The Shadow - The Black Dragon Part 6

Turning to his dapper secretary, Sauber gestured at the scattered papers.

"Gather those, Pelly," Sauber ordered. "Bring them home with you. I am leaving now." Swinging to Weston, Sauber added: "After tonight, I won't need any of your protection, commissioner. Why should I be afraid of things that don't exist - like Black Dragons?"

The conference ended with Sauber's sudden walkout. Leaving with Weston and Cardona, Cranston declined the commissioner's offer to ride in the official car, saying he preferred a stroll in the fresh air, to awaken from his recent doze.

Cranston's stroll ended in the shadows just around the corner. As the commissioner's car rolled away, the corner gloom stirred to life.

Keenly, The Shadow had foreseen that Sauber's erratic behavior might be the forerunner of something deeper and more purposeful. At least, it allowed for certain opportunities that were not apparent on the surface. It had certainly paved the way for one man to go his way unsuspected; namely, Sauber's secretary, Pelly.

Soon, the dapper man appeared from Fenmore's front door. Still poking gathered papers in the brief case, Pelly glanced up and down the street.

Seeing no one watching, he threw a suspicious look back at Fenmore's front windows, then moved along at a quick but s.h.i.+fty pace past the spot where The Shadow watched unseen.

Pelly's first stop was at a small cigar store a few blocks away. Still having trouble with his brief case, he unpacked some papers and laid them on the counter. Buying some cigarettes, he pocketed them, put away the papers and left.

From the blackness that fringed the store window, The Shadow still watched the counter.

There, Pelly had left a square package, placed under cover of the papers.

The cigar clerk scooped up the package and went through a rear door of the shop.

Circling to the next street, The Shadow saw the man from the shop step out, to be promptly accosted by a slouchy panhandler.

What the clerk gave the panhandler wasn't a dime for coffee. It was Pelly's package, obviously for delivery to someone else. Instead of following along the trail, The Shadow faded into thick darkness with a whispered laugh.

IT was Ming Dwan who answered the tinkly ring at Li Huang's front door.

No longer was Li Huang keeping that portal guarded. He no longer had his brawny servants, and Ming Dwan knew why, though she hadn't been informed - at least, not by Li Huang. Those vanished servants were members of the Dragon Clan, whohad actually kept Li Huang under a form of surveillance after he had sold out to the Black Dragon - for a price.

As an employer of traitors, the Black Dragon probably knew how untrustworthy they could prove. However, Li Huang's stint was through, or would be, after he went through with the delivery of a death token to some victim as yet unnamed. The Black Dragon had probably sized Li Huang as willing to do that final task in return for freedom. Hence the removal of the servants in advance was a form of encouragement.

But Li Huang was restless. Ming Dwan could hear his quick footsteps approaching as she opened the front door. Outside was a laundry man with a sizable bundle. Ming Dwan knew him for an honest Chinese. But she knew him to be careless, too, for she'd visited his little one-man shop. Someone could easily have stowed something in this bundle along with Li Huang's laundry.

The proof was the way in which Li Huang s.n.a.t.c.hed the bundle the moment that Ming Dwan closed the door. The girl was almost tempted to press the switch controlling the floor, when Li Huang turned to hurry back to his den. A tumble into the pit, and Li Huang would still be dazed while Ming Dwan joined him and searched the laundry package.

Still, Li Huang would guess things afterward, and that would injure The Shadow's plans. So, instead of using the floor trap, Ming Dwan let Li Huang go his way, while she made a detour past the side door and drew the bolt. Then stealthily the girl went to Li Huang's own door and listened.

Prolonged silence caused Mint Dwan to worry. She'd always been suspicious of Li Huang's paneled room, where he liked to drowse over a pipe containing a dash of opium, until a small alarm gong awakened him. Li Huang's frequent naps might be faked. If he had a secret route from the room, he could use it and return before the time at which he had set the gong. Tonight would certainly be an occasion for secrecy on Li Huang's part.

Slowly, carefully, Ming Dwan turned the handle of the door, ready to give a sudden knock and act surprised when the door went inward, as it sometimes did.

Pausing as she gained a view of the room, Ming Dwan was relieved to see Li Huang, in his chair, leaning forward, head on arm, as he always napped. Beside him was the alarm gong; near it the inevitable pipe.

