Part 4 (1/2)
”I was saying,” returned Salter, crisply, ”that the Xitli legend as yet remains unproven. This throne room is your whim, Hedwin, not mine.”
Hedwin's scrawny hands came up, as though he intended to dig his clawish fingernails into Salter's throat.
With a shrug, the curator turned away. ”Come, let us look at the other exhibits,” he said. ”Then we'll return downstairs, where a buffet supper has been prepared for us.”
It was Andy who restrained old Hedwin, for he knew how to humor the professor. Blocking the door, Andy asked Hedwin to identify the various Xitli images in the niches, according to their inscriptions.
Yvonne Carland looked quite interested; so did Lamont Cranston. Finding that he had an audience, the professor roamed the room, picking out the various figurines and stating in what parts of Mexico he had uncovered them.
By the time Hedwin and his present companions rejoined the group downstairs, the old professor was beaming happily, his feud with Salter forgotten, like his outbursts against Carland and Dorn. In fact, Hedwin became deeply interested when he heard Salter tell about the thwarted robbery of a few nights before.
Both Talborn and Brendle supported Salter's description, and all seemed pleased when they saw Cranston nod his agreement to their account. Meanwhile, the guests were making inroads into the buffet supper, and when the story was finished, Professor Hedwin wagged an oyster fork about the group.
”Those robbers were after the Xitli relics, I warrant,” declared the professor, solemnly. ”But I tricked them. I didn't s.h.i.+p the Xitli remains; I brought them personally, instead. But I am glad, Salter, that you stopped the robbery. By doing so, you saved some very fine exhibits.
”Which reminds me, Andy” - Hedwin turned to his a.s.sistant - ”another s.h.i.+pment is arriving tonight, on the Amazonia. It is the last s.h.i.+pment from Mexico. I think that you should be there when the boxes are unloaded.”
”You want me to go right away, professor?”
”No, not right away.” Hedwin threw a smile toward Yvonne. ”I would say that an hour from now would be soon enough. They called me at the hotel, to tell me that the Amazonia had docked; but there is no hurry, Andy. No hurry at all.”
Rather gratefully, Andy Ames accepted the professor's decision, because it allowed him another hour with Yvonne Carland. But there was one guest in the group who felt that the matter of the Amazonia demanded prompt attention: Lamont Cranston.
This was the first that The Shadow had heard of another s.h.i.+pment from Mexico. Its significance was plain.
Since crooks had stolen unlisted contents from boxes in the museum cellar, it was likely that they might intend to repeat the operation. But the museum was better protected than before, and this evening it was thronged with people. Which left the criminals one other choice: a robbery before the boxes were unloaded from the Amazonia.
Unnoticed by the chatting group, Cranston left the museum. Stepping into a car, he drove away, drawing a black cloak around his shoulders. Again, Lamont Cranston had become The Shadow, as was evidenced by his whispered laugh as he placed his slouch hat on his head.
The Shadow was bound for the waterfront ahead of schedule, to look up Pierre Laboutard. If he did not find the so-called pirate at the spot where he expected, there would still be another place to look: the wharf where the steams.h.i.+p Amazonia had docked!
CHAPTER VIII. ALONG THE WATERFRONT
BACK from the extensive line of wharves along the Mississippi, the huddled buildings of the waterfront seemed dwarfed and shrunken as they crouched behind the shelter of the levee, where loomed the steel sheds of the wharves.
There was life throughout that district, as mixed as a score of nationalities could make it, and at nightfall the bulking darkness of the sheds shrouded the menace of the district below, frequently hiding deeds as dark as the night itself.
Only the banana wharves presented activity by night; the chief danger in their vicinity was from tarantulas and tropical snakes that came in with banana s.h.i.+pments. But along the docks where coffee and cotton were unloaded, and near the mola.s.ses sheds, menace could exist in human form.
Picking his way past waterfront dives that emitted the babble of many tongues, The Shadow reached an old store front that made a forbidding portal. Windows close by betokened watchful eyes, ready to report the advent of any stranger; but no eye could have discerned the cloaked form of The Shadow in that gloom.
