Audible through the darkness, Barcla was easily followed by his stumbles. The puzzling thing was the length of the trail. The cellar seemed to be an absolute labyrinth, an almost endless maze, until The Shadow suddenly realized the ludicrous truth.
He had spent nearly ten minutes following Barcla in and out of passages, simply because the fellow had lost himself in the blackness!
It was no use lagging after that. Pressing forward, The Shadow closed in upon his prey. With shouts and roaring sounds coming from the floor above, Barcla was madly anxious to be out of the cellar that had become his self-made trap. The Shadow decided to conduct him out-at the point of an automatic!
There was another stumble, followed by a sprawl. Barcla had come across a flight of steps, leading upward. The Shadow was almost upon him, when Barcla, through sheer desperation, decided to take his newly-found route, wherever it might lead. He started upward with the speed of a scared rabbit.
Moving swiftly, The Shadow was right behind him at the top. Barcla didn't have time to yank open the door that he thumped against; but The Shadow, in his turn, lacked time to seize Barcla.
The door was ripped from the other side while Barcla was grabbing for the knob. Off balance, Barcla pitched out into the hall, scrambled madly past two men who were starting down into the cellar.
They were a pair of guests, coming to get fire extinguishers from the cellar. Though the flickers from the living room were guiding them, they failed to see Barcla because of the thick, swirling smoke. But they found The Shadow, when Barcla tripped them.
Headlong, the pair plunged down the steps, lurching squarely against Barcla's pursuer. From then on, it was a three-man tumble, with The Shadow beating off the flay of arms. Other faces appeared in the clearing smoke above the stairs, but the darkness of the cellar offset the fading light from the alcove fire.
New arrivals could only hear the shouts of the tumblers, claiming that they had grabbed one of the jewel thieves. More men came pounding down the stairs, toward crashes that they heard below.
The Shadow had used his attackers as buffers at the finish of the sprawl. Both still showing fight, he flung one foe into a wood bin; the other into an open closet. The clatter of tumbling logs, the smash of shelves loaded with preserves, were aftermaths of The Shadow's rapid action.
But The Shadow's route was blocked.
ILL LUCK had brought the attack in The Shadow's direction, instead of Barcla's. Half a dozen men were leaping down the stairs, intent to capture the unknown marauder. Against the last flickers of the fading fire, The Shadow saw their faces, Harry's among them. From darkness, The Shadow delivered a weird laugh.
The mirth carried no challenge, nor did it voice triumph. It was a ghostly laugh; one that would have fitted well in Scorpio's séances. There was a double purpose behind the trailing tone. The Shadow wanted to mystify these ardent, but misguided, attackers-with one exception; namely, Harry Vincent.
He knew that Harry would recognize the laugh, despite its disguise, and act accordingly. Harry did. As the others sprang for The Shadow in the darkness, Harry was with them. In blundering fashion, he began to trip his companions. His co-operation helped.
Grasping hands missed The Shadow's cloak, as it whisked off into the darkness. Stumbling, they heard a swish; then the laugh again, from another section of the cellar. They were spreading, hence Harry could be of no further aid, but it did not. matter. Once away, The Shadow was too elusive to be captured.
Even his uncanny laugh was vague, misleading. It seemed to echo in from different directions. Choosing his own path in the darkness, The Shadow had better luck than Barcla. Finding a window in a far corner of the cellar, The Shadow ripped it open and hauled himself through.
By then, someone had found the main switch. Dim lights came on; men spied the open window and started for it. Ordinarily, they would have had no chance of overtaking The Shadow, once he was away; but it happened that the cloaked fighter had met with opposition.
Through the window The Shadow had spotted a moving flashlight, bobbing hastily through a grove of huge pines. Knowing that the light meant Barcla, The Shadow was rising to follow, when a man intercepted him.
The fellow was stocky and brawny. He lunged in from the corner of the house. He had a weapon, in the shape of a heavy hammer, which he swung at The Shadow's head.
A quick hand whipped up from cloak folds, bringing a gun with it. The Shadow hadn't time to find the trigger of the automatic; he was using the gun for a cross parry. His darting hand slithered the weapon between his dodging head and the descending hammer, just in time to deflect the blow.
Overbalanced by his swing, the squatty man struck the house wall, shoulder first. Thrusting the gun away, The Shadow caught the fellow with a jujitsu hold; flung him, like a human battering-ram, against the first men who were coming through the cellar window. Sprawled back through the outlet, they lost their chance of pursuing The Shadow.
Again their prey had become a living ghost, the only token of his departure a creepy, elusive taunt, as spooky as the wail of an invisible banshee.
Delay was costly, none the less. Barcla had profited from it, as had The Shadow. The fugitive crook had managed to elude his cloaked pursuer, as The Shadow learned, after covering a hundred yards through the pine trees.
There were no further signs of Barcla's flashlight; no crackling sounds of a person moving through the underbrush. Similarly, there was no glow from the hacienda, nor any roar of fire. The flames had been extinguished, the building saved.
Having crossed a knoll, The Shadow could not see the windows of the building, which now shone with the restored electric lights.
WITH Barcla's trail lost somewhere in the woods, The Shadow decided to skirt to the lake front, where he could appear as Cranston and join in the hunt for the missing jewel thieves.
Others had already started on that mission. Harry Vincent found himself with Howard Carradon, who was pointing a light along a narrow path to the left. From the right, they could hear the sheriff bellowing that there was no one at the dock.
"This way!" Carradon plucked at Harry's arm. "To the old boathouse! That's where they might be hidden."
Carradon started to the left. Harry paused, realizing that it might be more than a two-man job. He yelled for the sheriff to head to the old boathouse, and finally received an answer. By then, Carradon and his light were out of sight. Blundering along the path, Harry saw other lights closer to the water. He yelled and a return call came from Niles Rundon.
"Find Carradon!" shouted Harry. "At the old boathouse. He's alone! He may get into trouble-"
An interruption came, from Carradon himself. His yell was triumphant; with it, Harry heard a splintering sound, like an old door being ripped from its hinges.
"Here they are! In the boathouse! Hurry up you fellows, before they can get away!"
Rundon's light cut a swath through darkness. It revealed the abandoned boathouse, the door wide open.
Carradon came bounding into sight, his own flashlight in one hand, a broken canoe paddle in the other.
He swung the improvised weapon at a pair of thuggish men who lunged for him from the boathouse.
The men were grappling with Carradon, when Rundon reached them. Harry had less than a hundred feet to go, but the ground was dark and rocky. He figured, though, that Carradon and Rundon could keep up the fight during the dozen seconds that he would require to reach them. But things went awry in that short space of time.
One thug yanked the paddle from Carradon. Harry saw it swing in the light, and Rundon took a long sprawl. His flashlight sailed from his hand and struck the ground. Harry had a fleeting glimpse of the rough-looking men shoving Carradon through the boathouse door. From the way Carradon was swept from sight, it was plain that other hands had received him.