The Shadow descended the spiral staircase. Totally unseen by Harland Mullrick, who had aided Joe Cardona to the window for fresh air, the master fighter passed through the room where the bodies of mobsters lay.
He took the elevator down the shaft. The recovered henchmen who had failed to serve Donald Gershawl clung screaming as they descended atop the car. The Shadow left them in their vertical prison, with six hundred feet of smooth shaft above them. He left the watchman bound.
The Shadow pressed the lever of the massive metal door. The barrier opened. The Shadow glided forth into the night.
Cries came from the street. Detectives who had gathered around Donald Gershawl’s body turned to hurry to the entrance of the Solwick Tower when they saw the light of the opened anteroom.
They had not, however, seen The Shadow. He had stepped into darkness before the headquarters men had noted the open door.
There were only two who could tell of The Shadow’s presence here: Joe Cardona and Harland Mullrick. Others were dead; the guardians of Gershawl’s tower, though they still lived, had no knowledge of the mysterious entrant’s identity.
Joe Cardona could clear Harland Mullrick. The Shadow knew what the star detective would say: that some unknown person had impersonated Harland Mullrick. The presence of Slugs Raffney and his dead mobsters would incriminate Donald Gershawl as a master of crime. The captured henchmen would squeal.
The Shadow’s part would not be revealed. Joe Cardona would not mention it in his report. Harland Mullrick would leave for Mexico, there to locate the lost mines of Durango, without molestation.
Out of the past, The Shadow could presage the future. As token of his hidden thoughts, his laugh resounded from the darkness of a narrow street three blocks distant from the Solwick Tower.
As burning eyes peered upward toward the tiny glow of the penthouse lights, the whistling wind seemed to catch the tones of the strident mockery and carry it quickly upward in the rising gale.
The laugh of The Shadow! It was the triumphant cry of invisible lips, Justice had triumphed through The Shadow’s aid. As Harland Mullrick, The Shadow had saved Harland Mullrick. Declaring himself as the one marked as a murderer, The Shadow had proven in what direction the murder really lay.
Such was the paradox of The Shadow’s justice. Through strange and devious measures had The Shadow gained the final victory. Long before crime was begun, The Shadow, through his agents, through his sources of information, knew of what was planned. And, in meting out the justice of The Shadow, this strange being of the night had allowed each insidious criminal to cause his own dire end, as it was planned for another. Then, when the moment came to prove the accused innocent, he pointed out the master villain behind it all.