they want to hold us up for half a mill -"
Bristow caught himself.
"They want too much money," he declared. "But we'll have to pay it, if
this doesn't work out."
Thurver was pouring ingredients into a fresh beaker. He apparently hadn't
noticed the slip, wherein Bristow had almost said "half a million dollars." The
Chem-Lab formula, developed in its own plant, had cost the company nothing more
than a few bonus payments to Thurver and some others.
The formula was mixed. Picking up an extra bottle, Thurver added a small
quantity of liquid from it.
"Solution K," he stated; "It has no effect upon the other chemicals,
except as a cooling agent. Watch, while I demonstrate how it offsets heat."
He repeated his former experiment. Under the high flame of the Bunsen
burner, the mixture occasionally bubbled and emitted smoke, but there was no
flame. Bristow, his elbows propped upon the desk, watched the process for a
fascinated ten minutes.
"Do you have enough of this new solution?" he demanded. "A sufficient
quantity to use in the plant?"
Thurver nodded.
"Have it added at once! We shall speed production as soon as you are
ready."
"It might be better to wait," suggested Thurver, "until I have made longer
tests -"
"You've been experimenting for five weeks," snapped Bristow. "That's long
enough, Thurver."
WITHIN half an hour, Bristow received word that all was ready in the
Fibrolast Division. Descending from his tower office, Bristow joined the chief
chemist on a platform high above the huge pressure machines. Watching the flow
of the chemical baths, Thurver gave the nod.
Great wheels started. Masses of brownish shoddy were shredded through
machines that shoved the raw product into a vat. Rendered pulpy by the liquid,
the stuff came dripping along rollers, to pass beneath the first presses.
Dipped again, it was pressed farther. Past intervening machines, Bristow
could see the final process that sent the sheets of Fibrolast into great stacks
that were wheeled away by busy workmen. It was Bristow who signaled for more
speed. The pounding of giant machines became a heavy clatter.
Half deaf to things that Thurver shouted in his ear, Bristow was nodding
and shaking his head at random. Gleefully, the president of Chem-Lab was seeing
a long-waited order turned out in record time. The vats were bubbling, but
workers were ignoring them. Already accustomed to wisps of fading smoke instead
of sudden puffs of flame, the men were close to the machines.
Thurver was shouting, warningly, in Bristow's ear, when a sudden thing
happened.
With a fury volcanic, a whole vat ignited. As scorched workers yelled,
another vat burst into flame. Great licking tongues were flinging out to ignite
the remaining baths, which responded instantly. The pulpy fiber turned into a
huge torch, serving as a carrier for the flames.
Men, like machines, were enveloped in an acrid smoke that carried to all
corners of the great floor. Bristow, Thurver, others near them, were staggering
for the open air, their faces buried in their coats. Men at the stacking racks
were getting into a corner exit, but those near the center of the floor were
doomed.
Loud clangs told that the company fire-fighting apparatus was on hand. The
smoke-eaters who worked for Chem-Lab were always ready, with gas masks handy.
They knew how to fight conflagrations that occurred in the Fibrolast division.
Though up against a bigger job than ever, they handled it.
By the time Eugene Bristow had been helped, choking, to his office, he was
able to look down and see only great billows of smoke where titanic gushes of
flame had been. The machines had been saved; but the men were a different
matter.
Bristow could see a score of them on stretchers, handled by gas-masked
rescuers. Flame-tortured victims were being taken to the emergency hospital;
from some of them, Bristow could hear agonized shrieks. A few, he noted, did
not move.
LATER, Bristow found Thurver brooding in the laboratory. The chief chemist
spoke mournfully.
"Evaporation must have caused it," he said. "The puffs were the
deterioration of Solution K. I tried to tell you, Mr. Bristow, that something
might go wrong."
"You should have foreseen it, Thurver -"
"I asked for time to make further experiments," interrupted Thurver,
almost accusingly. "You should have given it. There was a chance that the new
solution might not work; and it finally didn't. You'll have to buy up that
Experimento formula."
Bristow shook his head.
"I m going to see Ray Parringer," he declared. "As a consulting chemist,
he is the best. He is reliable, and his fees are reasonable."
"But Parringer doesn't have our formula."
"I'm taking it to him," declared Bristow, grimly, "so he can test it
thoroughly with fresh ingredients."
When Bristow had gone, Thurver still sat mournfully at his bench, but his
eyes were darting side glances toward his assistants. When they had left,
Thurver reached quickly for the telephone and gave a New York number. Like
Glenny the day before, Thurver recognized the voice that responded.
"The works went, chief," informed Thurver, in a low tone, "like I said it
would... Sure! Bristow fell for my bluff. He thought I had something that would
help... Our solutions? No, he doesn't suspect them. He's too worried to try to
blame me...
