The Shadow - The Mask Of Mephisto Part 1

THE MASK OF MEPHISTO.

by Maxwell Grant.

Somewhere, in that gay carnival of Mardi Gras - somehow, connected with a torn half of a one-hundred-dollar-bill - lurked a macabre problem for The Shadow - pitted against Mephisto!

CHAPTER I.

IT was Mardi Gras night and New Orleans was lush with light, mellow with music, bizarre with costumery. Everybody cared except Ken Langdon.

Reluctantly Ken was forced to admit that he wasn't entirely sad. Mardi Gras Day presented the last and biggest in a long procession of days filled with noise and revelry.

Tomorrow - or specifically at midnight tonight - Carnival would be over and quiet would again be in order. Ken's headaches would be ended and Wingless Victory would be finished.

Wingless Victory was the statue that Ken was molding in his upstairs studio in the patio off Dumaine Street, if anybody cared to know. The trouble was that the people who cared didn't know. As a result, Ken was four months behind on his rent, which was bad business in the French Quarter where everybody else was only three. But this was Carnival time and Ken's landlord, whoever he was, had probably gone amasking with the rest of New Orleans.

Revelry was drifting up through the arched entry to the patio and filtering its way into the room that Ken called a studio. Into that medley shrilled a familiar sound that Ken recognized, the ring of the telephone bell in the downstairs renting office.

Usually Ken paused breathless at that sound, hoping that some patron was summoning him to accept a fabulous offer for Wingless Victory when completed.

Those phone calls always proved to be for someone else, but tonight Ken wasn't taking chances.

Ken hurried out through the door and scurried down the outdoor steps to the courtyard which he crossed at a speed the neighborhood rats would have envied. Breathless, Ken unhooked the telephone.

The voice came thickly: "Mr. Kenneth Langdon? Could I speak to him?"

"This is Langdon." Ken couldn't believe that it had happened. "What can I do for you?"

"Would you like to make some money?"

"Why, yes. Of course the statue isn't finished -"

"One hundred dollars?"

Ken tried to answer but couldn't find words. The toil of six months was heavy on his hands and this insult was too much. What Ken might have said would have been plenty if the voice hadn't intervened: "One hundred dollars for one hour's work."

It was foolish, but so was Mardi Gras with its weeks of revelry, pageantry and idiocy. Ken gulped aloud that he would listen and the voice proceeded, its phrases still thick but disjointed.

"The costume," it said. "In the box - in your studio - wear it, you understand?"

How Ken would wear a costume that didn't exist was something of a question, but he didn't argue it. He just said, "Yes."

"Follow the schedule," the voice continued. "You will find it with thebox. You understand?"

This was clearing the situation somewhat.

"Half payment in advance," the thick voice promised, "and the remainder later. If you agree, dial this number."

The voice gave a number, the receiver clicked and the call was over, leaving Ken wondering if it were all a joke. However, Ken decided to dial the number that the voice had given him.

The number didn't answer in the three times Ken tried it, so he decided to go back up to the studio and lay some more clay on Wingless Victory.

The usual lights in the courtyard were missing. But between the glow from the little office and Ken's upstairs studio, the archway was reasonably visible.

As he started back Ken could have sworn that there was something in that archway, a solid something that slid away hastily as he approached. By the time Ken reached the arch and looked through, there was nothing to see except Dumaine Street and the pa.s.sing show of masqueraders who were turning Frenchtown into anything but a haven for hara.s.sed sculptors like Ken Langdon.

Still wondering who had sneaked out through the arch, Ken reached his studio and climbed the ladder that brought him on a line with Wingless Victory's chin. On the top step of the ladder was a package neatly tied and thoroughly delivered just as somebody on the telephone had promised it would be.

Ken opened the package.

It was hard to swallow Mardi Gras, tough to admit that the Carnival could breed artistic merit. But Ken's eye was stirred by the contents of that large, square package.

