They were tryin' to kid us. It's a fake!"
"The hell it's a fake," Rodney replied. "It means something, if only I could figure out what. I've searched the house from top to bottom. The cup isn't here! Those two jailbirds were wise. They've got the thing buried somewhere. But where? - that's what I'd like to know."
"That stuff about Indians is the bunk," Squint insisted. "They didn't fight much to keep hold of that paper, did they? That's because it's a bluff.
They wanted us to waste time huntin' for Indians while they scrammed with the cup!"
RODNEY opened his mouth to make an angry rejoinder, when an unfortunate thing happened on which The Shadow had not counted. Through the tiny opening of
the cellar door darted a shall, furry shape. It was a mouse from the rodent-filled cellar. It brushed past The Shadow's leg and ran squeaking across
the door of the living room.
Squint jumped nervously and almost dropped the tin of kerosene. Then he laughed with profane relief.
"Just a blasted mouse! The joint is alive with them. It had me scared for a minute!"
"Shut up!" Rodney's voice was very quiet. "Where did that mouse come from?"
"Why, I guess the cellar door - Hey!" Squint's voice shrilled with understanding of what his bearded boss was driving at. "How did the mouse get out here? That cellar door was closed!"
"Exactly," Rodney cried. "And now it's open!"
The Shadow had tried to shut it as tightly as he dared, but he had been unable to do so completely because the click of the catch would have betrayed him.
He sprang from concealment as both crooks darted toward the door.
His gun crashed at almost the same instant Rodney's did. The Shadow was thrown violently backward as his finger pressed the trigger. Rodney had shoved Squint spinning forward into The Shadow. The impact sent both men reeling, but it saved The Shadow's body from the rip of the brown-bearded man's bullet.
Squint squealed with terror. The kerosene from the fallen container splashed in a puddle on the floor.
Rodney tossed a lighted match into the heart of that glassy pool.
Instantly, flame roared upward like an exploding pillar of heat. The Shadow reeled away, beating fire from his cloak. Rodney and Squint fled. The flames were mounting almost to the ceiling, leaping from puddle to puddle with swift fury. So fast had the flames spread across the soaked floor that one half
of the room was now impassable. Squint and Rodney were beyond that wall of scarlet.
THE SHADOW threw himself to the floor as lead whizzed at him from the other side of the room. The crooks emptied their guns in final departure. The Shadow could not pursue them. To pierce that pillar of licking scarlet and orange would have been to commit suicide.
Suddenly, The Shadow saw a crumpled square of white on the floor. It lay barely an inch away from the advancing flames and The Shadow grabbed it before it could burst into fire. It was the paper that Paul Rodney had been waving in his angry hand. When he drew his gun, the paper had fluttered unnoticed from his grasp.
The Shadow ran up the stairs with the paper thrust into a pocket. There was no other place to go, now that the flames hemmed him in on all sides. But he had another grim reason for electing to remain a few minutes more in the doomed house. He wanted to find Hooley and Snaper.
He found them on the top floor. Both were lying stark dead in the front bedroom. Their clothing was soaked with kerosene. So was every part of the room.
The Shadow's eyes blazed with fury. Both men's throats had been slashed to
a red smear. They must have suffered torture that was hideous, before the final
merciful knife slashes had ended their lives.
Snaper's legs were broken. The bones in Hooley's both arms had been snapped. But they had died without revealing the secret of the missing Cup of Confucius. The state of the kerosene-soaked room was proof of that.
It had been torn to pieces. The bed was ripped apart, mattress and pillow slips torn into ribbons. There were even marks where Paul Rodney had tested the
door and walls with a pickax in his mad hunt for the vanished treasure.
The pickax lay on the door, bloody smears on the handle where Rodney had grasped it. Rags showed where he had cleaned his hands before he descended the stairs.
And now consuming flames would burn away all trace of the brutal double murder. Nothing could save the house. The Shadow knew it, as he heard the crackle and roar of flame that was swiftly mushrooming up the wooden staircase.
He knew that only a few seconds remained in which to act, if he expected to leave the doomed house alive.
Yet he stood motionless, while his hand drew a crumpled scrap of paper from his pocket. He read it, his piercing eyes intent. It wasn't in code. This was a message in which only the dead pair on the floor could read meaning. It was obviously based on facts known only to the murdered Hooley and Snaper. It read as follows:
When the Indian is high follow his nose and reach under There was no period mark to indicate whether the cryptic sentence was finished, or had been interrupted by the arrival of Rodney and his squint-eyed henchman. The Shadow had a strong feeling that the note was complete.
Hooley and Snaper must have written this message for their own guidance.
They must have done it when they had hidden the treasure, before they were surprised by their murderers. Yet the task of understanding it was well nigh hopeless.
REACH under what? And what could the "Indian" mean? To the ordinary intelligence such a scrap of nonsense meant nothing at all. The Shadow, however, immediately divined the circumstances under which such a note might logically be written.
He had no knowledge whatever of where the Indian was. But the fact that it
was to be a "high" Indian and that one must reach down after following his nose,
gave The Shadow all the preliminary information he needed.
He was certain that he could find this tragic Cup of Confucius as soon as he decided it was necessary to bring it to light. In the meantime, it was safe where it was.
The smoke in the bloodstained bedroom was now thick and choking. From the hall door came a scarlet blast of flame.
The Shadow darted toward the front window. Down below he could hear the shouts of men, the throbbing of fire engines. Firemen were visible, flitting across the glare of the grounds. The Shadow's chance of escaping unseen from the building was practically gone.
Nevertheless, he tested his chance of flight from the heat-seared bedroom window by raising the sash with a quick gesture and thrusting his head out into
the noisy, flame-lighted darkness.
The moment he did so, he heard something below that told him escape from the front of the house was hopeless. Worse than hopeless - it was absolute suicide!
CHAPTER X
FIRE - AND WATER
THE sound that warned The Shadow he was trapped was the shrill, angry yell
of a fireman.
"There he is! Up at the top floor window! He's one of the firebugs - get him!"
The Shadow stood revealed at the upper window, staring straight outward as
if measuring his chances for a desperate leap across space to the blazing branches of an elm tree.
He saw the blue sheen of a policeman's uniform. The copper was glaring upward. One hand shielded his eyes from the fierce heat and flying sparks; the other clutched a pistol.
"Come down out of there!" the officer yelled. "Jump! If you don't surrender, I'll fire!"
The Shadow's only answer was a harsh, sibilant laugh. It was a piercing, eerie sound that carried clearly above the roar and crackle of the flames.
The policeman fired. His bullet spat like an arrow into the burning casement of the window. But The Shadow was no longer in view as a helpless target. He had glided backward into the blazing room.