Working the door open, The Shadow glided through a pitch-black hallway, down a short flight of steps, to another door that signified a back room. The room was lighted; it contained a crew of rough-clad men, who felt too secure in these preserves to bother about placing a guard on the inner door.
The Shadow was looking in on Pierre Laboutard and his band of thugs. Smugglers, pirates, or mere cutthroats - any of the terms would have suited them. Laboutard, himself, was brawny, hard-faced, and sharp of eye. But the same description applied equally to the rest.
A few were Cajuns, members of the darkish, indefinable race found in the environs of New Orleans.
They considered themselves a chosen group, for one of their number was Laboutard's lone lieutenant.
Laboutard addressed the fellow as Jaro, and seemed to value his opinions. The rest of the band were largely ex-sailors, of various nationalities.
Laboutard was talking, when The Shadow viewed the meeting through the door crack. The leader's tone came in a forced purr that carried traces of a venomous hiss. Jaro, seated beside Laboutard, saw fit to put in brief comments of his own, supplementing some of the leader's statements.
”Tonight will be one more job,” spoke Laboutard. ”Like the others, but not at the museum. No. It will be more wise to go to the s.h.i.+p, the Amazonia. What matter if we make much trouble? This one will be the last time. A few can go to the s.h.i.+p more easily than many.”
”With me,” put in Jaro, tapping his chest. ”I pick my men.” He pointed to the Cajuns. ”I take five.”
”Then afterward,” continued Laboutard, ”after all is over, we come back here. I pay you all; maybe more than the price I promise. Then we wait, and do nothing.”
Jaro offered an objection.
”First you say there was something more,” he reminded. ”Some more jobs, for special men, that would bring big money, Pierre.”
”Ah, oui,” recalled Laboutard. ”But I have thought it over. I do not like it. To steal, it is easy, even if one have to kill. But to kill for nothing but the pay, is different. It is too foolish.”
Jaro looked doubtful on that point, as did several of the others, but Laboutard remained unruffled. Hemerely made his point more plain.
”One man say steal,” he declared, ”in a way that n.o.body find out. We do it, and even with trouble like we have the other night, the police do not bother us. So we can steal more, the same way. Good, eh, Jaro?”
Jaro admitted that it was.
”But another man say kill,” added Laboutard, ”and when we do, what happen? There will be police everywhere. They ask questions that make trouble for a lot of you, even though they do not arrest for murder.”
The ex-sailors caught the point. Some of them would be due for deportation if questioned too closely by the authorities, no matter what the subject.
”So we wait, after tonight,” concluded Laboutard, shrewdly, ”and then decide what is the best to do.
Maybe the man who wish the murder pay for something else. It may be that I know something that he would not like people to hear.”
LABOUTARD had made it quite plain that he had two clients: one, who wanted robberies committed and was getting them; the other, a man who desired murder done. In typical fas.h.i.+on, Laboutard was planning a shakedown as an easier way of collecting cash from the second man in question.
The fact that Laboutard had been approached by two different schemers did not strike The Shadow as a coincidence. The simple fact was that Laboutard was the one man in New Orleans best equipped to handle specialized crime. He and his band were the clearing house for such operations.
”I send you, Jaro, to the s.h.i.+p,” decided Laboutard. ”Go, now, and we can follow. Through the alley will be best for you, while we go out the front. Because maybe you find trouble; but for us, maybe we only watch.”
The Shadow took the route through the front door, while Jaro and his squad were sneaking from the back. The cloaked fighter was gone when Laboutard and his reserve crew came sauntering from the front door.
But The Shadow did not pick up Jaro's trail direct. Instead, he took a route of his own to the pier where the Amazonia was docked.
The Amazonia was an old freighter that often berthed in New Orleans. Her mixed cargo wasn't the sort that anyone would want to rifle, hence no pains were taken to protect the s.h.i.+p from boarders. Getting over the rail, The Shadow found a convenient lurking place behind a huge coil of rope, near a hatchway.
There, he waited for Jaro and the Cajun squad.
They came on board as stealthily as snakes. Crouching low, they wormed their way to the open hatchway and descended, one by one. When the last had gone, The Shadow moved forward from the rope coil and took a careful look toward the wharf, to make sure that Laboutard and the reserves were not too close at hand.