Springing forward, Harry crowded the porter aside and looked into the center of the room. Then he, too, stood motionless!
LYING on the floor, beside the bed, was the sprawled form of a roughly clad man. The crumpled bedspread showed that he had been lying there, but had tumbled to the floor, to spread crazily upon the carpet. The man’s face was turned sidewise; its pasty profile showed the rigidity of death.
Beside the man’s body, close to a twisted elbow, lay a small pile of objects that had dropped from the fellow’s pocket. A wallet, a few slips of paper, a cigar — these were evidences that the fall had been headlong. Harry’s quick eye visualized the situation.
The porter still gaped in terror as he viewed the hideous expression of the death-distorted face. It was Harry’s rough shake that brought the attendant back to his senses. There was a firmness in Harry’s tone as he gave the man terse instructions.
“Call the desk” — Harry indicated the telephone beyond the bed — “and tell them what has happened. Hurry, while I look at this man.”
The porter stumbled toward the telephone, avoiding the body as he went. His quavering voice sounded weakly as he stammered the word that a dead body lay in Room 1408.
Meanwhile, Harry, with the cold air of a man who has often witnessed death, bent carefully above the sprawled form to make sure that the man was really dead. It required but a few seconds for him to recognize the fact that life was gone.
Harry did not touch the body, nor did he disturb the articles that lay beside the dead man’s elbow. He knew that this would be unwise until the police arrived.
But Harry used his eyes to good advantage. He quickly noted the features of the dead man’s attire: the shoddy suit, the wrenched necktie, the unstained, stubby shoes.
Then his studied gaze observed something that projected from beneath the under elbow. This was a manila envelope, that had evidently dropped ahead when the man had fallen.
Harry’s eyes were keen as they spotted a scrawl upon that envelope. As he read the inscription, Harry uttered a repressed gasp.
He raised his head quickly, and looked across the bed. The porter had dropped, gasping, into a chair, his head buried in his hands. He was not watching Harry Vincent.
Footsteps and muffled voices were sounding in the corridor. The response from the desk had been rapid.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Harry stooped again and deftly withdrew the envelope from beneath the unrestraining elbow. As he rose, Harry thrust the manila wrapper up beneath his vest.
When two men hurried into the room a few moments later, they discovered Harry Vincent standing against the wall, surveying the body with a puzzled look. The porter was standing, having risen when he heard the men rush in.
The newcomers paused. They, too, stared at the body. They saw the details.
The dead form had not been moved. The articles from the pocket were still beside the elbow. The picture seemed complete. Only one thing was lacking — the envelope that Harry Vincent had secretly purloined.
Only Harry knew of that envelope’s existence. He had seized it instinctively, governed by an instantaneous thought that had resolved itself into prompt duty. For, to Harry’s way of thinking, that envelope did not belong upon the floor. He had exercised a right when he had taken it.
In one brief moment he had read the words upon the envelope. He was thinking of them now, despite his apparent calm. He was wondering about their significance. He was resolved that the very existence of that envelope should not be known to any investigators who might appear upon that scene.
To keep that envelope was Harry’s trust, for he felt that it belonged to the man whom he served. This belief was based upon the inscription which Harry had read — words which now seemed unbelievable with the envelope out of sight.
With half-closed eyes, Harry Vincent received a visual impression of the scrawl which he had seen, and its blue-inked words remained in vivid import. With lips unmoving, Harry whispered the words which he had read upon the envelope:
“To The Shadow.”
A message from an unknown source; a message dropped by a dying man; a message picked up by a secret agent, who alone could deliver it to its proper destination!
Beneath his vest, Harry Vincent held a message to The Shadow!
CHAPTER II
THE MESSAGE MOVES
A SWARTHY, heavy-set man was in charge of Room 1408 in the Metrolite Hotel. Detective Joe Cardona, able investigator of the New York headquarters, was on the job a half hour after the report came in. He had finished his study of the dead form on the floor. Now he prepared to question living persons about him.
“You say you left this room at nine o’clock?”
Cardona’s question was addressed to Harry Vincent. It met with a prompt response.
“Nine o’clock,” replied Harry. “I went directly to the lobby. As I left the room, the chambermaid entered to make the bed. I told her I was checking out.”
“Is that correct?” questioned Cardona, turning to a woman clad in uniform.
“Yes, sir,” replied the chambermaid, in a plaintive voice. “I seen him when he come out of the room, sir.”
“Did any one enter while you were here?”
“No, sir. But after I had gone out—”
“What happened then?”
“Well, sir, a man was standing in the corridor. It’s kinda dark there, sir. He says to me, that he wants to get back into the room. Says he has forgot his key. So I never thinks about it; I lets him in.”
“Was it this man?”
Cardona indicated Vincent.
“No, sir,” responded the maid. “I wasn’t thinkin’ right, sir. I just opens the door and lets the man go in. It ain’t always that I does that, but I kinda forget myself now and then. After he goes in, I begins thinkin’ that I’d made a mistake. I was goin’ back, sir, but then I figured all must be right.”
“Would you recognize the man who spoke to you in the corridor?” interrupted Cardona impatiently.
“I couldn’t say, sir,” pleaded the maid. “It’s so dark out there—”
“Then how,” questioned Cardona, “do you know that it was not this man?”
“His voice was different,” stated the maid. “He was kinda hunchedlike. I didn’t see his face, but I heard him speak, and that’s how I knowed when I thought that he was different.”
“Could it have been this man?”
Cardona pointed abruptly toward the body on the floor. The maid stared with blinking eyes.
“It was about like him, sir,” she answered. “It could have been him. Yes, it could have been him, but not the gentleman who belongs in this room.”
“That will do.”
Cardona turned to quiz Harry. In response to the detective’s questions, Harry replied with direct and firmly spoken words. Both his manner and his tone were convincing.
Harry had been absent from his room more than an hour and a half. He had gone directly to the desk when he had reached the hotel lobby. From there, he had entered the grillroom, returned to the lobby and finally had summoned the porter.
HARRY’S testimony was followed by amazing corroboration. Well known about the hotel, it seemed as though all his actions had been observed by witnesses.
The elevator operator had remembered his descent to the ground floor. The clerk at the desk recalled the exact time that Harry had approached — three minutes after nine. The waiter in the grillroom had seen him eating there. The clerk and the man at the cigar counter had noticed him reading in the lobby. The elevator operator remembered bringing him upstairs with the porter.