Upon the panel which closed after the parting man was this inscription:
RUTLEDGE MANN
Investments
An odd practice! A man whose business was dealing in securities seemed to be handling a clipping bureau as a side line. Moreover, his inspection of various newspapers, particularly those of smaller cities, was rather difficult to analyze.
Why did Rutledge Mann engage in this odd practice? The answer was a secret which the chubby-faced investment broker guarded with the greatest caution.
Rutledge Mann was an agent of The Shadow.
Who was The Shadow?
Rutledge Mann did not know. For a long while, now, he had been in the employ of this mysterious being, and he had gained no inkling to the identity of the personage whom he served.
Rutledge Mann knew only that when he had been in financial straits — a failure with no hope of the future — he had received a summons from The Shadow. A strange, weird being — a black-cloaked shape, that bore the semblance of a man — had appeared in Mann’s abode and had offered him opportunity.
WITH his promise to serve The Shadow, Mann had gained the monetary aid which he needed to reestablish himself in business. Since then, he had been an investment broker on the surface — actually, an important cogwheel in the human mechanism which The Shadow required in his constant warring against crime and injustice.
It had become Mann’s duty, while he posed as an investment broker, to look for printed statements regarding current crime. In addition, the investment man conducted special investigations and served as contact man between The Shadow and a group of active agents.
At The Shadow’s order, Mann had subscribed to certain small city newspapers — among them the Holmsford publication — and had made it a practice to cut out all unusual local items. The reason, Mann believed, must be that The Shadow knew of lurking crime in those communities and was awaiting any development that might lead to a connecting link with the past.
After a taxi ride down Broadway, Rutledge Mann found an old building on Twenty-third Street. He entered this decadent edifice, and reached a deserted office on the second floor.
The name “Jonas” was inscribed upon a cobwebbed black panel. Rutledge Mann dropped his envelope through a mail slit, and went away.
The investment broker had never passed through that dingy door. So far as he knew, the office was vacant. But Mann knew, for a fact, that messages dropped therein always reached the hands of The Shadow.
IT was late afternoon when Rutledge Mann had completed his errand to The Shadow’s post office. It was early evening when the aftermath occurred. This came in the form of a sharp click which sounded in the confines of a pitch-black room.
A blue light cast a ghastly glow upon a polished table in a corner of a sable-walled apartment. Long white hands appeared beneath the glare of the azure-tinted globe. Strong but slender fingers opened an envelope. Rutledge Mann’s clippings slipped to the table.
A strange, iridescent gem glittered in the bluish light. With ever-changing hues, the amazing stone gleamed purple, maroon, and blood-red crimson from the third finger of the hand that wore it.
The Shadow’s girasol — a precious fire opal unmatched in all the world — reflected the light, and splashed back sparks of scintillating flame.
A low laugh came from unseen lips, as the clipping from the Holmsford newspaper was lifted by the tapering fingers. To The Shadow — he who now dwelt in darkness but for his moving hands — this item was one which had been long awaited.
The hollow tones of whispered mockery indicated an unusual connection between sudden death in Holmsford and secret knowledge that existed in The Shadow’s brain.
The hands disappeared. The light glowed upon a blank tabletop. At last, the hands reappeared, carrying a yellowed envelope. From it slipped clippings — records which bore dates of twenty years ago.
Like the item which Mann had sent, these were from the town of Holmsford.
Hidden eyes pored over these accounts. Moving fingers brought forth record sheets which referred to those yellowed clippings. Upon a blank sheet of paper, in a brilliant blue ink, the hand of The Shadow wrote the name of Josiah Bartram, as though linking it with past events.
The name faded away. Not a touch of the blue ink remained. That was a feature of the fluid with which The Shadow wrote his thoughts. Its chemical formula caused it to vanish after it had dried and the air had made contact to absorb it.
The hand of The Shadow wrote again; it inscribed a brief and definite note in coded words. The fingers folded the paper before the ink had time to disappear, and inserted the message in an envelope.
With another pen — one provided with ordinary ink — The Shadow addressed this packet to Rutledge Mann, in the Badger Building.
A message to Mann — instructions to be forwarded to an agent. Should another open that letter, its writing would disappear before he had time to study the code. But Mann could decipher the cryptic writing as easily as he could read an ordinary message, for Mann was versed in that particular code.
The light clicked out. In the dread darkness of that mystic room a weird, sinister laugh broke forth.
It was a long, chilling burst of spectral mockery, a tone that rose and died away, only to be answered by ghoulish echoes that crept from sullen, invisible walls.
Something had occurred in Holmsford two decades ago — some unsolved event which The Shadow, who collected strange records for his archives, had alone divined as an affair which might have a later culmination.
To The Shadow, the death of so prominent an individual as Josiah Bartram signified a possible reawakening of crime in Holmsford. Did that demise import impending doom to others?
Only The Shadow knew — and the dying echoes of his laugh gave no answer to the problem. Taunting whispers of reflected mirth faded in the silent room.
This black abode — this unknown spot which was The Shadow’s sanctum — was empty. The Shadow had departed while the whispers of his mockery were still alive within the jet-black walls.
A BLACK patch flickered along the sidewalk of an uptown street. It reached the corner of Manhattan Avenue. Without a revelation of the figure which cast it, this shadowy shape glided into a waiting cab.
A voice from the darkness spoke to the sleepy driver and gave him a destination. The man awoke, wondering how a customer had so suddenly arrived in the cab.
The Shadow was bound upon some mission. Thus did he move, a living phantom, whose very form was shrouded by a cloud of blackness. Like a creature of the night he arrived and went his secret, mysterious way. Unseen, unheard, unknown, he could strike and leave no sign of his unfailing hand.
The Shadow was in New York; but his eyes had turned to Holmsford. He had given orders; one of his agents would soon be there.
The ending of crime was The Shadow’s penchant. He knew no restrictions in his endless battle against those who dealt in evil.
Fingers of death! Had they clutched at Josiah Bartram? Were they seeking new victims? Were they but a chimera of a weakened brain, or did they exist as a menace?
Those were strange questions. As yet, they had not come to The Shadow’s mind, for he had learned only of Josiah Bartram’s passing; not of the circumstances attendant to the deathbed scene.
But if such fingers did exist; if they were to be used for evil, they would find more than helpless victims in their path.
Fingers of death, stretching forth to deliver doom, would be destined to meet The Shadow!
CHAPTER III. ADAMS GIVES ADVICE
HURLEY ADAMS was seated alone in the inner office of his suite. With hands resting idly upon the glass-topped surface of a mahogany desk, the lawyer was staring from the window.