"He's going to Parringer, though, like we thought... Yes, taking him the
formula. To have him test it on his own... All right, chief. I know you can
spike it... Leave this end of it to me. When I take my vacation, I won't come
back... Yes, the Experimento buy is set, if Parringer flukes..."
His call finished, Thurver took another darting glance around him. Finding
himself alone, he drew an envelope from his pocket. It was the one that Ralph
Atgood had mailed the afternoon before.
George Thurver had already opened the envelope, but he wanted another
gloating look at its contents. He drew a slip of paper into sight, chuckled,
then thrust it back again.
That slip was a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made out to cash
and signed by R. G. Dean.
CHAPTER III
CRIME MOVES AHEAD
As late as dusk, the flame-streaked walls of the Chem-Lab plant were
visible from the Skyway, the great motor highway that stretches across the
Jersey Meadows, carrying traffic to and from Manhattan.
A passenger in a large limousine noted the vague outlines of those
ghostlike buildings. There was a keen flash to the eyes that peered from the
viewer's hawklike face; a whispered laugh escaped his thin, straight lips.
Tuning the dial of the limousine's radio, the hawkish passenger listened
intently to new accounts of the Chem-Lab tragedy that were coming over the air.
The passenger in the limousine was named Lamont Cranston. He was riding
into Manhattan to have dinner at the Cobalt Club with his friend Ralph Weston,
New York's police commissioner. But Cranston was alread
y planning to cancel
that engagement.
Usually, Commissioner Weston insisted upon talking about crime. Cranston
enjoyed the topic, when it related to events of importance. But he didn't care
to listen while Weston reviewed a hodgepodge of trifling gang fights and police
raids; not while real crime was in the air.
The Chem-Lab tragedy came under the head of real crime in Cranston's
opinion. There had been smaller fires at the plant; this afternoon's holocaust
linked with them. True, Cranston was probably the only crime investigator who
held that theory; but his ideas were usually correct.
At night, when crime was on the move, Lamont Cranston frequently changed
from a placid clubman of leisurely manner to a weird, black-cloaked being whose
actions were swift and devastating to persons who wallowed in evil deeds.
Actually, this personage, who posed as Lamont Cranston, was The Shadow!
There was a real Lamont Cranston, but he was usually out of the country on
big-game hunts or travels to strange places; thus, The Shadow adopted his
identity.
Arriving at the Cobalt Club, Cranston took a simple but direct step toward
crime's trail. He called up the hotel where Eugene Bristow lived and asked to
talk to the president of the Chem-Lab Co. It seemed that Mr. Bristow was not
about; that should he return, he would not care to make a statement to anyone.
Mr. Bristow's attorneys could be seen tomorrow, if the matter was important.
Hearing all that from a glib secretary, The Shadow made his own comments
in the slow, even tone of Cranston. What he said changed the situation entirely.
It happened that Cranston held stock in the Chem-Lab Co., and was also a
resident of New Jersey. He had learned, from a confidential source, that
Bristow was due for an unpleasant get-together with the Jersey authorities,
which might be smoothed over if he held a preliminary conference with an
influential friend like Cranston.
The argument brought results. From the anxious-toned secretary, The Shadow
learned that Bristow was already on his way back to New Jersey, but that he was
making a short stop and could be reached by calling a phone number that the
secretary gave: Caravan 6-2347.
Calling the Caravan number, The Shadow received no answer. He put in a
call to Burbank, his contact man, who checked on Caravan 6-2347 in a special
phone book listed by numbers, instead of names. Burbank informed that the
number belonged to a consulting chemist named Ray Parringer.
The clue was a pointed one; the fact that Parringer did not answer, gave
it an element of mystery. Telling Burbank to contact another of The Shadow's
secret agents, named Harry Vincent, The Shadow strolled from the Cobalt Club.
He was scarcely in his limousine before he dropped the guise of Cranston.
From a secret drawer beneath the big rear seat, The Shadow produced a
black cloak, a slouch hat, a pair of thin gloves, and a brace of automatics.
Equipped with such garb and implements, he became - The Shadow!
ACTUALLY, the mystery of the unanswered telephone call was a very slight
one. It happened that Parringer hadn't heard the bell ring. His telephone was
in a tiny office that adjoined his second-floor laboratory over an empty
garage. Parringer had chosen a very squalid neighborhood, where the smells from
the lab would not annoy the residents.
At present, the consulting chemist had a visitor: Eugene Bristow. The
Chem-Lab president had given Parringer the secret formula and was impatiently
watching while the chemist made up the various solutions. Glancing, at his
watch, Bristow remarked:
"I can't wait any longer, Parringer. I have an appointment in New Jersey.
Check your own findings with Thurver's report sheet and let me know the result.
We are willing to pay your highest consultant fee."