More important, the laundry package lay open on a chair, its contents rumpled. Li Huang had found what he wanted. It was on the desk in front of him -.

a little jewel box, its deep lid hinged wide, revealing a curved, jet dragon with tiny eyes of jade!

Step by step, Ming Dwan moved inward, breathing the air cautiously to detect the degree of opium that Li Huang had used, and therefore gauge the depth of his sleep. Reaching the desk, she saw a slip of paper projecting from beneath the carved dragon. Ming Dwan's confidence became complete.

Li Huang must have read the instructions on the folded paper, telling him to whom the dragon was to be delivered, and stating the hour at which he was to go. So Li Huang, to soothe his nerves, had set the little gong and taken some long drags at his pipe.

Still, this drowse might be feigned. The thought worried Ming Dwan until her gaze moved from Li Huang's fingers to his wrist. There she saw the telltale marks of a needle's jab. Evidently, Li Huang had been finding the pipe tooslow of late, and had resorted to a quicker way of absorbing dope. So his sleep was deep enough.

Ming Dwan crept a slender, cream-yellow hand toward the jet-hued dragon.

She intended to remove the token from the jewel case and read the folded note that lay beneath it. Li Huang could then fare forth upon his evil mission, only to have The Shadow reach the goal ahead of him. Just as those delicate fingers of Ming Dwan had saved the life of Steve Trask, so could they provide rescue for another threatened man.

A life was hanging in the balance! Such was Ming Dwan's thought, without the realization that the life was her own.

The truth came with a hiss, delivered by the death token that the girl thought was a carved dragon.

With a writhe, the creature came to life. No dragon, this, but a poison lizard that had already left its mark of death upon Li Huang! Again disturbed, the venomous reptilian darted its green-eyed head at the wrist of Ming Dwan!

Stabbing ahead, faster than any human hand could move, was a long, forked fang, thrusting its fatal stroke upon the girl who served The Shadow!

CHAPTER XI.

THE DRAGON'S MESSENGER.

THE anguished shriek that started from Ming Dwan's lips was interrupted on the instant. So suddenly did death jab home that it was done and over before the echoes of the broken cry had faded. The stroke itself was merciless, but the swift result was merciful.

Crumpling forward, Ming Dwan's frail form sagged across the desktop. Her hand gave a lifeless slither away from the spot where death had struck. There, where a carved, jet dragon had reared itself into a living instrument of murder, lay a plasmic ma.s.s of blackness dyed with crimson. From the gel, the redness began to ooze into a slanted furrow that had plowed the teak of Li Huang's desk.

Strange how the echoes of Ming Dwan's cry followed the roar that suppressed the scream itself!

Perhaps it was because the shriek was piercing, voiced in a moment of mortal agony; whereas the roar, though louder, had come with the burst of a thunderclap, an appropriate accompaniment for the flash of flame that produced it.

Yes, death had been swift and merciful, to a creature that deserved death yet could not appreciate mercy - the poison lizard!

His gun still smoking in his fist, The Shadow sprang in from the doorway and caught Ming Dwan as her sliding arm carried her body across the far corner of the desk. Brus.h.i.+ng the tumbled laundry from the handy chair, he rested the girl there and tilted her chin upward. Ming Dwan's breath came back with a gasp, as her eyes opened wide.

The opium-tainted air, the lizard's hissing death jab, the sudden explosion of The Shadow's gun - any of those could have been enough to throw a person into a faint. Not such a person as Ming Dwan. It had taken all three - and more - tooverwhelm this stout-hearted girl.

The more was represented by the bullet from The Shadow's gun. The lizard's darting fang, too fast for a hand to escape, could not outmatch the instantaneous action of a single finger pulling a hair-trigger. The Shadow had proven this with a timely shot that blasted the living trip-hammer midway in its errand of doom.

It was The Shadow's bullet that gave the death jab, reducing the lizard to the gelatin now on the desk. Ming Dwan had felt the quiver of the woodwork as the continuing slug grooved its downward path beneath her frozen hand, forming the channel through which the lizard's life blood now trickled.

Her eyes meeting The Shadow's, Ming Dwan stared, unbelieving. Following his gesture toward the desk, the girl looked in that direction. Her lips formed for another startled cry that her throat failed to voice. Knowing that the lizard's pulp wasn't enough to so startle Ming Dwan, The Shadow turned.

