Snarling, Duke yanked clear and aimed again. As he fired a quick, wide shot, The Shadow’s automatic spoke in unison. Duke slumped forward to the floor. The snarl ended in a dying cough.
Clyde Burke was coming to his feet. The Shadow, by the doorway, hissed an order. Clyde turned toward the guillotine. He could hear distant cries; he knew that The Shadow must go out to repel invaders. It was Clyde’s job to release Cliff.
Reaching into an opened exhibit case, The Shadow seized a poniard and sent the weapon sizzling through the air. The knife landed squarely in a broad post of the guillotine and quivered there, flashing in the dim light.
Clyde, breaking loose the clamp that held Cliff’s head, looked up as he heard the whirring blade. Dragging Cliff from beneath the guillotine’s menacing ax, Clyde reached for the poniard and wrenched it from the wooden post. He used the blade as a knife to cut Cliff’s bonds.
Cliff came to his feet. He grabbed Duke’s revolver, and Clyde snatched up Dopey’s. Together, they dashed out into the hall, where they could hear the sounds of shots. They saw The Shadow, by the front corner of the hall, firing out through the opened doorway. Returning gorillas were dropping back from his fusillade.
Wheeling suddenly, The Shadow pointed his agents to the opened door of the anteroom. Shots came from outside as they took to the designated cover. Roars resounded from a second automatic that The Shadow had drawn. A hoarse cry of a wounded raider came from beyond the outer door.
Then, with a swift whirl, The Shadow came swinging across the floor. His automatics — he was wielding one with each hand — sent blazing flames in the direction of the attackers. No shots responded as The Shadow swung into the anteroom where Clyde and Cliff were waiting.
Both agents expected to see The Shadow keep up the fight through a partly opened doorway. Instead, The Shadow swung the door shut. As he clicked the lock, Clyde suddenly realized the reason for that action.
Something thudded against the outside of the closed doors. Balked in a revolver fusillade, Konk Zitz had brought up a different method of attack. The Shadow, scenting a faint odor in the outer hall, had expected it.
Tear gas bombs. The same weapons that had enabled the invaders to overpower the police were now being used against The Shadow and his agents. The Shadow had closed the doors of the anteroom just in time.
He could not open the door to meet those incoming gorillas. Konk’s rallied forces would come equipped with gas masks. The Shadow and his rescued aids had only one avenue of retreat. That lay into the Sphinx Room.
Windowless, with walls that only The Shadow could scale, that inner chamber seemed no better than a hopeless trap, so far as Clyde and Cliff were concerned. Men were already pounding at the doors of the anteroom; trying to break through the metal facing.
Then, at this moment that offered nothing but despair, a dull blast came from the back of the museum. The building gave a quiver. Pounding from the hallway was resumed.
Standing in the darkness of the anteroom, The Shadow laughed.
CHAPTER XX
THE ESCAPE
THE SHADOW’S laugh brought shuddering quivers to the darkened anteroom. The tones seemed ominous, even to Clyde Burke and Cliff Marsland. Yet those agents of The Shadow knew that the weird mirth promised some prompt development.
Swishing through darkness, The Shadow opened the doors into the Sphinx Room. Staring into the moonlit vault, his agents saw him approach the huge Blue Sphinx. Serene upon its pedestal, the stone figure seemed to stare into the blackened room where the agents waited.
The Shadow was working swiftly. He was stooping at the sides of the pedestal which supported the Blue Sphinx, making a round of it that puzzled his watching agents.
Axlike blows were crashing at the doors from the outer hall. Konk and his men would soon break through. Yet The Shadow kept on with his circuit of the Blue Sphinx.
“You heard the blast?” questioned Cliff, speaking tensely to Clyde.
“Yes,” was the reply. “They blew the vault.”
“Where from?”
“The back of the museum.”
“The vault is under us?”
“Yes! Beneath the Blue Sphinx.”
The Shadow was returning. Something uncoiled behind him, along the floor of the Sphinx Room. It looked threadlike in the moonlight. Then, while terrific shocks bade fair to demolish the outer doors of the anteroom, The Shadow rejoined his agents and closed the inner doors behind him.
A tiny flame flickered suddenly in the darkness. A hiss and a sputter ran along the floor. It was the end of a fuse that The Shadow had lighted. The sparkling trail sizzled under the inner doors. Clyde and Cliff waited tensely.
At that instant, a crashing blow cleaved a portion of the brass-faced door. Light issued in from the front hall. An ax fell through the opening. A hand, with pineapple bomb clutched in it, appeared beyond.
An automatic roared in the anteroom, A man flopped from the opening, dropped by The Shadow’s shot.
A momentary silence. Then, from within the Sphinx Room came a terrific blast. The building seemed to rock. The stout inner doors of the anteroom crackled on their hinges. Then came the sound of shattering glass dropping in deluge from the dome above the Sphinx Room.
Stunning even to Cliff and Clyde, who had expected something of the sort, the explosion produced a tremendous stir beyond the front doors of the anteroom. It stopped Konk Zitz and his crew before they could begin a new attack.
Then, as shudders lulled, the sound of Konk’s snarling voice came through the ax-made opening. Konk was ordering a new bomb attack.
A hiss from The Shadow. As his agents turned, the cloaked fighter opened the inner doors and ordered them into the Sphinx Room. As the two men staggered there, The Shadow followed. He shut the inner doors and locked them, just as a gas-pineapple came through the outer break.
CLYDE BURKE was staring in amazement. So was Cliff Marsland. Before them, shattered into great chunks, lay the remains of the Blue Sphinx. Scattered about amidst the broken glass were portions of the pedestal on which the Sphinx had rested.
The Shadow had blown the whole structure loose. His fused charges, inserted in the holes that he had drilled, had totally demolished the pedestal and wrecked the statue with it.
The head of the Sphinx had toppled on its side. The face was staring with its blank eyes toward the doorway. The rear of the statue had rolled from the ruined pedestal, while the center section had broken in two halves that lay well apart.
Crash! Gas-masked invaders had beaten through the brass-faced doors. Closer strokes. They were attacking the inner entrance. Those inner doors were wood alone. They were already loosened by the blast that had shattered the Blue Sphinx. But that mattered no longer.
A yawning hole lay in the center of the demolished pedestal. The charge, spreading in all directions, had produced a yawning hole in the floor itself. Through the pungent room, The Shadow beckoned his agents to this outlet.
Clyde Burke noticed something as he followed Cliff down through the hole. The jagged cavity showed traces of a regular shape, as though there had been an opening through the ruined pedestal.
Cliff had dropped into the vault; Clyde followed. Then The Shadow swished beside them. His flashlight gleamed.
Again, Clyde stared. The vault was entirely empty. How had the other crooks managed to remove the treasure so quickly? Only a dozen minutes had elapsed since the first blast that had told of the entry through the bricked rear wall.
Moonlight showed through the rear barrier. At The Shadow’s command, Clyde and Cliff squeezed through. The Shadow followed, just as smashing from above announced that Konk’s outfit had crashed through to the Sphinx Room.