TEN minutes afterward, a window opened in an apartment a few floors below Goldy Tancred’s domicile.
An invisible hand stretched out into the night, and caught the end of the slender, hanging wire. A tiny flashlight threw a dollar-size disk of light upon the wall of the apartment where The Shadow now was. A gloved hand drew the end of the wire to the bell box of a telephone that was set against the wall.
There, The Shadow attached another mechanism. The operation here required a multitude of details.
When it was completed, The Shadow stepped back and viewed the completed job with the light of his tiny torch.
This was a private telephone, and the owner of the apartment was away. Upstairs, in Goldy Tancred’s living room, The Shadow had attached one end of a dictograph connection. Here, he had hooked the line with the telephone.
Through a perfected mechanism of his own invention, The Shadow now had the communication that he desired. It merely remained for Burbank to call up this apartment. The ringing of the bell would do the rest. The call would apparently be completed; actually, a connection would be formed with the dictograph line. This meant that Burbank could listen in at will to whatever was said in Goldy Tancred’s place.
By hanging up his own receiver, Burbank would complete the supposed call. Thus The Shadow’s hidden agent could follow everything at a distance, whenever the occasion might require. There would be some long calls over this wire during the next few days!
The flashlight went out. The Shadow swished through darkness. The closed apartment was once more empty. The Shadow’s work was done.
Impending crime! Could The Shadow learn its secret? Would his efforts frustrate the schemes of evildoers?
Tonight, Clyde Burke had gained an inkling. The Shadow, although too late to witness Ping Slatterly’s visit, had accomplished something that would reveal to him all telephone calls and conversations in which Goldy Tancred might be concerned.
Well had The Shadow planned! His eyes had seen; now his ears would hear. Important contact formed.
The Shadow held a great advantage.
Only one factor served to spoil The Shadow’s measures. Tonight, Goldy Tancred had completed plans so effectively that the big shot had decided to abandon all communications for the present.
Unwittingly, Goldy had acted with great wisdom. The black hush was due to fall again — in a place other than the Olympia Hotel. Where it came, crime would follow. Until then, Goldy was preserving silence.
The ingenuity of The Shadow had already been counteracted by the man who did not even suspect its presence.
CHAPTER VII. THE SHADOW MOVES
“BURBANK speaking!”
This was the statement that came over the wire. The reply, made from a telephone booth, was uttered in the quiet voice of The Shadow.
“Report.”
“Nothing.”
There was a tinge of helpless regret in Burbank’s final word. The Shadow’s hidden agent, usually unemotional in his conversation, had realized his present inability to help.
The receiver clattered in the telephone booth where The Shadow stood. Silence followed while The Shadow planned.
Two days had passed since The Shadow’s visit to Goldy Tancred’s apartment. In that space of time, not one report of consequence had come from Burbank. Night had come once more, and with it, a new threat of unknown action by dangerous men of crime.
The door of the phone booth swung open. It was not, however, a tall black figure that emerged. Instead, the huddled form of a shifty, capped-and-sweatered gangster made its appearance.
The Shadow, master of disguise, was garbed as a ruffian of the underworld. While Burbank waited, hopeful for news tonight, The Shadow, himself, had penetrated into gangdom’s terrain.
This was the second successive night upon which The Shadow had visited the underworld. Denizens of the badlands, unaware that their common foe was among them, had accepted the disguised visitant merely as an unrecognized gangster.
Thoroughly familiar with every feature of the underworld, The Shadow was undertaking a swift and methodical process of elimination. His analysis of approaching crime had connected Goldy Tancred with the activities of some gang leader. One by one, The Shadow had visited the hang-outs where representatives of different mobs were wont to appear.
His keen eyes, obscured by the visor of a wrinkled cap, had studied the bloated faces of a score of sordid mobsmen. His sharp ears had listened for snatches of conversation. Yet the cause had been fruitless. The Shadow had learned many facts; but none of them gave evidence of a connection with the case that now needed his attention.
In the middle of a darkened alley, the shuffling figure paused and turned to descend a flight of broken stone steps. His hand pushed open a rickety door. With hunched shoulders, the visitor entered an underground den where some two dozen mobsmen were assembled beneath the glare of two large incandescents.
TOUGHENED gunmen turned toward the doorway as the newcomer appeared. They saw a grimy, square-jawed visage beneath the cap visor. Somewhat suspiciously, they accepted this stranger as one of their own ilk. Not one man present suspected that he was viewing The Shadow.
No mobsman could truthfully boast that he had ever seen the face of The Shadow. There were a few who claimed that they had seen his mysterious shape, and all descriptions agreed that The Shadow was a tall being, habitually garbed in black. Had this stoop-shouldered gangster announced his true identity, no one in this dive would have believed his words.
This was one underworld hang-out that had no exact title. Once it had been called Gorky’s Joint, in honor of its proprietor. But Gorky’s period of ownership had terminated amid a barrage of gun play that had counted him a victim. Since then, three proprietors had taken charge in turn.
The unknown gangster drifted over to a table at the side of the room. He flung a crumpled dollar bill in front of him, and a grimy-faced waiter brought in a bottle and a glass. The unknown poured out a long drink, but let the glass stand idle while he stared glumly toward the barren wall.
Drifters of the underworld were here tonight, but among them were a few who looked like regular mobsmen. The Shadow, in choosing his table, had picked a spot close by a promising pair. Now, apparently indifferent to what was going on about him, he was listening to the conversation of these gunmen.
“It’s nearly ten o’clock,” came a growl.
“Yeah,” was the reply. “Wait’ll I have another drink. I’ll be goin’ with you.”
“You’d better be. Ping ain’t the guy that’ll stand for hokum. It’s a long jump from here up to the old Windsor Theater, an’ we’ve got to do a sneak into the back alley when we finally get there—”
The conversation broke as the gangsters prepared to leave. The Shadow, however, had learned all that he needed to know. The objective of the gangsters could not be the Windsor Theater itself, for the old, closed playhouse offered no attraction to men of crime. But the mention of the alley along side was a give-away. A fashionable apartment house was located next door to the theater, and it could well be a lure to smart crooks.
THADDEUS HARMON lived in that building. New Yorkers had heard much of him during the past few weeks. A millionaire whose name was frequently in the news, Thaddeus Harmon had expressed his approval of valuable gems as an investment.
He had spoken of important purchases which he had made through diamond merchants, and it was a known fact that he had invited wealthy friends to see the collection of resplendent gems that he brought back and forth from storage vault to apartment.
Until now, The Shadow had been unable to lay his finger upon the exact type of crime which might be impending. Murder — cold and exacting — had been the toll at the Olympia Hotel. More murder — racketeering — blackmail — all these had been possibilities.