It was an axiom among fiends of crime that The Shadow could be everywhere. The biggest shots of crookdom feared The Shadow when they plotted crime. Months before, a man of evil had spoken The Shadow’s name with awe while riding northward through Mexico. That was no exception to the rule. In every city that harbored an underworld The Shadow was feared as a living presence.
In London, in Berlin, in Madrid, crooks of all nationalities lowered their voices when they discussed The Shadow. In Paris, skulking crooks still mumbled tales of The Shadow’s prowess — of that eerie night when an unknown being in black had battled single-handed against a horde of apaches. In Moscow, there were men who remembered the time when The Shadow had fought himself free from a regiment of Red troops.
Who was The Shadow?
No one knew. Gangsters recognized him as an overpowering menace. The police of New York knew him only as a fierce foe to crime. Studious criminologists had expressed the well-founded opinion that The Shadow was the single factor that prevented the balance of justice from swinging to the side of lawlessness.
When crime became rampant, then did The Shadow strike. A living being of the darkness, he came and went unseen. Always, his objective was the stamping out of supercrime.
Dying gangsters had expired with the name of The Shadow upon their blood-flecked lips. Hordes of mobsmen had fallen before The Shadow’s wrath. A man garbed in black, his face unseen beneath the turned-down brim of a slouch hat — that was the spectral form that gangdom called The Shadow!
HAD leaders of the underworld suspected the existence of The Shadow’s sanctum, they would have spared no effort to discover it. Often had vicious plotters sought to reach The Shadow; but they had seldom gained more than a surface knowledge of his habitats.
Those who had found themselves upon The Shadow’s trail were no longer living to pursue their quest. Time and again had The Shadow turned upon those who sought to kill him; and those who had encountered The Shadow had encountered death.
Thus, The Shadow, secret in his identity, preserved the places where he lurked. This sanctum was inviolate. Not even the trusted men who served The Shadow knew its location. In fact, they, like The Shadow’s enemies, held no clew to the identity of the black-garbed phantom of the night.
When the weird blue light glowed, as it was glowing now, its strange rays were seen only by The Shadow. Into the revealing gleam came the first visible symbols of The Shadow’s presence. Two long, white hands, with tapering fingers, crept across the surface of the table beneath the light. They were like detached things, materialized from nothingness.
Upon the third finger of the left hand shone a mysterious jewel. The rays that struck it from above were reflected in a gleaming glory. At first they showed the blueness of the light that illuminated this corner of the room. Then the color of the gem underwent a visible metamorphosis.
Its hues deepened and turned to purple. Then they acquired a crimson touch that developed into a vivid red. Living sparks seemed to leap from the weirdly glowing stone.
This gem was unique. A rare fire opal, known as a girasol, its splendor was unmatched in all the world. That stone was The Shadow’s symbol, its everchanging shades a token of The Shadow’s own prowess. For The Shadow, when he appeared by day, could adopt disguises that deceived the most brilliant sleuths.
When the hands of The Shadow crept beneath the sanctum light, they were guided by well-formed purpose. Tonight, they suddenly produced a long envelope. Deft fingers opened the packet. Out dropped a folded paper and a tiny bundle of newspaper clippings.
The hands opened the paper. Hidden eyes read the coded lines that appeared in ink. As the hands still held the sheet, the writing began to disappear. Letter by letter, all traces vanished, leaving nothing but a blank piece of paper.
This was the method of communication that The Shadow utilized in correspondence with his agents. This coded letter, which The Shadow read with ease, had been written with a secret ink that vanished immediately after exposure to the air. It was a report from Rutledge Mann, a chubby-faced investment broker whose office in the Badger Building was a contact point wherein The Shadow’s agents met for instructions.
THE white hands spread the clippings on the table. These were accounts of unusual crimes, gathered by Mann for the inspection of The Shadow. Mann selected them in accordance with two formulas: first, those cases in which police were baffled; second, those which possessed some twisted element of crime.
The specimens that lay before The Shadow tonight were of varied types. Long, pointing fingers swept over the clippings, and one by one eliminated until only two remained. These, the hands placed side by side.
The item on the left told of a crime in Tilson, Illinois. The report stated that Carl Walton, secretary to Anthony Hanscom, was under arrest for the murder of Mosier, Hanscom’s secretary. It gave the details of the bond theft, and mentioned how Walton’s attempt to implicate Earl Northrup had been shattered by a perfect alibi.
The other report concerned a theft of funds from the First National Bank in Barmouth, Maryland. Sherman Brooks, the cashier, was being held; and his futile endeavor to cast blame upon Harold Thurber, chairman of the Civic Relief Committee, had served only to add further proof of Brooks’s guilt.
Evidently, there were definite points of similarity in these cases, so far as The Shadow’s observations were concerned. Rutledge Mann had indicated no connection. The Shadow, himself, had chosen these two reports from the multitude that had been submitted.
The hands produced a sheet of paper and laid it between the clippings. A pen appeared, and the hand of The Shadow inscribed a series of comparative notations:
Tilson, Illinois Barmouth, Maryland.
Bonds stolen Cash stolen.
Carl Walton Sherman Brooks.
Earl Northrup Harold Thurber.
The freshly written statements told their own story. Despite the differing circumstances, the essential details of these two cases were identical. In widely separated parts of the country, the same crime had occurred under a different guise.
Some one had been after wealth. Valuable spoils had been captured. One man was implicated. He had accused another. The accusation had been discountenanced because of a complete alibi. Such was the skeleton of each crime.
Could two such incidents, gleaned from local newspapers, have been mere coincidence?
The writing was fading from the paper; but the effect of The Shadow’s thoughts still remained. Those clippings told their stories. To The Shadow the identities were obvious.
In Tilson, Carl Walton lay in prison, charged with a crime which he had futilely blamed upon Earl Northrup. In Barmouth, Sherman Brooks was in jail, hopelessly declaring that Harold Thurber was the culprit.
Each case was of importance locally; but it was highly improbable that either had attracted attention in the other town. It had remained for The Shadow, in New York, to grasp the duplicated facts.
A low, weird laugh echoed through the spectral gloom. The laugh of The Shadow! That ghostly utterance was filled with meaning. Its sinister tones denoted a knowledge of hidden plots.
When The Shadow laughed, The Shadow acted.
THE white hands became restless. The left, with its sparkling girasol, held a sheet of paper upon which the right rapidly wrote a coded message.
As the blue ink dried, the hands dropped the first clipping — from Tilson — in the center of the message, and quickly folded the sheet of paper. This was inserted in an envelope.