Part 7 (1/2)

CHAPTER XII.

THE MAN WHO MOCKED DEATH.

POLICE sirens were on the shriek when Steve Trask alighted from the car that he had met at Gotham Court. By this time, Steve had straightened a few facts to his own satisfaction. For one thing, he'd decided that this wasn't The Shadow's cab converted into something else.

It probably was the commissioner's own car, though Steve wasn't sure about the chauffeur. However, everything fitted plausibly. Probably Cranston had managed to borrow the car for the evening. Being Tam's friend, Cranston might know The Shadow, too. It all fitted.

As for the sirens, they didn't matter. n.o.body would bother the commissioner's car. Steve watched it pull away, then turned to look at the place where the car had dropped him. As he did, a sense of unreality seized him.

The place looked like an oversized mausoleum, a granite structure two stories high that didn't belong in New York at all. It occupied the corner of a short, dead-end street where Steve saw a blocking wall of stone that ran across to an old brick building that looked deserted.

For that matter, the gray pile looked empty, too, and when Steve lookedat the inscription carved above its door he could almost read the word ”Mausoleum,”

which was already in his mind. Then, while his bewilderment was actually increasing, his eyes made out the inscription more plainly.

Steve's imagination had added a few letters that weren't there. Instead of ”Mausoleum,” the inscription said: ”Museum.”

There was another word above, a name which Steve finally identified as ”Norland.” He had never heard of the Norland Museum.

Seeing a big bell beside the barred front door, Steve rang it. The door opened promptly and Steve was ushered into a foyer from which he could see the interior of an exhibit room, which was lined with stuffed heads of queer animals, along with elephant tusks, turtle sh.e.l.ls, snake skins and other sizable knickknacks.

Footsteps sounded from a corridor. Steve turned and saw another attendant joining the one who had admitted him. Odd characters, these, men who were furtive, yet ugly. Maybe it was the poor light that gave their faces a clay color above the frayed collars of their drab uniforms.

Home to Steve came the sudden, startling thought that these attendants were too like some of the Oriental dregs who served the Black Dragon. Polynesians of a mixed caste was the best way to define them - or the worst. Yet the men were polite as they bowed Steve into the large trophy room, which seemed the princ.i.p.al portion of the Norland Museum.

As Steve's footsteps echoed hollow on the tiled floor, he heard others coming toward him. Stopping abruptly, Steve faced a man who stepped from a doorway at the rear. The man was an American whose face was long and oval in shape. Steve was taking in details of thin eyebrows, thin hair above an elongated forehead, when the man's eyes fixed upon him.

Droopy eyes, with lids like s.h.i.+elds, above straight nose and lips. With the merest flicker, the man raised his eyelids just far enough to survey Steve thoroughly. Then the man spoke in a drawly tone.

”I am Craig Norland. I suppose you came to look at the collection of weapons? Most people do.”

Norland gestured Steve into the rear room, which was smaller but well-stocked. It contained many odd weapons, but Steve was unable to identify any except boomerangs and blow-guns, so Norland politely cla.s.sified others for him. The droopy man pointed out a weapon which was hanging on a small door at the rear of the room. Norland stated: ”A Filipino barong.”

The barong was a two-foot sword that widened between hilt and point, but the really curious feature was its scabbard. The blade was sheathed between

two.

fitted slabs of wood, held crudely together by thongs. Through the primitive lacings, Steve could see a very sharp edge. So tight were the thongs that Steve began to wonder how anyone could unsheathe a barong, if in a hurry.

”My grandfather went in for big game,” remarked Norland. ”So I made weapons my hobby. I thought the combination would be appropriate, particularly as we both traveled extensively in the Orient.”

Steve was about to ask what part of the Orient interested Norland most, when he stopped himself. Glancing warily back across his shoulder, Steve heard Norland chuckle. A moment later, the back door of the museum was opening outward and Norland's hand was clamped firmly on Steve's shoulder, guiding the visitorthrough.

They were stepping into a high-walled garden in back of the museum, but for the moment Steve wasn't interested in such nearby surroundings. He was looking off above the wall toward the top of a great, sweeping superstructure that curved from one huge pillar off to another that seemed distant in the night.

The structure was one of the great suspension bridges that crossed the East River. This garden in back of the Norland Museum was located on the river bank itself. Oddly, the wall seemed specially designed to prevent anyone from looking into the garden.

For example, Steve could see the superstructure of the bridge, but not the roadway. Beyond the rear wall, he spied the pa.s.sing smokestack of a steamer, but couldn't quite see the topmost deck.

The museum itself cut off any view from the Manhattan side, and putting those facts together, Steve lowered his gaze to the garden to learn why it was too unique to be submitted to public gaze. In one glance, Steve understood.

This was a j.a.panese garden!

LITERALLY, this product of Nippon might have been uprooted from the yard of Hirohito's own palace and transplanted to New York. It was a chunk of j.a.pan in miniature, with an undersized paG.o.da no higher than the wall, a squatty s.h.i.+nto shrine, humped bridges crossing a ca.n.a.l that ran between two pools that teemed with golden carp.

There were beds of exotic flowers, a crude water wheel that turned under the constant pressure of a small, flowing stream. As Norland gestured Steve around the premises, more features came into view; one, for instance, being a pool so thick with lily pads and flowers that it looked like a solid, earthen bed.

They reached the squatty s.h.i.+nto structure which stood shoulder-high.

Norland opened its door and disclosed a peculiar curved sword in a scabbard of the same shape.

”A j.a.panese samurai sword,” explained Norland. ”It must never be drawn from its scabbard except for shedding blood. I am a stickler for such traditions, Trask.”

Steve stared. He couldn't understand how Norland had guessed his name.

Whereat Norland laughed quite heartily.

”I have no love for the j.a.panese,” sneered Norland. ”None except so far as their arts and crafts are concerned. I s.h.i.+pped these mementos back here, piece by piece. Why should I sacrifice them because j.a.pan has become unpopular?”

With a smile at his own mild way of putting it. Norland gestured toward the wall around the garden.

”Instead, I have seen that these souvenirs should remain hidden,” resumed Norland. ”I consider myself a man without a country, hence free to collect the trophies of every land. You have an oddity which I should like to add to those I.

already own.”

REMOVING his strong hand from Steve's shoulder, Norland extended his palm upward and ordered: ”Give me the jet dragon.” Mechanically, Steve placed the death token inNorland's palm, where it looked quite puny. Norland grated a laugh.

”I suppose the Black Dragon thought he could scare me by having a notorious murderer bring this token. Is that it, Trask?”

Things flashed home to Steve. Norland was using guesswork. First, he'd guessed who Steve was; that part was correct. But now he was guessing wide, in cla.s.sing Steve as a server of the Black Dragon.

”You have it wrong, Norland,” argued Steve. ”That little knickknack is

one.

the Black Dragon handed me through a j.a.p stooge named Sujan. The curse was supposed to get me, but it didn't.”

”Crawling out of it!” scoffed Norland. ”Well, I should have expected it.