The big shot’s mob had been defeated; but strategy might succeed where massed strength had failed. Even with The Shadow as an enemy, Stacks Lodi was willing to play the spy. The man was grinning his evil leer when he went up to the room assigned to him by the clerk.
His part was passive now, Stacks knew; but sooner or later, the men whom he was watching would return to the zone of danger. To-morrow, he would communicate with Hub at the Michigan road house. From then on, any move by Harry and Carter would be reported to the big shot.
The Shadow’s agent and the man whom he protected were still under surveillance by the cunning underling who served as Hub Rowley’s spy!
CHAPTER XVII
OUT OF THE SKY
LATE the next afternoon a strange ship of the sky appeared above the forested area north of the Wisconsin-Michigan border. Its flight was leisurely, due to the spinning blades that whirled horizontally above it.
The Shadow’s autogiro was flying above the wilderness!
To the sharp eyes that stared downward from the ship, every feature of the terrain was clearly visible. The autogiro settled slowly. Less than a thousand feet from earth, it hovered above one spot.
Directly below was the clearing with the miner’s cabin in the center. No bodies were there now. They had been removed at dawn, through a cautious foray directed by Hub Rowley. The big shot had found his men at the cars, and had lain there throughout the night.
All gangsters were gone, however. The Shadow had ascertained that fact. All seemed deserted below. The cabin was silent; the vertical mine shaft yawned, a square hole in the ground. These, however, were not the only objects that The Shadow sought.
In one brief flight, The Shadow was accomplishing something that had not occurred to Carter Boswick — a complete survey of all the territory about the cabin. The autogiro, after a slow hesitation that seemed a halt, turned toward the rising hillside. Beneath it was a structure that Harry Vincent and Carter Boswick had not discovered in their short survey on the ground.
This was a shack, halfway up the hillside. The building was sheltered amid the trees. Another unusual landmark was visible from the air. This was a path, so long forgotten that it could not have been noticed by a person on the ground, but which was slightly apparent from above.
The path began at the edge of the clearing by the hill. It ascended, past the shack, to fade upon the hillside. With strange precision, the autogiro seemed to follow that path until it reached a new angle of vision.
This brought another discovery — one that could not possibly have been made upon the ground. A cracked rock revealed itself in the midst of a thick cluster of trees and dried underbrush. As the autogiro circled, slowly nearing the ground, the meaning of that concealed ledge became apparent.
So artfully hidden that only a thorough and prolonged ground search could have uncovered it, was an opening between the rocks — the entrance to a hidden mine shaft on the hillside!
The tones of a weird laugh mingled with the throbbing of the autogiro’s motor. The ship poised, seeking a landing spot.
An ordinary plane would have taken to the clearing, and landed there with difficulty. But this windmill of the air was scornful. It descended with the easy motion of a parachute, and came to rest upon a flat ledge a few hundred yards away from the spot where the rocky opening was located.
The landing was rough. The giro’s wheel bumped as they struck irregular stone; but the hand that guided the plane used the utmost skill. The wheel made scarcely more than a single turn. The tilting ship righted itself, and rested in the barren spot like a huge bird come to earth.
THE SHADOW’S aerial inspection had been wisely planned. The conflict that had been waged in the clearing had caused a temporary withdrawal of the opposing forces. With a short interim at hand, the mysterious investigator had utilized air navigation as a method of observation.
Had an ordinary plane been used, its swift flight would have required more circling and interrupted study of the scene. With the hovering autogiro, The Shadow had gained quick results.
The darkening ground made excellent cover for the new progress of The Shadow. A black-clad figure appeared beside the plane. It glided stealthily along the ground, and reached a wooded area.
Feeling his way through the dusk, The Shadow, like a floating phantom, reached the clump of trees that his keen eyes had observed from an altitude of a thousand feet.
A flashlight flickered, and its rays showed the clustered barrier of wooden trunks. The position of the trees; the formation of the rocks; both conspired to completely conceal the opening which The Shadow sought. Even in the brightest light of day, a procession of men could have passed by this spot with no chance of detecting the hidden opening. Only The Shadow’s positive knowledge sufficed him now.
The probing light picked a course around jutted points of tree-protected rock. It found a twisting, natural path of stony base. The Shadow’s form poised momentarily above an overhanging rock; then sidled to the right, and glided to the ground below. Twisting into a short crevice, The Shadow halted directly in front of a cavernous opening.
The flashlight gleamed distinctly now. It showed a narrow, rock-jutted course that extended at an angle into the hill. The figure in black seemed to hide the light, except for brilliant flickers which occasionally glowed beyond it. Then both light and form were gone, into the recess of the earth!
Silence pervaded the place where The Shadow had disappeared. The moon, rising above the horizon, threw an eerie glow over this hidden scene as the gathering night increased. A motion occurred beyond the clump of trees that guarded the entrance of the cave.
That sound might have been the plunging of some wild animal. At first, there was nothing to indicate the positive presence of a human being. But the constant effort to work a way through the barrier soon betokened the action of a person. Then came pauses while a man breathed heavily.
Had some one, spying from the ground, noted the arrival of The Shadow’s autogiro? Had that person, heading toward the spot where the ship had landed, seen tokens of The Shadow’s presence through the glow of the probing flashlight?
This seemed the probable case yet the searcher was blind in his efforts. He could not make further discovery. His plowing in the brush became a clamber over jagged rocks.
It was then that his form became momentarily visible in the fringe of moonlight. The second investigator reached one of the overhanging portions of rock that hid the cave.
Here, all search would have ended fruitlessly. Perhaps, by day, the second man might have readily guessed that some important spot was below; but in the moonlight, his cautious, creeping form was heading toward the other side of the rock, away from the important spot.
It was chance that aided this new searcher. As he reached a cluster of saplings, he paused and stretched beneath the trees, listening between heavy breaths.
A glimmer of light had caught the searcher’s attention. This glow had come almost from beneath the rock that he had just abandoned. It was like distant lightning, obscured by a heavy cloud — a chance flash that revealed nothing, yet which gave positive evidence of activity.
AS the spying man watched, the light was repeated. Then the flicker came for a third time, and its glow gave the momentary sign of a blackened shape that was emerging from the rock.
That, however, was the last betraying signal. Had the spying man tried, he could not have gained an advantage over The Shadow. For the moment that the outside had been reached, the master of darkness extinguished his light completely, and became a being of seeming nothingness.