Part 12 (1/2)

Hungerfeld shook his head.

”No,” he gasped. ”Mallikan has left. He is sailing for Bermuda. He - he left here some time before the police commissioner. Mallikan was very worried -”

”Never mind the rest of it.” Callard's interruption sounded like a snarl. ”You can talk later Hungerfeld.”

CALLARD delivered singsong words to the two Chinese. The powerful Celestials pounced upon Hungerfeld. The old man's protests subsided as they gagged him.

Callard watched Leng Doy's henchmen bind the old man; the task was easy, for Hungerfeld was already in a forward doubled position.

Leng Doy entered and spoke to Dave Callard in Chinese. The American replied; the two continued their conversation. Leng Doy finally went back into the living room and clapped his hand lightly together.

Four Chinamen hoisted Markham from the floor. They carried the detective sergeant through the bedroom and out into the hall. Two Chinamen were waiting with an opened hamper. The burden carriers plopped Markham inside. A Chinaman closed the lid.

Hungerfeld's captors arrived, bringing the old man. They put him in the second hamper. At Leng Doy's bidding, the members of his yellow horde began to slink down the stairs until only two remained. These were the huskiest of the lot; they were stouter than the rest of Leng Doy's tribe.

Leng Doy remained with the pair while Dave Callard went back to lock up the doors of Hungerfeld's suite. The American reappeared and rang for the main elevator.

Leng Doy waited until the door had opened and the young man had gone aboard. As soon as that had happened, the chief of the Chinese horde pressed the b.u.t.ton on the service elevator.

A minute pa.s.sed before the car arrived. It had evidently come from the bas.e.m.e.nt, for it was manned by a janitor in overalls. The man took a pipe from his lips and stared at the three Chinamen with their big clothes hampers.

”We are the new laundry men,” announced Leng Doy, his English perfect, but in jerky tones. ”You will take us downstairs, please?”

”Sure thing,” returned the janitor. ”Where'd you get them hampers?”

”Not bringee wash,” put in one of Leng Doy's henchmen. ”Commee to takee. Melican man givee us these.”

”Say takee outside,” added the other henchman.

”All right,” agreed the janitor. ”Load 'em aboard. The way this joint is run beats me. Ringing in a Chinese laundry is the hottest yet. n.o.body handed the news to me; but that's the way they work around here.”

Leng Doy's men had lifted aboard the hamper that contained Justin Hungerfeld. They had handled thatburden with ease. As they started to pick up Markham's hamper, Leng Doy added an aiding hand.

The janitor noticed that the burden was heavy; but so smoothly and solemnly did the Chinese work that he never gained a pa.s.sing thought that the hamper might have contained a human being, let alone a man of bulk.

The elevator descended to the street level. On the way, the janitor decided for himself that the Chinamen must have come up by the regular elevator.

He noted a barred door to the stairway beside the service elevator. One glance told the janitor that the barrier was locked. Leng Doy's lock picker had attended to that little detail.

The street was gloomy behind the bulk of the Hotel Albana. There was a light truck standing there. Two Chinamen came from it to help the others aboard with the hampers. The janitor was no longer present.

He had taken the service car down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The laundry truck drove away. Leng Doy walked to a parked sedan and entered to join three waiting Chinamen. His two companions had gone along with the truck.

LENG DOY took the wheel and drove toward the West Side. He reached an alleyway beside an old garage and drove into the opening. Two vehicles were waiting; one was another sedan; the other was the laundry truck. Dave Callard was standing with a group of Chinese. The American had picked up his sedan outside of the Hotel Albana.

Hampers were unloaded. Chinaman opened them and brought out the two prisoners. They loaded Markham and Hungerfeld in the back of Leng Doy's big sedan. A Chinaman took his place between the bound victims.

Leng Doy and Dave Callard pulled up the folding seats of the seven-pa.s.senger car and joined the guard who was between Hungerfeld and Markham.

Two other Chinamen took the front seat. One handled the wheel and backed the sedan from the alley.

The second sedan followed, also loaded with yellow-faced occupants. Two Chinamen remained to take away the laundry truck.

