Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WRONG TRAIL.
AT the head of the stairs, Roger ran squarely into Dorthan, coming up from the kitchen. He was steering the stooge into the Colonial Room, when Dorthan suddenly pointed. Horror showed on the face that was made up to look like Donald's. The ceiling trapdoor in the closet was closed!
Footsteps were pounding from below, some from the kitchen, others by the front stairs. There wasn't time to get the trapdoor open. Madly, Roger hauled Dorthan out toward the pa.s.sage.
If ever crime had a great break, this was it.
Roger saw Wiggam arriving from the kitchen. Others hadn't quite gained the top of the front stairs. Motioning Wiggam aside, Roger chased Dorthan down the back way, hissing for him to grab one of Hector's coats that he would find in the kitchen.
Hardly had Dorthan gone, before Clyde arrived. He'd taken the front way in order to catch Roger. Spreading his hands in bewildered fas.h.i.+on, Roger looked about, as though amazed. Then, sighting someone coming along the hall, he exclaimed: ”There's Hector!”
It was Hector, coming from his room, where he had been sleeping when the gunfire awakened him. His bewildered look, plus the fact that his face was his own, were absolute proofs of his innocence. Hector stared, even more puzzled, as a whistle shrilled from below. It was Torrance at the front door, summoning men.
Hurrying up the front stairs, Torrance heard Clyde call down that the ghost wasn't Hector. As if to belie Clyde's shout, a figure scudded through the great hall and out the front door. It was Dorthan, das.h.i.+ng around by the dining room, but all Clyde saw of him was the back of his borrowed white coat.
Roger saw the fugitive, too, from the top of the stairs. Torrance didn't turn in time. Roger had another bright idea.
”This way, doc!” he called. ”I just saw someone dash up to the tower!”
As Torrance hesitated, some of his men appeared at the front door.
Torrance yelled for them to round up anyone they saw and to particularly watch the tower.
With that double order, he started up the tower stairs behind Roger, while Clyde hurried down to the front door to stimulate the real chase outdoors.
AGAIN, Roger was playing a bold hand. He knew that Crispin was in the tower, but he was sure he could handle Torrance well enough to allow the escape of the second ghost. What Roger didn't know was that at that very moment, Crispin was about to meet with a surprise.
Nicely rigged in a white sheet, Crispin was weaving about the tower, waiting for someone to come from the house and spy him. He particularly hoped that Jennifer would be the observer, because he was doing a very nice ghost act.
Crispin didn't know what a ghost act could really be.
Up the side of the tower was coming a shape in black that looked like a mammoth vampire bat. The sounds that accompanied this thing from the unreal, merely made it all the more uncanny. The noises were The Shadow's suction cups, but Crispin, hearing them, mistook them for floor creaks from the weather-beaten tower.
One squidge ceased; then another. Over the rail of the tower, behind the fake ghost's back, came the cloaked shape of The Shadow. Reaching to his feet,The Shadow stacked the last two suction cups with the others, placing them beneath his cloak. His gloves stayed there, too. In their place, The Shadow produced a small tin box with two sections, dipping a thumb in one, his forefinger in the other.
All this was happening during the chase that followed the death of Gustave.
Such trifling things as gunfire were too well m.u.f.fled in the great sprawly mansion to be heard from so remote a spot as the old watchtower.
Having applied two pastes to his thumb and forefinger, The Shadow delivered a low laugh that was caught by the tower's broken rafters and echoed back in ghoulish style. That weird tone might have impressed a real ghost; its effect was certainly electric upon Crispin, the fake spook.
The shrouded man wheeled about. He saw the burning eyes of The Shadow.
With a shrill, wild cry, Crispin lunged, hoping to hurl his rival from the tower.
The Shadow snapped his thumb and forefinger.
A burst like a reporting gun went off in Crispin's face, along with a flare of flame. Those special chemicals had served The Shadow often, but never more dramatically than this. (Because of the danger connected with this explosive formula, we do not give its components here. It is a device often used by The Shadow in his exploits against crime. - Ed.) The concussion scattered what was left of Crispin's dissipated wits. The man reeled back, his sheet falling from his shoulders.
