“The real fool would be Margo, if she made such a buy. I’d better go hunt for her before she receives a call.”
While Cranston spoke, Farnsworth was dialing the telephone, trying to get Ronjan’s number. Receiving no response, Farnsworth followed Cranston to the door and said in parting:
“Not that mink coats aren’t important, Cranston, but Ronjan has me worried. There’s only one place where he could have gone.”
Cranston made a half-jesting inquiry while half way through the door.
“Somewhere out in Central Park?”
“Be serious, Cranston,” returned Farnsworth. “I think Ronjan may be digging up some new investors. He may intend to drop the Good Wind job and go hunting treasure elsewhere. There’s one place he would take such investors.”
“Out to Skipper’s Rock?”
“That’s right. To see the full-sized articulated subsea tunnel. I’m going down the Battery and hire a boat myself to go out there. Call me at midnight; that’s about the soonest I can hope to be back.”
Cranston gave a nod and closed the door behind him. As he came out on the avenue, a taxicab swung around the corner only to be disappointed when a limousine pulled in front of it to pick up the gentleman in evening clothes.
Having just lighted a thin cigar, Cranston was drawing on it idly while his chauffeur was opening the limousine door. As a result, the lighted end of the cigar gave tiny glows that delivered a coded message.
Therefore the cab driver wasn’t disappointed; he happened to be Shrevvy and he already had a passenger huddled in the back seat, namely Hawkeye. There would be work for the speedy cab driver and the ace of spotters tonight.
Since Farnsworth’s apartment house was situated well up the avenue, Cranston had some distance to travel before reaching Central Park South. Lights were already beginning a mysterious series of blinks before Cranston’s needed minutes had ended.
Particularly mysterious tonight, those lights. They cleaved the lush darkness that belonged to Central Park but it was difficult to tell which flank they came from. Indeed, the blinks seemed to come from within the park itself, which was puzzling, since they were from a considerably high level.
Phil Harley didn’t know about the lights and perhaps he wouldn’t have cared. Phil was coming from a phone booth in the lobby of the Chateau Parkview after a heated talk with Arlene Forster. It seemed that Arlene was about to leave her hotel and wouldn’t tell Phil where she intended to go. There wasn’t time for Phil to race as far as the Plaza Central to flag the blonde before she started.
So irked was Phil that he didn’t realize he’d done a very odd thing. Stepping from a phone booth in the Chateau Parkview was a novelty. You usually walked into them and wound up somewhere else. So Arlene had claimed and Phil vaguely remembered a similar experience.
Right now, Phil was wondering if Thara Lamoyne was around. She was a person who might answer some pointed questions, if Phil could only find her. Not seeing Thara, Phil had another idea. He’d go up and call on old Niles Ronjan, who seemingly had some remote connection with matters involving Arlene. At least the blonde had mentioned Ronjan as a go-between where Cranston was concerned.
Phil caught an elevator too soon. If he’d waited for the next car, he’d have met Thara Lamoyne coming out of it. As it was, the cars passed and when Thara did appear in the lobby, she looked relieved when she didn’t see Phil there. However, Thara didn’t leave the lobby; she merely went to make a phone call in one of the alcove booths.
By then, Phil was knocking at Ronjan’s door.
The man who opened the door was Dom Yuble. The captain from the Caribbean shook his head when Phil asked for Ronjan, whereupon Phil became persistent. Thrusting himself into the room despite Yuble, Phil looked around as though expecting to find Ronjan hiding somewhere.
Yuble’s scars turned very white. It was a bad sign if Phil had noticed it, for it meant that Yuble’s face was purpling invisibly under his peculiar tan, the scars staying white because they weren’t included in the process.
Yet Yuble’s tone was still a purr, polite and persuasive.
“Mr. Ronjan has gone out to Skipper’s Rock,” Yuble informed. “If you wish to know why - look there!”
By “there” Yuble didn’t mean the Rock. He was gesturing to the huge tank in the center of Ronjan’s main room. For the first time Phil saw the model ships and the peculiar articulated tunnel, formed in miniature, that was designed to give safe passage to a treasure hunter.
“It is very interesting,” purred Yuble from beside Phil’s shoulder. “You may study it closely if you wish.”
Phil’s training as an engineer was coming to the fore. He leaned to take a better look at the device. In turn Yuble leaned forward and made a gesture as if to point out certain features of the invention. Only Yuble’s hand didn’t stop.
With a hard downward thwack, Yuble’s flattened palm struck the water with the violence of a beaver’s tail, hoisting a regular geyser right into Phil’s face. Before Phil could recover, Yuble gave him an arm clamp that somersaulted Phil over the tank, clear beyond the water and across the other side to a hard landing on the floor beside the window.
Yuble didn’t pause. Like a pirate boarding a merchant ship he clambered onto the tank, sprang across it and landed at Phil’s side with a drawn and lifted knife, like those that Phil had seen in the fists of the leopard men. But Phil, leaned back against the tank, was too groggy to attempt any warding of the stroke that was to come.
It didn’t come quite yet.
With a leer, Yuble gestured to the window, outside which the distant blinks had ceased.
“Maybe you have understood the first message?” The scarred man sneered. “If so, what should matter? You have not yet found out the important thing.” Yuble paused, as though hoping Phil would revive enough to comprehend. “You have not learned it, fool! You have not guessed that I, Dom Yuble, can receive a special message at any time.”
Turning to the window, Yuble let his eyes betray an expectant glitter.
“Look!” Yuble gloated. “I shall let you live long enough to see how a confidential message arrives!”
Maybe it was Phil’s swimming head, but he was sure he saw blackness loom suddenly up into the window. No longer sheer fancy, that blackness became a growing creature with great, outspread arms that looked like webbed extensions of its body.
Yuble’s manner was a greeting, as he waved a hand as if to gesture the creature upward, so it would dwindle from the light; then, so suddenly that Phil was jolted out of his mental whirl, Yuble gave a piercing scream of horror.
Instead of melting, that creature from the great outside flung its arms around Dom Yuble as though enveloping him in the folds of a death-delivering cloak.
To Phil Harley, the action of Yuble’s unknown foe symbolized The Shadow!
FOR the next few minutes, the fantastic ruled. To Phil Harley, what he saw was unbelievable, or at least half so. Yuble’s antagonist made it that way.
As Yuble reeled in front of the window trying to shake off his dread attacker, the changing position of the light produced remarkable tricks. At times, Yuble seemed overwhelmed by a huge, shadowy antagonist; there were moments when the attacker disappeared, leaving only Yuble, gasping, jabbing his knife wildly into thin air.
Half rising, Phil gained the impression that he saw flowing blood, which didn’t make sense, since Yuble, the man with the knife, wasn’t managing to carve anything. Then, before Phil could gain his feet, Yuble took a heavy sprawl, rolled over and lay still.
A moment later, something stirred from beside Yuble’s body; a patch of blackness flung itself up into the light, cut off the glow and became that same, gripping monster that had just done with Yuble and was in thirst of a new victim, Phil Harley!