Vorber, the tall, sour-faced servant, was the last one to watch the stoop-shouldered visitor depart. He stood at the door until he saw the white bearded man enter the cab. Then Vorber closed the portal.
From the cab, Martin Hamprell detected Vorber at the door. The fake Doctor Arberg chuckled as his taxi started away.
TWENTY minutes later, Hamprell alighted at a spot not far from the Hotel Imperator. Entering a cigar store, the false specialist made a telephone call to the hotel. In a voice somewhat like his own, he asked if Doctor Arberg had returned. He received a negative reply. Chuckling, he left the cigar store.
Five minutes later, Hamprell’s stooping figure appeared in the hotel lobby. Still playing the part of Doctor Arberg, the crook stopped at the desk and received a slip which stated that some unknown person had called him by telephone, only five minutes previously.
Strolling to the elevator, Hamprell ascended to the twenty-second floor. As Arberg, he shuffled toward the door of the old physician’s room. He did not enter. Instead, he kept on to the empty room which he had previously used as his own.
There, before a mirror, Hamprell quickly removed all traces of his make-up. With the remains of false beard and hair tucked beneath his coat, the murderer cautiously went back into the corridor. He found a stairway and descended four flights.
There, as himself, he quietly entered an elevator and rode down to the lobby. As a quiet, inconspicuous guest, he departed from the Hotel Imperator.
Murder had been Martin Hamprell’s work tonight. He had followed murder with a pretense. In the role of Doctor Johan Arberg, his own victim, he had held a consultation with Doctor Barton Keyes.
Boldly, Hamprell had returned to the Hotel Imperator, entering there at ten minutes after ten, for his final establishment of Doctor Arberg’s character. Departing, he was swallowed up in the multitude that thronged the busy streets of New York.
An archmurderer had performed an evil deed. He had followed it with new activities. The purpose of his crime completely veiled, the time of the evil deed covered, Martin Hamprell feared no consequences.
As he headed south on Broadway, his evil brain was gloating on the past. His thoughts were also of the near future. For Martin Hamprell, through one murder, had paved the way to another death which was soon to arrive.
CHAPTER VII
THE SHADOW HEARS
MIDNIGHT had arrived. Amid the turmoil of Manhattan, quiet existed in a little room. A pitiful figure lay upon a cot. His eyes staring upward, Sparkles Lorskin was breathing out his life.
Other crooks had died as Sparkles was dying. Evil, wasted lives had reached an end when they had been used for crime in opposition to The Shadow. This was but the aftermath of a battle in which justice had gained a grim triumph.
Yet Lorskin’s useless life was still to play a part in affairs of crime. Unwittingly, the dying crook was to reveal an evil deed which another had accomplished in his stead. Ignorant of all save his own hopeless condition, Sparkles Lorskin was about to state a fact that would lead to immediate consequences.
Two men were standing by Lorskin’s bedside. One was Joe Cardona, ace detective of the New York force. The other was Clyde Burke, police reporter of the New York Classic. Cardona was here in the interests of the law: to learn what little he might glean concerning the affray at Lorskin’s apartment. Burke, presumably, was on the job to get a story for his newspaper readers.
Yet Burke, as he stood watching Cardona and the dying crook, held another purpose in his mind. A keen-faced journalist, a man who could keep confidences, Clyde Burke had a greater duty than the one which he owed his newspaper.
Clyde Burke was a secret agent of The Shadow. Tonight, he was performing a function which was part of his routine. It was his work to keep tabs on those who had failed before The Shadow’s power, that he might report back to his unseen chief any added details which pertained to crime.
Joe Cardona, his swarthy countenance steady, was speaking in a slow, monotonous tone that drummed into Sparkles Lorskin’s dying brain. With cool, effective effort, the star detective was seeking an answer to certain speculative questions.
“We’ve got the stuff you stole, Lorskin,” Cardona was declaring. “Mitts Cordy is dead. So is his mob. Tell us what you know about them.”
Sparkles Lorskin stared. He did not speak.
“You’re dying, Lorskin,” reminded Cardona. “Dying — do you hear me? Come clean — before you die. Square yourself. Tell us what you know about Mitts Cordy and the rest.”
“Mitts Cordy!” The name came in a gasp from Lorskin. “Mitts Cordy. Where is he?”
Delirium showed as the dying crook turned his eyes toward the detective.
“Mitts got his,” informed Cardona. “He’s dead, Lorskin. Dead, like you will be—”
“Mitts was my pal!” coughed Lorskin. “My pal — he’s dead. Some — somebody got him. Somebody got me.”
“You were working together, eh?”
“The old doctor!” gulped the crook. “What — what happened to him? Where — where is he?”
“What doctor?” quizzed Cardona.
“Arberg,” said Sparkles Lorskin, in a weary tone. “Johan Arberg — at my apartment — to buy — to buy the stuff that—”
“Doctor Johan Arberg,” declared Cardona slowly. “Tell me how he figured in this, Lorskin.”
“Money!” blurted Sparkles, lifting his hands to claw in the air. “Money! He brought it with him! He came from the hotel — from the Imperator! He had the money with him. He wanted to buy gems — I wanted his money!”
The crook was staring wildly at the ceiling. His hands dropped heavily upon his chest. Blood trickled from his lips as he coughed huskily. A doctor entered and stood beside the bed. Lorskin’s head rolled wearily to one side. The physician turned to Joe Cardona.
“Dead,” was the single word the doctor uttered.
JOE CARDONA pondered as he strolled out into the corridor, with Clyde Burke at his elbow. The detective stared at the reporter, his eyes mirroring the deep concentration in his mind.
“I’ve got the idea now, Burke,” remarked Cardona. “It looked phony to me — a fight between Sparkles Lorskin and Mitts Cordy. With the two working together, though, it gets different. Who is this Doctor Johan Arberg? Did you ever hear anything of him or his work?”
“A blood specialist,” said the reporter, recalling a news item that he had read. “A big fellow from Copenhagen. Came to New York from Chicago. It seems to me I read something about him being a gem collector.”
“Ah!” A glimmer of understanding appeared upon Cardona’s face. “That tells us the story. Those jewels in Lorskin’s place were all stolen goods. They’re being traced now. Lorskin had a wise stunt — getting a foreign gem collector to buy them.
“From what Lorskin said, the old doctor must have been in the apartment. I see the game. Mitts Cordy there to grab him. It’s like the guy had a big roll with him — the way Lorskin mentioned money just now. Doctor Arberg must have managed to get away. That doesn’t explain it, though.”
“Explain what?” questioned Clyde Burke, in a tone of pretended curiosity.
“Explain how all that shooting started,” answered Cardona. “It doesn’t tell what happened to Doctor Johan Arberg, either.”
“There’s a story in back of this!” exclaimed Clyde enthusiastically.
“You just finding that out?” laughed Cardona. “Well, you’re Johnny on the spot, Burke. Come along. We’ll get the story all right.”
“Where?”
“Over at the Hotel Imperator. Come along — it’s only a few minutes from here.”