The hand wrote a single word at the top of the paper. That word was the name:
Fitzroy
Beneath the name, the hand inscribed these cryptic statements:
Where: The railway coupon.
Why: The French coin.
Who: The partridge feather
The hand moved away. Only the words remained emblazoned upon the sheet of paper in vivid blue ink, surveyed by invisible eyes that studied them from the darkness.
Then, as though responding to an unseen touch, those words began to vanish. First the name of Fitzroy disappeared, letter by letter; after that, the other words were lost in the same uncanny fashion. Only the blank piece of paper remained!
These words, written in the amazing disappearing ink used by The Shadow, had been like uttered thoughts. Now they were gone, existing only in the brain of the one who had inscribed them.
Two facts had been mentioned here that would have been obvious to Vic Marquette, the secret-service man who had gone back over Fitzroy’s trail. These were the facts that Jerry Fitzroy, investigating the matter of spurious foreign coinage, had gone to a place named Westbrook Falls.
But the final fact — the identity of the person whom Fitzroy had visited — had been divined by The Shadow alone.
To Vic Marquette, the presence of the feather in Fitzroy’s pocket was a mystery. To The Shadow, it was a proclamation of an unknown identity. Vic Marquette had looked upon the feather as one from any bird; The Shadow had recognized it as a partridge feather.
What was the connection between some unknown person and that feather? This was a problem that The Shadow was prepared to solve. But when the hand again appeared beneath the light, the new words that it wrote referred to another subject.
Again a name was inscribed in that ink of vivid blue — a name that was followed by carefully written comments:
Clifford Forster.
Home in New York.
To-morrow evening.
The light clicked out. The ear phones clattered slightly as they were lifted by unseen hands. A tiny bulb gleamed as the voice of The Shadow whispered across the wire to Burbank.
“Post Vincent at the home of Clifford Forster. Immediate report upon Forster’s return.”
The ear phones were back; the glow was gone; the room was in total darkness. The Shadow’s plans were made. Vic Marquette had gone to Westbrook Falls; but while he was absent, a new trail would be opening, here in Manhattan.
Temporarily ignoring the events that had preceded the death of Jerry Fitzroy, The Shadow was training his observation upon a man who had been far away, but who soon would be in New York.
To-morrow night would be the test. From Clifford Forster, wealthy mining promoter, The Shadow would gain information relating to a riddle that involved events of international importance.
Where death once struck, death would strike again. To Vic Marquette, the demise of Jerry Fitzroy had been an unfortunate incident. To The Shadow, it meant the beginning of a reign of fiendish crime.
A laugh resounded through the blackness. It was a harsh, mirthless laugh, that laugh of The Shadow. It carried none of the mockery which the hidden being so often uttered. It was a laugh that denoted the grimness of the game ahead.
The lure of gold — that lust that has made men kill throughout the ages — was at work. Heinous crime was the ruling motive in the minds of evil villains.
To The Shadow was given the duty of thwarting great crime. Shrouded by darkness, a hidden factor in the cross-purposes of scheming men, he had planned to-night.
The echoes of the laugh rippled through the sanctum as though caught and shaken forth by the motionless curtains that covered the walls of the black room. The echoes died away like the cries of distant, spectral beings.
The sanctum was now empty. The Shadow had departed.
Two forces were already at work to oppose the crime that threatened. One, The Shadow, had planned and issued his orders. His work began in New York.
The other, Vic Marquette, was directed at the point of Jerry Fitzroy’s last activity — Westbrook Falls.
A giant struggle was already in the making!
CHAPTER IV
AT WESTBROOK FALLS
ON the following afternoon, an eastbound limited came to a stop at the little station of Westbrook Falls. Several persons alighted from the train, among them a bulky, full-jowled, middle-aged man who was carrying a suitcase.
There were three or four men lounging about the platform. One of them, a stocky, firm-jawed individual, eyed the various people who had left the train. This observer, standing in an obscure portion of the platform, was none other than Vic Marquette.
The secret-service man watched the newly arrived passengers go to the dilapidated automobiles that served as cabs between the station and Westbrook inn, half a mile away. Satisfied that all — among them the bulky man — were going to the hotel, Marquette strolled away.
Had he been closer to the vehicle in which the bulky man placed himself, Vic Marquette might have learned something of interest. For when the driver asked his passenger if he were going to Westbrook Inn, the reply was in the negative.
A short, low conversation transpired between the newcomer and the cabman. The driver nodded his head, and the car pulled away.
But although Vic Marquette had failed to catch this conversation, the words between driver and passenger had been overheard by another bystander.
A thin, dark-faced man garbed in khaki trousers and flannel shirt, was standing quite close to the car, and his teeth glistened in a broad smile as he watched the vehicle depart. Shortly afterward, he, too, walked away from the station.
The cab in which the bulky gentleman was riding started up the road toward the inn; but turned off after it had gone less than a quarter mile. It rolled along a side road, crossed a bridge over a deep ravine, and swung through the woods.
After a trip of some four miles, the car emerged from the woods and skirted the fringe of a deep gorge — a continuance of the stream that ran through the woods.
This chasm was below the falls, which were back in the neighborhood of the hotel. The roar of rapids, far below, was audible to the man riding in the car, and he peered from the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the river beneath.
Then the car swung away from the gorge and traveled beside a high picket fence, running at right angles to the river. The fence turned, running parallel with the stream, and the road also went in that direction. The automobile stopped in front of an iron gate in the center of the fence.
“Here we are, sir,” informed the driver. “This is Mr. Partridge’s place. Guess you’ll find him at home. He’s always here.”
THE bulky man alighted, paid the driver, and told him to stand by. He rang a bell on the gate. A dark, evil-faced man appeared on the walk beyond the gate, and the stranger addressed him through the bars.
“Is Mr. Partridge at home?”
“Who wants to see him?”
The dark man’s reply had a surly foreign tone — the voice of an Italian poorly acquainted with English.
“I am Clifford Forster,” said the visitor.
A gleam of understanding flashed in the dark man’s face. He grinned, showing yellow, fanglike teeth. He unbarred the gate.
Clifford Forster waved the driver of the cab away, and entered the confines of this strange domain.
The dark-complexioned man led the way to a house among the trees. They reached the building — an old frame structure of considerable size — and the man who was conducting Forster motioned to the visitor to enter.
Up the steps, across a decaying porch, into a hallway — there Forster stood face to face with a stoop-shouldered old man.