The action was too late. Bigelow Zorman’s form was still. Doom had come to this victim who had unwittingly wandered into the circle of death!
The telephone receiver was clicking from the floor. Bigelow Zorman’s first calls for help had been heard below. The Shadow arose, but did not touch the instrument. He listened intently. His keen gaze was staring from the opened window.
Directly beyond, the electric sign glowed with green corners that had crimson centers. Those lights were the token that potential death had been delivered. As yet, the culmination had not been announced. Only The Shadow knew that Bigelow Zorman had succumbed.
Hurried footsteps in the corridor. Voices accompanied the sound. People had come from below, summoned here by Zorman’s frantic call. The face of Henry Arnaud betrayed no concern. As fists pounded upon the door, the tall visitant turned toward the end of the room.
There was another door there — one that connected with an adjoining room. The Shadow inserted his pick in the lock. The door yielded. Someone was opening the outer door of Zorman’s room. Just as the barrier yielded to a key, the figure of Henry Arnaud disappeared beyond the closing door of the next room.
The house detective had arrived, accompanied by other attendants. The newcomers sprang forward to examine the body of Bigelow Zorman.
In the darkness of the next room, The Shadow, still in the guise of Henry Arnaud, was moving toward the outer door.
He reached it. The door opened softly. The Shadow stepped out into the corridor. The passage was deserted, for all of the arrivals had hurried into Zorman’s room. With quick stealth. The Shadow headed down the corridor. He reached a turn in the passage just as an excited bell boy came from Room 1416.
The bell boy did not glimpse the disappearing form of Henry Arnaud. He was obeying an order from the house detective as he hurried back toward the elevator. Meanwhile, The Shadow had reached the stairway of a fire tower. Two flights down, he went back into a passage.
With the quiet demeanor which characterized Henry Arnaud’s appearance, he acted the part of a chance guest as he strolled toward the elevators.
THERE was a stir at the desk in the lobby. The bell boy had arrived there and was speaking to the clerk. The man hushed him with an awed tone.
“Dead!” was the clerk’s low statement. “In Room 1416?”
The bell hop nodded.
The clerk turned toward the manager’s office. A mean seated near the desk arose. He was the one who had trailed Bigelow Zorman to the hotel. He entered a telephone booth and put in a call.
“Hello,” was all he said. “The business is settled… Yes… Yes… Apparently all is satisfactory…”
The informant strolled from the lobby. He had reached the avenue when Henry Arnaud appeared from an elevator and also walked toward the outer door.
Just as Henry Arnaud reached the street, a change took place in the light that showed in the corners of the signal sign. Greens had altered; all corners were of solid red.
A beacon above Broadway — a blazing omen against the sky — this sign meant nothing to thousands who viewed it. Yet to the members of the circle of death, it was a final token of another victim’s demise.
The man who had left the Hotel Goliath viewed that sign. So, for that matter, did Henry Arnaud. Both were walking directly toward it at the moment when the red light, no longer needed, vanished to be replaced by white.
Bigelow Zorman was dead. Chance circumstances had brought his death while The Shadow had been setting forth to prevent it. The circle of death had scored another victory. A victim had been gained from the thousands who teemed above Times Square.
Yet the lips of Henry Arnaud formed a thin, grim smile as the tall personage who wore Arnaud’s visage turned along a side street a block from the Hotel Goliath. The soft whisper of a strange, outlandish laugh came from Arnaud’s lips.
The circle of death had struck. Once again, doom had been delivered with no apparent clew. Yet The Shadow had turned the past into a future plan. He had heard the dying words of Bigelow Zorman.
Dying words! Brief gasps from the lips of a man already doomed. These would be fitted with other facts that The Shadow knew. Through them, the master who battled crime was planning his next forays against the circle of death!
CHAPTER XII
WITHIN THE CIRCLE
DETECTIVE JOE CARDONA was seated in his office. He was studying notes that he had scrawled upon a pad. Cardona’s face was glum. The detective picked up a newspaper and read the headlines.
A news account told of Bigelow Zorman’s death. Physicians had attributed it to the effect of poison. Yet there was no evidence that such a dose had been administered. Bigelow Zorman, a stranger in New York, had succumbed in mysterious fashion.
It was possible, Cardona knew, that Zorman could have received the poison in some food or drink. That death might have been due to a queer accident. Such, apparently, was the cause. There was no way to tell where Zorman had dined on the evening of his death.
He had come to his hotel room from the Times Square area. He might have stopped at any of one hundred places. He might have met any one of thousands of people. His death was of mysterious origin.
Fortunately, in Cardona’s opinion, the newspapers had rejected certain facts which the detective considered as important. No connection had been noted between the deaths of Bigelow Zorman, Maurice Bewkel and Dustin Cruett. Yet Cardona saw a link. He, for one, had gained a suspicion of the truth.
Somewhere, somehow, death could be delivered in untraceable fashion to persons who entered a certain zone near Times Square. Joe Cardona had no idea of the confines of that zone. He had refrained, for the time, to detail his growing suspicions to Inspector Timothy Klein.
As he arose from his desk, Cardona wore a grim expression on his face. Once again, the sleuth was faring forth on a seemingly hopeless task. He was going to place himself within that district where death had taken hold; yet where not one suspicious person could be located among the passing thousands.
As he left his office, Joe Cardona experienced an odd recollection. He remembered a hawklike face that he had seen near Times Square. Was that a mere coincidence? Cardona did not think so. He was more convinced than before that he had seen The Shadow.
Time and again, crimes that had seemed unsolvable had yielded when The Shadow had stepped upon their trail. Cardona, much though he prided himself upon his ability as a sleuth, was wise enough to know that he could not match his own skill with that of The Shadow. Secretly, the detective held the hope that The Shadow, too, was on this trail of death.
CARDONA’S hope was a reality. As the detective was leaving headquarters for his nightly patrol of Times Square, The Shadow, too, was making plans. Within his secret sanctum, this supersleuth was studying the latest reports received from those who worked in his behalf.
Harry Vincent had uncovered but little at South Shoreview. The plant of the Electro Oceanic Corporation was closed, pending the raising of new capital. The death of Bigelow Zorman had dropped like a bomb-shell there. Perry Harton, the plant manager, had left for the North. Harry could not learn whether or not the man had gone to New York.
Through Rutledge Mann had come important data. He had worked upon the names that The Shadow had given him. Rightwood — the first name uttered by Zorman’s dying lips — had proven to be Channing Rightwood, who was, at present, in Chicago. Rightwood, Mann had learned, was a stockholder in Electro Oceanic.
Following this discovery, Mann had taken the incompleted name which Zorman had pronounced as “Tress.” He had decided that this must mean Felix Tressler, wealthy investor who was also a purchaser of Electro Oceanic.