The costume proper was a ma.s.s of crimson sheen, a cape as gorgeous in texture as it was ample in proportions. The black ruffle around the neck was obviously intended for a contrast and Ken saw why when he studied the remaining contents. Out from the box peered a devil's head so realistic in its ruddy features that Ken wished he could do as good a facial with Wingless Victory.

A Mask of Mephisto and a masterpiece!

From the costume fluttered an envelope which Ken plucked promptly from the floor. Within it was a sheet of paper with a typewritten schedule telling the places where he was to be at given times. And that wasn't all; the envelope also contained fifty percent of Ken's wages in the form of a hundred dollar bill torn in half.

This Mephisto proposition was devilishly clever.

The sponsor had certainly invested his whole hundred, but Ken would be an equal loser unless he followed the trail to its completion, an equal loser both of the trail and the hundred dollar bill.

Ken caped himself in the crimson robe, picked up the Mephisto head and set it down over his own. Peering down through the ample nostrils of the nose, he read the time sheet and found that he was due to be parading along Ca.n.a.l Street in exactly ten minutes. He set forth, wearing what the well-dressed Satan should wear.

Frenchtown struck Ken as a strange world on this last night of Carnival.

The narrow streets with their overhanging balconies and lattice ironwork were the same, but the people looked different. True, they were in costume, but that hardly accounted for their odd behavior, for the way they stopped and stared. Ken Langdon was stopping these maskers in their tracks!

If His Mephistophelean Majesty had popped up in person from the antiquated paving of the French Quarter, he couldn't have riveted the pa.s.sers-by in any better style.

But why?

Somewhere along Royal Street, the answer filtered through. It wasn't the horror of his costume that impressed them; it was the magnificence.

Whoever had squandered too much on this Satanic outfit had done it well.

Never had a more resplendent Mephistopheles stalked the by-ways of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. As the murmurs of appreciation reached Ken, he began to feel a pride, even though the costume wasn't his own idea.

Ken found himself liking Mardi Gras until he reached Iberville Street.

There something happened that wasn't listed on his schedule sheet. The admiring eyes that trailed the magnificent Mephisto opened wider as they saw a rival for the t.i.tle of the Carnival's outstanding masker.

They came face to face, Mephisto and The Shadow!

Cloaked in black, his features lost beneath the downturned brim of a slouch hat, the masquerader who confronted Ken immediately stole the show.

Until a moment before, this black-clad personage had been inconspicuous in the general parade, but in contrast to the flaming crimson of Mephisto's regalia, The Shadow's somber garb literally leaped into prominence.

It was as if some impossible challenger had risen to meet an equally fabulous foe, and the prominence that The Shadow gained so suddenly gave a startling realism to the Mephisto who confronted him.

Then, as the eager crowd jostled forward to witness what seemed an actual crisis, the masqueraders were separated by the swirl. Through design more than chance, The Shadow blotted himself into the patchy darkness where the street lights were few, while Mephisto, with all his gorgeous s.h.i.+mmer, was forgotten by the eyes that stared after the cloaked figure that disappeared so suddenly.

And Ken Langdon, swirled along toward Ca.n.a.l Street, was looking back, wondering what had become of the cloaked Nemesis who had disturbed the triumphal parade. Again, however, Ken's majestic trappings were attracting attention from new observers who hadn't seen The Shadow's brief eclipse of the brilliant Satanic grandeur.

This singular encounter was a mere incident amid the masked revelers who were celebrating the end of Carnival's reign, but it had all the semblance of an omen, The Shadow's crossing of Mephisto's path!

CHAPTER II.

AROUND a corner where no one would have expected him to reappear, the masker who wore the black cloak and hat stepped suddenly from a doorway. With a few short strides he reached a masked girl who was wearing a short-skirted Columbine costume and literally plucked her from the crowd.

Next they were sweeping through the door of a little cafe where a sleepy waiter was eyeing a stretch of empty tables. Taking a table in a subdued corner, the man in black removed his hat and dropped back his cloak, while Miss Columbine discarded her domino mask.

The girl spoke first with a slight laugh of relief.

"I knew this would happen," she said. "You just can't do it, Lamont."

