A look of vague understanding flitted over Froman’s face.
“Then, the trap was not set,” resumed The Shadow. “Tonight it has been prepared. Only one who enters here can leave — so you believe. I shall show you that you are wrong.”
He tapped upon the door. The steel curtain began to rise. Two men stood in the outer passage. At a word from The Shadow, they entered, as the figure in black stepped aside.
Still covering his enemies with the automatic, The Shadow raised his free left hand and held the door open from beneath. Another word and the two men approached the box upon the table. They closed the lid and worked the table toward the door.
Two masked operatives had followed here at The Shadow’s bidding. They had been waiting for the signal. They had turned the safe outer knob. Now, they were removing the false jewels.
His agents gone, The Shadow waited, still holding the fatal curtain of steel. His last words were a command.
“You may make your peace,” he said. The figure in black stepped through the barrier. The steel door glided downward. The threatening automatic followed with it, moving just below the bottom edge. As the curtain neared the final stopping point, the three men in the dungeon could see only the muzzle of the automatic until the final spot was reached. The door clicked shut as the end of the weapon disappeared.
The Shadow’s judgment had been declared.
The figure in black was gone.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE FINAL RECKONING
A LONG silence pervaded the dungeon after the departure of The Shadow. At last, the tension was relieved. Three disappointed men looked at one another.
Parker Noyes showed misery and disappointment. But Froman and Motkin glared with sudden hatred as they faced each other. For a moment, it appeared that they were about to fling themselves into conflict.
Then Noyes intervened.
“We are beaten,” he declared, in a trembling tone. “There is no use in further quarrel. Let us leave here, Froman, and go our ways, glad that we still live.”
Froman shrugged his shoulders. He seemed appeased by the lawyer’s words. He bowed and walked calmly toward the door.
“Come,” he said, shortly. “We will go.”
Motkin and Noyes advanced and stared curiously while Froman brought a long, sharp point of metal from his pocket and thrust it into a tiny hole in the center of the knob on the steel door.
Something clicked within. The barrier moved upward. Froman laughed in a disgruntled tone.
“This releases the door without turning the knob,” he said. “The bomb is set. To turn that knob would mean instant death.”
He held the door up and motioned to Parker Noyes to walk through. The lawyer stepped from the dungeon. Ivan Motkin followed.
The Bolshevist agent reached the top step unsuspecting. It was then that Froman acted. With a swift swing, he seized his hated enemy and flung him back down the steps.
“Die!” he cried. “Die as all your kind should die!”
Catching himself, Motkin scrambled upward just as Froman started through the door. The barrier was falling, but Froman was not in time. With a fiendish snarl, Motkin gripped his enemy and pulled him back into the dungeon.
A short, tense struggle followed. Both men were governed by intense fury. Motkin, the Red, and Froman, the Czarist, were battling to the death.
The odds were first with Motkin; then, with a mighty effort, Froman flung the man aside. Motkin fell and lay still. Froman sneered. He walked deliberately to the closed door and once more inserted the tiny pick that opened the hidden catch.
He did not see Motkin, cautiously rising. His eyes glittering with vengeance, The Red agent crept up the steps. With a quick motion, he seized Froman’s throat.
Clinging to the knob of the door, Froman gasped and his eyes bulged helplessly. Motkin was choking him to death. There was no escape from that terrible clutch.
No escape? A hideous smile appeared upon Froman’s distorted features. Motkin was dragging him toward the bottom of the steps. Froman’s slipping fingers were sliding from the knob of the door. Yet his last, despairing action succeeded.
As Motkin gloated with triumph, Froman’s fingers twisted the knob of the door!
A terrific explosion rang out through the dungeon. A mighty charge broke loose and both strugglers vanished in the burst of flame that swept through the buried vault.
Frederick Froman, descendant of the Romanoff line, and Ivan Motkin, hater of the Czarist cause, were blown to atoms.
The terrific rumble shook the entire building. The floors above trembled, from cellar to top story. The whole upper structure collapsed.
When police arrived in that solemn street where the terrific detonation had occurred, they found the residence of Frederick Froman a mass of hopeless wreckage. Clearing away the debris at the front, they discovered the form of a dying man. It was Parker Noyes.
The old lawyer had been trapped just within the front door. His body was crushed. His feeble lips tried to speak as his dimmed eyes saw the rescuers. The effort was too great. Parker Noyes expired.
He was the last of the three who had heard The Shadow’s judgment.
IN a strange, weird laboratory, a figure in black was standing before a burnished vat. Within the huge, cup-shaped contrivance glittered a mass of shining objects — the false jewels for which men had striven and died.
A black-clad hand released the end of a glass tube. A reeking liquid poured into the vat. The flow was stopped by the same hand.
A powerful acid had entered the vat. It covered the shining baubles that lay within. The luster of the false jewels vanished. The bits of glass melted away. Only a muddy sediment remained.
The black gloves were drawn from the hands. Above the fuming, acid-filled vat appeared a glowing object. It was The Shadow’s girasol — the one true gem that had figured in the long succession of terrible tragedy.
The lights of the room dimmed mysteriously. All was darkness except for the Promethean glow of the fire-opal.
The trail of bloodshed and slaughter was ended. The gory lure of the Romanoff gems no longer existed.
The Shadow had gained the final triumph!