Coyd understood for the first time. He thrust out a firm hand; Rydel received it. Together, these men who had stood apart congratulated each other above the dead body of Foster Cruzan, the arch−plotter who had tried to work evil to them both.
New sounds from below; the doorbell was ringing the arrival of a new visitor. Seeing victory secure, Harry Vincent went out through the hall and down the stairs, to find Mose faltering to answer the call. Harry sent the servant away and opened the door himself. It was Senator Ross Releston.
“I left Baltimore early,” explained Releston. “We heard Congressman Coyd's speech through the radio in the automobile. I was in a friend's car, you know. I told them to bring me here at once.”
The senator paused; then gripped Harry's arm.
“I heard the weird laugh,” he added. “The others merely wondered about it—they thought that somehow a mystery program had worked in with the banquet broadcast. But I understood. I knew that something—”
HARRY nodded. Accompanying the senator to the stairs, he explained the vital points as they went upward.
Senator Releston gasped when he heard of Foster Crozan's traitorous dealings.
“Crozan was the murderer,” asserted Releston, decisively. “No doubt about it, Vincent. We have witnesses to his statements; to those of his hirelings. The three whom we now hold—Borneau, Jurrick and Mullard—will be forced to declare the full truth.”
“They have already done so,” returned Harry, as they ascended to the second floor. “Borneau told facts; up to the point where he named Dunwood Rydel as the villain, instead of Foster Crozan.”
“He will retract that lie,” assured Releston. “Crozan is dead; his threat will no longer influence Borneau. Now that the crisis has passed, Vincent, the game is plain. I should have realized that Crozan's virtues were a pretense. Secretly, his desire was for worldly pelf.
“I felt sure that speculators had been buying those utility securities, Vincent. That was why I dropped my original objection to Coyd's genuine speech. The prices will drop—as they should—and the losers will be those rogues who connived with Foster Crozan.”
“What of those associates, senator?”
“They will gain what they have deserved. Financial ruin. We shall press them no further; for they are not of Crozan's criminal type. Murder was his own choice, Vincent. We will learn—I am confident—that Crozan's entire fortune is tied up in those utility stocks. He, himself, must have been the chief speculator. He probably salvaged his original investments in munitions and threw millions into this bigger game.”
HARRY VINCENT could detect a note of finality in the gray−haired senator's tone. Justice had triumphed; The Shadow's work was done. There would be finishing details, Harry guessed; and in that assumption he was right. But The Shadow's remaining tasks were trifling.
Word to Cliff Marsland, to call the police; then depart from the apartment where he had been waiting in case Montgomery Hadwil had slipped loose and fled thither. The law would discover that hide−out, where Hadwil's cherished press clippings, his letters, articles of make−up and disguise would be disclosed as proof of his part in Crozan's game.
A message to Hawkeye, to forget the F Street garage, where he was no longer needed as a watcher. To Clyde Burke, also, telling the reporter to visit Crozan's rooms at the Hotel Barlingham.
Evidence would be uncovered there as well. Records of stock purchases; perhaps a duplicate of a planted cable from Europe, that had told of Hadwil's supposed elopement with a foreign actress.
After that, Burbank. Like The Shadow, the contact man would leave the Hotel Halcyon and make his departure from Washington. Other missions awaited The Shadow and his agents. Soon Harry Vincent would join them.
Glimmers of such thoughts flashed through Harry's mind as he and Releston reached the threshold of the living room, where Layton Coyd and Dunwood Rydel held mutual charge of cowering prisoners. Suddenly the senator stopped; his face was solemn as he harkened to a strange, uncanny sound from below.
It was a weird burst of departing laughter; from the depths of the first floor hall, near the side door that led from this old house. Chilling, solemn mirth; more a knell than a token of elation. Eerily it shivered to a shuddering climax. A host of echoes faded into nothingness.
The author of that mirth was gone. The parting laugh had sounded the final triumph of The Shadow.
THE END