“Leave Garry at the door,” he said, as Briggs helped him upward.
Then came Shargin, and finally, Briggs was drawn upward. The panel closed.
Garry Elvers shrugged his shoulders. He drew an automatic from his pocket and stood on guard beside the door.
This afternoon, the gangster was determined to leave nothing to chance. Any intruder would meet his doom.
Garry half hoped The Shadow would appear.
A flashlight clicked above the closed ceiling panel. Exclamations of triumph came simultaneously from the four men above.
They were in a small, square room. Each corner had a short, angled wall. But these corners did not interest them. Before them, on the floor, lay two locked boxes.
Moose Shargin dropped on his knees and pried away the lock from one of the containers. Bob Maddox did the same with the other. Hiram Mallory held the flashlight and looked on with Briggs.
The lids of the boxes came open. The light revealed piles of paper, masses of bank notes, and a hoard of glittering gold coins!
“Galvin’s pile — the old hound!” exclaimed Maddox.
The spoils came out upon the floor. Briggs was with the others, now, helping them stack up piles of twenty-dollar gold pieces, and sheaves of bank notes of large denominations.
“Divvy now?” questioned Shargin, looking toward Mallory.
“Go ahead,” said the Chief. “Six piles. Two for me; one for each of you — and one for Theodore Galvin, to be divided equally among us.”
Bob Maddox was examining the pile of papers. He handed them over to Hiram Mallory.
“Bad stuff, these,” he declared. “Evidence that could be used against us if—”
“I’ll take care of them,” declared Hiram Mallory.
Maddox crept over to the trapdoor and slid it open. He peered into the darkness below; hissed and received a response from Garry Elvers.
“O.K.?” whispered Bob.
“O.K.,” came the reply.
“Hoist up those suitcases.”
THE bags came up. Garry returned to his post. Maddox closed the trap. The suitcases were opened. The work went on.
Briggs, usually taciturn, grunted with satisfaction as he began to count off a handful of thousand-dollar bills. Maddox rejoined the workers.
“Eighty grand in each pile,” declared Moose Shargin, in a pleased growl. “Pretty close to half a million bucks.”
Moose began to place the various piles in the suitcases. He stopped to note which one belonged to Hiram Mallory. He put two portions in that one. He laughed as the gold coins jingled.
“Those yeller boys sound nice,” was his comment. “But I’m glad there aren’t too many of them. They weigh too much.”
Bob Maddox divided the sixth portion into four groups and handed them, one by one, to Moose Shargin, to deposit in the different suitcases.
Briggs watched with gleaming eyes. He was slowly calculating amounts. Eighty thousand dollars in each heap — twenty thousand from the dead man’s share — one hundred thousand dollars for each underling, and one hundred and eighty thousand for the Chief!
The suitcases were closed now. But one thought was in each mind — the getaway. Hiram Mallory motioned to the trapdoor. Bob Maddox placed his hand upon it. The old man turned out the flashlight as a precaution.
“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Moose Shargin, in a greedy tone. “Let’s look around some more — those corners—”
Before he could complete his statement, a ray of light swept into the room. The four men were blinded by the glare of a powerful electric torch. They held their positions as though petrified.
Instinctively, their hands rose above their heads. The light shone from a corner. In the fringe of its illumination, they could see that the tiny nook had been opened like a door.
They could not see the man behind the light; but a low, weird chuckle reached their ears — a chuckle that became a mirthless laugh which brought shudders to their quaking bodies.
“The Shadow!” gasped Hiram Mallory.
“You fools!” came a sinister voice. “Fools, to think that you could elude me! You thought that I did not know what you had learned — instead, I was waiting for you to find out what I already knew!
“The paper which you thought was a code, I recognized as a map the same night I saw it. I traced this building and found this place. How? By looking up at the building and observing this very spot — a windowless space.
“I have been watching it since then through the eyes of a trusted agent. I have been here. I have discovered the secret of the ceiling.
“I have examined this wealth; and have left it — as a snare for thieves.
“Last night, you added another to your list of murders. First, Theodore Galvin — a member of your gang.
“Second, Reynold Barker, the man you hired to win his confidence, but who learned his secret after poisoning Galvin by your orders.
“Third, Hodgson.
“Fourth, Richard Harkness.
“Fifth, Zachary Mitchell.
“The last three — all innocent of any wrongdoing.”
The voice paused while the trapped men trembled.
“You failed in two crimes,” declared The Shadow. “You did not kill Thaddeus Westcott. You did not kill Betty Mandell — although you thought you succeeded in that cold-blooded murder.
“I saved both of them!”
NOT a single one of the four had made a move. All were dominated by their terrible enemy, the man whose face they could not see, and whose voice came like tones of doom.
“I need not dwell upon your former crimes,” said The Shadow. “I know them all — thanks to those papers which Theodore Galvin left with his ill-gotten gains.
“Some of the wealth was rightfully his. It will go to his heirs. The rest will be returned to its owners; those who were robbed by your crimes and schemes — Hiram Mallory and Theodore Galvin.
“You were master minds of crime, aided by such lesser crooks as Maddox and Briggs, eliminating enemies with the aid of Shargin and his gang. Covering clews with the help of—”
The sentence was never finished. One of the four had acted. Strangely enough, Briggs was the one to combat The Shadow’s strategy.
The big man had been kneeling beside a bag when the blinding light had come. Moose Shargin was beside him. Briggs, with upraised hand, had nudged the gang leader’s hip pocket. He had struck the butt of a gun.
Briggs had been waiting. Then, realizing that his hand was virtually out of sight, he had suddenly snatched the gun.
Luck played a great part. Briggs was not only a remarkable shot; he was also left-handed. Shargin’s gun was on his right hip. Briggs, seizing it, instantly found the trigger.
As his hand came into view, he fired directly at the light. The cannonlike roar of the automatic ushered in darkness. Briggs had hit the light that The Shadow held!
There was confusion while the roar of the automatic reverberated through the square-walled room. Hiram Mallory’s light flashed on, to reveal a black-clad figure prone upon the floor in the corner.
Moose Shargin, weaponless, leaped forward with a snarl. As he did so, two black-clad hands came up from that form. Shargin’s leap ended in mid-air as two automatics spurted their flame.
The Shadow had been holding the light away from his body! The shot fired by Briggs had done him no harm!
The Shadow’s new strategy had saved him. Briggs had been about to fire when Moose had leaped. Now, as he pressed the trigger with deadly aim, the bullets found a mark, not in The Shadow, but in Moose Shargin, for the gangster’s body lay as a protection to the man in black.
Another shot came from the corner. It struck Briggs in the wrist. The big man uttered a cry as the blue gun fell from his hand.