The Shadow - The Golden Dog Murders Part 13

Five minutes later, the two investigators approached the deadly gate.

Vincent was wearing rubber gloves, the sort used by professional linesmen inhandling heavy current.

He examined the gate's lower hinge, then drew something out that was tucked flat in a groove of the metal. It was a tiny sc.r.a.p of folded paper.

Unfolding it with nervous fingers, Harry Vincent saw that there were two brief sentences typed, on the paper. It was unsigned, and read: Proceed 210 feet south along outside wall.

Enter grounds through The Shadow's Stone.

"The Shadow's Stone!" Cardona e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "What the devil does that mean?"

Vincent didn't know any more than Joe did. But he took something from his pocket, that showed he had been prepared for just such an emergency. It was a disk of steel that contained a rolled tape measure.

"The tape is exactly one hundred feet long," he whispered to Cardona.

"I'll unreel it until it's taut. Then bring your end south to wherever I'm standing, and we'll repeat. Two lengths of the tape and ten feet more will give us our exact measurement."

He started to back up with the end of the tape, when he halted suddenly.

"What's that?" he cried.

He was peering upward at the black night sky. Ragged clouds covered the moon. But Vincent stared rigidly, trying to see something in that black void overhead.

"Listen! Can you hear it?"

There was a faint echo, like the distant tw.a.n.g of a rubber band - silence - then again that tw.a.n.ging sound high in the sky.

"An airplane!" Cardona cried.

He was right. But there was more than an invisible airplane in the sky tonight. Drifting slowly down, was a queer, whitish blur in the darkness. It looked like a pale mushroom as it floated toward the quiet earth.

A parachute! The tight-drawn cords from the spread edges of silk were attached to the dangling dot of a man. He was too tiny and too far away for Cardona or Vincent to be able to tell his ident.i.ty.

They had a quick, startled glimpse of his swinging body. Then he dropped out of sight among the trees inside the walled grounds.

The moon was again visible, as the racing clouds overhead parted for an instant. But vision was of no use now to Vincent or Cardona. Whoever the strange visitor from the sky was, he was out of sight.

WAS it The Shadow himself? The question occurred simultaneously to both observers. Cardona shrugged. Vincent shook his head. Both had a hunch that it was not The Shadow. A parachute jump didn't seem to tie up with the message in the gate hinge concerning "The Shadow's Stone".

Then who was it? The mysterious head of the crime syndicate? Was he arriving from the sky to appear masked and unknown before his a.s.sembled henchmen?

Uncertainty spurred Vincent and Cardona to nervous speed.

Harry disappeared with the end of the measuring tape. It stretched taut in the blackness of the road outside the Wall. It tugged sharply three times.

Then it went limp. Cardona pressed the b.u.t.ton on the metal container in his hand and the tape rolled backward under the pull of a powerful spring.

Joe hurried to where Vincent waited. Again the tape was stretched. Then ten more feet brought the eager men to the two-hundred-and-ten-foot mark described in the message of The Shadow. At this point, there was one of the high arc lights beyond the wall, along the road. But where - and what - was The Shadow's Stone?

It was impossible to tell. The wall itself offered no clue. It was exactly the same as at any other point. The ominous steel points of electrified spikes at the top precluded any possibility of scaling it at this spot.

Vincent and Cardona examined the wall more carefully. It was formed of cemented stones. One seemed no different from another, yet one of these stones must be an entrance to the grounds. The Shadow had promised it - and The Shadow's word was infallible!

Light from the single lamp at this spot of the road dappled the faces of Cardona and Vincent as they stared hopelessly at the barrier. There was a break in the bushes on the side of the road. The slanting light stained part of the wall with whiteness.

The rest of the wall remained in darkness. Was this the clue? Vincent racked his brain for a solution to the puzzle.

He backed across the road as a painter backs away from an easel to get a more distant view of the composition of a troublesome picture.

Suddenly, Harry gave a quick cry of delight. He had the answer! He had missed it hitherto, because he was too close to the wall.

He saw now that one of those light-bathed stones was splashed with shade.

The leafy top of a tree across the road cast a black, irregular blotch over one of the stones. It made a tiny, yet grimly familiar, silhouette. A line like the jut of a strong beaked nose; a suggestion of a firm mouth and chin half hidden by the folds of a lifted cloak The Shadow's Stone!

CHAPTER XVI.

THE GOLDEN SPECTER.

A MAN hung swinging in mid-air at the end of a tangle of twisted ropes.

Above his head was the dark blur of spreading branches. Below him was the vague blackness of the ground. The man hung like a jerking spider.