"Do what, Margo?"

The man's query had an even tone that went with his calm face. Both were habits with Lamont Cranston. Being used to them, Margo Lane suspected thatCranston knew exactly what was in her mind, but she didn't say so. Instead: "You can't put on a black coat and hat and expect people not to notice it," Margo declared. "That is not if you let them see you, not even during Mardi Gras."

"You're positive?"

"Absolutely positive."

"Then why talk in negatives?" queried Cranston with a slight smile.

"That's all you've been using, Margo, and all that backs your argument was my chance meeting with that chap in the Mephisto outfit."

Margo had to admit that Cranston was right. Among all the quaint characters represented by the merrymakers, The Shadow had been the least noticed until the Red Devil had popped up to meet him. Still, Margo was wondering why Cranston had chosen his Shadow costume and that brought up the question of why he had come to New Orleans at all.

"I was perfectly happy at Miami Beach," sighed Margo, ruefully, "until I received your wire telling me to fly to New Orleans for Mardi Gras Day. I suppose you've been here all along, enjoying the preliminary features of the Carnival?"

Cranston shook his head.

"No, Margo. I just arrived from New York today."

"Just to see the parades?" queried Margo. "Well, I suppose they're worth it. The Rex parade was wonderful and I really can't wait to see the night parade of Comus."

"Except that you aren't going to see it, Margo."

A flash of indignation sparked Margo's dark eyes; then smiling it away, the girl treated the subject as a jest.

"So I won't see Miss m.u.f.fet and her tuffet," declared Margo, "Jack and his bean-stalk, or the rest of them. The floats are all supposed to represent Mother Goose stories, you know. I just delight in Mother Goose."

"You'd better read up on it then. You won't find Jack's bean-stalk in among those yarns."

"Anyway, I wouldn't miss the parade for a thousand dollars!"

"Not for a hundred thousand, Margo?"

There was something so steady in Cranston's tone that Margo knew he meant it. In reply to Margo's questioning eyes, Cranston pa.s.sed a small, thin-paper certificate across the table. The official look of the paper impressed Margo and as she read its t.i.tle, she exclaimed: "Why, it's a ticket for the Louisiana Lottery!"

"A winning ticket, Margo. Worth a hundred thousand if it draws the grand and only prize."

"But I thought the Louisiana Lottery was banned!"

"So was horse racing," reminded Cranston, "and recently. Certain ways had to be designed for people to stake money, and the Louisiana Lottery was one of them. It always had a solid reputation in gaming circles. Therefore its revival won immediate confidence."

"But how does the lottery pay off - and where?"

Cranston answered that with a question of his own.

"Did you ever hear of the Krewe of the Mystic Knights of Hades?"

Margo shook her head, then said brightly: "It sounds like one of these New Orleans Carnival a.s.sociations."

"It is," stated Cranston, "but the Knights of Hades are strictly secret and do not parade. They hold a Ball of Death in what they term the Devil's Den and all the guests are strangers."

"Why strangers?"

"Because New Orleans is full of them, all fighting to get invitations from the dozen or more organizations that are unable to fill all requests." "But how is anyone invited to the Ball of Death?"

"By lot." Cranston emphasized the words. "Names are picked from hotel registers or other sources and the invitations sent."

"And what goes on at the Ball of Death?"

"Some curious ceremony with a Wheel of Fate in which the winner is called the loser and is banished from the Realm Below, with some slight gift so he won't feel too unhappy. Only this year, the gift may be different."

The point dawned slowly on Margo. Then: "You mean that the Krewe of Hades is the front for the Louisiana Lottery!"

As Cranston nodded, he tossed an engraved card across the table.

"Your surmise is correct, Margo, and there is the proof."

Reading the card Margo saw that it was an invitation to the Grand Ball of Death, to be held in the Devil's Den, otherwise known as the Hoodoo House, under auspices of the Scribe, the Seneschal and the Messenger, the official representatives of his Satanic Majesty, Mephistopheles the Faust.

Margo frowned. "There's no name on the invitation."