CHAPTER XIV
THE SHADOW SEEKS
EVENTS had moved swiftly that night. It was not yet ten o’clock. Homer Briggs had visited the Black Ship shortly after dark. Gangland’s vigil had begun at an early hour.
Far from the scene of the shooting, other officers of the law were on duty. They were watching the floors of the Redan Hotel.
Only one was on duty at Harshaw’s apartment. This was Mayhew, in charge of operations. All others were on the floors below. There was a man behind the hotel.
The mail chutes were important tonight. Cardona had given word that they should be watched.
If a fourth message were due, it might be slipped surreptitiously into one of the slits that marked the path of the long chute from the tenth floor to first.
Mayhew arose from a chair and went carefully through the apartment. He noticed everything in sight. He left the apartment, and locked the door behind him.
No one was in there. The window of the study had a new grating. Some one was watching from in back of the hotel. The apartment was safe from intruders.
There were rooms across the hall, but they, too, were locked. They had been inspected tonight.
Mayhew went to the stairs and called softly to the floor below. There was an answering response.
A man on the ninth floor was doing double duty. He was guarding the foot of the stairs; he was spying the mail chute on the same floor.
Mayhew went down the steps. This floor was safe. It could be reached only by the elevator, and the elevator operator had orders not to go above the ninth.
Mayhew knew that his presence was urgent below. There were not enough men to watch all the floors.
It was nearing ten o’clock, the hour when the mail would be collected.
The ground floor needed no watching by police. A man was stationed outside. The clerk and hotel attendants were eyeing the mail box itself.
The balconied mezzanine was deserted. The mail chute there was blank, without a slit through which a letter could be dropped.
While Mayhew was coming downward, a man was moving upward. He had entered the hotel by the door from the empty dining room.
Unseen, he had gained the stairway. He stopped when he reached the mezzanine.
It was The Shadow — again garbed in dark cloak and hat. The only difference in his usual stealth was the slight hesitancy in his gliding step.
Only the right arm was active as The Shadow felt his way along the darkened stair. He had been wounded in the arm and in the thigh — flesh wounds that had slowed, but not incapacitated, his actions.
The elevator shaft was twenty feet from the stairway. There, The Shadow crouched. The lights of the descending car went by as the elevator dropped to the ground floor.
Quickly, The Shadow was at work, his right hand bearing the brunt of the effort as he wedged a piece of steel between the sliding doors and pried them apart.
He glided through the opening, and his form slipped to the top of the elevator below. Black-clad hands closed the mezzanine doors.
Detective Sergeant Mayhew was arriving at the mezzanine. His form was plainly visible as he reached the lighted area in front of the stairway.
He was seen by the hidden man who crouched upon the top of the elevator. But that figure in the darkness of the shaft was totally invisible.
The elevator moved upward. It ascended floor by floor until it reached the ninth. There it stopped, in accordance with orders. Then it moved downward.
The black figure was no longer with it. The Shadow had abandoned the top of the elevator. He was clinging to the doors of the tenth floor.
There, his work was difficult. He supported himself with his right arm, while his left painfully worked to spread the doors.
Under the exacting circumstances, he did not totally avoid a noise; but the opening of the doors was no more than a dull sound. The Shadow emerged from the elevator shaft.
He closed the doors carefully, and moved slowly toward the door of Harshaw’s apartment.
By his ingenious artifice, The Shadow had reached the tenth floor without running the gamut of watching men. The only obstacle now might be some one stationed in the apartment.
That was unlikely. The Shadow had a divining mind. Mayhew’s descent was a sign that the tenth floor was deserted, but that the path to it was blocked. Nevertheless, The Shadow was cautious as he unlocked the door of the apartment.
He slipped within. There was a single light which Mayhew had left burning. The Shadow crossed the outer room and opened the door of the study. It closed behind him.
As on another night, the mysterious man was shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
ONCE again, The Shadow started an inspection. It was brief, covering details that had been interrupted on that other night. Soon after he had begun, The Shadow arrived at the window.
The Shadow ignored the window. His light glimmered upon the radiator. He had inspected that spot before.
Now his hand rested upon the knob that controlled the flow of heat. Through the thin glove, he sensed that the radiator was cold.
The Shadow laughed softly. His inspection here had been interrupted and postponed. He had divined a secret of this place.
Tonight he had learned of it from the dying lips of Homer Briggs. But the man’s reply to The Shadow’s question had simply substantiated what The Shadow already knew.
The Shadow, however, had divined something else — a most important fact which Homer had not known.
Upward clambered The Shadow. His body rested on the window sill. His feet were against the window. The black-clad arms hung downward toward the floor.
They moved in the darkness, spreading gradually apart as a dull glimmer appeared above the floor. Slowly, gradually, the strange, gleaming object stopped on its upward way.
The muffled report of a pistol shot sounded through the room. The Shadow’s motion ceased. His whispered laugh joined with the echoes of the shot.
Headforemost, The Shadow slipped downward to the floor. He waited there, listening; ready to take action had the shot been heard.
Tonight, as on the night when Silas Harshaw had been killed, no ears were close enough to hear.
The Shadow’s flashlight glimmered. It followed his right hand, which was moving toward him, holding a stack of papers. Some of these were letters, in unsealed envelopes.
The Shadow removed them one by one, and read their shaky scrawl. He understood their import. The light went out.
Now, The Shadow was gone from the spot beside the window sill. He was approaching the side wall.
There he waited for a moment. He was creeping along the wall, measuring. There was something about his careful calculation that corresponded to the slow strides he had made when he had left the elevator shaft.
The Shadow stopped. His light glimmered on the floor. He was prying up the tight-fitting flooring.
At this time, The Shadow was working on his own. He had no clew from Homer for this task.
It was a thought in that hidden brain that was guiding the man of mystery in his search. He was seeking an elusive clew. He found it.
Close against the baseboard was a bit of flooring that commanded close inspection. A small, black piece of steel was moving beneath the glare of the light.
The Shadow’s hand forced a piece of wood downward from the baseboard. Nimble fingers pressed into the space. They pushed upward. The baseboard swung outward on a hidden hinge.
There, in a cache less than a foot square, was a metal box. The Shadow’s ear detected the slight ticking of muffled clockwork.
Below the box projected an envelope. Its end was directly above a thin slit in the floor — a slit that turned at an angle toward the wall.
The light of The Shadow’s torch gleamed full upon the white envelope. Those eyes in the dark read the name and the address.