“So you’re the young lady,” the man acknowledged. “Miss -”
“Arlene Forster.”
“I’m glad to meet you, Miss Forster.” The shaggy head bowed again. “I am Niles Ronjan. Now let me see: you are staying at the Plaza Central.”
“That’s right.”
“A very nice place. Very well, the charts will be sent there. You are familiar with coastal charts, of course.”
“I am.”
“Then that’s all. Your job will be to check them when you receive them.”
“At what salary?”
“Why, eighty dollars a week,” responded Ronjan, as though Arlene should know, “with hotel expenses in addition.”
Arlene hardly knew what to gasp, so Ronjan saved her the trouble.
“Don’t thank me,” he expressed. “Thank Mr. Cranston; it was his idea. He sent me word to interview you” - Ronjan’s tone became confidential - “probably because of Miss Lane.”
Arlene took it that Miss Lane was probably the type to be jealous if she knew that Mr. Cranston had offered a job to a former Wave. Perhaps her face registered a trace of reluctance on the basis of possible complications, for Ronjan immediately sought to reassure her.
“It’s really very important,” confided the shaggy-haired man. “Any word from Mr. Cranston is important. He has influence with Craig Farnsworth, the man who backed my great invention.”
With that, Ronjan gestured to the big tank where the articulated tube was on display. He didn’t have to explain it to Arlene; she could tell that it was a model of some sort of device used for reaching sunken ships.
“Our calculations were correct,” declared Ronjan, “but perhaps Farnsworth is not convinced of it. The work you do may furnish the proof he needs.”
Noting that Arlene was interested in the tank and its contents, Ronjan let her study the exhibit, though it was apparent that he was anxious to leave. In fact, Ronjan seemed to be timing things by the occasional glances he gave at his watch. Finally, Ronjan was about to gesture toward the door when a strange thing happened.
It occurred when Arlene was on the far side of the tank, over toward the window. As she turned, the girl was attracted by the scene from that window, for outdoors the dusk had settled, bringing a typical Manhattan nightscape. Central Park was gaining its velvety touch, lights were gleaming like gems, and a soft glow, rising from the street was a natural magnet for Arlene’s eyes.
Then all was blackened by a momentary horror. Arlene dropped back aghast as the window clouded, almost blotting the scene with it.
The blotting shape had all the semblance of a cloaked figure with outspread arms, looming straight up into the window, as though arrived on some monstrous mission!
As suddenly as it appeared, the illusion vanished with a curious dwindling effect. Suddenly bold, Arlene stared down from the window, thinking the intruder had dropped away, but no one was in sight.
Ronjan, having turned to open the door, apparently had failed to view the startling sight outside the window, so Arlene said nothing about it. Ronjan bowed her out and then followed, locking the door behind him, as he muttered something about an appointment.
They had reached the elevator when its door opened to emit a tawny-faced man whose features were marred by two white scars. Bowing, Ronjan croaked an introduction:
“Miss Forster, allow me to present Captain Dom Yuble from the Caribbean. He has proven very helpful in my present enterprise.”
Yuble’s gleaming smile rather impressed Arlene. When Ronjan offered Dom the key to the suite, the tawny man exhibited one of his own, then smiled again as Arlene entered the elevator with Ronjan.
All the way down in the elevator, even after she parted with Ronjan in the lobby, Arlene kept wondering about that fanciful occurrence upstairs. The more she wondered, the more she believed that Ronjan had tried to divert her attention from the window; indeed, had sought to have her leave before the weird interloper made that momentary appearance.
In fact, Arlene was ready to drop her feud with Phil in order to gain someone’s reaction to her strange experience, but Phil wasn’t around to hear her story. Starting back to her own hotel, Arlene decided that Phil must have gotten tired waiting for her, for which she couldn’t blame him. Looking up toward the towering roof of the Chateau Parkview, Arlene saw lights that probably represented Ronjan’s suite, tucked just beneath the eaves of the peculiarly ornate roof.
It looked trivial, that scene high above, so trivial that Arlene was ready to forget it. After all, when things seemed trifles, they couldn’t matter much.
Arlene Forster was wrong. Trifling things could mean a great deal, whether noticed or unnoticed. In the latter class could have been included the tiny blinks that were beginning somewhere off in the distance.
They came from a building flanking Central Park, those twinkling gleams, symbols that strange crime was again on the move!
BLINK - BLINK - blink - blink -
The flashes were guarded tonight and their code was changed, but that didn’t worry the man who watched them. He sat with his back away from a window, so his face couldn’t be seen at all, unless the distant blinks had eyes.
Because the code was new, its signals were repeated, which was a bad mistake. It gave the watcher more time to operate a peculiar machine which whirred after he pressed certain buttons. Various letters fell in line within an illuminated dial, switched to other sets, until finally they made sense, at which time this observer stopped the process.
Leaning slightly forward, the man attended a switchboard, without letting his face come into the light. He had ear-phones on his head and when a voice responded, he announced:
“Burbank speaking -”
That name defined him. Burbank was The Shadow’s contact man who reached the active agents. To vie with crime, The Shadow had posted Burbank at this strategic spot from which the contact man could view the limits of Central Park.
Now Burbank was announcing what he had learned. His statement was concise:
“Watch Outlook Cafe - check on a man named Claude Older - watch for green coupe -”
There were other details, which Burbank relayed as they arrived, together with his crack-down of the code, as gained by means of The Shadow’s mechanical decoder. It was a neat machine, this, based on the fact that codes follow patterns and ideal for quickly breaking up simple codes once they had been changed.
As he repeated these things, Burbank was changing plugs in the switchboard, to reach various persons and inform them. There was only one that caused a brief delay; it was to the Graceland Memorial Library, which was located rather far up Fifth Avenue. Distance wasn’t what delayed it; time was needed simply because a certain Mr. Cranston had to be informed that he was wanted on the telephone.
Now The Shadow’s agents were definitely on the move. The question was how much they could accomplish even if they reached the Lookout Cafe in time to operate.
The Lookout Cafe was a most popular place. Only a short distance inside the park, it combined an old mansion with a garden to compose a fashionable eating spot. The only hazard was the weather; if bad, it crowded the patrons indoors, but that didn’t apply tonight because although the sky was overcast, there was no threat of rain.
Hence finding a man named Claude Older, particularly if you’d never met him, was something very difficult, even more difficult than locating a blue coupe among some fifty cars all parked in the darkness.
What helped was the loud-speaker which suddenly interrupted the orchestra that was playing on the garden terrace. It announced:
“Mr. Older - Mr. Claude Older - your friend is here -”
A pause followed, during which a number of diners stirred at various tables, but only because they were restless. Nobody answered to the name of Claude Older.