the Bubble Club. That was just the old game over again. It had strengthened Ondrey's position with the law, enabling him to retain his pose as a victim of crime, instead of a man leagued with crooks.
THE SHADOW clicked off the sanctum light. His whispered laugh brought shuddering echoes from walls that were invisible in the pitch-darkness. Those echoes faded. The Shadow had left the sanctum. But he still chose paths of blackness.
Evening had come to Manhattan. In the darkness of narrow side streets, The
Shadow was no more than a gliding shape as he chose a route to his waiting limousine, a few blocks away. Stepping into the big car, The Shadow dropped his
hat and cloak.
A street lamp showed his face at the window. No longer was The Shadow disguised as a droopy-faced panhandler. His features were hawklike; impassive and distinguished. He was immaculately attired in evening clothes.
The order that The Shadow gave the chauffeur was spoken in a calm but lazy
tone - that of a man who seemed bored with life and was looking for some diversion:
"Bubble Club, Stanley!"
CHAPTER VI
AT THE BUBBLE CLUB
THE Bubble Club was located on a side street not far from Times Square.
It
rated high among night clubs, and many well-known persons chose it as their favorite bright spot. Drinks and meals were reasonably priced, and no other nitery provided a better-balanced floor show. In fact, every evening was a triumph for Claude Ondrey, who was always on hand to greet his patrons. Ondrey was portly and genial, with a bald head that kept bowing as he walked from table to table. His handshake, though, was flabby, and his smile a sham.
Ondrey
didn't make his real money from the customers who thronged the Bubble Club.
That
was apparent on this present evening, when Ondrey finished his rounds and returned to his fancy office at a back corner of the club.
Three men were seated in the office. One was Pinkey Findlen, who wore a hard grin on his lippy, sallow face. The second was Slick Thurley, maintaining his usual wise pose, in constant imitation of Detective Bill Quaine.
The third arrival was a chunky block-faced man, who looked presentable despite the squinty way he shifted his eyes and the side-mouthed manner in which he grinned. He was "Bugs" Hopton, leader of Pinkey's strong-arm crew.
Ondrey was pleased to see his visitors. From his coat pocket, the night club owner brought a notebook that he handed to Pinkey. While the big-shot studied red-ink figures, Ondrey spoke an explanation. "The place is packed,"
he
said, "but it can't make money. Not at the prices we give them. If I could put on a cover charge, we'd break even."
"Forget it!" snapped Pinkey. He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and
counted off the required amount. "This clears you, Ondrey. Keep running things the way you have. I don't want you to run no clip joint. That brings squawks."
"But some of the best places have cover charges -"
"So what? That makes this joint better than them, don't it? Better than the best; that's the way I want it. I'm willing to pay for a front that everybody falls for. When you spend dough that way, it ain't wasted."
Pinkey gestured Ondrey to a chair. Then:
"We're sitting pretty, Ondrey," declared the big-shot. "So pretty that we're going to tell you all about it. We've finished three jobs out of four; and when that one goes across, we'll have a million bucks in the bag!"
Settling back in his chair, Pinkey began to recount the victories to date.
"FIRST was Howard Milay," Pinkey declared. "General manager of Sphere Shipping. He was a cinch, because he had a past that he was trying to forget.
We dug up the dirt; he had to come through.
"So he let one of his boats go to the bottom, when we fixed it for him.
Only an old tub that ought to have sunk anyway. It was loaded with a cargo of junk metal, and that helped the dive. That cargo" - Pinkey chuckled - "was on the books as supplies worth three hundred grand. Milay collected the insurance dough and passed it to us."
Ondrey knew of the case, but hadn't heard all the details. His shammy smile took on a genuine appearance.
"Next was John Thorry," continued Pinky. "He was the president of a company called Western Oil Fields. He won't forget that trip he made to New York. We framed him a couple of ways, and let him crawl out by buying some punk
oil wells. He'd been lucky at picking good ones, so he can laugh off some lemons. Anyway, that brought the total up to half a million."
"And after that" - the interruption came from Bugs Hopton, who spoke with raspy tone - "the going got tough!"
Pinkey swung about angrily in his chair. "Whatta you mean by tough?"
"I mean last night," retorted Bugs. "You said it would be soft, framing young Meriden. But it wasn't - not with The Shadow barging in on us."
"Forget The Shadow!" scoffed Pinkey. "He got left behind, didn't he? And today, Slick and me put the deal through with the kid's old man. That's one thing The Shadow ain't wise to."
Bugs didn't continue the argument. He helped himself to an expensive cigar
from a box on Ondrey's desk. Scratching a match on the mahogany, he lighted the
cigar and puffed it in silence.
"The next job is soft," assured Pinkey. "We've already put through a lot of forged checks and notes with World Oil interests. There's only one guy who can spot that phony stuff. He's Lewis Bron, the auditor. He'll smell a rat as soon as he goes over the books.
"What we're going to do is get to Bron before he sees the books. When we've done that, he'll see things the same way we do. Once the books have his O.K., there'll be no more worry."
No one asked Pinkey how he intended to handle Bron. The big-shot's word was good enough for the listeners. Even Bugs had no objection. He knew that Pinkey always changed his game when occasion required. There wouldn't be another tangle like the Masked Playboy proposition.
IT was Ondrey who voiced the main thought that all the others held.
"Over a million bucks," said the night club owner, in an eager tone. "You get half of it, Pinkey, and we three divvy the rest. Fair enough."
"That's only half the story," inserted Pinkey. "This ain't just a million dollar proposition. I'm going to double it, before I've finished."
Eyes popped, including those of Bugs Hopton. That was unusual; it took plenty to surprise the chunky mob-leader.
"Here's the lay," confided Pinkey. "All these companies we've nicked are owned by one outfit, and that's the World Oil interests. They call those companies subsidiaries; but that's just a business term. Big business is just a
racket anyway, from my way of looking at it.
"Western Oil Fields pumps the oil. Sphere Shipping runs the boats that bring it here. Eastern Refineries peddles the gasoline to the public. The gravy
all goes to World Oil, because it owns the rest of them.
"The biggest guy in the whole game is Giles Jondran, because he's the president of World Oil. It's the head of what they call a fifty-million-dollar corporation; and he's worth about ten million on his own. So when we've finished with the rest of them, we'll work on old Jondran himself.
"We'll tell him that we've snagged a million, and how we got it. We'll say
to him: 'all right old buzzard, you're going to double the ante!' And if he don't, we'll spill the whole works. It won't be us that'll take the rap. It will be guys like Milay, Thorry, and Meriden, along with this auditor Bron -"
A buzzer interrupted. It meant a house call for Ondrey. Pinkey waited while the night club owner spoke over the telephone. Ondrey was brief; when he hung up the receiver, he turned promptly to Pinkey.
"There is a gentleman who wants to see me," explained Ondrey. "He wants to