over a pebble as large as a walnut. He threw the round, hard stone with all his
strength.
His aim was good. The missile flew toward Bruce in a straight line and struck him squarely on the forehead.
Bruce was stunned by the numbing blow. The gun slipped from his fingers and he slid to his knees. He was not unconscious, but he was too dazed for the moment to do more than grope feebly for the weapon that lay in the grass at his
feet.
The Shadow resumed his flight toward the wall. The rough stones helped him
to gain a hasty foothold and to swarm upward to the broad top. He rolled across
and dropped headlong to the road outside.
He could hear the thud of Bruce's pursuing feet. Sprinting into the bushes
across the road, The Shadow reached the sheltered spot where he had left his speedy coupe. A wrench of his black-gloved hand and the door flew open.
An instant later, the motor was pulsing. The car backed out of concealment
onto the road. The Shadow's foot jammed hard on the gas pedal. The powerful car
responded. It was racing down the road when the face of Bruce Dixon appeared above the top of the wall.
His gun flamed again and again. The noise of the shots was inaudible to The Shadow. The roar of the pulsing engine was like a blanket covering the barks of the pistol.
The Shadow's eyes veered briefly backward, as a turn in the road hid him from sight of his enemy. Faint laughter came from his pain-tightened lips.
Two facts became clear in his mind as he left the estate of Arnold Dixon far behind. Bruce Dixon was not as innocent as he had seemed at first. He was part of some vicious conspiracy against his father. And the conspiracy itself was a double one.
Two forces of evil were fighting each other back in the darkness of that lonely and secluded estate on Pelham Bay. Hooley and Snaper were on one side, perhaps with the aid of Bruce. Brown Beard was on the other.
To-morrow the newspapers would carry another brief "burglary" item. Or perhaps no news at all. The two rival gangs would flee to cover. Arnold Dixon would attempt to hush up the whole affair.
Only The Shadow knew!
His goal was his secret sanctum, where a private telephone wire linked him
with trained agents who were eager to do his bidding. At the other end of that wire, night and day, was the calm voice of Burbank, The Shadow's trusted contact man.
The coupe roared onward through the night.
CHAPTER V
THE SULPHUR CANDLE
LATE afternoon sunshine was staining the windows of Manhattan with a ruddy
blaze when Clyde Burke sauntered into the lobby of the Brentwood Hotel. He went
straight to the desk, smiling as he noted that the clerk on duty was a man who had good reason to be grateful to Clyde for past newspaper favors.
Clyde Burke, of the Classic, was a reporter, one of the smartest in the city. He was more than that. Unknown to his editor, he was a loyal agent of The
Shadow. The night before, he had received from the quiet lips of Burbank an order, which he had faithfully carried out. That, order was to pick up the trail of Joe Snaper and Bert Hooley. He had succeeded.
He was entering the Brentwood Hotel for purposes connected with a camera that was jammed in the side pocket of his overcoat. He did not tell the clerk at the desk what his real purpose was. He lied smoothly and efficiently.
The fact that Clyde was a well-known reporter made the yarn easy to put across. He told the friendly clerk that he was after an exclusive financial story for his paper.
Two Western business men, Bert Hooley and Joe Snaper, were secretly in town to meet an Eastern executive and sign a huge mining contract without the knowledge of the financial houses in Wall Street. Clyde wanted a photographic scoop for his newspaper. He asked the desk clerk to telephone upstairs and tell
Snaper and Hooley they were wanted in the lobby.
"Why can't you follow them and photograph them on the street?" the clerk protested, uneasily.
"That's impossible," Clyde said.
He didn't explain why. The truth of the matter was that he was not interested in the faces of Snaper and Hooley. He wanted an opportunity to get clear pictures of their hands, the fingers - particularly the tips of the fingers.
The orders of The Shadow had explicit on this point. Faces of criminals change with the passing years. The Shadow had been unable to identify Snaper and Hooley from pictures in his private files. He wanted finger prints and his efforts had been balked so far by a strange and significant fact.
Both the suspects wore gloves when ever they left the hotel. So far, there
had been no opportunity to obtain specimen finger prints of the wily pair to be
compared with the prints on record in Washington.
"Well?" Clyde whispered to the clerk. "Will you help me? Don't forget the favors I've done for you."
"Okay. But for Heaven's sake don't let them see you!"
He turned toward the room phone and spoke briefly into the instrument.
There was a long pause. Then he shrugged.
"Sorry. Can't help you to-day, Clyde. They're not in their room."
"Are you sure?" Clyde looked puzzled. He himself had seen both crooks enter the side door of the hotel barely a half hour earlier and go upstairs in the elevator.
They couldn't have left without his knowledge. He was certain of it, in spite of the fact that the clerk turned to the key and showed him the room key hanging idly on its hook.
CLYDE BURKE left the hotel lobby. But he didn't walk very far from the vicinity of the hotel. He merely turned the corner, hurried up the street and came back through the side entrance.
He wondered why Snaper or Hooley hadn't answered that telephone call from the desk. Evidently they had made for themselves a duplicate room key taken from a wax impression of the original one on the hook downstairs. That would make it easier for them to come and go without creating any particular attention.
Frowning, Clyde patted the camera that was tucked inside his coat pocket.
He took the elevator - a rear one near the street corridor - and got off at the
eighth floor. This was the floor where Hooley and Snaper had reserved their expensive double room. The number was 829.
Clyde Burke sauntered past, his slow, careful steps making no sounds on the thick carpet. The corridor was deserted.
He dropped to one knee outside the quiet closed door of Room 829.
Instantly, he made a rather alarming discovery. The keyhole was plugged with cotton. So was the crack between the bottom of the door and the threshold.
Clyde got swiftly back to his feet. Because of his intimate knowledge of the Brentwood Hotel, he knew exactly what to do.
Striding hastily toward the far end of the corridor, turning right-angled into the adjoining corridor and running to its end, he began to shove upward at
the stained-glass window that gave dim light to the hall.
The balky window lifted with a squeak. Clyde scrambled over the sill to the slotted platform of a fire escape. The fire escape steps made a steep slanting ascent from a rear courtyard to the roof of the hotel. But Clyde didn't climb or descend.
He shut the stained-glass window behind him, hiding him from view of any one who might walk along the corridor. Then he took quick stock of his surroundings.
Luck was with him.
The thing that made Clyde squint his eyes with satisfaction was the red, dying blaze of the afternoon sun. It shone straight into his eyes, and into the
rear windows of the hotel rooms.
Leaning sideways from the fire escape platform, Clyde could see that the shade was drawn tight on the nearest window to keep out the unwelcome glare.
If
the first window was that way, the others were probably the same.