The Shadow - The Golden Dog Murders Part 14

Cardona felt that he was sliding into deeper and deeper mystery.

Suddenly, he felt the swift tug of Vincent's hand. He was pulled flat to the ground. Lying there, he saw Vincent's shadowy face close to his, contorted with warning. "Crawl!" Harry whispered. "Quick!"

He bellied swiftly out of sight, keeping close to the black earth.

Cardona followed him. They dropped flat behind a small outcrop of rock. Then the startled Cardona realized what had caused Harry's sudden retreat.

A tiny sound was audible somewhere in the darkness on the other side of the tiger's rock den. A loose pebble rolled down a slight incline with a faint clatter. Another one sounded a moment later, a little closer to the cage.

Someone was creeping stealthily across the ground toward the den of the Bengal tiger!

IT was impossible to see the person or thing that was so furtively creeping through the blackness. The moon was invisible behind the ragged sweep of clouds overhead. But as Cardona stared, one of the clouds broke into gray, ragged tatters. For a second or two, the moon shone downward with eerie brilliance.

And Cardona saw the Thing!

It was crouched flat on the ground outside the tiger's den. It lifted its head slowly, to glare between the bars at the chained tiger. Fangs were clearly visible in the red, wide-open jaws. It uttered no sound. The tiger inside the bars whimpered faintly and stirred his striped body. He began to shrink backward.

The Thing facing him in the moonlight was a golden dog!

Abruptly, the dog vanished. The moon above had dipped behind another cloud. Cardona could see nothing. Yet he had a queer, shuddering feeling that the ghostly dog was gliding like golden mist, straight through the solid steel bars of the tiger's cage!

Vincent's teeth were chattering.

"Joe! What in the name of Heaven is -"

His whisper cracked. In the light of the reappearing moon, Harry could see once more the golden head of the dog. It was crouched close to the ground. The pit door was closed. But the dog was now inside the tiger's den!

Its golden head began to lift from the ground. It rose slowly. Higher, higher - Cold sweat broke out on Vincent's forehead. The beast was towering upright on its hind legs, swaying slowly from side to side. And - and it wasn't a dog!

Except for the b.e.s.t.i.a.l, snarling head - it was a woman!

A nude, golden girl! The Thing began to sway with curiously stiff steps toward the wide-open jaws of the tiger. It moved like a lifeless statue. The tiger growled menacingly in his throat. But he was retreating! Backward he slunk, his tail nervously swishing the ground. Without a sound, the golden statue advanced.

The Dog G.o.ddess! Vincent thought wildly. His throat was dry; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; he stared like a man in a trance at the metallic gleam of that pagan statue from a temple in Rajk.u.mana.

Darkness blotted vision from his eyes. When he could see again, the moonlight showed him the tawny shape of the tiger as it sprang forward. But the claws of the great striped beast struck empty air. The tiger was alone in its den.

The Dog G.o.ddess had vanished!

FOR a long time, Cardona and Vincent remained rigid, clutching mechanically at the ground where they had stiffened themselves. It took courageto rise. It took guts to approach the bars of that den. But they did it - walking close together to feel the solid, comforting touch of their own flesh-and-blood bodies.

It was Cardona who made the first discovery. Joe's hand lifted to the barred gate. It swung noiselessly ajar at his tremulous touch. It was unlocked.

He looked mutely at Vincent. Vincent's face was white and strained. He nodded. Both men pa.s.sed cautiously inside the den.

The tiger leaped at them. But it couldn't reach its victims. The long chain jerked taut and held it helpless by the scruff of its tawny neck.

Cardona saw that the beast's chain was anch.o.r.ed to one of the rocks in the, rear of the den. It seemed to disappear into a metal slot in a huge boulder.

Vincent whirled. He pointed to the earth with a faint cry. In the soft ground, a faintly indented trail was visible: the naked prints of a woman's feet.

The prints led to a rock at the left of the growling tiger. It was too far away for the beast to reach. Cardona, bending over the rock, saw that there was a deep hollow in the back, where the rear of the stone had been chipped away.

In the hollow was the black metal handle of a lever.

Vincent held the muzzle of his gun toward the tiger. Cardona jerked the lever.

Instantly, the two men knew that the vision they had seen was not a golden wraith, but a woman of flesh and blood. The long chain that held the tiger began to pull steadily. It dragged the fettered beast backward on its striped haunches. As the chain slid inch by inch into the slot in the rear of the den, its shortening length pulled the tiger away from the spot where it had lain crouched.

A square of solid earth began to rise at that spot. It tilted soundlessly upward, disclosing itself as a cunningly camouflaged trapdoor. A steel-runged ladder led straight downward into darkness. The strange retreat of the tiger was explained. So was the magic disappearance of the golden G.o.ddess.

For an instant, Cardona and Vincent stared at the yawning hole in the floor of the den. Then they roused from their frozen inaction.

The chain that held the tiger was again lengthening. It was coming out from the slot in the boulder. At the same time, the trapdoor began to close.

Both evidently worked in unison. They were controlled by a mechanism that had been started by the lever in the rear of the hollowed boulder.

Cardona glanced grimly at Vincent. Harry cried: "Yes!"

The two sprang toward the opening in the earth. Cardona wriggled down the rungs of the vertical ladder. Vincent followed him.

He was just in time. The tiger was barely a foot away as Harry threw himself into the closing trap. The door struck the back of Harry's head as he jerked it downward.

Clang! - Thump!

The metallic sound was the echo of the falling trap. The duller thump was the impact of the tiger's body. He had struck the spot where Harry Vincent had stood barely a second or two earlier. The beast was crouched directly over Harry's hidden head.

