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“I can be with you for about an hour and a half,” returned Cranston. “After that, I have an appointment.”

“Too bad,” observed Weston, in a disappointed tone. “However, there will be time for a brief conversation. Since I am going to Garauca shortly, I should like to listen in on a discussion between you two. It might give me a more varied view of what lies ahead.

“Suppose we talk here for a few minutes longer. I am expecting a police call. It should come at any minute. In the meantime, I shall prepare to leave with you.”

Stepping to a closet, the commissioner appeared with hat, coat and cane. He set the walking stick against the side of the desk. It slipped and fell; Cranston stooped and replaced it, in its standing position.

It was a Malacca cane, with hooked handle that ended in a gold tip. The wood, though solid, had the appearance of being made in telescopic sections. Cranston still eyed the cane as he stepped back to his chair. He seemed to be admiring its workmanship.

Corlaza was watching Cranston. Weston’s friend was attired in evening clothes; his seated form made a blotched outline against the dull background of the chair. The form cast a long stretch of blackness that ended in a perfect duplication of the silhouette that Corlaza noted.

Upon the wall, that hawklike outline showed as distinctly as if it had been a living presence of its own. It was almost an enshrouding pall, a semblance so real that Corlaza paused, expecting to see it move clear of the wall.

While the South American stared, a ring came from the desk. It was the telephone. Weston turned to answer the call. Corlaza shifted his gaze in that direction. It was then that Cranston’s keen eyes moved to watch Corlaza.

“Hello… Yes…” Weston was speaking eagerly. “At the apartment… What’s that? You’re not there?… I told you… When?… Ten minutes ago? Yes… Yes… Expect me at once.

“Yes. I am leaving right away…”

DROPPING the telephone in place, Weston stood leaning on the desk. He looked at Lamont Cranston, who met his eyes with a quiet gaze. Then the commissioner turned suddenly to Marinez Corlaza.

“What is it?” questioned the Garaucan. “Have they found the man you wanted? Did they arrest Sigby Rund?”

“They have found him,” returned Weston, soberly, “but they did not arrest him. They were too late.”

“You mean that he has done something you did not expect?”

“Yes. Sigby Rund has committed suicide.”

“At his apartment?”

“No. He plunged from the window of his office. A drop of thirty-five stories.”

As he made this announcement, Weston reached for hat and coat and motioned for the others to do the same. When he picked up his Malacca cane, the commissioner stepped to the door and opened it.

“I should like both of you to accompany me to the Halbar Building,” he suggested. “The inspector called from Rund’s office. We may find much of interest there — much that pertains to the Garaucan bond swindle.”

The visitors preceded the commissioner. They reached the street and stepped to a limousine where a uniformed man was saluting. The trio formed a cluster before the opening door. The light from the front of Weston’s apartment house produced strange splotches of darkness as the group was momentarily motionless.

Across the sidewalk stretched the same odd streak of blackness that had shown on the wall in the commissioner’s little office. The profile of a hawklike silhouette showed in weird outline, once more the symbol of a personality.

For that silhouette represented a being other than Lamont Cranston, globe-trotting friend of Police Commissioner Ralph Weston. A sinister outline, etched like a fragment of night itself, the blackened profile symbolized the master of darkness: The Shadow.

Supersleuth, mysterious thwarter of crime, The Shadow was traveling with Ralph Weston and Marinez Corlaza on their way to investigate the affairs of Sigby Rund.

CHAPTER III. CLUES TO DEATH

WHEN Commissioner Weston and his companions reached Sigby Rund’s office, they found a swarthy, stocky man in charge. This was Detective Joe Cardona, to whom Weston had assigned the capture of Sigby Rund.

The meeting took place in the outer office. Cardona pointed to the door of the inner room when Weston requested details of Rund’s death.

“Rund jumped from a window of his private office,” explained the detective. “Looked limp as a caterpillar when they found him. Envelopes in his pockets, telling who he was. Markham got the report at headquarters and sent word up to me.”

“At the apartment house?” queried Weston.

“Yeah,” returned Cardona. “I headed here, commissioner. Called you the minute I arrived. The traffic men that identified Rund’s body didn’t know anything about him, except that he had an office in this building. The letters told them that.

“That’s why I wanted to get here in a hurry. So nothing would be disturbed. Well, I was in time all right. Take a look in here, commissioner. Everything is just as it was when Rund took the dive.”

Weston and the others followed Cardona into the private office. The commissioner walked with the detective toward the desk, while Cranston and Corlaza paused just within the door. Weston beckoned them closer.

“Lights on, to begin with,” declared Cardona. “Next, Rund sitting in this chair, at the desk, his back to the window. He must have been brooding here, commissioner, after reading that newspaper there on the desk. Getting ready to write a note or something — then he changed his mind.”

Cardona paused and pointed past the desk. On the floor was Rund’s fountain pen, lying in two sections.

Its fall had caused the cap to break clear of the barrel. Pointing further, the detective indicated the chair, pushed fully three feet from the desk and skewed at an angle to the right.

“Shoved back his chair,” decided Cardona, “tossed the pen for the desk and headed for the window. The impulse must have got him and he took it in a hurry. He made a big jump, because he had something to clear.”

The detective had edged toward the window. Weston was beside him. Pointing downward, Cardona indicated the projecting cornice. The commissioner nodded.

“That needed a healthy jump,” commented Weston. “Well, I guess Rund had the inspiration for it. I thought those newspaper headlines would worry him; but I guess I overplayed my hand. I didn’t think he would try suicide though — not this early in the game.”

“There’s more than the newspaper to show it, commissioner,” affirmed Cardona, turning back toward the desk. “Look here — in this corner of the blotter — first thing I found when I came in.”

“A lawyer’s card!” exclaimed Weston. “Tyson Curwood. I wonder if that’s his home phone scrawled underneath his name.”

“Phone number of Curwood’s apartment house,” informed Cardona. “I called up. When I found it was an apartment house, I sent Markham there. He called back. He and Curwood are on their way here.”

“Commendable, Cardona!” exclaimed Weston. “Good work and prompt. If Rund talked to Curwood, we may learn something worth while.”

LAMONT CRANSTON had strolled to the window while the commissioner was talking. He was staring downward. His keen eyes noted the cornice a few floors below. His thin lips were forming the trace of a strange, mysterious smile.

“A cigarette?”

The question was purred at Cranston’s side. Marinez Corlaza had approached; he, too, was gazing from the window, but he seemed more interested in the distant lights of Manhattan’s skyline. In his hand, Corlaza was proffering a cigarette case.