He was the mysterious parachute jumper who had floated downward from an unseen plane in the night sky. His chute had dropped him like a plummet through the foliage of a tall pine. Branches had whizzed past his head like clubs. But he was a man of skill and nerve. His upraised arms had protected his face and eyes just before he struck the tree.

Lifting his head, he could see the torn wreckage of the parachute. It had fouled itself on the spiked branches at the top of the pine. Draped in grotesque folds, it could fall no farther. The man at the end of the shrouds hung taut.

Moonlight flicked his upturned face for an instant. It was a grim countenance. The eyes blazed with strength and cunning. A trickle of blood ran down the man's cheek from a gash on his forehead; but the splash of crimson was the only spot of color in a face that was as gray as clay.

The parachute jumper was David Frick.

He didn't waste a moment of time. Coolly, he measured the distance below his dangling legs to the ground. His quick estimate told him that the fall could not be more than twenty feet. He fumbled in a pocket of his clothing. It was hard to reach what he was after because of his rope harness. His exertions made his body circle dizzily.

But he finally jerked out a clasp knife. His teeth helped get the bladeopen. Holding on grimly with one hand he used the other to sever the nest of cord's that bound him to the wreckage of the parachute.

His left hand clutched the last cord about the spot where the keen blade of his knife cut through. Dropping the knife, he hung on for an instant with both hands. It saved him from an uncontrolled plunge to the ground.

His hands began to slip. But his body was stiffening like an acrobat's, his pointed toes held close together. Coolly, he glanced downward - and let go his grip.

Straight as an arrow, he dropped. His lungs were expanded, knees slightly bent, arms folded over his chest. The impact was terrific. But as he rolled head over heels, he allowed himself to fall with the boneless ease of a rubber doll.

His neck hinged his face close to his chest; his arms remained folded to avoid a fracture. Like an enormous ball, he rolled down a slight declivity in the ground. Then he lay relaxed and panting.

When he straightened out his arms and legs and tested them, he found he had escaped serious injury. Except for a stone bruise on the back of his skull, and a dull ache in one of his thighs, Frick was unhurt.

Instantly, he was on his feet. He slipped silently through the interlaced leaves of the underbrush beyond the tall pine.

He came presently to a gravel-covered path, stood watching it from concealment. He saw that the path wound inward from the gate in the electrified wall. David Frick expected visitors to come along that path. He expected to see the furtive figures of Ramon Ortega and Otto Muller.

He was disappointed in that hope. He was unaware that Muller and Ortega had entered the grounds before he had leaped from an airplane high in the black sky. After a while, however, he guessed the truth. Silently he stepped from concealment to the path.

Am instant later, with a gasp, he was back out of sight. He had seen the staccato beams of a flashlight through the steel bars of the gate in the wall.

A signal!

THE signal was answered by someone farther back in the grounds. A man hurried past Frick's covert at a quick trot. Frick recognized him as he pa.s.sed.

It was Squint, one of Sam Baron's gun-slingers.

Squint turned off the electric current and opened the gate. He came back with a companion whose ugly voice rumbled deep in his throat. Frick recognized the voice before he saw the face.

Sam Baron!

Baron and Squint hurried along the gravel path. Their goal was evidently some spot deep within the guarded grounds. David Frick followed them like a gray wraith. His body merged with the blackness of shrubbery, his feet made no sound on the turf. He paralleled his two figures, never losing sight of them for an instant.

Presently, he saw where they were heading. A large frame building with a high peaked roof, loomed in the darkness.

Baron hurried to the front door and opened it. He and Squint vanished inside the building. But before the door closed behind them, a queer sound was audible from within. A shrill medley of chattering and screaming. It rose to a high pitch as the door opened, then died into silence in the faint slam the closing door made.

David Frick moved stealthily forward to investigate the interior of that frame building. But a more ominous sound baited him. From the darkness behind him came a coughing roar. To Frick's tense nerves, the snarling echo seemed tovibrate almost behind his back. He whirled.

David Frick knew enough of tigers to recognize the roar of one when he heard it!

But the sound was not very close. Frick's s.h.i.+ver changed to a grin of relief. Turning on his heel, he abandoned further thoughts of the distant jungle beast.

He followed the closer trail of Squint and Sam Baron. He darted like a gray streak toward the frame building from whose opened door had issued that jangled outcry of chattering and shrieks.

Stealthily, Frick opened the door - HARRY VINCENT had a mind as quick as a steel trap. He had no sooner discovered the meaning of The Shadow's Stone, than he was racing eagerly toward it to discover the mechanism of how it worked.

