Then The Shadow swam slowly and noiselessly toward the shelving beach that
curved inshore past the angle of the hangar's side. He divined that he had now reached Paul Rodney's private hangout.
The Shadow was certain of it when he waded ashore. He surveyed the land and a distant house that showed faintly in the darkness atop a small sandy bluff. A path led upward, winding in and out among worn boulders.
Rodney and Squint were just disappearing around the last bend in the ascent when The Shadow reached the beach. He didn't follow them. Instead, he retraced his steps along the shore to the rear door of the hangar.
The door was shut, but it was not locked. The Shadow had counted on this lack of vigilance on the part of the weary crooks.
The Shadow explored the hangar, found things he had hoped to find. A shallow closet yielded a jar of salve, which The Shadow rubbed into the aching flesh of his burned hands.
In an open clothes locker, The Shadow saw a suit of dungarees hanging limp
from a rusted hook. He slipped out of his own charred and water-soaked clothing
and put on the dungarees. He smeared his face with grease.
A bit of exercise sent a warm, reviving heat through his chilled body.
His
teeth ceased to chatter. With a firm step, he left the hangar and ascended the winding path to the top of the sandy bluff.
THE house was well in from the edge. It was built of fieldstone - heavy, irregular chunks of rock joined together with colored cement in the modern manner. A peaked roof covered with red and green slate completed the picture.
Evidently Rodney had bought this new house of his recently, and had spent plenty of money for it.
It was dark, except for the light that shone out the windows of the living
room on the ground door. The Shadow glided closer, his footsteps masked by the moan of the wind. A spat of rain began to fall. Peering, The Shadow saw two men
seated at a table, talking fiercely together, although it was impossible to hear
a syllable of what either man was saying.
Rodney looked grim and threatening. Squint was badly frightened. He kept moving a thin, clawlike hand in a nervous, placating gesture.
The Shadow waited to see no more. He was turning away, prepared to find some quiet method of entering this house, when a freak action of the storm upset his calm plans.
The Shadow had heard the low rumbling mutter of thunder, but had paid no attention to it. Thunder meant nothing important at this cold time of the year.
Yet, as he turned away from the window, he was startled by the totally unforeseen flash of a jagged streak of lightning. It darted without warning across the black sky, lighted up objects on the ground with dazzling suddenness.
A cry came from within the house. Squint had uttered that yell of amazement. He had leaped to his feet. His finger pointed toward the window. It pointed toward the grease-smeared face and the overall clad body of The Shadow.
Squint had recognized the powerful beaked nose of the man outside the window. He remembered the deep-set piercing eyes. It was a man that Squint was confident had been left to roast to death in a burning inferno on the other side of storm-tossed Long Island Sound.
Yet here he was alive, menacing - staring through the rain-pelted window like the vague embodiment of a ghost.
"The Shadow!"
SQUINT'S scream was clearly audible above the moan of the gale. It was followed by an oath from Rodney and the smash of a bullet through the glass pane of the window.
The Shadow ran into enveloping gloom. He reached the road outside the low-hedged lawn with swift ground-covering strides. As he turned into the road,
be could see Squint and the brown-bearded Rodney spring from the porch.
Bullets raked the hedge over which The Shadow had leaped. He ran swiftly down the black asphalt road, after a single glance east and west to determine his best course.
For reasons of his own, The Shadow did not want to make a fight of it with
them at this time. The Shadow had a plan that he hoped would be instrumental in
disclosing the actual identity of this mysterious "Paul Rodney." He knew the brown beard was merely a useful disguise, covering a personality that had not yet been brought out into the open in this strange case of intrigue, theft and murder.
The Shadow fled with one urgent thought in his brain. He had to elude these two men - and find the nearest real estate office!
Rodney's howl was like a trumpet call of rage through the rain.
"Where did he go? After him, Squint! Kill him!"
"Get the car out!" Squint shouted. "He can't get far on foot! There's no place where he can hide!"
"Right!" Rodney bellowed.
The Shadow heard no more. Racing down the road, he managed to elude his pursuers by hiding in bushes off the road. When he finally saw them get off the
trail by taking to a side road, The Shadow continued along the way he had headed
originally.
After The Shadow had covered better than two miles at a dogtrot, he passed
a cluster of houses and stores. One store in particular drew his keen attention.
He read the sign on the dark window with a sibilant laugh: "John Honeywell -
Real Estate." The telephone number was also visible in white letters on the lower corner of the window.
The Shadow wrote down both the name and the telephone number with a stub of pencil he found in the greasy pocket of his stolen overalls. His note paper was a scrap of newspaper he fished from an ash-barrel. Then he found a shallow doorway and waited, his eyes watching the road for signs of a speeding car.
Presently, headlights glowed. The Shadow listened and watched for a moment, then he stepped boldly from concealment. He was certain that the lights
were not those of Paul Rodney's murder car.
It proved to be a milk truck. The Shadow made a thumbing motion and the truck stopped, gave him a lift. Then it ambled down the highway in the direction of New York City.
CHAPTER XII
ENTER, MR. PERDY
THE SHADOW, again in the guise of Lamont Cranston, sat in a comfortable chair, smiling faintly as he glanced at the telephone on a small table.
Morning
sunlight flooded the room with cheerful splendor. The room was part of an expensive suite maintained by Lamont Cranston in New York's exclusive Cobalt Club.
The Shadow had risen late after an exhausted, dreamless sleep. No one knew
why Cranston had returned to the club at such an early hour in the morning.
The
attendant on duty at the club desk had noticed nothing strange in the behavior or appearance of the millionaire clubman when he arrived.
The reason was simple. The Shadow had left the milk truck in Brooklyn and had returned to Manhattan by subway. Then he had made his way to his secret sanctum hidden away in an old building in midtown New York.
The Shadow had immediately gotten in touch with Burbank his contact man, and had given brief clipped orders for all his agents. Then The Shadow had changed from his dirty dungarees into the well-tailored clothing that befitted the suave Lamont Cranston.
It was as such that he had made his early morning entrance through the portals of the Cobalt Club.
Again The Shadow smiled toward the telephone, then lifted it to his ear, called a number in suburban Long Island. His voice was changed so that it resembled none a club attendant might have identified. He was calling the real estate man whose name and telephone number he had scrawled on a scrap of newspaper.
"Mr. John Honeywell?... This is Peter Stedman. I'm interested in buying a home on Long Island."
"Yes, sir." Honeywell's tone was pleasant crisp. "We have many such houses
-"
"I'm interested in a particular house. I saw it a week ago, when I was driving past on the shore road. It's called Cliff Villa. Is it for sale?"