The thing to which Ming Dwan pointed was Li Huang. His body was showing grotesque signs of life, as its arm slithered sideways, under the pressure of a tilting head that turned a bloated, sightless face toward the persons by the desk.

Having witnessed Ming Dwan's slide across the polished surface, The Shadow defined Li Huang's motion properly. The bullet's impact against the desk had jogged the dead man from his balance point. His arm, brus.h.i.+ng pipe and gong ahead of it, was definitely lifeless, as Li Huang's hideous face proclaimed.

WITH The Shadow's hands bracing her shoulders, Ming Dwan steadied as she saw the corpse of Li Huang complete its slide and disappear with its frozen leer in a toppling slump beyond the desk. Her eyes again meeting The Shadow's, Ming Dwan found her voice and began to detail all that had occurred, prior to The Shadow's timely appearance.

What interested The Shadow most was the paper that Ming Dwan mentioned.

It was intact, for The Shadow's shot had literally plucked the lizard from the jewel case. Yet there was something strangely grim in The Shadow's mirth as he reached for the folded note. He knew the paper couldn't contain the Black Dragon's instructions to Li Huang.

As good as dead when he received the package with the living death token, Li Huang, a traitor no longer useful, would need no further orders. Already, The Shadow could sense evil omen in that folded slip of paper.

Opening the sheet, The Shadow read its contents and pa.s.sed the paper to Ming Dwan. The girl's expression changed from horror to anger, as she read: To The Shadow: Greetings, Ying Ko, when you find this message. Alive, Li Huang could have told you much. Dead, he is as useless to you as he already was to me. If you suspected that Li Huang was to deliver a death token to my next victim, you were wrong. I have already provided another messenger.

THE BLACK DRAGON.

The Shadow was clicking a telephone on Li Huang's desk. The action proveduseless, for the line was disconnected - more forethought to the Black Dragon's credit. Clutching Ming Dwan's arm, The Shadow spoke in a tone much like Cranston's, except that it was quicker: "Come, Myra. There's not a moment to lose!"

"You mean the messenger?" queried the girl as they were hurrying toward the side door. "You know who he is?"

"Too well," returned The Shadow grimly. "The Black Dragon slipped in writing that message. The word 'provided' is our clue. It seems impossible, yet stranger things have happened -"

NOTHING could have seemed stranger to Steve Trask as he sat in the quiet security of his room at Dr. Tam's. During his sojourn here, Steve had learned that Tam's house was an absolute stronghold into which neither friend nor foe could find a way without Tam's due permission.

Yet The Shadow had come and gone invisibly within the last five minutes!

The proof lay in Steve's hand, a brief note written on a small slip of torn paper that somehow fluttered to the table beside his tobacco pouch. It was addressed to Steve, and it stated: Our mission is immediate. My car is waiting near Gotham Court.

Take it and deliver the jet dragon. Let no one know.

The Shadow.

Grimly, Steve wadded the paper, its tiny writing on the inside. Thrusting the wad in his pocket, he felt the carved dragon that he still carried. A death token to which he was immune, being under the protection of The Shadow. That, Steve knew, was the reason why The Shadow wanted him to carry it.

A challenge to the Black Dragon, and now to carry it further, The Shadow wanted Steve to deliver the token somewhere. To whom and why, Steve neither knew nor cared. It was The Shadow's order; that was enough. It could only be The Shadow's order, otherwise it could not have arrived here. That was where The Shadow held the advantage over the Black Dragon. The Shadow knew where Steve was: the Black Dragon didn't. So this was The Shadow's order and Steve would follow it.

Picking up his tobacco pouch, Steve found he'd already filled it. The empty can was lying on the table, fragments of its paper lining beside it, where Steve had crumpled them. Funny. Steve didn't remember filling his pouch, though he must have, because he'd been smoking his pipe steadily.

Maybe The Shadow had thrown some hypnotism Steve's way in order to pay the unseen visit. That was it, for Steve was sensing The Shadow's presence as he had that night in the opium den. He was moving steadily, almost rapidly, out through the door and toward a stairway. Below, Tam's men would be on guard, but they were watching for intruders and therefore not concerned with Steve.

Free run of the place - that was what Tam had given Steve in return for a promise not to leave. So there would be no questions from Tam's men and no regrets on Steve's part. He wasn't breaking his word to Tam while following orders from The Shadow!

