There was no chance for parley. Ring and Banjo were snarling their hope of murder as they came up to aim, counting upon their killing instinct to mow down opposition. Wayson, the able marksman; Harry, The Shadow’s agent — both were deliberate and sure. Their automatics roared as one.
Ring and Banjo tumbled to the floor. Wayson had dropped the big-shot; Harry had downed the go-between.
From the living room came splintering crashes. Ring’s outside crew was here. Frankie Larth and his pals, augmented by Banjo Lobot’s chain of henchmen — these minions of crime had thought the signal theirs.
They were breaking in, expecting to rout a tribe of cowering servants.
Instead, they encountered a master battler. The Shadow, swinging into the living room, unloosed a double volley against the first invaders. Larth came pitching forward from a window. Two others toppled outward into the darkness. They were poor fighters, these misfits banded for reserve. When new shots ripped from shattered windows, they scattered wide for cover.
Within Hayd’s study, the four riflemen had started a surge across the room. Quick shots blazed from two guns. Wayson and Harry were ready for this rally. They dropped Craylon and Luder. The other pair surrendered.
Clubbed rifles clattered to the floor; two from numbed fists, the others from hands that shot abruptly upward.
Outside, new guns were barking. Wayson had offset one error with an order that proved useful. He had brought reserves of his own; police who had stationed themselves well distant from the house, ready for any signal. They had heard the gunfire; their cars had sped up from near-by streets.
Leaping to the ground, policemen and detectives spread in chase of scattering crooks. Wild fugitives fired hopelessly. Police revolvers sprawled them. Shouts of surrender came from trees and hedges. The round-up was under way. Officers were battering at Hayd’s front door. The barrier gave. Five men came through, to answer Wayson’s sharp call from the study.
They dashed through an empty living room. The Shadow had seen the sequel in the study. His task was ended. He had gone. Out through the hallway, into the distant wing. Somewhere, he had left the house.
That fact was proven minutes later, to those who had remained.
LESTER HAYD lay motionless upon his desk. The dead rogue’s henchmen were prisoners; two wounded, two unscathed. Ring Stortzel, chief of the rival faction, was dead upon the floor. Likewise Banjo Lobot, the lieutenant who had served the defeated big-shot.
Lieutenant Wayson was in control, with Harry Vincent sharing his congratulations. Andrew Blouchet was proudly extolling the bravery that Fanchon Callier had shown. The girl, though strained by grim events, was smiling to the man she loved.
Into this scene of happy victory came a sudden lull; a hush that was instantaneous, as though each person had caught a psychic impulse of a token that was due.
A weird laugh carried from a distance. Long, shivering, it echoed from the rain-swept night. Rising, it faded into nothingness; yet in its wake remained the lingering impression of a living presence.
Those saved from doom had heard that laugh before — here in this very room. But now it spoke from spaces of the night, from an outer world that had swallowed a vanished being of blackness. There was a final note to that fading mirth, a tone that told of victory.
The triumph laugh of The Shadow!