The great head that Ralph described was obviously the combination of a
face and a beard. Ralph had remembered that the head seemed long-faced and
narrow. Such a description fitted the probable appearance of Cyrus Shawnwood
under the green light.
Knowing the location of Shawnwood's brownstone house, The Shadow had
checked a route to it in terms of the turns that Ralph remembered. With that
finishing touch, he decided that the alleyway entrance must be in the next
block, with an underground passage beneath the intervening street.
Otherwise, Shawnwood's hidden servitors could not go in and out, because
the police were on guard all about the master criminal's house.
"How do you like my laboratory," sneered Shawnwood to the prisoners, "now
that you are viewing it in brighter light? This is the attic of my house; a
fourth floor, that no one suspected, not even The Shadow.
"It is where I conduct experiments in every branch of chemistry, so that I
can replace outmoded methods with new ones. As you have learned, I never sell a
process for a trivial sum, as most chemists do.
"No, I am the representative" - he chuckled over the word - "of poor,
forgotten men, who have never received their proper due. Using their names -
mythical ones, like Loman; or those of mere tools, like Gruble - I reap huge
rewards - for Cyrus Shawnwood!"
The wizard of crime was moving forward, raising his clenched fists to the
level of his shaggy beard. He thrust his tightened hands toward the faces of
the prisoners.
"I dispose of fools!" he told them. "That rule applies to you! But first,
particularly for your benefit, Atgood, I shall end the experiment with my sleep
gas."
He swung about, shoved a scrawny finger toward the high, oblong box, like
a sarcophagus, in the corner. Ralph's own fist tightened. He knew that
Shawnwood's words were Alicia's death warrant.
"Go there, Glenny!" ordered Shawnwood. "Turn off the flow of gas. We shall
let Atgood watch the girl die the slow death of suffocation! It will be a
merciful end" - Shawnwood's tone was a gloat - "compared with the death that he
and Vincent will suffer!"
GLENNY reached the coffin-shaped box. Ralph wanted to start after him, but
one of the chunky assistants prodded him with a gun point. Harry spoke, telling
his companion to wait and watch. Harry hadn't lost confidence in The Shadow,
even though Ralph had.
"It's off already!" exclaimed Glenny, as he tried to change the gas flow.
"Perhaps the girl is dead!"
He was reaching for the cloth that topped the great box, when the oblong
object started to tilt forward. Glenny sprang back; the side of the box hit the
floor. The cloth covering fell away, and with it came the glass top.
Before the astonished eyes of Shawnwood, and the equally amazed prisoners,
lay the open interior of the satin-lined casket - empty!
Then, above the edge of the overturned box came a head topped by a slouch
hat. On either side of a pair of burning eyes looked the mouths of automatics,
covering the chunky men who held Harry and Ralph captive.
Lips that were vaguely visible voiced a weird, outlandish laugh that
seemed to creep to every corner of the lair of crime and whisper back in
multitudinous echoes:
The laugh of The Shadow!
CHAPTER XX
CRIME'S LAST STAND
SHAWNWOOD'S chunky assistants took up The Shadow's challenge. Swinging
their guns away from Harry and Ralph, they aimed for the head above the casket.
They didn't fire as most crooks did, when facing The Shadow; hastily, before
completing aim.
The chunky men did not fire at all. Trained to act with exactness, they
fingers of his opponents found time to pull their triggers.
Reeling, the pair sank slowly to the floor, each carrying a bullet in his
chest. The Shadow swung his guns for Shawnwood and Glenny. The next shots that
he fired were ineffective. Neither the crime wizard nor his lieutenant had lost
an instant in getting to cover, which was easy in the laboratory.
Shawnwood's bearded face disappeared beyond a metal cabinet; Glenny took a
dive behind a squatty steel vat. As Shawnwood moved, he grabbed the light switch
with his scrawny hand. White glare began to change into green.
The Shadow was out from cover. Cloakless, he was weaving a swift course in
and out among the chemical equipment, trying to get new angles of fire at
Shawnwood and Glenny, who answered back with guns of their own.
Harry understood the reason for The Shadow's move. He wanted Harry and
Ralph to get to the cover that he had left. Dragging Ralph with him, Harry
reached the shelter of the corner.
There, they found a human bundle in the corner. It was Alicia Weylan,
still asleep, wrapped in The Shadow's cloak, the collar folded over her blond
head like a cowl. Lifting the girl, the two men waited for a signal from The
Shadow.
