Maxwell Grant
The Python
CHAPTER I
THE PYTHON’S PRISONER
A SALLOW, leering face gloated as it studied the prone, limp figure stretched upon a rickety cot. Ratlike features surveyed the closed eyes of a drawn, bloodstained countenance. Such was the scene that showed beneath the glare of a single electric-light bulb, which provided the sole illumination of a windowless, stone-walled room.
The leering man was short and stocky. The malicious ugliness of his thick lips and pudgy profile was increased by a scar that crossed his sloping forehead.
His clothes, though new, were cheap and ill-fitting. In every point of appearance, he was inferior to his unconscious victim.
The prisoner on the cot was clad in evening clothes of faultless fashion. His face, despite its gashes, was one that betokened dignity. His features were of even mold; calm, even in this temporary state of oblivion.
The rat-faced man turned from the cot. He thrust a cigarette between his puffed lips and scratched a match upon the surface of a metal-sheeted door. As he lighted his cigarette, he stopped abruptly; then wheeled about to face another door on the opposite side of the room.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
The sallow-faced man recognized the knock. With a clumpy stride, he crossed the room and drew a bolt. His stocky figure backed away. A tall, stoop-shouldered man entered the room and gave an ugly grin of greeting. The newcomer, too, was a sallow, hard-faced ruffian. The pockmarks on his long-jawed countenance were a match for the stocky man’s unsightly scar.
“Hello, Bevo,” growled the stocky man. “I’ve been waiting for you. Thought you’d be here soon. Doc said he knew where he could get hold of you.”
“Doc called me,” returned the stoop-shouldered rowdy. “Told me to chase up here in a hurry, Chuck. Said you was—”
Bevo paused. Looking past “Chuck,” he had seen the figure on the cot. His glary eyes widened as they noted the unconscious man’s fastidious attire.
“Say!” exclaimed Bevo. “Doc told me you was watching some bloke; but I figured it was some stoolie you’d grabbed. Pipe the soup and fish this bird’s wearing!”
“Class, ain’t it?” queried Chuck, his thick lips leering. “Ritzy-looking, ain’t he?”
“Sure is. Say — who is this mug?”
“The Shadow!”
CHUCK gaped. For a moment, his features froze as he heard Bevo’s statement. Then, with a forced laugh, the stooped-shouldered rogue faced his companion.
“Lay off the hooey, Bevo,” insisted Chuck. “It ain’t good business, talking about The Shadow. Even when you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” retorted Chuck. “Say — do you think Doc would want two of us to watch a guy that’s lying here cold? A guy that Doc’s loaded up with dope, to keep him that way? He wouldn’t — not unless it was The Shadow.”
Bevo pondered, still doubting. Chuck delivered an ugly laugh; then reached underneath the cot and dragged forth a dress-suitcase. He yanked the top upward and pulled out a mass of cloth. Bevo stared, almost aghast, as he saw a black cloak with crimson lining.
“Lamp this,” snorted Chuck. “And take a look at that slouch hat laying there. Get an eyeful of them smoke-wagons. Four of ‘em there in the suitcase. Heft ‘em.”
“Whew! What gats!” Bevo, stooping, was hoisting two huge automatics from the suitcase. He replaced the guns to examine a second brace of similar weapons.
“Say — there is only one guy who’d want to handle these rods. Boy! A .45 like this baby” — he paused to test a single weapon — “a gat like this could blow a hole through a stone wall!”
“Maybe,” corrected Chuck. “Maybe not. Anyway, this mug’s The Shadow. Lamp this ring he’s wearing, Bevo.”
Chuck raised a limp arm from the prisoner’s side. Bevo stared warily at a resplendent gem that shimmered in the light, its colors changing from deep to lighter hues.
The stone was a rare girasol, the only jewel that The Shadow wore. It shone from the long third finger of the limp left hand.
“Doc says it’s a kind of fire opal,” informed Chuck. “Worth plenty of jack, maybe. Kind of a ring The Shadow might be wearing. We got to leave it on him, though.” Chuck flung the arm against The Shadow’s body. “We’re not doing nothing to the guy until The Python sees him.”
“The Python?” inquired Bevo, breathlessly. “He’s coming here?”
“So Doc says. He put the call through and got the flash-back. But we won’t be seeing him, nor Doc either. The Python will come in through the other way.”
“Through the middle room?”
“Yeah. That’s where we’ll leave The Shadow for him. But not until Doc gives us the word.”
BRIEF silence followed. Bevo was staring at the wan face on the cot. The lips of Bevo’s pockmarked face were twitching; a fact that brought a grin to Chuck’s ugly face.
Chuck, too, had been leery when he had learned that the man was The Shadow; but Chuck had gotten over it. He waited for Bevo’s next question. It came.
“How did you bag him?”
Chuck laughed, his tone half a snort.
“We didn’t,” he admitted. “It was a lucky break, Bevo; that was all. It came when we was up by the Hotel Bragelonne, Doc and I, this evening.”
“Watching for Jurrice?”
“Yeah. Like you was this afternoon. Doc and I had the sedan. We was half a block away from the Bragelonne, ready to tail Jurrice if he took a cab. Just to be sure he wasn’t clearing town.”
“I know why you was there. But what about The Shadow?”
“I’m coming to that. While we was sitting there in the car, a big, swell looking limousine comes across the avenue, going toward the hotel. Just then a truck kites around the corner, making a left turn. The truck rams the limousine and sends it up on the sidewalk. It hits a brick wall — the limousine does — and the door opens.
“This guy comes diving out — bag and all — and hits the sidewalk. A chauffeur climbs out of the front seat, kind of dizzylike. We was right there — Doc and me — and it would’ve looked phony if we hadn’t jumped out to lend a hand. So we did.”
“But how—”
“How’d we know who The Shadow was? Luck, I told you. First thing we see as we come up to him was this bag. It had cracked open; the cloak and hat was half out of it. We saw the gats. I was dumb, Bevo; but Doc wasn’t. He got the idea quick.”
Chuck paused to snap his fingers as an indication of the rapidity with which Doc experienced mental impulses.
“Doc slams the stuff into the bag,” he resumed. “Closes it and hands it to me. A copper comes up; Doc stoops over the unconscious guy and tells the flatfoot to help him get the mug into our car.
“‘I’m a physician, officer,’ says Doc. He used to be a croaker — you know that, Bevo — and he tells it to the copper like he meant it. ‘I’m a physician. My car is available and I shall hurry this man to the nearest hospital. You look to the chauffeur, officer’ — that’s what Doc said, Bevo.”
“But you brought him here instead?”
“Sure. We started in a hurry so’s the flatfoot wouldn’t see that Doc didn’t have no green cross on his car. The Shadow took a jolt, falling out of that limousine. But he wasn’t hurt so bad, Doc told me. Doc brought out that kit he carries under the rear seat. I stopped while he jabbed a needle full of hop into The Shadow’s arm. Just so’s he wouldn’t come to.
“Then we stopped again, while Doc went into a place to telephone. The word must have gone through in a hurry. Them blue lights was blinking when we got here. Doc says the signal was his. Orders from The Python to hold The Shadow here. After we’d lugged him in, Doc went out to call you, Bevo.”
Bevo nodded; then inquired: