The situation was plain now. The fleeing car was closely followed. Fawcett could see men on the running boards of police cars, firing as they chased.
Click!
The black ray was on again. Now its beam was slender, tapering out to a comparatively small circle.
Focused almost directly downward, Hobbs threw the shaft directly into the avenue behind the carload of escaping gangsters.
The pursuers shot into the gloom. Their cars did not reappear. Hobbs wavered the circle slowly forward, taking account of the momentum which the cars had acquired. Hector Fawcett laughed.
The new maneuver had paralyzed the pursuing police. Their cars were blotted out by darkness. Motors stalled, lights gone, the chase could not be continued!
The fleeing gangsters were gaining blocks, but a new menace to their flight had now appeared. They were coming to an important crossing. Swinging in behind from side streets were new pursuers, and from both directions on the wide cross street, other cars were converging!
It was too late now! Fawcett uttered an oath — for he fancied that more than men were in those cars. He did not know that the fleeing gangsters had failed to make their haul from the coffers of the New City Bank.
The mobsters would be captured surely, Fawcett thought, for cars were closing in ahead and from the rear. He expected Hobbs to widen the ray; to blanket the entire area with blackness, that the fleeing men might leave the car and run.
Fawcett added a groan to his oath as he saw that the clear avenue traffic was about to be interrupted by the cross-town flow. Total darkness would be the only resort now.
HOBBS did the unexpected. The circle of his ray swept forward with amazing speed, a veritable lever wielded from a distance of a thousand feet. It freed the stranded police cars that were now far behind. It stopped suddenly upon the important intersection toward which the gangster car was fleeing.
Spreading, the ray caught the cross traffic just as it was starting. No blocking car could reach the intersection.
It was a perfect maneuver, but Fawcett feared that it was futile. The police were stopped on the cross street, but the fleeing car was heading directly into the black circle with a trio of pursuers gaining on it, less than half a block behind! Those new chasers had come in from side streets!
Click!
Just as the gangster car reached the edge of the black circle, the huge spot disappeared. Traveling at a mile-a-minute clip, the fleeing automobile shot across the cleared intersection.
Click!
Hobbs resumed the ray. Clear of the further arc, the escaping car kept on — but the intersection was again bathed in blackness, which enveloped the police cars as they came into the range!
“Great work! Great work!” cried Fawcett. “Keep them there! They can’t follow now!”
“Not too long,” decide Hobbs.
The gangsters had gained half a dozen blocks. Both watchers saw the car swerve into a side street.
Hobbs pressed the switch. The black hush was ended at the intersection. It had been a matter of broken minutes. The police chase had begun anew, but now the law would have to guess which direction the escaped gangsters had disappeared.
The Shadow had won his fight tonight. He had driven back a horde of criminals. He had defeated the scheme of cunning brains. A handful of the thwarted raiders had escaped; but that fact marked an empty attainment for those who wielded the strange black ray.
It was the belief that Ping Slatterly was fleeing with a mass of stolen wealth that had caused Hector Fawcett’s anxiety to aid the speeding gangsters. Had Fawcett known that those in flight were traveling empty-handed without the leader, he would have ordered Hobbs to let them fall into the hands of the police.
Ping Slatterly was the only one who counted. He, alone, had controlled his henchmen. None of the underlings possessed an inkling regarding the source of the black hush. Ping’s contact with Goldy Tancred had been guarded, even from his own men.
Thus, The Shadow, by his strategy, had not only thwarted the power of the black hush. He had also caused the hidden malefactors — Fawcett and Hobbs — to take drastic action which had not been contemplated.
With their moving barrage of blackness, the men in the Judruth Tower had revealed new clues which would serve The Shadow well in his unceasing efforts to learn the source of the weird black hush!
The power of the ray had been demonstrated in a new way, but it had gained nothing for the men behind it.
CHAPTER XVIII. FACTS FOR THE SHADOW
AT noon the following day, a young man appeared in the outer office of Rutledge Mann’s suite. The stenographer recognized the visitor. She entered the inner office, and announced that Mr. Vincent was calling.
Mann ordered the girl to tell Vincent to enter.
This had not been the first conference between these two agents of The Shadow. While The Shadow had been battling against the crooks who worked with the black hush, Rutledge Mann and Harry Vincent had been cooperating in an effort to gain information that concerned Richard Reardon and Roland Furness, the electrical engineers slain at the Olympia Hotel.
To date, they had made progress. Rutledge Mann, by methodical research, had learned a pointed fact concerning the past of Roland Furness. In his senior year at college, Furness had been expelled with his roommate, Don Chalvers. The young men had completed their education elsewhere.
The cause of the expulsion, Mann had discovered, was due to repeated experiments in which the roommates had indulged. On several occasions, they had thrown the electrical equipment of the dormitories into disrepair. This had led the college authorities to request them to continue their studies at another institution.
Roland Furness was dead. He had met his end amid a strange blackness which was significant, for it linked his demise with his expulsion from college.
Rutledge Mann had forwarded these facts to The Shadow. He had been ordered to locate Don Chalvers.
This had proven difficult. Mann had learned that Chalvers owned a small, isolated estate in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Independent because of a legacy, the young engineer preferred travel to seclusion in his home among the wooded hills.
Aided by Harry Vincent’s efforts, Mann had traced Chalvers to New York City. The whereabouts of Dan Chalvers had been left for Harry to learn. It was concerning this matter that Harry had come to Mann’s office today. The investment broker was sure that the active agent had gained new information.
This proved to be the case.
“I’ve located him,” announced Harry, when Mann had put his clippings aside.
“You mean Chalvers,” returned Mann, voicing his words as an agreement.
“Yes,” asserted Harry. “He has an apartment on Fifty-fourth Street. He’s there occasionally; and I caught up with him at a Broadway night club” — Harry smiled — “at two o’clock this morning.”
“What then?”
“I introduced myself. Made friends. Pretended to have met him before. Helped him get home to his apartment. I’m due to drop in there this evening.”
Methodical, Rutledge Mann required precise descriptive data pertaining to Don Chalvers. Gazing thoughtfully at Harry Vincent, the investment broker put forward careful questions.
“What reaction did Chalvers show when you introduced yourself?” asked Mann.
“He seemed a bit surprised,” declared Harry. “Then he became very friendly.”
“Did he take your word for it that you were an old acquaintance?”
“Yes. After a short befuddlement, he felt sure that he remembered me. He remarked that he had been many places, and had met many people. He said that he could remember faces, but not names.”
“Where did you say that you had met him?”