With a new gesture of impatience, The Crime Master raised the glass sheet that covered the table. His hands were sinewy as they lowered the heavy plate and rested it beside the table. His claws pulled away the large scale map and threw it to the floor.
From beneath the table, the old man drew forth another spreading sheet. He flattened it on the table — a new map that showed another section of Manhattan. He raised the glass and set it in position. Its griddled lines formed their checkered pattern upon the new chart that lay beneath.
From his box of pieces, The Crime Master began to draw forth reds, blues and greens. Like a general mapping a field of battle, he was planning a new campaign of crime. One by one, he massed his forces, in contemplation of a new raid against the law.
THE CRIME MASTER paused. He chuckled as he surveyed the beginnings of a coming battle field. Colored pieces, splotched upon the board, brought joy to this creature of evil. The Crime Master settled back in his chair. His gaze lowered as he shifted from the table. His eyes stared to the floor; his lips spread as he emitted a wild, maddened cackle of elation.
The Crime Master was looking at the broken cone and the cube that bore the letter C. White upon a maroon-hued rug, they made a tiny, pitiable sight. That broken piece was out of the coming game.
Joe Cardona, the only instrument of the law whom The Crime Master had considered worthy of individual distinction, would not be present at the next affray. The ace detective could make no thrust against The Crime Master’s well laid plans.
That fact was the cause of the fiend’s delight. Confident because of success, the plotter could see no block to trouble him. His hands went back to the pieces on the board. Among them, he scattered cones of white — pieces which he regarded with sneering contempt.
To The Crime Master, all was clear ahead. He trusted in the reliability of the report. What if gangsters had been slain? What did it matter that Louie Harger was in flight? More minions could be had. Louie Harger would return. Again, the old man chuckled with contemptuous delight.
The Crime Master thrust the scanned report away. He had digested all its contents. He thought that he knew all. In that supposition, however, he was incorrect. Neither The Crime Master nor his informants had learned the truth concerning the counterthrust that had come from the law.
No report had been made about The Shadow. Nothing told of the weird presence that hovered in the background. Nothing had been said of a mysterious, hawk-nosed stranger who had appeared among the denizens of the underworld.
Exhaustive though The Crime Master’s plans might be they were lacking in one vital point. Those colored pieces on the board; the white ones that opposed them — were of little consequence.
For The Crime Master had neglected the greatest factor in the game. Until he took cognizance of it, his schemes would be open to disaster that he could not foresee.
Among those blocks that rested upon checkered squares was none to represent the king piece of them all. The Crime Master had made no provision to meet the power of The Shadow!
CHAPTER VIII
THE SHADOW’S CLUE
IT was the second night after the raid upon the Titan Trust. Crime was in abeyance. Newspapers screamed the news of the successful foray. The underworld was still troublous beneath its calmed surface. Tension — not action — prevailed.
In all the dives of the badlands, there were no signs of the mysterious mobster who had been garbed in black sweater. The strange observer had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.
The Shadow had sensed the coming situation. He had gained inkling of the methods whereby The Crime Master was controlling forces of the underworld. He knew that a big job like the robbery of the Titan Trust Company would be followed by a lull.
The Crime Master, no matter how great his hidden power, would be at fault in his strategy should he strike again while turmoil still persisted. Though the supercrook might actually govern an invisible empire of crime, his thrust, if over frequent, could prove disastrous.
One stroke; then plans for new evil, while weak points were being strengthened — such was the invariable law that ganglords must obey. The Crime Master, whose giant intellect had accomplished a merger of gangland’s forces, would certainly follow this process.
Hence The Shadow had departed from the underworld. He had no need to be there, while speculation, alone, was the talk in gangster hangouts. Stool pigeons, recovering from their temerity, were back on the job, trying to glean information for the police. Their task would be a futile one, since crime had already been accomplished.
The Shadow, when he mapped campaigns against crime, chose measures which matched those of his hidden foemen. This was the work that engaged him for the present. On this night, forty-eight hours after his encounter with Trigger Maddock, the master sleuth was contemplating a stroke of his own.
A light was burning in a black-walled room. Bluish rays shone on the polished surface of a table. White hands, living things that extended from blackness, were at work. A glimmering gem — The Shadow’s girasol — sparkled from a tapering finger. Its iridescent hues, changing in constant procession, seemed to reflect the mystery of The Shadow himself.
The Shadow was in his sanctum. While his hand inscribed names upon a sheet of paper, his eyes, peering from darkness, studied the written columns. A soft laugh came in sibilant tones from the gloom on the near side of the table.
A STRANGE contrast! Somewhere in Manhattan, secluded in his paneled room, The Crime Master, wizened and gray-haired, was placing pawnlike pieces upon a many-squared board. Meanwhile The Shadow, within his shrouded sanctum, was planning methods to defeat the supercrook.
Hidden foemen! The Shadow, lone wolf of action, who used but a handful of trusted agents; The Crime Master, generalissimo of evil, relying upon massed hordes organized into a mighty fighting body!
Which would win?
Could The Shadow, by his daggerlike thrusts defeat this genius who could order forth a phalanx of fighting gunmen? Or would The Crime Master, precise in his maneuvers, prepared for all emergencies, down the hidden being who sought to thwart him?
The answer lay in the balance. Never before had The Shadow encountered an enemy who had risen to such swift prominence. Never before had either The Shadow or the law been faced by an organizer who had brought all gangdom beneath his domination.
The Shadow had observed The Crime Master’s strength. He was reckoning it upon the sheet before him. Names of gangleaders, small and large, were in The Shadow’s list. Through observation in the underworld, The Shadow had gained the names of all whom he suspected as members of The Crime Master’s huge organization.
Often had The Shadow battled with powerful mobleaders. Sometimes, he had thrown opposing bands into conflict. He had also indicated courses which the law had followed. Unwittingly, police had often taken The Shadow’s lead. But here, The Shadow saw the futility of former measures. Should he attack any point of The Crime Master’s organized structure, the rest would come battling down upon his head. Secrecy, to date, had been The Shadow’s strongest weapon.
The Crime Master’s strength could not be discounted. The Shadow’s hand had completed its listing. Dozens of names — those of dangerous underworld characters — were before The Shadow’s eyes. Yet the whispered laugh came shuddering through the sanctum. In strength, The Shadow had spied weakness.
Rapidly, his hand began to form another list. This one, in a column of its own, was brief. It carried the names of half a dozen mobleaders of considerable repute. These, to a man, were not members of The Crime Master’s chain.