By light that came through a glass-paneled inner door, Shakes could read the names upon the wall beside an apartment phone. His lips formed a grotesque smile. His shaking hand reached for the knob of the inner door.
This barrier was locked. Shakes noted that it gave a fraction of an inch. He pulled a jimmy from his pocket and pried at the woodwork. After he had splintered the edge of the door Shakes managed to pry the latch. He entered; smoothed some of the wood with his gloved hand; then closed the door behind him.
SHAKES headed up a flight of stairs. He reached the third floor. He noted a door at the back. It bore the number 3 D. Quietly, Shakes tried the door. His twisting lips formed a grin as his hand found it unlocked.
Shakes Niefan stepped into a lighted room. It was a small chamber that served as living room and study.
In the corner was a lighted lamp upon a table. Shakes noted papers lying there. He approached.
With his left hand, he pulled the glove from his right; then thrust the bare hand in the pocket of his overcoat. His left knuckles rested upon the dusty surface of the table. The glove formed a mark in the dust.
Shakes threw brief, shifty glances toward the papers. All the while, he was concerned with a door that led to another room. Light showed beneath the door.
Reaching out with his left hand, Shakes began to paw over the papers. He shrugged his shoulders; then bundled up the whole batch and thrust the pile into his coat pocket. Standing erect again, Shakes faced the closed door to the other room. His left knuckles, resting lightly on the desk, were twitching in their usual fashion.
Shakes had heard the sound of a moving chair. Now, before he could make a step, the door opened. A tall man in shirt sleeves stopped to stare at the intruder. Shakes gave a sour smile.
“Who are you?” demanded the man who stood in the lighted doorway.
“Just a visitor,” returned Shakes. “You’re Jerome Neville, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” The speaker still eyed Shakes. “I’m Jerome Neville. Usually, visitors call this apartment. What’s the idea of walking in this way?”
“You’ll find out quick enough,” retorted Shakes. “I’m going to take a look around this dump, see? There may be something here that I want. If there isn’t—”
Neville was staring. He saw that the papers had been removed from his table. He noticed the package sticking from the intruder’s pocket.
“A crook, eh?” questioned Neville. “Well, there’s nothing here for you. Get going, before I call the police.”
“I’m warning you,” growled Shakes. “I’m going through this joint—”
Shakes still had his left hand on the table. It was quivering. Neville noticed it. He thought the intruder was trembling from fear, now that he had been discovered. Neville closed a pair of hard fists. He snorted as he saw the nervous twitch of Niefan’s lips and the shifty action of the man’s eyes.
“Get out!” With that challenge, Neville strode forward. Then, as he saw Shakes still stand his ground, Neville made a furious spring, raising his left hand as a guard as he drew his right back for a powerful swing.
Shakes Niefan tightened. His feet never budged. His left hand steadied hard against the table. His right snapped from his pocket with a quick wrist action that was a motion of only a few inches.
A stub-nosed revolver gleamed in the bare hand. As Jerome Neville’s left hand came swinging toward him, Shakes pressed the trigger of his gun. Neville’s stroke became an awkward swerve as the short revolver barked.
The tall man collapsed to the floor. Shakes Niefan, steadied, leered at the sprawled body. His shot had been aimed for the victim’s heart. It had found its mark. Jerome Neville was dead.
SUDDENLY Shakes awoke to furious action. He leaped to the table and ripped open its single drawer.
He grabbed the few papers that he saw there and thrust them in his pocket with the ones that he had taken before.
Springing across the dead body of Jerome Neville, Shakes reached the inner room. There he found a bureau. He yanked open the drawers in search of other papers. He found none. The quick search completed, Shakes hurried through the living room.
Opening the outer door, Shakes listened. He could hear subdued voices from below; then came one in a louder tone — the voice of a man.
“I’m going up,” the speaker was saying. “It sounded like a gun shot — like it was from Neville’s apartment.”
Striding to the head of the stairs, Shakes Niefan raised his right hand and fired his revolver toward the floor below. Shrieks sounded as the zimming bullet dug its way into the wall beyond the bottom step.
Women were screaming; a man’s heavy footsteps took to flight.
Shakes started downward. He saw a man diving for cover through a door at the front of the hall. He fired a bullet that marked the doorway above the fellow’s head. Hurrying to the flight that led to the first floor, Shakes fired another shot.
Then came the dash for the street. The murderer reached it unopposed. On the sidewalk, Shakes whirled as he heard the sound of a police whistle. A patrolman was hastening up from the nearest corner.
The officer saw Shakes. A revolver shot sounded; the bullet whistled by the murderer’s head. With quick return, Shakes aimed his own gun and fired. The cop sprawled upon the sidewalk.
There was a car parked across the street. A man was in it, hastily trying to start the motor. Just as the engine rumbled, Shakes pounced up to the side of the car.
“Scram!” he snarled as he swung his revolver.
The man in the car ducked. He went sprawling through the open door toward the curb. Yanking open the nearer door, Shakes leaped to the wheel. He jammed the car into gear and sped down the street.
More whistles sounded. The shot from the sidewalk was bringing a new patrolman. The officer, however, was too late. Shakes Niefan was a block away when he arrived.
From the opened window of the old sedan came flurries of paper fragments. Shakes Niefan, driving from this neighborhood, was making sure that no evidence would remain.
These paper bits, scattering in the wake of the speeding sedan, were the destroyed portions of the documents which Shakes Niefan had carried from the apartment of Jerome Neville.
The murder of MacAvoy Crane had been followed by a similar outrage. Shakes Niefan had proven himself to be the new killer. He was the one whom The Shadow had divined might take the place of Strangler Hunn!
CHAPTER X. THE SHADOW’S CLEW
“WHAT do you make of it, Joe?”
It was Inspector Timothy Klein who put the question. He and Detective Joe Cardona were standing in Jerome Neville’s living room. The dead man’s body had been removed. Klein and Cardona were summarizing their findings.
“I don’t get it, inspector,” confessed Cardona. “Here’s a murder that looks a lot like the killing of MacAvoy Crane. But there was a motive for Strangler Hunn to kill Crane — at least, Crane was an investigator who may have found out something.
“But this fellow Neville was a refrigerator salesman. So far as we can figure, the only letters and papers that he would have here were ones that had something to do with his business. Yet the murderer grabbed everything.”
“It looks odd,” admitted Klein.
“I’d like to have a description of the killer,” grumbled Cardona. “Those people downstairs ducked for cover. The patrolman was wounded before he had a good look at the guy. The man in the sedan was too scared to even take a glance.”
Detective Sergeant Markham appeared in the doorway as Cardona finished speaking.
“We’ve found the car,” declared Markham. “The killer left it down on Seventy-first Street. No papers in it, Joe. The fellow made a get-away.”