“I did not see the rock, nor the person on it,” this woman declared. “What attracted my attention was the light that blinked very strangely, off yonder.”
The woman stabbed a long finger in a direction at an angle to the rock and on a level a trifle above the trees. Following her point, others saw only the silhouetted outline of a tall apartment building to the west of Central Park.
“That light,” suggested Cardona, suddenly. “Was it like a candle, floating through the air?”
The long-faced woman thought a while, then nodded so vehemently that her horse followed suit.
“The corpse candle,” said Cardona to Weston, “or whatever they call it in Wales. The thing Miss Selmore said she saw, commissioner.”
The commissioner wasn’t impressed. He eyed the long-faced woman dubiously as though wondering if she had played the banshee and then skipped off to acquire her riding habit and her horse. But after a brief appraisal, Weston decided that this witness couldn’t have come up to the specifications of the woodland sprite who had been described in captivating terms.
It was time to tighten the cordon and bring in the banshee. So the commissioner dismissed class and went about his business, which left Margo on the bridge by moonlight, thinking she’d have a few quiet words with Lamont. But when Margo looked around, she found herself alone and realized only too suddenly that she hadn’t seen Lamont Cranston during the past ten minutes.
Somehow this setting was becoming a trifle too spooky. The ripple of the water beneath the bridge, the added tumult where it tumbled into a series of cascades down the lower slope, were sounds that threatened to drown anything less than a banshee’s wail. If such a howl should again disturb the night, Margo didn’t care to be the only person to hear it.
Looking for somewhere else to go, Margo happened to glance beyond the westward trees. A moment later she was riveted by a sight she didn’t want. It was starting again, that blinky light that Madame Mathilda and Miss Selmore had called the Canhywllah Cyrth!
Oddly, the sight stiffened Margo’s nerve. At least this was one mystery that she might solve in her small way. So she started in the direction of the intermittent light, even though it led around to the other side of the rocky pool which was unexplored territory to Margo.
The light was like a will-o-the-wisp, but it served as a beacon even though it might not be leading anywhere. Suddenly its flickers ceased and only then did Margo realize that her path had been guided by the light itself. Now she was suddenly worried, for she was past the pool and practically among the searchers who were clinging around it. If she ran into any of them, Margo might be arrested on suspicion of having impersonated a banshee, which would mean a lot of troublesome explanations.
That thought impelled Margo to undertake a detour further around the pool and the immediate result was grief. The turf gave suddenly and along with a deluge of spilling stones, Margo was precipitated down into a narrow gully which was completely hidden under the spread of overhanging trees.
Though startling, the slide proved brief. As for the gully, it furnished exactly what Margo wanted, an outlet past the cordon. As she crept along, moving away from the direction of the pool, Margo realized that at intervals this narrow passage actually burrowed under solid ground where drives and bridle paths crossed it. By the time the gully leveled off, the crowd of circling searchers was far behind.
Still, the ground was still high here, for as Margo ventured past some large boulders, she saw a downward slope and beyond it some rapid moving lights that flitted a reflection from among the tree roots. She realized then that she had reached a transverse, one of the speedways that cross Central Park below the level of the driveways.
Those were the lights of automobiles, rolling along the underpass. Since there was no way to cross the cut, Margo was about to turn and look for a pathway, when she saw a figure come stealthily from behind a tree near the transverse.
It was a singular figure, lean anal stoopish that could hardly be termed more than an outline of something human, though with a trifling stretch of the imagination it might have been mistaken for an orangutan escaped from the Central Park Zoo. If the thing hadn’t turned in Margo’s direction, she probably wouldn’t have attracted its attention, but it did turn.
Sight of an ugly, darkish face leering into the moonlight brought a half-scream from Margo and that was not only enough, but too much. The figure wheeled, unlimbered to full height, and whipped its arm back to throw.
Right then an avalanche struck Margo.
That avalanche came in the form of human blackness, launched from the darkness of a large rock that Margo had just skirted. Spilled by the drive, Margo sprawled headlong, hardly realizing that her rescuer was The Shadow. For rescuer he was, as testified by a whirring sound that whipped past the spot where Margo had just been, to end with a thud against a stout tree.
From her sprawl, Margo saw a sight that really dazed her. As The Shadow lunged toward the embankment, the stooped man who had thrown the knife made another of his unlimbering motions, but with a complete turnabout. It seemed that he literally scooped himself from The Shadow’s grasp and vanished into the darkness above the transverse which at that moment, fortunately for the fugitive, was devoid of passing cars and their tell-tale lights.
It was The Shadow’s voice that hissed the warning that Margo heeded. Scrambling up past the rocks, the girl found a driveway and ran along it toward where she knew a cab was waiting for Cranston. Finding the cab, Margo popped into it and felt safe at last, for she knew the driver. His name was Shrevvy and his cab was always at Cranston’s service, especially on nights like this.
Five minutes later, Cranston arrived back at the cab to report that the police hunt was still under way and accomplishing nothing. In fact, Cranston seemed rather bored with the whole business until the cab had rolled from Central Park and was swinging along a lighted avenue.
Then, turning to Margo, Cranston queried:
“Remember that mysterious apport business over at Madame Mathilda’s?”
“Of course.” Margo found her voice with a forced laugh. “You mean the sprig of lilac that they found there. But there was plenty more lilac out in the park.”
“And that was only half of it,” reminded Cranston. “There was a dagger that landed on the floor of the seance room. There seems to be plenty more of such out in the park too. I found this as a sample.”
In the light of the passing street lamps, Cranston exhibited the object which Margo realized was the whirring thing that had sped past her and planted itself in the trunk of a tree.
Glistening in Cranston’s hand was the exact twin of the dirk that had arrived so mysteriously in Madame Mathilda’s parlor!
CENTRAL PARK was anything but sinister when seen in the pleasant light of afternoon. It was a melody in green, tempered by streaks of rocky gray, broken with the sheen of blue pools and ponds, plus a few spots where pleasant streams came into sight.
Of course there were paths and drives, along with occasional buildings. People were everywhere. Margo wondered how long they would stay around after dark, particularly if they thought in terms of a banshee’s wail.
Probably everyone was thinking in such terms, for the newspapers were full of the banshee business. Nothing quite like it had come along since the days of the famed Jersey Devil or the more recent Mattoon Madman.
Rather fun, having such a mystery right in your own front yard, which was what Central Park was to all Manhattan. Only the police had placed strong restrictions upon anyone trampling around in search of the vanished sprite. In fact, Commissioner Weston had issued an edict to the effect that officially the banshee did not exist.