Both clutched knives. The first lunged to hurl his blade. Sweeping in, The Shadow clutched the assassin and drove the rogue’s arms upward. The knife flew to the wall. Hurling the man with terrific force, The Shadow bowled over the second attacker with the first man’s body. Another knife skidded wide.
Noy Dow had unlocked another door. Harry and Cliff, their faces gaunt from imprisonment, were coming to The Shadow’s aid. Shan Kwan had lied when he had said that he had shown them new hospitality at his own table. They had been living here on simple fare, brought them by his servants. That, after all, was fortunate. Their senses were keen again; they were weary of confinement and ready for battle.
“The package,” blurted Noy Dow, starting to unlock a third door. “I hid it — in this room — after Loy Ming gave it to me.”
The door came open. Noy Dow sprang through and pulled a package from beneath a couch. It contained automatics and their ammunition. Not waiting to open it, Noy Dow dashed back into the hall.
Harry and Cliff yanked the package open; as they did, they followed The Shadow, for he had hissed a command. The sprawled Chinamen had scurried away while The Shadow was gaining their discarded knives. As The Shadow neared the turn of a passage, four Mongols headed into view — two with knives; the others with revolvers. With a flash, a blade whirred from The Shadow’s hand.
Yellow lips screamed as the knife ploughed deep into the breast of a revolver-bearing Mongol. The other gun carrier aimed; as his hammer clicked on that inevitable empty chamber, The Shadow’s second knife whistled straight for his heart. Leaping, twisting; the Chinaman received the blade in his side. As he sprawled, the other pair of Mongols hurled their dirks at The Shadow.
The black shape faded sidewise. One knife sliced the edge of the hat brim; the other slithered through the folds of the cloak. The Shadow laughed his challenge, his mirth a mockery. The knife-throwers dived for cover; beaten at their own game, they left their sprawled companions.
REVOLVERS lay where The Shadow could gain them; but he did not need the weapons. Cliff was coming up from the last passage, swinging automatics for his chief to clutch. The Shadow snatched a brace of weapons and led a mad dash forward. Cliff and Harry were close behind, guns in hands and pockets. Noy Dow lingered long enough to grab up the Chinese revolvers.
They met with fight when they reached the passage that led by the temple room. In that wide hall, a dozen men were ready; fierce Mongols, who, like the others, varied in their choice of knives and guns.
The Shadow’s automatics thundered; Harry and Cliff joined the barrage. The promptness of the attack sent Shan Kwan’s vanguard scudding.
The Shadow did not pause as yellow forms dived into side passage. He had one objective: the room of the Fate Joss, where Loy Ming should be waiting. He and the others reached it; they dashed through the opened portal. Past the Fate Joss and its War Dogs; there, The Shadow stopped. Bound and gagged upon the floor was the form of Loy Ming. The girl’s eyes were plaintive. They tried their best to speak in response to The Shadow’s gaze.
A key was lying beside Loy Ming. Noy Dow snatched it up; in hope of safety, he leaped to the rear of the room and unlocked the rear panel, just past one of the screens. He turned about, stuttering hopelessly. The panel was open — but beyond it lay a huge barrier of steel. Shan Kwan had dropped a secret bulwark; there was no escape this way.
The Shadow saw the barrier. He wheeled toward the outer doors, where Cliff and Harry were standing ready between the gem-encrusted Fate Joss and the steps. Before he could give a command, babbling cries of triumph sounded from without. Swinging sheets of brass curved into view.
The big brass doors were coming shut, manned by arriving henchmen of the mandarin. Mongol forms were safe behind those closing walls. The Shadow sprang forward, too late; the doors clanged tight and huge chains clanked beyond them.
Then came a strange, tremendous hissing from all about. Through slits in the brass walls and ceiling surged jets of greenish smoke. Curling inward, loosed fumes of poison gas were threatening their final doom. Trapped within metal walls, with a barred double door the only exit, The Shadow and his companions were faced with the prospect of short minutes in which life remained.
Loy Ming, released by Noy Dow, was blurting out the hopeless news. Her uncle had suspected her; he had forced her to tell facts. He had sent down serfs to slay; but he had been ready with this final trap for any who might reach the temple.
The cult had assembled. Within ten minutes, the deadly gas would fulfill its task. Outside were all of Shan Kwan’s henchmen, completely assembled to gloat at the fate of the unfortunates. That squad of nearly fifty would open the doors later, that the gas might thin.
Then would Shan Kwan come; the mandarin and a hundred of his cult, to see the dead forms of unbelievers, sacrificed at the feet of the mighty Fate Joss. Such was Loy Ming’s brief, spasmodic tale, delivered in less than fifty seconds.
THE gas hissed on, its venomous wreaths coiling snakelike toward the center of the room. Ominous was the sound; yet it seemed to lose its terrifying aspect when it was drowned by an eerie burst of rising laughter that broke back from brazen walls with clanging echo.
The laugh of The Shadow. Rising in fierce crescendo, it mocked the devices of Shan Kwan. Even within this trap of doom, the black-cloaked warrior was unperturbed. Shan Kwan the Mandarin was yet to learn of The Shadow’s stalwart might!
Solid though this trap might be; overwhelming though the numbers were beyond it, The Shadow was ready for conquest. Outlined before the leering statue of the Fate Joss, he had issued challenge to the unhearing foe. Golden eyeballs glared from the idol’s face, their jeweled pupils glittering amid the slow-increasing wreaths of poisonous green.
Had they possessed sight, those eyes of metal would have been prepared to witness the most amazing episode of all that the idol had experienced. Upright before the towering image of the Fate Joss, The Shadow was prepared to prove that he — not the lifeless idol — was the one who could shape his chosen destiny!
CHAPTER XXIII
THE JOSS CULT MEETS
MIGHTY doors of massive brass, their joined opening airtight, so closely was it shut. Those were the barriers that blocked escape — so formidable that they baffled human strength. The Shadow had foreseen their danger and their use. He had known that he already held an answer to their strength.
Cliff Marsland had been careful with the package that contained the guns. The Shadow, eyeing him in the passage, had seen him thrust small objects in his pocket. One was a flashlight, which The Shadow did not need. The other was a long but slender metal cylinder.
It was for this The Shadow called. Quickly Cliff produced it. He watched The Shadow draw forth fuses. Waving his companions back behind the massive Fate Joss, The Shadow inserted the first fuse in an opening at the base of one squatty dog cannon.
A sudden understanding came to Noy Dow as the young Chinese saw The Shadow twist away the plug that was wedged within the War Dog’s muzzle. Those marks that he had seen on muzzle and plug, that he had looked for at The Shadow’s order. Being exact, those thin lines indicated that the plugs had not been removed!
A match from the metal cylinder flared. Greenish amid the gas-filling room, The Shadow lighted the fuse. In that deed lay the crucial test. Should the incoming gas be inflammable, and already thickening, it might ignite. But apparently Shan Kwan, always wise, had preferred to store away poison vapors that were fireproof. Only the fuse from the dog cannon took the flame. It sputtered rapidly.