There was a click. Raising up, the prisoner flung the handcuffs on the desk, where they lay open. Before Cardona could realize the quickness of English Johnny’s self-release, before a single detective could cover with a revolver, the prisoner pressed the button that controlled the wall panel.
The two detectives leaped toward him, but he seemed to shrink as he slipped between them, underneath their grasp. The panel was turning in the wall, and the escaping prisoner passed through.
Shots rang from Cardona’s gun; they went wild, crashing against the wall beside the panel. The prisoner had gone; the two detectives were staring at the spot where he had been. He had passed through their clutches like a shadow!
And as the panel closed against the wall, a long, reverberating sound came to the ears of the astonished men. It was a laugh, a vivid, creepy laugh; a laugh that was real, and yet unnatural.
It was the laugh of The Shadow!
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID
THE front page of the New York newspaper amused Harry Vincent as he read it. He was seated in the club car of the limited that was carrying him westward.
He was going home for a short vacation; home to see his folks in the little town in Michigan.
There were startling statements in the paper. Some of them, Harry knew, were partially correct. Others were entirely wrong. For he knew facts that the reporters had not obtained, yet his knowledge of the affair was amazingly inadequate.
The startling revelation that Diamond Bert Farwell had been captured; that he had been living in the guise of a Chinaman while the police had believed him dead, was sensational news.
To Detective Cardona, the papers said, belonged the credit for the capture of Diamond Bert and the recovery of the Laidlow gems. Diamond Bert had been surprised at an opportune moment just after he had removed his disguise in the security of his room above the tea shop.
But Cardona had attributed much of this success to Inspector John Malone, whose keen, perceptive mind had ferreted out the secret of the master brain behind the Laidlow robbery. The inspector had received high praise and commendation from the police commissioner.
The discovery that Diamond Bert had been masquerading as the old Chinaman had led to a thorough search of the building that stood on the outskirts of Chinatown. A package containing other jewels had been discovered; they were the spoils of previous minor robberies - goods which, for some unknown reason, had not yet been unloaded by Diamond Bert.
The murder of Geoffrey Laidlow had been solved immediately after the news of the recovered gems had been flashed throughout the country. Howard Burgess, the secretary of the dead millionaire, had committed suicide in Florida.
The brief note that he had left had stated simply that he had assisted in the robbery of the safe; had killed Geoffrey Laidlow, and had wounded himself. He had given the box of jewels to a confederate, his account stated, and it was the other man whom Ezekiel Bingham had seen escape through the window.
Harry realized that this statement was only partly true. Burgess had evidently feared the consequences of his crime; at the same time, he had been careful to shield his actual associate. The police had accepted his note as true in its entirety.
The dragnet was out for English Johnny Harmon, the man who had been found with Diamond Bert, but; whose name had never before been identified with crime. English Johnny had escaped, the papers said, before the detectives had an opportunity to capture him.
It was believed that he was the accomplice of Howard Burgess - the man who had fled across the lawn in front of Geoffrey Laidlow’s home. Some one had been the connecting link between Howard Burgess and Diamond Bert Farwell; and English Johnny was the logical person. The police were quizzing the employees of Johnny’s lunch wagons.
Ezekiel Bingham, the veteran criminal lawyer, had refused to defend Diamond Bert Farwell. There was much speculation regarding this. One reason was that Bingham would be needed as a witness, should English Johnny be captured; the other was that the old lawyer had contracted a severe illness, and his physician had prescribed a rest cure.
Harry rubbed his face as he read these details. His cheeks were still sore from the punishment he had experienced. His shoulders ached, but no bones were broken. He had taken a severe beating, but with no serious consequences.
He was feeling fit now; but he had been greatly wearied and sadly weakened when he had awakened in his room at the Metrolite Hotel, the morning after his journey to the old house on Long Island. He still wondered how he had been rescued from the hands of English Johnny; for his last recollection of that night was the memory of a red, leering face that had leaned threateningly above his helpless form.
Then he had received his ticket to Michigan, with the Pullman reservations that accompanied it. He had taken the train without further orders.
Once more he glanced through the account in the newspaper, searching for something that did not appear in print. Strange, thought Harry, that in this long report there was not one mention of a man called The Shadow!
For the newspapers never learned that the man who had unmasked Diamond Bert was not - could not have been - English Johnny.
THE END