“Listen, Malone,” said Cardona. “The big-minded idea is all right enough, but a big mind betrays itself. And there’s none in sight right now. I know. Because I handled a case once that had a big mind in it. You remember Diamond Bert?”
“Yeah. What was his real name?”
“Well, I’m not quite sure. Diamond Bert Farwell was what we knew him as. He went after jewels. Always had trouble getting rid of them, though. That’s where we began to get him.”
“Maybe there’s another like him.”
“Not a chance, Malone. That fellow was wise. He would wait for anything. Played safe. The public never heard of him, just on that account. He must have been preparing a long while before he pulled his first jobs. Then they came quick; but he slipped up when he turned the jewels over to a fence, That was where he made his mistake.”
“I know that, Joe.”
“There’ll never be another like him, Malone. He’s gone now. Killed five years ago. We got the goods back; recovered so much that the public forgot all about the robberies. Then we were after Diamond Bert. Had his picture, his record - everything. He’d been a bad boy when he was younger.”
“Do you think we’d have got him, Joe?”
“If he hadn’t been killed when that car went off the bridge? You bet we’d have got him!”
“Maybe. He was smart, though.”
“Sure. Came from a good family. Met his brother once. He came from California. Guess he was glad enough when Bert cashed in. Tough on a good family when the black sheep makes trouble.”
“When did you meet the brother?”
“Before Bert died. He had a couple of brothers and sisters. All fine people. I sorta ran into them when we were getting the goods on Bert. Then - phooey - Bert was killed and that was the end of it all. Yes, Malone, there was one man. One man. He might have been clever enough to pull this kind of a game you’re talking about, but he’s gone. Wise - could talk all kind of languages. Smooth - could pass in any company. He’s dead, and that’s that. I’m glad he’s gone.”
Inspector Malone lifted himself from his chair.
“Well, Joe, let’s move along. Keep working, boy.”
“I’ll do that, inspector. We’ll keep on grinding and watching the fences. That’ll bring results.”
“Look for brains, too,” said the inspector as they reached the door.
“Fritz, for example,” replied Cardona, pointing his thumb at the slow-moving janitor who was now working down the corridor.
“Watch the chinks,” reminded Malone.
“I’ll do that - if I get a real tip-off.”
The two men passed the janitor.
“Good night, Fritz.”
“Yah.”
The door clanged behind the inspector and the detective. Fritz, the janitor, leaned on the handle of his mop.
“Diamond Bert,” he said softly. “Diamond Bert Farwell! Dead!”
Fritz shambled down the corridor away from the door through which the men had made their exit.
Reaching an obscure locker, he opened it. His hands drew out folded cloth. A blackened cloak unpleated as it slipped over the stooped shoulders. A slouch hat settled on the head above.
A weird figure had replaced that of Fritz, the janitor. It was a phantom shape that glided noiselessly from this obscure spot. Fritz the janitor had become The Shadow. New facts gained, the master sleuth was seeking outer darkness.
As The Shadow reached the end of the hallway, a low, soft laugh echoed from the walls. A quiet laugh, but a mocking laugh; a laugh that would have surprised both Inspector Malone and Detective Cardona, had they been there to hear it.
CHAPTER XIII
LOO CHOY’S COUSIN
STRANGE were the methods of The Shadow, Master of action, he could also play a passive, waiting game. Aiming for quick success, he had thrust Harry Vincent into the role of messenger to Wang Foo. That stroke parried, The Shadow had sent his rescued agent on a new and less dangerous assignment.
Amazing in his ability at disguise, The Shadow had visited detective headquarters unsuspected. His next move would be to cover the house of Wang Foo; and this campaign of strategy was one that demanded his lone attention.
Time moved slowly in Chinatown. On the outskirts, where Wang Foo’s tea shop stood, there was comparatively little bustle in the street. Many of the passers-by were Chinese; others were ragged specimens of American humanity. An occasional taxicab drifting by from the more used streets of Manhattan would wake the quiet street with its roar, but on the whole the scene outside the shop was serene.
Strangers went by apparently unnoticed. But the Chinaman, although his eyes seem to peer straight ahead, can see more from out their sides than one would suppose. And Wang Foo’s tea shop, despite its seeming desertion, was a house of many eyes.
Of late Wang Foo’s tea shop was more quiet and still than ever. Since a certain happening, no one was seen entering its dilapidated door. The windows grew dustier; the piles of tea boxes were undisturbed. Wang Foo was a prosperous tea merchant, every one knew - yet somehow the Chinese can be prosperous without the bustle and activity that attends business normally.
On the day after The Shadow’s trip to headquarters, a newsboy might have been observed in front of Wang Foo’s tea shop. It seemed a poor post for business, yet he kept bravely at it, back and forth; up and down the street - but never far from Wang Foo’s. He even entered the doorway of the tea shop but did not tarry after he had received a sign of negation from Loo Choy, the calm, almond-eyed Celestial who was forever behind the counter of Wang Foo’s shop.
It seemed as though the cries of the newsboy must have had its influence on potential customers. For no one came or left the door of Wang Foo’s shop on that particular day. The newsboy was a big fellow - really too old to be called a “boy,” and old enough, evidently, to have chosen a better spot for business. Yet he came back a while the next day; then, evidently finding it a hopeless task, he returned no more.
On the following day, a bearded cripple chose a spot almost directly across the street from the tea shop. He was a distorted specimen of humanity. His twisted body, and the stump of an arm that he exhibited had all the marks of genuine deformities. But there was little pity for the cripple in that district. His tin cup collected a few pennies each day that he remained in his chosen place. But he, too, must have thought better fields could be worked, and he went away and did not come back.
It must have been a tiresome sight for the cripple to sit all day with that dingy, black-windowed building in front of him. It was a hopeless sort of building. The signs needed paint; the usual Chinese banners were absent.
At night, the building lost some of its dinginess, but it assumed an ominous appearance. It loomed a black, foreboding mass. No lights appeared at the upper windows. If rooms were occupied, they were certainly not those in front of the house.
At dusk, huge shadows fell across the street from Wang Foo’s tea shop. Life seemed to lurk in those shadows. They were almost real. Passers-by kept near the curb, and away from the old rickety buildings that were across from Wang Foo’s. As for the side of the street where the tea shop stood - no one walked there at all, it seemed.
There was a dim light downstairs in the shop itself: a very dim light, for the tea shop remained open half the night, waiting for customers who never came; open for business that did not appear. One evening - in fact, the very night that the cripple had quit the street, a Chinaman entered the tea shop.
He did not come there to buy. He merely visited to talk with his friend, Loo Choy. For Loo Choy, despite the fact that he stood all day in the tea shop apparently unconcerned by lack of company, was considered quite a gossip among his Chinese friends.
This evening he greeted his visitor with a babble of lingo. So intent was he on his conversation that he did not eject the drunken white man who staggered in the door to prop himself against a pile of tea boxes.