Lowder smiled after Cooperdale had strolled out. He lighted his cigar, took a chair in the living room, and began to read. This was an old habit of Cooperdale’s, giving Lowder a treat which the servant enjoyed. Puffing his cigar, Lowder opened a book and began to read.
NOT more than twenty minutes after Cooperdale’s departure, there was a rap at the door. Lowder was rather surprised that the expected guest should have arrived so soon. When he reached the front door, the servant found a man standing on the gravel walk. He noticed a tanned face beneath a gray fedora hat, which was tilted at an angle.
“Good evening, sir,” said Lowder.
“Good evening,” answered the visitor, in a brusque tone. “I want to see Mr. Cooperdale. He is expecting me.”
“You are the gentleman from New York?”
“Yes.”
“Step right in, sir.”
As the visitor showed no immediate response to the invitation, Lowder stepped out upon the walk beside him. The servant pointed into the hallway.
“Would you mind waiting in the curio room, sir?” he asked. “It is the far door — on the left.”
“On the left?”
“Yes, sir. The other is Mr. Cooperdale’s bedroom, which adjoins the curio room. Mr. Cooperdale is over at the Westertons. A short piece from here, sir. They have no telephone. I shall run over there promptly and inform Mr. Cooperdale that you are here.”
The visitor entered. Lowder watched him for a moment; he noticed the man’s stooped shoulders, and the angled position of his expensive gray hat. Lowder went down the walk and hurried off toward the Westerton bungalow.
As he reached the house toward which he was going, Lowder glanced back. He fancied, for a moment, that he had caught a glimpse of the gray hat outside Cooperdale’s bungalow. He wondered if the visitor had decided to leave. Then Lowder, catching no further glimpse of gray, figured that he was wrong.
THE servant found his master at the Westertons. Cooperdale, in the midst of a discussion with his friends, seemed rather annoyed at Lowder’s early appearance. However, he excused himself and announced that he might return later in the evening.
“Take along your fizz bottles,” Mrs. Westerton suggested.
“That’s right,” recalled Cooperdale. “I left some here, didn’t I? You bring them, Lowder.”
While the servant was gathering the empty bottles, Cooperdale left the Westerton bungalow and walked across the lawn to his own home. He entered the hallway of the bungalow, and went to the rear. He stopped a moment at the door on the left; then, as an afterthought, decided to enter his bedroom. He opened the door on the right.
As he closed the door behind him, Cooperdale, in the darkness of the room, noted a ray of light from the door that connected the bedroom with the curio room. He stopped dead still. In sudden alarm, he made a grab for the knob of the door to the hall. A choking scream came from his lips. He sank writhing on the floor.
“Lowder! Lowder!” Cooperdale’s screams were gasps. They turned to mere motions of the lips as the man twisted in agony. “Lowder — Lowder — Low—”
The servant, coming with the bottles, did not hear the call. He was strolling toward the door of the bungalow. His destination was the kitchen, which he intended to enter through the front hall.
Lowder was not the only figure upon the darkened lawn. Momentarily obscured by the shelter of a bush, so motionless that it seemed nothing more than a shade of night, a blackened form was waiting. As Lowder entered by the front door, this figure came to life. Moving swiftly, it circled to the rear of the bungalow.
The Shadow was here. Stealthily, the black-clad master paused phantomlike outside the window of Sidney Cooperdale’s bedroom. Noiselessly, The Shadow raised the sash. His tall figure reached the sill.
A soft sound came to The Shadow’s keen ears. It was a hiss from the darkness. The Shadow’s arm stretched forth and pushed the door to the curio room until it opened fully. On the floor lay the Penang lawyer. The head of the clublike cane was loose from the stick itself!
The Shadow sprang from the sill. As his feet struck the floor, his body stopped, and his right hand, gloved, grasped the walking stick just below the spot from which the head had been removed.
Then, with a sweep, The Shadow turned toward Cooperdale’s bedroom. In response to a new hissing sound, The Shadow, with his left hand, flicked his flashlight on the floor.
THE rays revealed a snake, some five feet long. The serpent’s head was rising from the floor. Its neck was spread, like a hood. Its wicked, forklike tongue was threatening. The snake was about to strike.
It was the sudden appearance of the light that momentarily delayed the reptile’s thrust. The beady eyes flashed as the head wavered. With a hiss, the snake snapped forward, just as a swish came through the air.
The Shadow had swung the walking stick. Like a whip through the darkness, the long cane lashed the snake at the beginning of the strike. The serpent missed. Again the stick whistled. The snake’s body writhed hideously on the floor.
Two more fierce strokes, and The Shadow’s work was done. The snake still twisted, but its malignant life was ended. The Shadow stepped by the spot. His light revealed Sidney Cooperdale’s agonized form. Cooperdale was dead.
There was a knock at the door. Lowder, coming from the kitchen, had heard the vicious swishes of The Shadow’s effective weapon. The servant had located the sounds as coming from his master’s room.
“Mr. Cooperdale!” called Lowder, beyond the closed door. “Mr. Cooperdale!”
The Shadow let the cane fall to the floor. As it clattered there, the black-clad visitor whirled to the window. His lithe body glided above the sill. The sash descended silently, as Lowder opened the door to Cooperdale’s room.
Lost in enshrouding darkness, The Shadow was an invisible creature. Yet there was a token of his presence; a whispered laugh that sounded grimly in the night.
The Shadow had arrived at the window of the room too late to prevent the poisonous snake from striking Sidney Cooperdale. Another man had died; the third on Harland Mullrick’s list had felt the stroke of doom!
CHAPTER XIV
THE SPOKEN CLEW
MIDNIGHT. A group of sober-faced men were gathered in Sidney Cooperdale’s living room. Inspector Timothy Klein, Detective Joe Cardona, and Jim Clausey, were three members of the group. Lowder was seated, gloomy, in a corner of the room.
“It’s plain enough, inspector,” asserted Joe Cardona. “Cooperdale received the cane in the afternoon. This man of his put it in the curio room. The expected visitor came later.
“The snake was in the cane. The stick was hollow. All he had to do was open the door of Cooperdale’s bedroom — the little door that led there from the curio room — and then scram before the snake got loose.”
“And this visitor?” inquired Klein.
Cardona indicated Lowder. The servant spoke in a breathless tone.
“I didn’t see his face, sir,” he declared. “He was a tall rogue, with stooped shoulders. I talked to him outside the bungalow. He seemed loath to step into the light while I was there. He was wearing a gray hat — a soft hat, sir — a fedora.”
“Hear that?” asked Cardona. “The man we’re after. He was here tonight. Tell us, Lowder, about some of your dead master’s travels.”
“They were many, sir. He went to the Orient; to Egypt; with various expeditions. But his favorite country was Mexico. He spent a long, long while there.”