As he reached his goal, The Shadow paused. He was allowing one short interval before he resumed the pursuit. It was in that space that an event occurred which totally changed The Shadow’s plans.
AN explosion came with a mighty roar, back in the strongroom! The entire building seemed to shake. The Shadow caught his footing, as he wheeled. Smoke was pouring from the strongroom. The Shadow realized what had happened.
New marauders had blown through the wall from the garage! The first attack had been no more than a preliminary sortie. Here were the real raiders, coming through into the strongroom itself!
The Shadow pounced to the open door. Defying the stifling fumes, he peered toward the corner where the blast had shattered a jagged opening. His automatics dropped beneath his cloak. His gloved hands swept out a second brace of weapons.
A light glimmered from the broken wall. The Shadow loosed a shot. The light fell. Then came the responses of revolvers. Men from the opening were aiming to give battle. The sides of the hole were their cover; The Shadow was again using the metal door as his barricade.
Bursts of a single automatic thrust past the edge of the door. These timely shots were keeping the new forces at bay. The Shadow was expecting a mad rush. He was equipped to handle it. All was going well for the time; then, while the expected attack still held back, a new onslaught opened from another quarter.
A whistling bullet flattened itself against the metal door, a scant inch from The Shadow’s head. The cloaked warrior whirled. The shot had come from the outer door. A new mob, held in reserve to replace the outfit which The Shadow had put to flight, was on hand to battle with the lone fighter!
The opening shot, had it been less hasty, would have settled The Shadow once for all. Swinging from his narrow escape, The Shadow aimed toward the outer door and opened fire as a deluge of mobsmen sallied into the room.
Amid the smoke that still hovered from the explosion, swift fight was waged. The Shadow, had he remained at the door of the strongroom, would have been quick prey for his opponents. But he shifted as he fired. He headed toward the window, intent upon meeting his foemen as they advanced.
Amazingly, The Shadow seemed to precede the enemy’s aim. Spattering bullets followed him while the men who fired were diving away to avoid return shots. It was the swiftness of the struggle that aided The Shadow during his course to the opened window.
A mobleader — Harger — was at the heels of the crowd that had sallied through the door. More deliberate than his hurried henchmen, Louie aimed for the blackened target that he could barely see. He fired. The Shadow wavered.
Wounded, the superfighter staggered at the window sill. A single automatic loosed flame toward the door, A mobster, his body protecting Louie, began to sink as his leader was aiming above his shoulder. Harger dived away toward the safety of the hall.
THE door of the strongroom swung open. A light glimmered full upon the window. The Shadow, barely freed from the menacing mob which had attacked from the hall, was forced to turn and fire single-handed at the light.
The Shadow’s right arm was limp; his left, however, loosed a pair of final shots with deadly precision. The light went out; a staggering mobster screamed. A gunman’s hand yanked the metal door shut.
The Shadow’s triumph was brief. Before the cloaked fighter could make another move, three men surged inward from the hall. Louie Harger, behind another pair of underlings, was coming back to fight.
One mobster fired. His bullet singed The Shadow’s wounded arm. The second man was aiming; The Shadow flung an empty automatic squarely in the fellow’s face. Louie Harger loosed a shot. The Shadow toppled. Backed against the window, his only refuge, the trapped warrior sprawled sidewise on the sill. Louie fired again, as The Shadow’s form went outward. His bullet clipped The Shadow’s thigh.
Then the form was gone; the window clear — save for a clutching hand of black. A dozen feet away, Louie aimed point blank for those clinging fingers, which he could see upon the white surface of the woodwork. Before the mobleader could pull the trigger, the fingers loosened. The Shadow’s form was plunging toward the rooflike marquee, nearly twenty feet below!
Louie heard the crash as he sprang for the window. The shattering of glass — the snapping of metal — these were the sounds that had marked The Shadow’s vertical plunge. Reaching the window, the mobleader looked downward. Spread upon the broken surface of the marquee lay the cloaked figure. The Shadow seemed to be writhing in agony.
Louie Harger aimed. The Shadow was helpless. Here was his chance to finish the archenemy of crime. Despite his belief that The Shadow must have already suffered mortal wounds, Louie was determined to gain the privilege of pumping lead into the black-garbed form.
As Louie’s hand steadied on the trigger, The Shadow seemed to hunch together. Then, to the gangleader’s amazement, the blackened form dropped. In his fall, The Shadow had shattered the center of the marquee. He still possessed sufficient strength to wriggle himself through the gap!
The Shadow had chosen the hard sidewalk a dozen feet further down in preference to the lead which he knew was coming from above. From his angle of vision, Louie could see but the fringes of the black cloak as The Shadow thumped, sprawling, on the sidewalk.
Viciously, the gangleader fired through the gap that showed in shattered glass and twisted metal. His zipping bullets smashed against the cement sidewalk. Changing his aim, Louie shattered another pane of glass, in maddened effort to uncover The Shadow’s dragging form.
Bursts of flame — whining bullets — crackles from below — then the click of Louie’s emptied weapon. The Shadow, wounded by gun shots, crippled by two successive plunges, had crawled toward the protecting entrance of the building.
The Crime Master’s moves had been well planned. The Shadow had been trapped within the central square. Eliminated from the fray, he had taken a desperate measure to avoid certain death in the face of overwhelming odds.
Even yet, he was not clear. Louie Harger knew that fact as he stood snarling by the window. Guns were echoing in the street below.
The Shadow had moved from one square to another. Unarmed, incapable of fight, he was still within the range of The Crime Master’s minions!
CHAPTER XIII
THE FLIGHT
WHILE The Shadow had been waging battle in the offices of the Associated Importing Company, strife had broken loose upon the street below. The gunfire from above; the explosion which had followed it — these had served as signals for other action.
Prompt with the beginning of the upper fray, men had issued from buildings across the street. Half a dozen in number, they represented detectives who had been smuggled in to watch.
These men had sent the alarm before they appeared in view. The distant police who surrounded the district were notified that crime had struck. The half dozen detailed to watch were then ready to force their way into the Fergis Building.
But where Weston had relied upon a slim vanguard, The Crime Master had placed full crews of fighters. Hardly had the detectives appeared before the doors of parked taxis opened. Armed gunmen tumbled into view; they opened fire on the plain-clothes men.
Thus, while The Shadow had fought furiously above, shots had been ricocheting along the street below. Weston’s men, hopelessly outnumbered, retreated to the buildings from which they had come. Of the six detectives, four were wounded.
During the last phases of The Shadow’s upstairs battle, taxis were swinging along the street. These cabs were moving fortresses in The Crime Master’s scheme. Each contained its quota of mobsters.