“How is that?”
“By supposing that the murderer never got inside the room. If anybody can show me how that would be possible, I’d like to see it.”
“Very good, Cardona,” prompted Weston. “You can keep this note as evidence. It may incriminate the murderer when we apprehend him. But you are missing one point.”
“What is that?”
“The murderer who wrote the note would scarcely have used the dead man’s correct name.”
Weston smiled triumphantly as he spoke. Cardona, however, came back with a prompt reply, referring to the notes as he made his remarks.
“There is a man named Schuyler Harlew,” he declared, “who has an apartment about two miles from here. One of the men from the precinct checked up on him while I was on my way. Harlew has not been seen for three days. He answers this man’s description.”
“Ah! That is puzzling.”
“I don’t think so, commissioner,” declared Cardona seriously. “It fits in perfectly. The murderer would figure that we would learn the dead man’s identity. By putting Harlew’s real name on the note, he makes it look like Harlew actually wrote it.”
“Right,” admitted Weston, throwing a quick glance toward Cranston, who had said nothing. “Very keen, Cardona. Very keen.”
Weston caught Cranston’s eye, and gave a slight nod as though to indicate that the millionaire had just heard a gem of deductive reasoning. Cardona rated highly in the commissioner’s opinion. Now that the matter of the note to The Shadow had been settled as a hoax, all tension was relieved.
“We can go down to Harlew’s place,” suggested Cardona. “That’s what I intended to do as soon as I had gotten a line on the murder situation. I’ve got a police car outside—”
“I shall go down there,” interposed Weston. “Would you like to come?” He put the question to Cranston.
“Certainly,” replied the millionaire.
BEFORE departing, Weston took the police notations from Cardona and began to study the statements with which the detective had been working. Cardona watched him. The two stood alone, except for Cranston. Neither noted what the millionaire was doing.
While his tall form cast its mysterious silhouette across the dead body of Schuyler Harlew, the keen eyes of The Shadow were at work. It was amazing, the way they traveled from spot to spot.
A watch appeared in Cranston’s hand. It slipped back into his pocket. With that action, The Shadow had checked the time upon the desk. A thin, knowing smile showed on the lips of Lamont Cranston. The Shadow had observed that Harlew’s clock was fast.
Every detail of Harlew’s antemortem statement was affixed in the keen brain of The Shadow. This master of deduction had observed points that had not occurred to either Cardona or Weston. They had read the note only word for word.
But to The Shadow, the one for whom that message was intended, the note was a revelation of Harlew’s terror of an unknown foe. The Shadow knew that no murderer could have prepared such a document of human expression to lay upon that desk.
The doomed man’s plea for aid rang true. The threat of death — the monster who wielded it — the hour of midnight — the suggestion of flight — the hesitancy about revealing the name — all were evidences of sincere statements.
Harlew’s very suggestions that his thoughts were wild, that they would not settle until after the dead line of midnight, alone convinced The Shadow that the murdered man had inscribed the message to the one who he believed could meet and conquer the superfiend who had planned this death.
Why, then, if Harlew had written the note, had not the murderer taken it with him? Hasty flight on the murderer’s part could not be the answer to his question. Cardona’s theory included the deliberate locking of the door; the thrusting of the key beneath.
The Shadow saw the answer. It was one that Cardona had himself given, yet one which the star detective had rejected as impossible. The Shadow knew that Schuyler Harlew’s murderer had never entered the room!
STROLLING toward the window, The Shadow stood directly before the desk, at the very spot where Harlew had half risen from his chair. Staring through the crevice of the half-opened window, The Shadow, still wearing the thin smile of Lamont Cranston, saw an object at an angle across the street.
Cranston’s limousine was parked beside it — a tall telephone pole that bore a thick grouping of wires upon its lofty cross bars. A pole of unusual height, the top of this pole was above the level of Harlew’s window. The pole was barely visible against the evening sky.
“We are going, Cranston,” remarked Commissioner Weston.
The burning of The Shadow’s eyes had vanished as Cranston’s tall figure turned from the window. That blaze reappeared for an instant as the same eyes focused themselves upon the stiletto that Cardona had placed upon the paper.
Outside the room of death, Commissioner Weston turned to look at the body as he had first viewed it. Cardona was beside him. The policeman was ready to close the door. Cranston, behind the group, was watching.
“Odd,” remarked the commissioner, “the position of those hands. One over the other; fingers thrust out on the left; the right hand clenched, as though to fight the assailant.”
“I noticed it,” replied Cardona. “First thing when I came in. It’s just one of those peculiar positions that you see with a lot of murdered bodies.”
“Let’s go along,” suggested Weston. “And as for that note, Cardona” — he paused to tap the yellow paper which the detective held — “don’t let it fool you. If this man whom we believe is Harlew had a name to give, why didn’t he give it?”
“It looks fakey enough,” agreed Cardona.
Lamont Cranston was still standing at the door as the commissioner and the detective started for the stairs. He, too, had noted the position of Schuyler Harlew’s hands when he had entered the room. The eyes of The Shadow were keen. They were steadily fixed upon the dead hands when the policeman closed the door.
A whispered laugh, no more than a soft echo, sounded from thin lips as Cranston walked along the hall to overtake the men who were descending the stairs. That was the laugh of The Shadow, given sotto voce, that none might hear. It was The Shadow’s answer to questions which both Weston and Cardona had rejected as of minor consequence.
SCHUYLER HARLEW had received his knife thrust at the desk. He had staggered away from the window; he had sprawled upon the floor. He had lost his opportunity — at the crucial instant — to inscribe the name of the man whose wrath he feared.
Dying, Harlew had tried to make amends for negligence. With the name of his enemy upon his lips, he had done his best to leave some trace of his final thought. Crossed wrists; three extended fingers; a loose fist. As The Shadow had viewed them from the door, they told a story.
Weston had not seen it. Cardona had not seen it. The Shadow, however, knew. From Schuyler Harlew’s death-stilled hands, the master investigator had gained a vital clew to the identity of the monster who had doomed his minion to die!
With motionless lips, the lips of Lamont Cranston, The Shadow pronounced a single word that came as a startling aftermath to his solution of Schuyler Harlew’s desperate effort to reveal a villain’s name.
The left hand — three fingers spread with tips toward the door, denoted the letter “M.” The right hand, with its loosely circled fist, gave the letter “O.” The crossed wrists, placed with a final effort, stood for “X.”
These were the letters which formed the name The Shadow uttered — a barely sibilant word that ended in a whispered hiss:
“Mox!”
CHAPTER IV
THE BROKEN TRAIL