Rising, Cardona thrust himself against the desk and pushed it toward the side of the room, The effort was weakening. Cardona’s head began to swim. He steadied himself and stared at Pringle.
The man who had termed himself The Red Blot was propped upon an elbow. His trembling finger was pointing to the crevice in the floor. Cardona saw the indicated mark.
“There!” gasped Pringle. “Beneath — beneath that stone. You — you have won. The money—”
The exhausting effort was too much. Pringle’s elbow gave way. Falling upon his side, the defeated villain watched the detective claw with his left hand at the movable stone.
“The lever,” murmured Pringle. “The lever on the wall—”
Cardona noticed Pringle’s attempt to point. The lever which the gray-haired man indicated was just below the spot which the top of the desk had covered. Reaching up, Cardona pulled the lever.
He heard a fiendish chuckle. He stared at Dobson Pringle.
No longer placid and weary in expression, Pringle was glaring with malicious eyes. The evil personality of The Red Blot was in his gruesome stare. His lips, foaming, spat insidious words of hateful triumph.
“Your friends” — The Red Blot’s voice was spasmodic in its insidious tone — “the prisoners — the ones you have left — are doomed. You — you have slain them — rats — drowning in a deluge—”
As the voice broke off, Cardona could hear the roaring surge of a cataract far below. He realized the malice of The Red Blot’s last action. Dying, Dobson Pringle had tricked him into loosing a hidden torrent of water into the dungeon where The Shadow had left the prisoners!
Was it too late?
Cardona staggered away from the wall. He slipped to his knees, weakened by loss of blood from his wounded shoulder. He could hear The Red Blot’s death rattle — a gargling sound that carried a tone of glee.
As if in answer came a whispering echo — a sinister challenge that sounded from beyond the outside corridor. It was The Shadow’s triumph laugh — the symbol of the departing victor. Cardona, resting upon his left hand, waited, too weak to move.
A clatter in the corridor. The voices of men. Four persons came into the room. Cardona did not recognize them; but they knew him.
The detective had been groggy during his imprisonment in the pit beneath; these men had not. They were the prisoners, freed from the dungeon — on their way up the steps at the moment when Cardona had unwittingly released the tide intended for their doom.
Selfridge Woodstock; his secretary, Crozer; Carlton Carmody — with them was a tall, elderly man, with pale face and stooped shoulders, whose facial muscles twitched as he observed the scene in this bloody room.
They helped Cardona to his feet. Then came other rescuers; Detective Sergeant Markham and a squad which had come in from the corridor to the East Side subway. Markham recognized that these were friends.
The tall, eccentric individual spoke. His statement cleared the confusion as he named his identity.
“I can explain everything,” he said. “I am Hubert Craft, chief architect of the Amalgamated Builders’ Association — supposed to be dead — actually held prisoner by this fiend—”
Craft pointed toward the inert form of Dobson Pringle. Joe Cardona, still game, added the final words.
“The Red Blot,” gasped the detective. “Pringle — The Red Blot—”
Dobson Pringle’s form was now on its face. Markham raised the body to learn that the man was dead. Clutching the motionless corpse, Markham stared — the others followed his gaze.
Where Pringle’s body had lain, the floor was stained with a pool of crimson blood. Spreading slowly, gushed forth from a wound that still oozed, that fluid formed a grotesque pattern.
In death, as in life, Dobson Pringle had left the signature which he had chosen for the key mark in his villainous campaign of crime. That pool of blood remained as the final signature of The Red Blot!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE COMMISSIONER EXPLAINS
“THE most astonishing case of criminal activity in the history of the New York police!”
This assertion regarding The Red Blot came from Police Commissioner Ralph Weston. It was uttered with emphasis as the commissioner sat with his millionaire friend, Lamont Cranston, in the grill room of the Cobalt Club.
They were keeping the luncheon engagement which Cranston had jocularly arranged a few days previous. When the newspaper had blazed forth the triumph of the law over The Red Blot, Cranston had telephoned Weston to congratulate him — and to remind him of the suggested meeting.
“I have read the newspapers with great interest,” observed Cranston, after he had heard Weston’s all-inclusive definition, “My own experience — observations at the Club Janeiro — made me understand the remarkable features of this case—”
“That was but the surface, Cranston,” interposed Weston. “The whole affair was incredible. The motive was a relentless scheme for ill gain. A criminal intelligence masked by a most disarming exterior.
“Who could have suspected that Dobson Pringle, kindly and prosperous gentleman, was The Red Blot? Yet, once the scheme was uncovered, the machinations became as plain as day. Let me give you a summary of it, Cranston.
“Dobson Pringle was a man long experienced in building. He gained access to old city maps and records; to facts that had been forgotten. He noted that Manhattan was honeycombed with abandoned conduits; with blocked-off excavations. Below the surface of the city streets were the nucleus for a remarkable underground system of passages — not to compare with the catacombs of Rome or the sewers of Paris, yet an arrangement that could be put to definite use.
“Pringle was in a position to develop that system. He saw in it the making of a real underworld. The Amalgamated Builders’ Association was erecting skyscrapers, all within a short radius of Times Square. By a tie-up with Socks Mallory, then an enterprising racketeer, Pringle peopled his catacombs with a squad of wanted men — chosen ruffians who stayed below ground gladly, and who served as the advance workers. They were The Red Blot’s sappers.
“Pringle made Hubert Craft, the architect, his unwitting aid. In the plans for new buildings, he urged special arrangements for hidden outlets from the structures. He explained to Craft that these might later be used for connecting links with other buildings — subways and the like — and that they would prove of value in the future.”
“Craft was easily duped,” observed Cranston.
“For a while, only,” returned Weston. “The first of these hidden entrances to the cavernous domain was placed in the office of the Club Janeiro — beneath the Stellar Theater Building — an Amalgamated enterprise.
“That enabled Socks Mallory to go in and out; to add replenishments to his workers. Each new building had another outlet to be tapped. In the Hotel Gigantic it was an elevator shaft that descended more deeply than supposed.
“The most artful of these secret openings was in the fifth floor of the Amalgamated Building. The structure pyramids” — Weston began making a diagram upon the back of an envelope — “and the first set-back comes above the fifth floor. For five floors, there are corner rooms — like the conference room of the Amalgamated Builders, shaped thus. A narrow anteroom allowed for a hidden wall space, like a large air shaft. Pringle’s hidden workers installed an elevator there; one which could be reached through a secret panel in the anteroom wall.
“Galladay’s jewelry store was neatly designed so that one spot would allow access to all parts of the ground floor. That, of course, was protected by installed alarm apparatus; but Pringle had made full allowance. Craft was not suspicious even then — it was when Pringle made him put in a secret entrance to the ground floor of the Soudervale Building that the architect raised an objection. He knew that the space would give access to a banking institution.”