It was the laugh of The Shadow!
Despite the consternation in the room where the murdered man lay, the baffled captors of the supposed murderer acted quickly. Within one minute after Henry Arnaud's escape, the news had been phoned to the lobby below.
Police had entered. A manhunt was under way. All available attendants in the hotel were pressed into service for the search.
The principal search was instituted on the floor where Perry Warfield had been killed. It had hardly begun before a cry of alarm was sounded by an elevator man. His car was stopped at the seventh floor.
He had looked up just in time to see a form speed rapidly to the head of the stairway!
"There he goes! There he goes!"
Uniformed police rushed from the corridors. Downward they went, in mad pursuit. And again, from the floor below came the sound of a mocking, bursting laugh.
A man appeared in the lobby of the Goliath Hotel. No one saw him arrive until he walked up to the policeman standing by the door. He drew back his coat and showed a badge. The policeman nodded.
"Headquarters," said the man nonchalantly. "Keep on the job, here! I'll be back with more men!"
As the man passed through the revolving door, two policemen dashed down a stairway into the lobby.
"There he goes!" cried one, pointing to the figure emerging beyond the revolving door. "That's the murderer! Get him!"
The guarding policeman joined in the pursuit. But he had realized his mistake a few moments too late.
When the bluecoats reached the street, their quarry had disappeared. He had vanished like a shadow!
Passersby were quizzed, but to no avail.
As the policemen were joined by others and the searchers scattered along the street, a form emerged from beneath the darkened windows of the dining room of the Goliath Hotel.
Silently, swiftly, a strange being flitted through the night, keeping always in the protecting shadows. He did not seem human, until he had reached a spot a block away from the hotel. Then he suddenly revealed himself in the light. It was Henry Arnaud!
The man stepped into a passing cab. He gave an uptown address — near the home of Matthew Stokes.
The taxi driver did not recognize anything unusual.
Matthew Stokes, despite his important position as the head of a detective agency, was a man who kept out of the public limelight. The importance of his investigations was known only to himself. He was a sleuth par excellence, who handled most vital cases for private individuals.
The front of the Stokes house was dark when a taxicab stopped several doors away. Shortly after the cab had gone, a stealthy figure approached the house and made its way up the side wall of the building.
Projecting cornices helped the task.
Two hands came from the darkness and raised a window. A man entered. He moved invisibly. Then he stopped in the corner of the room and listened.
There was no sound. Finally a slight click occurred. A small lamp turned on in the corner of the room.
Beside it stood the visitor, scarcely more than a shadowy mass of black in the dim illumination. The Shadow was in the bedroom of Matthew Stokes!
The room seemed silent and deserted. There was a bed in the opposite corner, with a high baseboard the foot. For a moment, the features of Henry Arnaud were visible as the shadowy investigator moved past the corner light. When he reached the bed, he appeared only as a fantastic, dark-clad form.
He stopped beside the bed. Then there was silence again. The Shadow did not move. He was contemplating the figure that lay huddled beneath the covers of the bed.
Although the night was warm, the man in bed was covered with blankets.
A hand appeared from the darkness and drew back the top edges of the blankets. A face could be distinguished in the gloomy darkness. It was the face of Matthew Stokes.
The eyes stared with the glassy stare of death. Matthew Stokes was dead! He had been shot in bed, the noise of the report muffled by the blankets!
The Shadow had arrived too late! "Killer" Bryan had come and gone before him. The nefarious gunman had committed a second murder!
CHAPTER X. KILLER BRYAN SPEAKS
Henry Arnaud had escaped! But he had been recognized, and his identity admitted. The morning following the affair at the Goliath Hotel, his picture had been published in the newspapers.
Then came the bombshell. A statement from Toronto declared the real Henry Arnaud was in that city. A man well known in the Middle West, and a frequent visitor in New York, he denied any connection with the case, and his ironclad alibi was a sensation.
In the apartment of the German criminologist, Doctor Heinrich Zerndorff, Inspector Burke and Joe Cardona were discussing the murders of the night before.
Zerndorff, eyebrows bristling, leaned forward in his chair.
"I cannot understand it," he said. "Who is this man who looks like Henry Arnaud, yet is not Arnaud?"
Cardona shrugged. He was thinking of The Shadow, but keeping those thoughts to himself. He remembered the phoned warning that had led to discovery of the bomb in the Financial Building.
Could it be that the murders of Perry Warfield and Matthew Stokes were connected with the explosions that had terrified New York?
"Well," said Inspector Burke, "we must get busy, Cardona. There's too little evidence in this Stokes case.
"We figure the killer must have been waiting. Stokes was shot in bed, and the blankets were used to muffle the sound of the gun. We've got to locate this fake Henry Arnaud!"
Darkness was gathering outside. Joe Cardona stared speculatively from the window. Somewhere in that gloom, two men were buried in the depths of Manhattan. It was his task to find them.
The telephone rang. Doctor Zerndorff answered — and then turned the phone over to Joe Cardona. A low, whispered voice began to talk the moment that Cardona placed the receiver to his ear.
"You are looking for me," said the voice. "I am the man who called himself Henry Arnaud.
"I did not kill Perry Warfield. The murderer is Killer Bryan. He also murdered Matthew Stokes. I have located him. You can capture him tonight. But take him alive. You understand? Alive!
"He is hiding out in a rooming house two doors west of the Pink Rat," the voice continued. "You know where the place is?"
"Yes."
"His room is the first to the left, at the head of the stairs. He will be in there at ten o'clock. He does not know that he is suspected of murder. Be there with your men tonight!"
The receiver clicked. Cardona turned to the other men. He told them what he had heard.
"Trace the phone call," ordered Inspector Burke.
"It won't do any good," replied Cardona. "We'll try it though."
"You will go there tonight, yes?" questioned Doctor Zerndorff.
"You're right I will!" replied Cardona emphatically. "I've been tipped off before. We'll get that guy, if I'm not mistaken!"
"I think I shall go with you," declared Doctor Zerndorff. "Perhaps I shall be of use."
It was shortly before ten o'clock when a thickset, long-armed man entered the doorway of the second house from the Pink Rat. He climbed stealthily up the stairs to the second floor, stopping at the top to listen. He entered the room at the left of the stairway, and snapped on the light.
The hardened face of Killer Bryan was revealed. He looked about the empty room and laughed. Then he turned out the light and lay down on the creaking bed.
Outside the room, there was a slight rustling sound. But Killer Bryan couldn't hear it. Someone was passing the doorway in the darkness. Someone was moving — a silent, invisible shape. Then came absolute silence.
From below a door opened softly. Four men were on the stairway, creeping softly upward. Then they stopped.