He found there was no mechanism at all. The stone and the one next to it were loose in the wall. Harry didn't hesitate to tug at it. His hands were still encased in rubber gloves. He took no chances on the fact that the steel-spiked fence atop the stone wall was probably insulated from the masonry beneath to avoid leakage of electricity. Insulated or not, Harry kept on his linesman's rubber gloves.

The cement between The Shadow's Stone and the one next to it was a binding agent that was easily removed. It was putty. Harry dug it out in a few moments.

Cardona helped him remove the two stones from the wall.

The rectangular hole thus disclosed was large enough for both men to squeeze through. Inside, they advanced cautiously through the thick planting of shrubbery within the wall.

They came presently to the pine from which David Frick had dropped after slas.h.i.+ng himself loose from his dangling parachute harness. The marks of his fall were clearly evident in the soft earth beneath the pine. Staring upward, Cardona saw the wreckage of the silken chute entangled in the upper branches of the tree.

His grim exclamation was echoed by Vincent. They still had no idea of the ident.i.ty of the mysterious 'chute jumper but his present whereabouts were hinted at by the marks in the earth and the bent branches of shrubbery where Frick had glided out of sight.

Following the faint trail, Cardona and Vincent emerged from the interlacing leaves at the point where Frick had halted beside the gravel road.

Here all trace of Frick was lost. But Cardona was not easily discouraged.

Motioning to Vincent, he followed the road as it wound deeper and deeper into the grounds. The two men kept close to the shrubbery that lined its border, ready to duck out of sight at the slightest hint of danger.

They heard and saw nothing until they reached the frame building into which Frick had vanished when he had followed Sam Baron and Squint.

There were no windows in the building, through which Cardona could peer.

Apparently, light was admitted through a gla.s.sed skylight arrangement on the roof.

Drawing his Police Positive, Joe Cardona motioned meaningly to Vincent.

The two stationed themselves on either side of the closed door. As Joe threw it open, both men flattened themselves against the entry, their guns pointing inward.

They could see nothing. It was pitch-dark in the building. But a terrific jangle of shrieks, yelps and chattering issued from the warm darkness. With it came a fetid, unpleasant smell. Animal smell! Vincent closed the door softly behind them. His tiny electric torch sent a stab of yellow into the blackness. Then his tense body relaxed. He began to laugh with nervous relief. Cardona, too, was chuckling.

The place was a monkey house! Dozens of apes were darting wildly about their cages, grimacing, leaping from trapezes, making a shrill and hideous uproar.

THE fact that the apes were so wildly excited, meant something to Cardona.

He sensed that the recent presence of other humans had aroused the monkeys to so excited a pitch. The glow of his torch proved the accuracy of his deduction.

In the center of the floor, in the open area between the cages, was a square black opening.

Someone had raised a trapdoor and had left it open behind him. Someone who might have been afraid to close off his line of retreat!

Cardona's torch showed that a flight of steep wooden steps led downward to what looked like a cement cellar beneath the floor of the monkey house.

But Joe didn't descend. At that exact instant, he and Harry Vincent heard from somewhere outside the building the same vibrating echo that had made David Frick flinch.

It was the coughing roar of a man-eating tiger!

Going outside, they waited until the noise was repeated; then they were able to trace it. It came from a section of the grounds sharply off to the left. A narrow footpath led upward through the darkness, to the summit of what seemed to be a natural rock knoll. At the brow of the hill, the path turned sharply and descended into a rocky hollow.

Vincent pointed with a shaking forefinger. His voice was like the clink of ice.

"Good heavens, can you see him? Look at that striped devil! He's enormous!"

They could see below them the barred outlines of a large, open-air pit.

Inside the pit, chained to the rock wall behind him that formed part of his prison, was an enormous tiger. It lay full length, with its huge head couched on its extended paws. Every once in a while, the striped head lifted lazily.

The coughing mutter of its roar made the ground vibrate.

Vincent and Cardona descended the dark slope, approached the bars of the open-air den. On the door of the cage, a faded placard had been tacked to a slab of wood, evidently by the former circus owners of the jungle beast. The sign read: BENGAL TIGER.

Habitat: India, Province of Rajk.u.mana.

Cardona gasped as he read that faded placard. Rajk.u.mana! It was the name of the native princ.i.p.ality ruled over by the Maharajah Ali Singh! Was that the reason why the suave Senor Ortega was here tonight? Was Ortega himself the unknown master criminal behind the theft of his own sapphires?