He was fighting a grim battle under the greenish glare, that had regained
its full intensity. Shifting from one shelter to another, he kept up the duel
against a pair of desperate foemen. Beakers were smashing; glass coils broke to
bits as bullets struck them. The air became pungent with the reek of many
chemicals.
Ralph, watching The Shadow's amazing zigzag course, realized what had
happened at the elevator. The Shadow had shifted through the partly open door,
to take a gliding course along the laboratory wall. He had allowed Harry and
Ralph to be trapped, only that he might have time to reach the big box and open
it.
The Shadow had shut off the sleep gas; he had worked the casket open, from
the hinges at the back. By draping his cloak over Alicia, he had managed to
remove her while Shawnwood and his companions were concentrated entirely upon
their prisoners.
Alicia was rescued; the prisoners were free. The Shadow was waging battle
in the heart of enemy territory. But how were they to make their exit while
Shawnwood and Glenny held out?
That seemed a real problem, even for The Shadow, considering that
Shawnwood had locked the elevator on this floor.
The Shadow was near the elevator at present; he was gesturing for the
others to join him. It was time, for fumes were filling the laboratory.
Chemicals were puffing, beginning blazes that might develop into a huge fire.
KEEPING to shelter, Harry and Ralph brought Alicia along the wall, dodging
jets of fire and smoke that came from pools of chemicals. They were near the
elevator, when they heard a shout from Shawnwood.
He had made a dive from one shelter to another. He was behind a large
wheeled tank, a squatty cylinder that was five feet in height and at least six
in diameter.
Shawnwood shoved the thing in front of him, until he reached Glenny's
shelter. The lieutenant joined him; from behind their tank, they took potshots
at The Shadow. The tank had a conical top that made it look like a massive
skyrocket. Shawnwood suddenly poked the cap and knocked it from the tank.
Then the whe
eled thing was rolling along the steel floor, and Shawnwood
and Glenny were gone, beyond a steel door that dropped behind them. They
reappeared, a few seconds later, upon a little balcony that overhung the corner
of the laboratory and had a bulletproof screen.
Shawnwood's grinning teeth were visible, despite the fact that his face
and beard were scarcely more than a great green glow. He was carrying a small
control box attached to a wire that ran to the big tank on the lower floor. The
tank, itself, had rolled partly beneath the balcony, where it had only a foot to
spare.
Safe in his screened nest, Shawnwood was pointing downward, shouting
something.
It was obvious that the tank was filled with a high explosive, that would
go off the moment Shawnwood pressed the switch. But he did not intend to
perform that action until he and Glenny were safe. The lieutenant was unbarring
a trapdoor at the top of a boxlike space above the ceiling.
Once on the roof, the pair could stretch their wire to another house. From
that remote spot, Shawnwood planned to use the control and wreck the laboratory,
with its trapped victims. Evidently the elevator was out of commission to stay,
for Shawnwood's glee denoted that the exit would not serve The Shadow or the
trapped people with him.
Calmly, The Shadow dropped to the floor near the elevator and began a
probe with his fingers. Shawnwood's glee ended. The Shadow had found what he
wanted. The portion of the floor where Ralph had noticed loose rivets, on his
previous visit, was a concealed trapdoor that led down to the floor below.
The Shadow knew that the connection must exist, otherwise Shawnwood would
have no access to his laboratory, for the elevator went down inside the wall,
to the subbasement. Working with his quick discovery, The Shadow found the
release and brought the snug door upward.
Glenny, meanwhile, was having trouble with the outlet to the roof.
Shawnwood, screeching for him to hurry, forgot the scene below. Harry and Ralph
had reached the opened trapdoor.
Below, they saw Joe Cardona and a pair of excited detectives. The police
inspector had come to visit Shawnwood, just in time to learn that gunfire had
started somewhere in the top of the house.
A black-cloaked figure came through the trap. Cardona thought it was The
Shadow. He and his men caught the falling form, expecting a heavier weight than
they received. The loosening cloak dropped half away, leaving Cardona amazed by
the sight of Alicia's blond head resting on his shoulder, with a slender arm
draped around his neck.
Harry and Ralph landed in quick succession and yelled for Cardona and the
others to head downstairs. They thought that The Shadow was following them, for
he had ordered them to make a rapid departure. But The Shadow had something else
in mind.
