A LIGHT shone in The Shadow’s sanctum. It was a bluish glare, which clung to the top of a polished table, projected there by the incandescent above.
A pair of white hands rested on the table. From the third finger of the left hand shone a gem of ever-changing hue. This was a girasol, or fire opal, of rare size. It was the lone jewel which The Shadow wore, and its sparkling depths, with their intermittent flashes of light, betokened the mystery of The Shadow himself.
A stack of clippings appeared. Deft fingers separated them until only two remained. These were of varied dates; they came from different cities.
One told of the disappearance of an eccentric inventor, Joel Neswick, who lived in Philadelphia. The other mentioned another inventor, Curry Durland, who had left Cleveland for a journey East, and who had not returned.
Upon a white sheet of paper, The Shadow inscribed a single name of three letters: Mox. Beneath it, in separate columns, he wrote two other names, so the list read:
Mox
Schuyler Harlew Peter Greerson.
The Shadow paused. He studied the clippings. He touched the more recent one first. It was the item from the Cleveland newspaper. Then, with deliberation, The Shadow added to his list. Its final context read:
Mox
Schuyler Harlew Peter Greerson
Curry Durland
Joel Neswick
Thin lines appeared as The Shadow drew them from Harlew’s name to those of the three inventors. Speculative though the list was, it asserted a definite truth.
Schuyler Harlew had contacted with Peter Greerson. Harlew had admitted, in his statement, that he had led men to a monster who had designed their death. In his last living effort, Harlew had spelled the name of Mox.
Thus — as The Shadow reasoned — Peter Greerson had gone to visit Mox. The one feature that distinguished Greerson was the fact that he was an inventor. Thus, from a list of missing men, The Shadow had chosen others who were inventors also.
Perhaps Durland or Neswick did not belong upon the list; conversely, there were unquestionably others whose names did belong there, but whose disappearances had not been recorded. Joe Cardona would have been amazed had he seen The Shadow’s list. It would have given him an inkling of the truth in this case.
Cardona was seeking Greerson as a murderer, not as a victim. It would not occur to the star detective to study the affairs of other inventors who might have disappeared. Cardona, with this list, might have begun an investigation of the past.
Therein lay another point that showed the detective’s methods as puny when compared to the efforts of The Shadow. For The Shadow, as he viewed his list, was thinking of the future, not of the past.
Peter Greerson had followed the lure after Schuyler Harlew had died. The tapping forefinger of The Shadow’s long right hand showed that this was the thought within the master brain.
Some other victim might soon be on his way to the lair which The Shadow knew existed — the unknown abode of the fiend whom Harlew had dreaded: Mox!
UPON a fresh piece of paper, The Shadow inscribed short statements, with a new pen from which flowed ink of vivid blue. These markings were like crystallized thoughts. They showed the working of The Shadow’s mind.
As the ink dried, each written item faded. The fluid was a type that disappeared and left no trace.
Inventors.
The Shadow was thinking of men of Greerson’s class, who might be here in New York. Any who would follow Greerson were probably in the city, or would come here on their way.
Burke.
To look up such inventors would be the reporter’s mission. Harlew had located such men; Burke, by effective work, might find one or more whom Harlew had filled with the impulse to visit Mox. His connection with the Classic would aid him in this.
Greerson.
The Shadow’s hand paused as it placed the inventor’s name upon paper. As the word faded, The Shadow added:
Departure.
Then, as a final thought:
Station.
Greerson, so the proprietor of the apartment house had said, had carried two large bags with him, and had taken a taxicab at a quarter past ten. The fact that Greerson had been in a hurry indicated that he must be intending to take a train.
Thus the time of his departure from either the Grand Central or the Pennsylvania Station would have depended upon a quick cab trip from the Seventies. Any train which Greerson might have taken would have gone out before eleven o’clock.
The Shadow’s reasoning was apparent as his hand inscribed the names of the large terminals. But The Shadow did not overlook other possibilities; the railroads which left from New Jersey depots, accessible by tube or ferry from Manhattan. With these, as well as the large stations in New York, the departure could be set close to eleven o’clock.
Had The Shadow stopped with this, his tracing of Peter Greerson would have been ended. The Shadow, however, added another notation: one which was a recollection of a phrase in Schuyler Harlew’s statement, found on the dead man’s desk.
Midnight.
That lone word told its own story. Midnight! The hour which Harlew had feared; the hour at which Mox, the monster, dealt his strokes of death! A weird laugh crept through The Shadow’s sanctum. Wherever Peter Greerson’s may have been, the doomed man must have reached it amply before midnight!
The Shadow’s hands disappeared. When they returned, they carried a folded map. They spread the chart upon the table. Then came schedules of train departures. His hands moving rapidly, but with no apparent effort, The Shadow began his consultation.
His long fingers produced white-headed pins, and thrust them into spots upon the map. When the time-tables were thrust aside, portions of the map within a fifty-mile radius of Manhattan were studded with markers that showed possible destinations where Greerson might have gone.
The process of elimination began. Studying certain pins, The Shadow removed them. Yet his quest had by no means been narrowed to a few points. Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, and points along the Hudson River showed indicative pins that might any one have been the spot The Shadow sought.
Roughly, the places which The Shadow had chosen formed an arc, with Manhattan as the center of the partial circle. Although a week or more would be required to visit all the possible towns by going in and out of New York by train, an automobile would make it easy to perform a circling tour.
Placing sheets of paper upon the map, The Shadow formed two itineraries. He sealed each in a separate envelope, and addressed one to Clifford Marsland, the other to Harry Vincent. Using the ink that would disappear when it encountered the air, The Shadow coded a message on a third sheet of paper. He folded the note and placed it, with the small envelopes, into a large envelope.
With indelible ink, The Shadow addressed the long envelope to Rutledge Mann, Badger Building, New York. Mann was a contact agent of The Shadow. He would receive this letter at his investment office. He would understand the code, reading it before it disappeared. As a result, Mann would communicate with Marsland and Vincent.
They were active agents. Each would take a different route. In the towns which The Shadow had chosen, they would seek a man whose name resembled Mox.
THE map showed large cities within close radius of New York. None of these were marked with pins. That was a sign of The Shadow’s intuition. He knew that if Mox had sought a lair in an urban district, he would prefer New York to all other cities. Its massed population would offer much greater possibility for a hidden abode.
Since Peter Greerson had probably left New York by train, The Shadow, therefore, worked on the assumption that Mox had chosen the opposite type of district for his place of residence. The neighborhood of a small or fair-sized town would be the fiend’s most likely choice.