inquired Clyde.
“We don’t know,” responded Cardona. “He’s the only one of the lot that got away. But we located his apartment. We landed those pictures that belong to the British Syndicate.
“Looks like Glade crossed himself, as well as the others. I can’t figure it. But the important part is the way we’re tracing the stolen stuff. We’ve landed Gaston Ferrar’s jewels. We’ll have everything else in a week, I’ll bet. What’s more, we’ve got Garry Hewes.”
“Garry Hewes?”
“Yes. The real murderer of George Hobston. One of the crime crew was Culbert Joquill — lawyer with offices in the Zenith Building. We found a secret room in his place. Guess he didn’t trust his own workers, for he had a statement there about Garry Hewes, with the guy’s address. It was hidden with cash, and bonds of Hobston’s.
“We trapped Hewes in his hotel room. He put up a fight; he got the worst of it. Confessed the murder while he was dying in the hospital. We knew Howard Norwyn was all right anyway, after he showed up with his dictograph reports, but the confession that Hewes made cleared Norwyn from all suspicion.
“And it all started from a tip-off,” said Clyde, as he turned to leave the office. “Who gave it to you. Joe?”
“I don’t know,” asserted the detective, staring straight at the reporter.
Clyde Burke was smiling when he reached the street. He knew that Joe Cardona had wisely refrained from stating the source from which the word had come.
For Joe Cardona knew the power of The Shadow. He knew that The Shadow preferred to shroud his work in darkness. He knew that the master sleuth would aid him in the future, so long as his mighty hand could remain unknown.
Detective Joe Cardona, like the agents of The Shadow, knew the true being who had wiped out Crime Incorporated. Yet even they did not know the full details of the master fighter’s war against that evil chain.
That record, hidden like The Shadow himself, belonged within the black walls of the secret sanctum. The facts concerning Crime Incorporated were preserved for the archives of The Shadow.
There, upon a single page of a massive tome was the heading, “Crime Incorporated.” Beneath it, the dividend for which The Shadow had called, its full sum totaled in a single word:
“DEATH.”