STILL in the laboratory, he could see Shawnwood helping Glenny to crack
their exit open. On the other side of the bullet-proof mesh, they were safe
from gunfire. Given a few moments more, they would be on their way to permanent
security, where Shawnwood's evil brain could hatch out new schemes of crime,
which Glenny could help put in operation.
The Shadow did not allow those needed moments. Clutching the raised
trapdoor in the steel floor with one hand, he reached to the nearest bench,
stuffed cotton wadding into a burning beaker and tossed the improvised
firebrand like a hand grenade.
With the same move, The Shadow dropped through the trap, pulling the
hinged door after him. The beaker was still in midair, as the steel-sheeted
barrier clanged in place. The flames were igniting the wadding, as the beaker
skimmed the edge of the cylindrical tank and dropped into the explosive
contents.
The squatty tank ripped apart in a titanic blast. It lifted the
steel-meshed balcony, and took the entire roof along with it. People who saw
that explosion said that the top of Shawnwood's house opened like an umbrella;
that the flames it gushed would have done credit to a volcano.
Two figures went skyward with that mighty eruption, but they were lost
among the many fragments of Shawnwood's laboratory equipment. As he had
planned, Cyrus Shawnwood took Frederick Glenny with him on a long, long trip,
beyond The Shadow's future reach. But the destination was not the one that the
wizard of crime had contemplated.
Cyrus Shawnwood, the chemical genius who fumed his wizardry to schemes of
crime, had found his own doom in the final thrust that he launched against The
Shadow.
Thanks to the steel floor of the laboratory, the shock did not destroy the
house below it. The Shadow had calculated that the main portion of the building
would resist the explosion. Nevertheless, he had ordered others to be on their
way, before he risked the blast.
They were all outside, watching the flames gorge the ruined housetop, when
The Shadow made his own departure by a side door.
THOUGH Cyrus Shawnwood had paid his followers well, as Fitzcroft, Caulden,
and other later admitted, the master crook had stowed away the major portion of
his profits for the future that he never realized.
His bank accounts were closed, but Ralph Atgood supplied a list of
safe-deposit boxes, which were opened and found stuffed with Shawnwood's spoils.
The recovered funds were restored to the proper owners. Weylan's cash and
securities were identified by the lists that he supplied, and Joe Cardona went
out to Long Island to deliver the quarter million. Joe made the trip in an
armored car, and finished his rough ride by stopping at the Cobalt Club, to
report to Commissioner Weston.
Cardona found the commissioner in the grillroom, talking with Lamont
Cranston amid the interrupting squawks of parrots and macaws. Planking a
package on the table, Cardona announced that he had checked over all needed
details with Ralph Atgood.
"They're going to be married," said Joe. "Young Atgood and Weylan's
daughter. He's a tricky guy, getting a wife that has a good sense of humor!"
Cardona opened the package, to display The Shadow's cloak.
"Miss Weylan was wearing this," said Cardona, "when she was rescued. She
says she doesn't need it any longer, because she has a more extensive wardrobe.
So she suggested that I return it to The Shadow."
"Why don't you?" asked Weston with a smile.
"I said you would, commissioner," returned Cardona. "I told Miss Weylan
that you were going to meet The Shadow on the City Hall steps and that you'd
give him his cloak, along with the pass-key to the city. The cloak is yours,
commissioner!"
Weston was still chuckling after Cardona left. The chortles were being
echoed from a dozen cages when Weston turned to The Shadow.
"You keep the cloak, Cranston," said the commissioner. "Put it in that
trophy room of yours. Just as a memento of the time when Inspector Cardona
found a blonde inside it instead of The Shadow!"
While Cranston was wrapping the cloak in its package, the commissioner had
another thought and expressed it.
"Cyrus Shawnwood was very crafty,
" he said soberly. "I think he was a bit
gone" - Weston tapped his forehead - "up here. Do you remember that time when
he let that gas bomb loose, right here in the grillroom?"
The Shadow nodded. Weston leaned across the table and spoke in a confiding
tone too low for the listening tropical birds to hear.
"Shawnwood tried to kill you!" asserted Weston. "I know it sounds
fantastic Cranston but I actually believe that Shawnwood was crazy enough" -
Weston paused to shake his head - "just crazy enough to think that you could be
The Shadow!"
THE END