Parringer nodded, blinking, like a wise owl, through a pair of horn-rimmed
spectacles. But Parringer, withered and gray, was not as wise as he looked; a
fact to which Bristow could testily. For a mere fifty dollars - Parringer's
highest fee - Bristow hoped to get facts that might save him half a million.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was locked, so Parringer conducted
Bristow down to open it. On the way, the chemist remarked:
"It surprises me that your formula should become inflammable, even under
heat. Of course, if some of the solutions were not precisely right, anything
might happen. An overamount of Solution B, for instance -"
"Thurver has double-checked all that," interposed Bristow. "Nevertheless,
that may be the trouble. I am depending upon you to learn the answer."
Parringer nodded. Then: "If the formula proves inflammable, it will be
impossible to remedy it, Mr. Bristow. Thurver's addition of a cooling agent,
which he called Solution K, could not cure the trouble. Any such solution would
be liable to evaporation under heat."
Bristow's car was waiting. Parringer watched it pull away, then locked the
door and started upstairs. Halfway to the top, he heard someone rapping at the
door. Thinking that Bristow had returned, he went down and opened it. Instead
of finding Bristow, he faced a very earnest young man who handed him a package.
"My name is Atgood," said the stranger. "I was told to bring you this
package. It must have been sent from the Chem-Lab Co., for it bears their
label."
ingredients from the plant. Probably Thurver had decided to send them, for on
the package was the rubber-stamped statement: "For Immediate Test. Rush."
Then suspicion gleamed from Parringer's wise eyes. He asked sharply:
"Why didn't you deliver this while Mr. Bristow was here?"
"Mr. Bristow?" asked Ralph
"Yes," returned Parringer. "He is the president of Chem-Lab Co. He left
only a few minutes ago."
Ralph smiled at his own ignorance.
"I never met Mr. Bristow," he explained. "In fact, I never heard of him
before. I was told that this package was so important that it had to he
delivered to you alone. That is why I waited until Mr. Bristow had gone. I saw
his car outside, but had no idea who your visitor was."
The frank statement satisfied Parringer. Ralph went his way, and the
chemist returned upstairs. Laying the package on a shelf, he placed his own
mixture over a Bunsen burner and increased the heat. After a few minutes,
Parringer smiled and said: "Ah!"
He had put the burner up to what Thurver described as "superheat" and the
mixture did not even bubble. Parringer's theory was right. The ingredients at
the plant were faulty. As a consequence, Parringer's interest centered
immediately upon the package that Ralph had brought.
OPENING the package, Parringer found one bottle already mixed, along with
smaller bottles, each bearing a lettered label, including the new Solution K.
Deciding to test the faulty formula, Parringer poured some of the complete
mixture into a beaker. Before proceeding, he opened an envelope that was tucked
in beside the bottles.
What Parringer expected to find was a note from Thurver embellished with a
lot of chemical symbols, to help him in the test. He wasn't surprised that the
company chemist should be seeking his cooperation. But Parringer was actually
astonished at what he did find in the envelope.
His lean fingers drew out a slip of paper that bore the terse typewritten
statement:
Thurver's work is satisfactory. Return these chemicals intact,
and mark the labels: "Analyzed." Instead of summing your own tests,
simply mark Thurver's report sheet with the word: "Confirmed."
R. G. D.
Parringer was puzzled by the initials R. G. D., until he unfolded a larger
slip that the envelope contained. It was a check for ten thousand dollars, made
out to cash and signed R. G. Dean.
Who Mr. Dean was, Parringer neither knew nor cared. The angry mutters that
the owlish man gave were meant for George Thurver. He saw Thurver not as a man
responsible for murder, or a person faithless to his employer, but as a traitor
to his own profession.
Thurver had been bribed to fake the Chem-Lab formula. The master crook
behind the game was trying the same tactics with Parringer. This time, the
mysterious Mr. Dean had picked the wrong man. Parringer did not intend to heed
his thin-veiled threat, even with its offer of easy money.
There was just one duty for Ray Parringer. That was to expose Thurver's
fraud and let the law take care of the rest, including R. G. Dean. The first
step was at hand: to test the doped mixture that Thurver had supplied, then
analyze its ingredients. Intent upon that task, Parringer set the beaker with
the mixture on a tripod above a burner.
The withery chemist had just increased the flame, when blackness stretched
across the workbench. Hearing a sharp hiss from the doorway, Parringer looked up.
He saw a figure in black, with burning eyes that peered from beneath a
slouch hat. Those eyes had spied the open package and the envelope lying upon
the workbench.
Hidden lips voiced a quick order that Parringer did not heed. The Shadow
sped for the workbench, to end the test that the chemist had so unwisely
started. From his cramped space behind the bench, Parringer grabbed a crucible
and hurled it at The Shadow's head.