IT was in the living room that Mark Tyrell strolled toward Harry Vincent. He chose a time when Lamont Cranston and Doris Munson were engaged in conversation at the front end of the room.
“Stay by the door to the library,” whispered Tyrell, to Harry. “Have a cigarette ready. Strike a match to light it if one heads into the library.”
Harry strolled over toward the door that Tyrell indicated. The schemer walked away and joined Cranston and Doris. The girl was thanking Cranston for the aid that he had rendered during her fainting spell. Tyrell joined the conversation. He wanted to hold the attention of this keen-eyed guest whom he had identified as The Shadow.
Joe Cardona and Rudolph Brockthorpe had departed from the living room. The only man close to where Harry Vincent stood was Hubert Bexler. The gray-haired collector was smoking a cigar. His face seemed serious. Bexler had sobered considerably since the discovery that Brockthorpe’s screens were stolen. Harry fancied that the man might be thinking of the safety of his own treasures.
Bexler’s reverie, however, was advantageous. At present, it was Harry’s duty to play in with Mark Tyrell’s schemes. As yet, Harry could not fathom how the Chinese screens had been stolen. He was puzzling over the problem as he threw a sidelong glance into the library.
There, Harry saw Chopper Hoban entering stealthily from the side door. The fake servant glanced in Harry’s direction. Seeing no signal, Chopper stopped beside the heavy chair that had been carried from the strongroom. Harry saw him raise the covering. Muffled clicks followed. Harry caught a glimpse of the seat moving upward in side-hinged sections. He saw the back of the chair open like a double door.
Then a figure squirmed in view. In the gloom of the library, Harry caught a glimpse of a wicked, yellow face as a limber form unfolded its legs and arms. A curious, spiderlike man reached the floor. The portions of the chair clicked shut. Chopper dropped the covering into place.
As Chopper made a gesture, the figure — which Harry took for that of a dwarfish Chinaman — went scampering through the side door of the library. The man was crouching as he ran. Chopper followed into the side hallway.
As the two figures went out of sight, Harry looked about the living room.
Joe Cardona was returning with Rudolph Brockthorpe. The two were joining Hubert Bexler. Harry caught Cardona’s suggestion that the guests be urged to leave. As the trio stepped toward the door to the library, Harry moved aside and idly lighted his cigarette.
Mark Tyrell caught the signal from the other end of the room. The schemer smiled in satisfaction. He was sure that Chopper and the Chinaman had gained ample time. Harry’s signal convinced him that this new henchman was alert.
Cardona and the two collectors found nothing suspicious in the library. The detective’s suggestion was followed. The guests were invited to leave. Lamont Cranston was one of the first to depart. Mark Tyrell and Doris Munson followed. Harry Vincent went afterward.
IN his room at the Hotel Metropole, Harry Vincent began to make a written report. He had scarcely started before the telephone rang. He answered the call. It was Mark Tyrell.
“Hello, Vincent,” came the suave voice of the smooth crook. “I just wanted to extend my compliments. Very good, old chap.”
“Thanks,” responded Harry.
“I shall need you later,” purred Tyrell, over the wire. “Within the week. Stay around your hotel and wait for a call.”
“All right.”
When he had hung up the receiver, Harry went back to his report. In coded writing, inscribed in bluish ink, he detailed his action of the evening. As he made the report, Harry added a definite theory regarding the robbery. The appearance of the Chinaman had told him all he needed to know. He wrote:
The dwarf was in the chair. The alarms could be turned off within the strongroom. The shutters were easy to open from the inside. Of all the articles in that room, the screens, though the largest, were the easiest to steal.
Folded, they could have been thrust singly through the bars of a side window. Turned endways, inserted flat, their width would have been no more than two feet — less than the width of the window. The dwarf could have closed the shutter afterward.
Elsewhere in Manhattan another man was writing a report. Cliff Marsland, seated in a grimy room of a cheap hotel, was telling of his own activities. He was reporting how he had gone to cover up for “Slug” Bracken; how he had remained near the entrance of a passage outside of Rudolph Brockthorpe’s home.
He had seen Slug and a henchman appear with one screen and then the other. They had driven away in an old touring car, carrying their burdens with them. Cliff and other guards had left in a sedan.
This report, like Harry’s, was going to Rutledge Mann. Through the investment broker, both stories would reach The Shadow. Mark Tyrell had succeeded in crime. Joe Cardona was baffled. But The Shadow’s agents had spotted the inside tale.
MEANWHILE, a light was glimmering above a polished table in a black-walled room. White hands were on the woodwork; one holding a sheet of paper while the other wrote. The Shadow was in his sanctum, preparing his own notes concerning this night’s work.
Neither agent knew that his master had been at Rudolph Brockthorpe’s. Mark Tyrell was sure that The Shadow had been there, in the guise of Lamont Cranston. He, like Harry and Cliff, believed that The Shadow had been thwarted.
Yet the laugh that sounded through the sanctum would have startled Mark Tyrell had he been there to hear it. The burst of mockery came with surprising suddenness, just as the click of the lamp switch brought Stygian darkness to the black-walled room.
Taunting tones reached a weird crescendo. Sardonic mirth broke with a ghoulish shudder. Quivering echoes followed. Lisping taunts spoke back from the inky walls. When the creepy reverberations had ended their dying gibes, profound silence persisted throughout the sable-walled sanctum.
The Shadow had been present at Mark Tyrell’s second crime, as he had been present at the first. He had divined the crafty method by which the crook had gained the Persian tapestry from underneath the door at Sebastian Dutton’s. He knew the truth of to-night’s episode.
A doped cigarette to Doris Munson; a chair introduced with a living being inside it. Screens through the window, as Harry had supposed; the escape of the hidden worker who had aided Tyrell’s scheme. All these factors were apparent to The Shadow.
The master sleuth knew what his agents would report. The Shadow had studied Tyrell’s actions almost step by step. Yet The Shadow had laughed. There had been foreboding tokens in his chilling mirth. That fading merriment had indicated that when the last laugh came, it, too, would be The Shadow’s!
CHAPTER IX
THE THIRD CRIME
“HELLO, Vincent. Glad to see you, old chap. Wellington, take Mr. Vincent’s hat and coat.”
The speaker was Mark Tyrell. He was receiving Harry Vincent as a guest in his apartment at the Esplanade. It was five nights after the theft at Rudolph Brockthorpe’s.
The two men were in Tyrell’s dressing room. Wellington had closed the door. Away from listening ears — Tyrell told Wellington but little of his plans — the scheming crook was about to give instructions for this night.
“Two days ago,” stated Tyrell to Harry, “you received an invitation to a reception at Ferrell Gault’s. I called you up and told you to accept it. Your attire” — Harry was dressed in evening clothes — “indicates that you are going there. Am I correct?”
“Certainly,” replied Harry, with a smile.
“I arranged the invitation,” resumed Tyrell. “I also received one of my own. I intended to go to Gault’s, accompanied by Doris Munson. I have, however, changed my plans.”