If The Shadow wanted gas he could have it. Strampf beckoned to the men with the hose. They thrust the nozzle through the opening and pulled the lever of the cylinder. Deadly gas began to mingle with the white vapor in the lab.
Fortunately for Strampf, he had stepped back. That whitish gas had a purpose that Strampf did not suspect. The clue to it lay in the flames of the Bunsen burners.
The room had not quite reached its proper saturation when the drillers had finished making the hole.
Some gas had trickled through the opening; but the hydrometer jars were still increasing the amount.
Hardly had the underlings shoved the hose into the laboratory before the whitish vapor acted. The air was overcharged with gas. The burners ignited it. The whole air coughed with one fierce explosion that produced a blinding flash of flame.
The steel door shattered outward. The laboratory walls cracked; its floor collapsed. Down came the ceiling above it; the whole room became a crumbled pit. The floor of the sanctum quaked. Its stripped walls shuddered and began to cave.
The blasted door carried the two gas handlers with it. They lay dead, their bodies shattered. About them were crawling thugs, some crippled, others merely shaken. All were groping for the exit at the corner of the sanctum, to escape the scorching fumes that followed the flaming blast.
Strampf was by the ladder. He took one look at the ruined laboratory knew that no one could have stayed there and survived. He clambered up the ladder followed by two others. More had gone out by the other passage. The only ones who remained were dead.
Dead like The Shadow!
THAT thought strummed through Strampf's brain, as he reached the outside door. In the alleyway was a truck loaded with the trophies from the sanctum.
Strampf could hear shrieking sirens; the staccato gun barks that told wide battle was in progress.
Cordons of crooks were fighting off the law, while those in the center completed the destruction of The Shadow.
Clear air quickened Strampf's thoughts. He wanted to cover crime, to keep it a permanent mystery. That could be done. Strampf gave the right order. Henchmen were to set the charges that had originally been intended. Experts hopped to the job when Strampf shouted the command.
Five minutes later, there was a silent, deserted area in the midst of the wide circle where hordes of crooks skirmished with squads of arriving police. The truck was ten blocks away, finding a route that a convoy of thugs had hewn. Looking from the rear of the truck, Strampf saw the sequel.
The night air was ripped by a tremendous upheaval of flame. The volcanic blast tossed chunks of masonry above surrounding buildings. Ground shook; even the elevated posts seemed to rattle from the vibrations that shuddered through the solid rock that formed Manhattan's base.
Then the muffled roar of the settling debris. The shudder was ended. Tons of masonry had crushed all remnants of the hollow chamber that had once been The Shadow's sanctum. It had gone, with his ruined laboratory.
Even the body of The Shadow, like those of the buried crooks, would be consumed by the scorching gaseous flames that seared through the shattered foundations of the blasted building.
The truck was away to safety. It rolled southward, into Manhattan's financial district. It reached a skyscraper that pointed far into the darkened sky. The building occupied a full block; at one corner was a special entrance for vehicles. Big doors opened; the truck rolled through.
In a gloomy confined space, picked men worked as Strampf ordered. They removed everything that had come from the sanctum; they loaded the goods into a freight elevator. They rode forty stories upward.
They unloaded the cargo at the end of a short corridor. A door stood open at the left. The load went through; up a steep stairway.
SOON afterward, Strampf stood alone in a squarish room that his men had carpeted with black. The walls were hung with the sable draperies from The Shadow's sanctum. The table was in one corner, the archives coffer beside it and the bluish light above. The file cabinet was in the corner opposite.
Strampf broke open the coffer that contained the archives; made a brief study of the books that it contained. He went to the file cabinet. He opened each drawer and made a quick, but methodical, run through the index cards.
Strampf was working by a regular light that hung in this room. That light and the vaulted roof were the only features that made the place differ from The Shadow's sanctum, as Strampf had found it.
Satisfied with his general inspection, Strampf left the tower room. He closed a heavy door behind him and bolted it solidly from the outside. His footsteps rang out on the steep metal stairs. Strampf had finished with that room for tonight. He had other duties to perform.
Strampf would not have credited his own senses had he remained to learn what happened afterward in the tower room.
First there was a dull metallic sound from the file cabinet - a sound that came like some unruly echo from the past. There was a swish, somewhere in the room; a flashlight formed a gleaming beam.
A whispered laugh echoed in the darkness as the sweeping ray completed its circuit from the room. That laugh was ghostly.
It was the laugh of The Shadow!
No longer was The Shadow a mere wraith from the past. He was himself; his hand turned on the bluish light. Beneath that glow came black-gloved hands, the gloves peeled off. A gleaming gem showed from a finger to throw back the blue light's sparkle in many varied hues.
That gem was The Shadow's girasol - the rare fire opal that he used as token of his identity. Those hands produced the vital documents that The Shadow had bundled from his files before the explosion.
In the past, The Shadow had returned in amazing fashion from depths to which powerful enemies had consigned him. Tonight's ruins had been greater than any before. Often, The Shadow had come into strange places after escapes from death; never before had his first outlet been so unique as this one.
The Shadow had returned to his own sanctum!
Its location was changed but the fittings were the same. Strampf had taken them as trophies, for Marvin Bradthaw. Tomorrow the crime-insurance man would view this transplanted sanctum.
Tonight the sanctum was again The Shadow's own abode!
AFTER a short while, The Shadow returned to the file cabinet using his flashlight. The glow explained the clever method by which he had so completely deceived Strampf.
The drawers of the cabinet were deep; but they did not extend clear to the back of the cabinet. They were short enough to allow a six-inch space between them and the rear wall.
Strampf had not noticed that difference; for the rear space was too cramped to hold a hidden person.
That space told only half the story.
The base of the cabinet was heavy; it formed a six-inch platform that seemed shorter because it tapered.
That base was hollow; moreover the bottom of the lowermost drawer was raised a matter of a few inches.
The space in the bottom of the cabinet was large enough for a person's legs when that person was seated cross-legged. The space at the back was deep enough for torso and head.
Though neither the base nor the back space could have concealed The Shadow alone the two together had been ample. In seated position, he had been half in the base, half in the back. With the drawers locked so they could not be pulled clear from the cabinet, The Shadow had remained secure from discovery.
The cabinet was where The Shadow had gone after fixing the gas machinery in the laboratory. All that Strampf had seen through the smoke was one of the low black benches that had been part of the lair's equipment.
Relocking the cabinet so that the drawers could not be completely taken from it, The Shadow made another inspection of his files. He had taken the most important papers that he needed; he had decided on a few others, having gained plenty of time to look for them. He replaced several that he had taken in his hurry, but kept the bulk.