Two cars sped northward along an avenue. The setting sun was s.h.i.+ning from across the broad North River. The big sedans were bound on a trip that would parallel the Hudson for a course of more than sixty miles. High-powered vehicles, they were due to clip the mileage in a hurry.

A race had begun; its goal a forgotten vessel in the ghost fleet below Poughkeepsie. Into that mad game had come a new contestant. David Callard, wanted for murder, was riding with a group of yellow-skinned allies to find the goal chosen by his dead uncle.

The only men who could have told of the invading yellow horde were prisoners in the hands of Leng Doy's Chinese. Dave Callard, through his daring coup, had s.n.a.t.c.hed away Justin Hungerfeld and Detective Sergeant Markham without the knowledge of the law.

Nor did The Shadow, his own goal set, have evidence of the swift invasion that had worked so silently within the walls of the old Hotel Albana.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE GHOST FLEET.

IT was twilight above the Hudson River. A dim afterglow persisted over the high hills that flanked the broad surface of the stream. Placid, the river held a silver sheen between the rugged, darkened banks. Moored below the shelter of a high cliff lay the ghost fleet. Proud vessels lingering to ruin, these s.h.i.+ps deserved the t.i.tle that they had gained. The flotilla spoke of vanished hopes. These hulks were but specters of the past.

By day, the s.h.i.+ps of the ghost fleet displayed the marks of time. Their rusted sides; their tilted beams; such factors showed them to be useless relics that no purchaser would buy. Dusk, however, had softened the grimness of the ghost fleet. Beneath the gloaming, the forgotten vessels looked respectable once more.

The ghost fleet! Perhaps the significance of the name lay in the fact that at night alone could an observer picture these s.h.i.+ps as active farers of the seas. A melancholy touch seemed to brood above the time-aged craft that lay anch.o.r.ed so close to the towering sh.o.r.e.

There were men about the ghost fleet. Some, perhaps, had come there like filings drawn to a magnet.

Riffraff, human derelicts who shunned respectable habitations. There were others, hired to watch these depreciating s.h.i.+ps. Some of them were men of little caliber, for these sc.u.m-surfaced hulks did not require guards of capability. Outside of heavy fittings, rotting lifeboats and rusted anchor chains, these boats contained very little of value. Most of them had been dismantled by their owners.

A few of the s.h.i.+ps still had skeleton crews. These were composed chiefly of old sailors who kept to themselves. They wanted no visitors aboard their boats; they received none. They knew how to deal with roustabouts. The riffraff kept away from them.

Such was the case aboard the Steams.h.i.+p Xerxes. Moored near the lower end of the decadent row, this squatly, old-fas.h.i.+oned vessel presented a better appearance than its fellows. The Xerxes was a comparatively recent comer to the ghost fleet. Its painted hulk and superstructure looked presentable even by daylight.

SEATED on the deck of the old s.h.i.+p was a portly, broad-faced man who puffed his pipe contentedly in the gloom. This was Captain Jund, master and reputed owner of the Xerxes.

Though his past career had carried him to many foreign ports, though he had weathered typhoons off Asiatic sh.o.r.es, the portly skipper did not seem burdened with unhappy recollections of the past.

A lantern was swinging along the deck of the Xerxes. It pa.s.sed beyond a corner that marked the beginning of a short row of cabins. That lantern was carried by a member of the crew. For Jund's s.h.i.+p, though lightly manned, had men on duty day and night.

A blaring shriek split the darkened air. Captain Jund gazed sh.o.r.eward. On an embankment above, a limited was whizzing through the night, along the tracks which streaked this side of the Hudson.

Jund heard the whistle of the locomotive come to an eerie finish. He watched the clattering string of lighted cars that went speeding by. As the train faded past a bend, the old sea captain resumed his puffing at the ancient pipe.

Another whistle, its blast faint and far away. Jund looked across the river to view a slowly moving light upon the farther sh.o.r.e. A freight was plodding northward; the clicks of its car wheels could scarcely be heard at this distance.

Jund's eyes narrowed suddenly as he glimpsed another light at greater height. He rose from his chair and went to the rail; from that point, he studied the twinkle as it crossed the river, a few hundred feet above the stream. ”What're you watching, skipper?”

Jund turned at the question to see a man with a lantern. It was one of the crew, coming to make a report.

The captain pointed down the river.