The great snake head, with its forked tongue, turned in its forceful smash. The girl was out of danger; The Shadow’s form, moving clear, received a glancing blow. That stroke, delivered squarely, could have felled a huge beast. The Shadow staggered to one side, caught himself upon the smooth, matted turf, and sprang forward to escape the python’s looping coils.
The Shadow was Koon Woon’s quarry now. The head, with its beady eyes, twisted back toward the man who had eluded it. The long, twisting body, forming a widespread curve, rounded the indomitable fighter in black, and began its fierce embrace.
STRIVING to clear himself of the snake’s mammoth body, The Shadow was lifted upward toward the trees. Mildred Chittenden screamed in horror as she saw her rescuer going to what seemed certain doom. Harvey, now witnessing the horror of the grove, knew that he could do naught to help.
The Shadow, who had conquered all human foes, was falling into the grip of a hideous reptile that possessed the strength of a score of men. But as he neared the boughs of the tree, he performed a superhuman feat. Locking one arm about the limb, The Shadow whirled his body free of the rising coils, and clung there.
Koon Woon was not to be so easily deprived of his prey. The huge body was twisting about the bough.
One threatening coil, closing with steady squirm, blocked off The Shadow’s possible fall. The head of Koon Woon, twisting from beneath, darted straight toward The Shadow, and the huge mouth of the monster opened.
The python’s stroke — the python’s grasp — both of these had been partially avoided by The Shadow.
Now he was facing the third and most formidable weapon that the great reptile possessed — its teeth.
When a python captures its prey between its jaws, there can be no escape. That is the hold which enables such a snake to hold its victim while the coils entangle themselves about the helpless body. Koon Woon had brought his enemy up to the tree. The quarry was escaping. Koon Woon was yawning to gain that sure grip with his mouth.
The Shadow was stretched along the bough. The instant that he had gained that hold, he had prepared for this attack. As Koon Woon’s head was swinging from the opposite side of the limb, The Shadow’s hand was coming from beneath the black cloak. Firm fingers gripped the round black object that Harvey Chittenden had seen The Shadow hold some time before.
As though to gorge his victim in one mighty gulp, Koon Woon unlimbered his great jaws. The peculiar hinged formation of the python’s mouth now displayed itself. The great cavity widened and spread in different directions — a sight that opened before The Shadow’s eyes.
A black-garbed arm swung straight toward the yawning terror. Into that mighty mouth, between those cavernous jaws, The Shadow hurled the object that he held — a hand grenade with gridded surface!
That weapon was no more than a tiny pill to Koon Woon; but no pill could have produced more dire results to the recipient. The fierce jaws came on; they were closing upon The Shadow’s form. Then, within the serpent’s neck came a terrific explosion!
The head of Koon Woon flopped downward as the neck broke apart, ripped with jagged tears. The helpless jaws were short of their mark. The great coils writhed on. The Shadow, rolling from his perch; was shaken toward the ground by the force of the exploding grenade. The whole tree trembled, and for once the beech leaves rustled.
Head-foremost, The Shadow crashed into the twisted, writhing body of Koon Woon, but that huge coil that acted from reflex action, sagged as the weight came upon it. Swinging free, The Shadow toppled to the ground, and sank into a huddled heap of black.
MILDRED CHITTENDEN, running from beneath the tree, had rushed straight into the arms of Harvey.
Her scream turned to a happy sob as she realized she had reached her husband. Together, they turned to see the finale of The Shadow’s battle.
The huddled form was moving. It rose and stepped away as the long, headless body of Koon Woon swept across the ground, and dangled with harmless twists.
The Shadow had triumphed over the monster from Penang. He had met the menace in the grove of doom. Craig Ware — son of Sidney Chittenden — was dead, his fiendish schemes brought to an end. No longer would Koon Woon, the temple python, lie waiting with his sinister slave, Lei Chang!
Weird death had been rampant in this grove since that foggy night when Craig Ware had masked himself amid the mist to receive the boxes that the Malays brought ashore. A man who had traveled everywhere, Ware had managed to arrange with Lei Chang to bring the terrible Koon Woon to America.
The showman’s cunning had been great. From the start, he had managed his insidious schemes with skill that carried suspicion from him. Even when The Shadow had learned that murder lay within this grove, Ware’s evil fortune had persisted long enough to bring doom to the three Chittendens from the hill.
Stealing through the grove at night, The Shadow had been forced to move so stealthily that not even the listening Lei Chang could hear him. He had evaded the instinctive watchfulness of Koon Woon, also. But in those visits to this weird spot, The Shadow had failed to find the menace that he sought.
His keen, unsurpassed skill in crime detection had told The Shadow who the master schemer was. But to have eliminated Craig Ware without destroying the menace of the grove would have been insufficient.
Carefully assembled data sent by Mann, The Shadow’s agent, had revealed the connection of Craig Ware to the family of Chittenden.
But only through his visit to Choy Lown had The Shadow gained the vital fact that he required — the identity of Koon Woon. Lei Chang had crooned that name. Brought to The Shadow’s ears, it produced the clue that had saved the lives of Harvey and Mildred Chittenden, and had brought death to Craig Ware, Lei Chang, and the mammoth python.
As the rescued man and wife gazed upon the weird ending of this strange drama, they knew that The Shadow had preserved them. Uninjured is his dynamic conflict with Koon Woon, the black-clad avenger now stood in the center of the grove. His long arm, sweeping onward, upraised and pointed beyond those who watched.
Harvey Chittenden understood the sign. He was to leave the grove of doom with Mildred. Together they turned their backs upon the bodies of the dead men and the snake. At the command of the living shadow, they walked slowly back toward Lower Beechview.
THROUGH the gloom echoed the reverberations of a long, weird laugh. That cry had brought terror to men of evil. To Harvey and Mildred, the laugh, chilling though it was, came as a mocking melody of retribution.
The laugh of The Shadow told of triumph. It seemed to dispel the terrible atmosphere of this strange grove as it rippled through the corridors of tree trunks. With the laugh still ringing in their ears, Harvey and Mildred came suddenly from the grove and sank, side by side, upon the green grass of the lawn.
They had come back into the world — the real world of cheer and happiness — into the midst of a clear summer day. All seemed new and wonderful. The sparkling waters of the Sound matched the azure of the sky above.
No longer would Lower Beechview be an abode of strife and misery. The evil fiend who had dwelt there as a friend was dead. The grove, gloomy and somber though it might still remain, would hold no terror now other than those fantastic thoughts that memory might create.
Harvey and Mildred looked toward the motionless, burnished trees. They breathed in relief, as they thought of the hideous, unseen menace that had lived among those thick-leafed branches.