Then The Shadow was upon him, about to complete as rapid a capture as could be desired. With Crispin settled, the way would be clear to bag the others of this crooked clan. At least it would have worked that way, but for a blaze of intervention.
Flashlights shone suddenly from all about the house. Torrance's men had heard the shout from upstairs. They were converging upon Dorthan, but they hadn't forgotten that they were to check the tower, too. Somebody aimed a searchlight from a car and gave it the switch.
The glow flooded the scene in the tower.
There, Torrance's men saw two ghosts instead of only one!
Curious ghosts, one white, the other black, that tangled in a grip that formed a swirling camouflage pattern. The Shadow was taking Crispin well in hand, despite the crook's last desperate struggle. But the men on the ground made no distinction between ghosts, good or bad.
Torrance's tribe let loose with a volley from guns of all description.
Bullets battered the base of the tower and raked its pergola top. Slugs whistled over The Shadow's head and shoulders as he flung Crispin to the floor and made a twist of his own for the shelter below the rail.
THE brief release wouldn't have helped Crispin if he'd been purely on his own. He was still dizzy from the chemical blast that had drawn so much attention to the tower. To Crispin, the rattle of the guns was just an echo of the explosion that had bewildered him. But to Freer, it meant new trouble, and Freer was here. He'd finished his climb up into the tower to warn Crispin of something that seemed very slight in comparison to present events.
One of Crispin's legs was dangling down the ladder. Grabbing it, Freer hauled Crispin right out of his sheet. Together, they were tumbling down the ladder, leaving The Shadow nothing but a shroud so empty that Crispin seemedto have really turned into a ghost. With bullets still whining through the openwork, The Shadow took the route by which Crispin disappeared.
The trap door was thudding in place before The Shadow reached the landing.
A few seconds more and The Shadow would have wrenched it open, to follow the
two.
ghosts down the chute to the secret room. But at that moment, the regular door of the tower slashed inward, admitting a three man surge.
It was a neat device, that door. Opening inward, it was stopped by the warped floor boards; Actually the floor was a trapdoor that hoisted upward, hence the door, when open, served as a lock to keep the trap shut. The landing was so small that people always left the door open when they examined the floor, and thereby defeated their own chances of discovering the trick.
In this case, the door prevented The Shadow from following the two fake ghosts. Before he could slam the door shut, the landing was crowded to its utmost capacity. The Shadow was squeezed among three men: Roger, Wiggam and Torrance.
It was a disadvantage, being a black ghost.
If Roger and Wiggam had found a white one, they'd have let him go, and muddled Torrance into the bargain. But a black one meant The Shadow and Roger was prompt to draw a gun. So was Torrance, who regarded any intruder as Gustave's murderer. So The Shadow's only course was to rip loose from his captors and plunge down the regular stairs.
He did it with such speed that when they began to fire at blackness down the stairs, they learned it was nothing but the slamming door below. Angry at the escape of the very material ghost, Torrance ordered an immediate chase.
REACHING the front stairs, The Shadow heard a pleased cackle from his right and saw old Jennifer at the door of her room. She was holding her arms folded as though standing guard and seemed very pleased because the searchers had discovered a real ghost in the tower. At the front door, The Shadow met a rush of Torrance's men and bowled right through them, to dash off into the dark.
All was quiet around the corner of the house. There, Crispin and Freer were coming from the hinged s.h.i.+ngles, carrying Margo between them. Another man sprang up to aid them; it was Dorthan, still wearing Donald's face, but no longer enc.u.mbered with Hector's spare coat.
The three sped for the mausoleum and were nearly there with their burden, when The Shadow came around the corner of the house, followed by waving flashlights and wild shooting guns. He saw the fugitives near the mausoleum, but was unable to overtake them, because another batch of local fighters were das.h.i.+ng in to trap him.