The night air ended Steve's exit. He was outside, somewhere in Chinatown,though how he'd managed it so swiftly he couldn't understand. Right now Steve's worry was his legs: they were getting draggy. Seeing a cab, Steve stumbled into it. The driver's face showed through a cloud like something from a nightmare.

Its features, though, were plain. This wasn't Shrevvy, so naturally this wasn't The Shadow's cab. Steve laughed.

How could it be?

The Shadow's cab was waiting outside Gotham Court, which meant that The Shadow was probably checking on Carlton Sauber. That suited Steve perfectly, so he muttered: "Gotham Court."

The cab began to revolve. Next it started forward, so its locomotion took a corkscrew effect that made Steve very dizzy. At last the spiral ended and the cab became an arrow that shot right to its mark, stopping like something hitting smack against a target.

Steve handed the driver something that looked like an eleven-dollar bill, judging from the two ones that he saw side by side. No good, eleven-dollar bills, but they couldn't be counterfeit because there weren't any genuines to begin with. Maybe the one and one made two, but that didn't matter, either.

Two-dollar bills were bad luck. The cab driver could have it.

The tail-lights chuckled and the cab was gone. It could go; Steve didn't want it. He wanted The Shadow's cab and here it was, flapping its door and saying: "Get in!" The Shadow's cab, all rigged up nice and new. They'd put a leaf in it, making it longer, like a dining-room table, and painted it so it would look like Commissioner Weston's official car.

Smart fellow, The Shadow, fixing the cab like this for Steve. No cops would think of bothering the commissioner's car. More power to The Shadow.

STEVE'S wish was The Shadow's own. At that moment, The Shadow was wis.h.i.+ng for more power as he stood with Dr. Tam, viewing Steve's empty room. Ming Dwan, peering over their shoulders, arched her eyebrows as she sniffed the atmosphere.

The opium scent was heavier here than at Li Huang's.

"My men did not know," apologized Tam. "They thought that Trask was looking somewhere for me. He seemed in no hurry, yet suddenly, he was gone!"

The Shadow did something very suddenly. Striding to Tam's office, he skimmed his hat across the desk, let his cloak drop from his shoulders. About to play the part of Cranston, he wanted to look like Cranston, even though he was only making a telephone call. After all, he would have an audience: Dr. Tam and Ming Dwan. He could judge from their reactions whether or not his act was convincing.

It was convincing. Tam and the girl stared open-eyed as they viewed Cranston in a state of fervor, something that he so rarely displayed. His call had gone through to police headquarters and he was talking directly to Inspector Joe Cardona.

"Yes, this is Cranston..." The Shadow was putting strain into his tone.

"The commissioner just left the Cobalt Club. That's why I'm calling you, inspector... A message from the commissioner? No! One from the Black Dragon! "Yes, the Black Dragon called me... His voice? I couldn't describe it!

But what he said was even worse. He intends to murder the commissioner...

Absolutely! He says that Commissioner Weston will never leave his car alive, not even if the whole force tries to save him!

"Excellent, inspector! The short wave will help... They may have taken over the commissioner's car, as you say... Yes, in that case, it will try to get away... But wherever it is, it will be reported. Good!"

Real sweat was streaking Cranston's forehead as he finished his intensive hoax. Mopping it with a black handkerchief that he took from his cloak, this man who was The Shadow leaned back and smiled at Dr. Tam and Ming Dwan.

"If Steve is where I think he is," declared Cranston, "the police will find him for us."

"Unless they find the commissioner's car first," observed Tam with a worried expression. "In that case, the search will be ended."

Cranston picked up the slouch hat and turned toward the door.

"They won't find the commissioner's car first," he a.s.sured quite calmly.

"In fact, they won't find it at all."

Tam stared, puzzled, as did Ming Dwan. They saw Cranston raise his cloak collar and place the slouch hat on its head, its brim still upward, so that they could see his face. Sensing an immediate departure, Tam queried: "Why not?"

"Because Commissioner Weston is at the Cobalt Club," declared Cranston.

"His official car is parked right out front, the one place in all New York where the police will never look for it."

Cranston pulled down the hat brim. As darkness obscured his features, his hidden lips delivered the famed laugh of The Shadow. With it, he was gone.