These new observers were not the only ones who were keeping track of Slade Farrow. Harry Vincent, lounging in the hotel lobby, watched Farrow go upstairs. The Shadow’s agent waited.
Up in Room 309, Slade Farrow unwrapped his package. He took out a light overcoat — one that he had taken from the stock in the store — and hung it in the closet. He folded the wrapping paper and placed it in his pocket. He lighted a cigar. Just then the telephone rang.
“Hello.” Farrow was gruff as he lifted the receiver. “Oh, yes… The garage, eh?… Sure. I ordered a car for tonight… Yes. I’m going to drive over to Gwynnesborough… All right. Yes, half an hour will be soon enough…”
Twenty minutes later, Slade Farrow reappeared in the lobby. He sat beside the window and watched until a sedan pulled up in front. A garage attendant entered the hotel. Farrow stopped him.
“Give me the receipt,” he ordered. “I’m Mr. Farrow. That car is for me.”
The attendant obeyed. Farrow walked out, stepped in the car, and noted that the motor was still running. He shot it into gear and rolled along the main street in the direction of the railway depot.
Immediately the starter buzzed in the roadster across the street. The light car moved away, following the course that Farrow had taken. Harry Vincent, standing in the lobby, strolled out to the street. He entered his coupe and joined the procession.
CROSSING the railway, with its station tracks and sidings, Slade Farrow opened up the motor. He smiled as he found the sedan’s speed. He swung along the open road that twisted until it neared the railway. At a sixty-mile-an-hour clip, he paralleled the tracks, going back beside the route on which he had arrived by train.
Farrow applied the brakes as the road dipped. He took the curve that went beneath the low railway bridge just outside of town, then came up alongside the tracks and resumed his previous speed. The sedan responded perfectly. Slade Farrow chuckled.
A man of photographic impressions, the ex-convict knew the terrain. His idle watching from the Pullman window had familiarized him with the contour of this road. The blazing path before the headlights came streaming toward the car. Slade Farrow, by the prompt swiftness that he had shown, was far ahead of pursuers.
The road swerved to the right as it approached a clump of woods. Farrow knew this turn. It was the spot where the highway took an easy, sweeping arc to make the grade crossing at the near side of the high trestle. Farrow pressed the brake pedal. The big car lurched.
With keen eyes, the driver had spied an opening in the trees. An old, rocky road, coming along the fringe of the gulch, had joined the highway. This was something that Farrow had not observed from the train, due to the presence of the trees. He made prompt use of his discovery.
The shrieking brakes brought the sedan to a stop forty feet beyond the entering road. Shoving the lever into reverse, Farrow shot the car backward. The rear tires jounced upon the rocks. Farrow did not desist. He ran the sedan a full eighty feet back into the rocky road. He extinguished the lights.
Farrow stopped just as he was about to step from the car. He could hear the hum of a motor coming through the trees, along the road which he had used. The ex-convict waited.
Watching toward the opening at the end of the rocky road, he saw a roadster hit the curve at rapid pace. The little car kept sweeping ahead, toward the grade crossing a hundred yards away.
Farrow chuckled as he alighted from the car. Again, he stood in silence as he caught another thrum. This time a coupe shot by, also at high speed. When its tail light, like that of the roadster, had twinkled away beyond the bend, Slade Farrow moved stealthily from his sedan.
THE ex-convict seemed well satisfied with the spot that he had chosen for his car. Even though it was openly upon the rocky road, it was safe from observation at night. The two cars that had passed were going away from the hiding spot. Should cars come from the opposite direction, they also would fail to spy the sedan.
The peculiar curve of the highway took care of that. The rocky road came in at such an angle that any headlights would sweep to the right of it. They would do no more than blaze the entrance to the abandoned road. They would miss this sedan, parked deep in the woods.
A flashlight glimmered as Slade Farrow picked his way through scraggly underbrush. The man was making his way through the trees, toward the very edge of the ravine. At the same time, he was making forward progress. He was picking a course between the highway and the gorge itself.
A narrow space — scarcely thirty yards in width — yet Farrow made excellent headway with his flickering light. At last he reached the spot he sought. He stood at the very edge of the precipitous gulch, with the huge steel trestle a dozen yards ahead.
Here it was that Farrow changed his course. His flashlight picked among the rocks. The glimmer showed an angled patch of dirt that descended between two pinnacles. Gripping one rock, Farrow used his light to find the way down to a flat rock that projected from the side of the gorge. He followed this narrow shelf toward the trestle, then found another dangerous drop.
Half sliding as he clung to the shelf, Farrow reached a big boulder. From there, he managed to ease down a short slant of clay that served as a path. The flashlight showed the dull, painted metal of a trestle post. Farrow arrived at that spot. He chuckled as he swung the flashlight upward.
This post had been set in the side of the gorge. It towered fifty feet upward. It had criss-crossed bars. It was connected with the next post by heavy iron beams, reinforced with x-shaped wires.
Farrow extinguished the light and pocketed it. Gripping the post in the dark, he climbed it in ladder fashion. His breath came heavily and tensely; on those occasions when he eased it, he could hear the babble of the trickling stream from the bottom of the gorge.
The climbing man had passed the first cross-beam. He had neared the second, about fifteen feet below the top structure of the trestle when the blare of a locomotive whistle caused him to pause. The rails of the trestle began to sing. Farrow laughed and clung tight to his post.
RAILS whined. The roar of the train came closer. The trestle trembled as a heavy locomotive thundered upon it. A freight train ploughed overhead. Farrow could feel the heat from the fire-box; then he listened and clung tight while clicking wheels rattled above in clattering succession.
The vibration eased. A light, dying click marked the passage of the caboose.
Farrow was proceeding upward before the last car had left the trestle. Reaching the cross-beam, the climber clung there, with his left hand. His right used the flashlight to probe the join of beam and post.
A hoarse expression of satisfaction came from Farrow’s throat. His flashlight, wedged between the x-slats of the post, had picked out a greenish color.
Adjusting his position, Farrow thrust his left arm inward. His hand gripped cold metal. Twisting, his fingers pried an object loose from its hiding place — the depressed end of the huge iron girder that extended from the post.
The object was a metal box. Its top was locked. Less than twelve inches in width, its other dimensions smaller, this article formed no troublesome burden. Moreover, it was fairly light.
Farrow’s flashlight dropped into his pocket. Clinging to the box that he had found, he began the descent. His find was under his arm. It did not handicap him. He reached the ground. He used his flashlight to pick his way upward.
The box went ahead. Farrow set it on the ledge above, then climbed to get it. He did the same with the pinnacles. When he reached the top of the gorge, he started back among the trees to reach the hidden sedan.
In the car, Farrow wrapped the box in the paper that he had brought with him. He listened to make sure that no automobiles were approaching. He started the motor, edged the sedan forward and turned on the headlights as he thumped toward the highway.