Griff stared admiringly at the truck with its trailing banners at the side. As Dave raised the back and closed the doors, Griff saw that the oilcloth extended at the rear and bore the legend:
FOLLOW FARROW
HE LEADS
Just as Dave was taking the wheel, Louie came out of the store with a small box that had evidently been forgotten. Grumbling, Dave refused to open the back of the delivery truck. Louie set the box on the runningboard and held it there. Griff paid no more attention to the truck as he strolled past the bank toward the athletic club.
There were watchers, however, who saw the truck depart. Harry Vincent and Cliff Marsland, seated by the window of Room 301, were keeping vigil. The truck rolled slowly up the main thoroughfare. As it neared the bank, the loose box suddenly fell from the runningboard. Dave applied the brakes. The truck stopped in the middle of the street, almost directly in front of the bank.
Louie scrambled from his seat. The box had broken open. Shirts wrapped in cellophane had scattered on the street. Louie made a funny sight as he waved at approaching cars, steering them aside. Bobbing about, Louie gathered up the shirts and replaced them in the box.
Coming to the truck, he set the box on the runningboard and fished out a rope from beneath the front seat. Under Dave’s direction, he tied the box firmly in place. The work was slow. Fully five minutes elapsed before Louie clambered aboard and the truck pulled away.
Eyes were watching from above. In Room 401, a thin smile formed on the hawklike visage of Lamont Cranston. The tall watcher went to the writing desk. He inscribed a blue-inked message. He inserted it in an envelope. Leaving the room, he took the stairway to the floor below.
Cliff Marsland and Harry Vincent were talking in subdued whispers. They were discussing the matter of the truck.
“It looked natural enough,” Cliff was saying, “but it may have been a stall.”
Harry nodded.
“That fellow took a while to tie the rope,” added Cliff. “The way the box cracked open gave him time, too.”
“Wait a minute.” Harry gripped Cliff’s arm. “Look — that’s where the truck stopped, isn’t it? Right over that man-hole cover.”
“That’s the spot.”
“What do you think was in the truck?” questioned Harry, in an excited whisper. “Just boxes?”
“Maybe not.”
“And those new streamers, with the arrows. Dragging to the street — covering the wheels—”
“I get you, Harry!” Cliff’s tone also betrayed excitement. “A trapdoor in the bottom of the truck. A hidden drop under cover of the streamers—”
“That’s it,” interposed Harry. “The same three men who robbed Blogg and Marker—”
Something swished beneath the door of the room. Harry and Cliff turned quickly to see an envelope, projected from beyond, coming to the end of a flutter that had followed its swift skim.
Harry pounced on the envelope and opened it. He and Cliff read the coded lines. The words faded one by one. Harry looked at Cliff.
Their assumptions were correct. The Shadow had spied the game while his agents were still pondering. He had prepared the message; his instructions told Cliff and Harry to remain here on duty.
Craftily, Slade Farrow had unloaded his three threats into a conduit that led beneath the walls of the Southfield Bank. While more than a score of watchers guarded the street, crime was coming from below!
Grimly, The Shadow’s agents watched. The waiting game was still in progress. The Shadow was ready. Did he intend to let this third crime strike?
Only The Shadow knew!
CHAPTER XVIII
THE THIRD CRIME
THE big clock on the Southfield city hall was booming the hour of nine. In the darkness of Room 301, Harry Vincent and Cliff Marsland were still watching the lighted street below.
Armed deputies were much in evidence. Fully fifty men were on duty. In contrast, four uniformed policemen seemed a trivial number. Eric Griffel, not Alexis Kerr, was in charge of the city. The leader of the vigilantes had usurped the police chief’s power.
Despite the lulling quiet, The Shadow’s agents were expectant. They knew that crime was due to strike. They had box seats for the coming drama. Their low, whispered conversation showed their tenseness.
The zero hour had arrived. The token of crime came with a startling suddenness. Harry and Cliff leaped closer to the window as they heard the sound of a dull, muffled explosion. The blast was from within the Southfield Bank!
Griff’s deputies stopped their patrol. The men stood as though stupefied. Alarms began to ring. Then came a wild shout as Griff himself appeared. The leader of the transformed vigilantes had been coming in this direction from the Southfield Athletic Club.
Men with rifles sprang toward the doors of the bank. Griff’s lieutenants were on the job. The doors swung open. Volumes of smoke poured forth. Shouting orders, Griff directed his cohorts into the bank.
Of four policemen, three were joining the deputies. The fourth man dashed to an alarm box to signal headquarters. Chaos reigned as deputies dashed about to stop oncoming traffic.
THE deputies who had entered the bank were met with warning shots. These crackled from the top of a stairway that led below. Three men were firing through a heavy gate. Their shots seemed purposely high but they gained effect. The green deputies scrambled back to the outside air.
Amid swirling smoke, Hawkeye, a water-soaked bandanna about his face, growled to his companions. They had come up here to escape the effects of the charge which they had used to blow the lower vault.
“Grab the swag,” was Hawkeye’s suggestion. “We can’t do nothin’ up here. I’ll keep ‘em away from this gate. Hook the stuff out of that vault downstairs.”
Tapper and Skeets descended in a hurry. Their faces, too, were covered with dampened handkerchiefs. They had purposely added smoke powder to the charge which Tapper had used for the vault.
With flashlight aiding, the tall crooks rifled the vault and bagged the spoils. Shots from above played a staccato while they worked. Tapper chuckled as he piled away the articles that Skeets handed him — other objects besides reams of cash.
The job was quick. Tapper whistled. Hawkeye, crouched behind the top step, was still delivering timely shots. Three emptied revolvers lay beside him. The cunning crook had gauged his fire to ward off the deputies.
A surge came just as Hawkeye reached to grab his guns. Griff’s orders had taken effect. Deputies, with police behind them, were piling in through all the doors. They reached the metal gate too late. Hawkeye was already below.
Tapper and Skeets were waiting. Hawkeye sprang into an opening in the marble floor, a jagged hole which the three had drilled from the conduit below. This was another token of Tapper’s craftsmanship.
Skeets followed Hawkeye. Tapper was the last to leave. Loaded with bags of swag, the three henchmen of Slade Farrow were moving through the conduit which they had used to reach their objective. The pipe turned toward the front street. Hardly had the three men gained the corner in the conduit, before a muffled explosion echoed behind them.
“That’ll do it,” chuckled Tapper. “That’s the charge I placed to crumple junk into the hole we went through. Keep ahead. We’re safe.”
Griff had opened the metal grill through which Hawkeye had held back his men. Deputies, on the stairs, dropped back at the second explosion. Volumes of smoke poured up the stairs. The outlet was blocked; these fumes were driving back Griff’s men.
OUT on the street other deputies were warning cars away from the curb. Traffic was blocking on the far side of the street as Slade Farrow’s delivery truck came speeding up the thoroughfare. Dave was grim as he held the wheel. He ignored the shouts of two deputies; then applied the brakes in a hurry.