The sleuths spied the broken barrier which marked the path of Kwa. They took it as the only exit to the control room. With a call to the others to remain above, Cardona led the charge into a narrow passage.
Twenty-five feet of stone tunnel to a room at the end. Cardona uttered a cry of triumph as he reached the end, and saw a lean form sprawled upon a tawdry cot in the corner. His shout changed to apprehension as he approached the motionless figure.
This was not Kwa! It was the man whom the detective had come to rescue — Barton Schofield!
For a few moments, Cardona was afraid that the old banker was dead. But as the detective raised the gray-haired head and stared into the pallid face, Schofield’s eyelids flickered, and he stared dully into the detective’s eyes.
“Where is he?” questioned Cardona. “Where is Zelka — Kwa — the one we want? Which way did he go?”
Schofield was too weak to reply. One of the detectives, however, uttered a shout of discovery as he spied an open passage in the dim corner of this stonewall cell. Resting Schofield back upon the cot, Cardona hurried to the spot, and shot the rays of his torch down a short passage that ended in an abrupt turn.
Calling upon the others to follow, the ace detective took the one course which seemed available.
Markham and the other sleuths followed him with drawn revolvers. Barton Schofield was alone.
Wearily, the old man tried to raise his head. His feeble efforts to find his rescuers were rewarded with increased strength. Schofield gained his feet. He saw the black opening, and tottered in that direction. He stumbled, caught himself, and straightened as he placed his hand upon a door that was open beside the exit through which the sleuths had passed.
A sudden sound made the old man turn. Looking toward the outer door, Barton Schofield saw a menacing figure garbed in black. An automatic jutted from a black-gloved fist.
The eyes of The Shadow burned; a weird, sinister laugh echoed from mocking lips!
CHAPTER XXVII. DOOM TO THE FIEND!
“KWA!”
The insidious name came from the taunting lips of The Shadow. The word was more than a name; it was an accusation. Barton Schofield cringed against the wall.
“Your doom is here,” pronounced The Shadow. “You, Barton Schofield. The man who took the semblance of a fiend. You are the one who has played the part of Kwa, the Living Joss.”
Schofield, cowering in pitiful fashion, tried by action to deny the charge. The Shadow’s gibing mirth reverberated through the vault.
“Your dual personality was well concealed,” remarked The Shadow, in a strange whisper. “You planned well, feigning yourself to be a broken old man by day, so that you could take your insidious part by night.
“Your strategy was clever. A paragon of integrity, you lived a life of strictness, surrounding yourself with men of honesty, to better mask the secret life which you preferred to lead. With Huxley Corporation stock offering easy millions, you played a cunning game.
“Westley Hartnett — Blaine Goodall” — solemnly, The Shadow named the men who had died by Kwa’s insidious order — “they were your first victims. Koy Shan and Chun Shi were capable subordinates until I deprived you of their services.
“There were two others whom you planned to slay. You succeeded with one — Hugo Urvin — because he deserved to die. But David Moultrie did not die. I saved his life. I, The Shadow!”
A peculiar change was coming over Barton Schofield’s face. The man was still cringing, but his features were undergoing a strange distortion, which he appeared to force. His lips were protruding; his lower jaw, disjointed, was extending. The man’s eyes seemed to bulge as they took on a fiendish glare.
Barton Schofield, his double part declared by The Shadow, was assuming the hideous countenance that was the mark of Kwa, the Living Joss!
“You had a foil,” resumed The Shadow, his tone more mocking than before. “Doctor Ward Zelka. A rogue, perhaps, but not a criminal. Zelka was a traveler. He knew the ways of the Chinese. He liked to stroll in Chinatown.
“He was well suited to be the scapegoat — the man whom the law would readily accept as the Living Joss.
So you let Zelka live, knowing that he would quail when the time came to threaten him with death from Kwa.
“Your abduction was the step which you knew would place both Moultrie and Zelka in a hopeless position. By killing Moultrie, only Zelka would be left. Afraid of Kwa, afraid of police action, Zelka would have to flee to avoid being murdered or being declared a murderer.”
BARTON SCHOFIELD, whose face was now a grotesque, livid countenance, snarled venomously. His body was swaying as though ready for a spring toward the doorway where The Shadow stood. The threat of the automatic, however, was enough to hold back the fiendishness of Kwa.
A crumpled ball of paper appeared in The Shadow’s left hand. With a deft motion, the cloaked being smoothed it before the glaring eyes of Kwa.
“This was left at Zelka’s,” informed The Shadow. “He read its Chinese characters. He may have laughed at first, even though the message stated that Chun Shi had come from seeing one man die, and was going to slay David Moultrie.
“Then Zelka decided to find out if Moultrie had been slain. He learned that the plot had failed; but the police were in charge. He had only one course: to flee, as the note from Kwa had ordered him.”
The laugh of The Shadow was sibilant.
“You knew,” pronounced the being in black, “that Moultrie still lived. You were waiting for another opportunity. The police came here tonight. You tricked them. They still believe that Kwa is Ward Zelka.
“Your present ruse is to let them rescue you as Barton Schofield. Just now you realized that you could entrap the ones who had found you, and make another effort to escape. But you have faced The Shadow!
“I, The Shadow, have long since known the truth. A bounding figure upon the lawn of your mansion. That was an inkling. You planned a real abduction; to have Koy Shan bring you to Soy Foon, that he might lay you helpless in the temple of Kwa, where you, as Kwa’s prisoner, would become the Living Joss himself!
“The abductors failed. Koy Shan died. You took the part of Kwa yourself, and fled. Others thought that Kwa had carried Barton Schofield with him. I, The Shadow, alone divined the truth!”
Barton Schofield was a terrible sight. His fierce face, his clawing hands, his bounding form that bobbed up and down in rage — these were the proofs of the fiendish nature which he had so cleverly disguised from the world.
The Shadow laughed.
“If you wish to play the part of Kwa” — the whisper from the hidden lips was taunting — “put on the trappings which you have so lately discarded. You have hidden them, but you need them now. Those false upper teeth — those long, imitation finger nails — the grotesque robes of the Living Joss! Put them on to add fully to your evil personality!”
With a monstrous snarl, Barton Schofield advanced upon The Shadow. Three long bounds brought him almost to the muzzle of the menacing automatic. There, this man who had played Kwa came to a cowering halt. That looming weapon, with its huge opening; those steady, burning eyes — these were threats which stopped him.
BACKING away, Schofield cowered toward the opening in the corner of the room. His face was still livid, and suddenly a snarl of joy escaped his insidious lips. The Shadow had moved backward; the being in black was lost in darkness!
About to pounce forward, Schofield hesitated; then turned. He saw the reason for The Shadow’s quiet departure. The detectives, with Cardona at their head, were coming from the hole in the wall after a fruitless search down a blind passage!