There was no way out of this black shaft in which two white-faced men clung to a steel ladder. The only exit they knew of was by using the lever in the tiger's den.

But neither Cardona nor Vincent had any idea of retreating down that mysterious shaft the gleaming, golden body of the Dog G.o.ddess had vanished.

Cardona and Vincent gripped hands for an instant. Their quiet whispersfloated in the darkness. Then they began to descend.

Cautiously. Testing each metal rung of the ladder. Downward into utter blackness.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SAPPHIRE STAIN.

CARDONA led the descent. He was the first to reach the bottom of the ladder. He knew he was standing on the last rung, because his probing foot encountered nothing below that rung but empty hair.

His whisper acquainted Vincent with the situation. The two men hung quietly, listening. But the silence was as profound as the darkness. It was like being entombed in the shaft of an ancient mine, one that had been abandoned for centuries.

Cardona, however, was not a man to give way to superst.i.tious fancy. He knew that the Dog G.o.ddess had preceded him down this ladder. He no longer believed her to be a wraith. He had seen the prints of her naked toes in the soft earth above. Beneath the stark gleam of her golden body was living, human flesh. Wherever this strange woman could flee, a living man could follow.

Cardona's whisper brought Vincent's gun jutting. Hanging tensely to the ladder by one hand, Harry slanted the muzzle of his pistol over Joe's head. He was ready to spurt flaming lead into the unseen tunnel.

Cardona snapped on his flash, pointed the tiny cone of its light downward.

Then he grunted a low-toned relief. The floor of the tunnel was barely three feet below the last rung of the ladder. Joe's probing foot had missed it only an inch or two in the darkness.

He raised his light horizontally. The gallery was a short one. It ran twenty feet or so to a blank wall, and then turned at a right angle. Joe snapped off his light.

The fake Dog G.o.ddess was unaware of pursuit. Cardona's quick glance had seen the prints of her bare feet in the earthen floor of the tunnel. Joe had been a detective too long to be misled as to the significance of a footprint trail. The size and shape - or the lack of shape - of toemarks could tell a smart detective whether the fugitive who left them had been walking, or tiptoeing, or racing at top speed.

The woman with the dog's head had been walking at a calm, unhurried pace.

Harry Vincent dropped from the ladder and stood crouched in the dark tunnel alongside the bulkier Cardona. Joe explained his plan of attack. He was going to follow the trail in darkness - for two logical reasons.

The first was, that the girl ahead had obviously used no light. Had she carried a flash, its betraying gleam would have been visible from above when Joe had made his quick leap through the trapdoor overhead. Therefore, there were no pitfalls ahead. The girl, who knew this underground route, was not afraid to walk in utter blackness.

The second reason was the formation of the tunnel itself. It was quite narrow. By stretching out his arms, Joe was able to touch both walls. Guided by his finger tips and the slow advance of cautious feet, Cardona was ready to go forward.

No sound came from the darkness as the two men turned the sharp angle at the end of the corridor. The width remained narrow. The earth floor gave no betraying echoes.

The bend of the walls told Joe whenever the tunnel curved - and it curved often after they had covered fifty yards or so.

Unconsciously, Cardona increased his pace. He was pressing forward, when out of the quiet blackness, he heard a grim command: "Stop!" INSTANTLY, Cardona stiffened. His gun pointed toward his unseen foe. He bent swiftly to one side to allow Vincent, also, to point his gun.

For ten nerve-racking seconds, the two men waited, fingers taut against triggers. Then the silence was broken by a hissing murmur - the whisper of a sibilant laugh.

Vincent knew that laugh. He had heard it countless times, when the pursuit of criminals had led Harry to a spot of urgent peril.

"The Shadow!" Vincent gasped.

At his clipped cry, the blackness ahead seemed to swirl and grow solid. A figure appeared from utter emptiness. Only the piercing flame in the depths of deep-socketed eyes showed that the figure had a face. The Shadow's cloak was drawn high over his throat and chin.

Cardona dropped his gun muzzle. Vincent listened alertly; he heard only a single word: "Look!"

A beam of light sprang from The Shadow's hand. It slanted straight downward. Shuddering, Cardona recoiled a step. He had been standing at the very brink of a horrible and unclean death.

Directly in front of him was a pit whose walls and bottom seemed to be made of smooth black gla.s.s. The pit was about ten feet deep. It spanned the entire width of the tunnel from wall to wall.

The whole bottom of that gla.s.s pit seemed to be moving, twisting. Cardona could see flat, ugly heads, speckled with brown lidless eyes; the darting fury of forked tongues - Snakes! A tangled, writhing nest of them - poisonous brown adders! One of them tried to glide up the vertical gla.s.s wall of the pit. It slipped back on the writhing ma.s.s below.

The gla.s.s was greased. That was the only thing that kept those speckled adders from crawling out of the pit. But if Cardona had taken one more step, had fallen - He cringed, in spite of his iron nerve. Vincent was watching The Shadow.

Harry realized that the woman they were pursuing had crossed that death pit harmlessly; so had The Shadow. He was wondering how?

The answer came from the lifting torch of The Shadow. His finger pointed.

On the roof of the tunnel, supported by metal brackets, was a black, horizontal cable. A wheeled device was attached to the cable. Hanging downward from it was a circular ring somewhat like the ordinary support used in the subway by tired strap-hangers.

The Shadow showed how the overhead table worked, by reaching up and grabbing the smooth metal ring. A kick of his feet sent the tiny car rating along the table. The Shadow's body whizzed across the unclean horror of the adders' pit.

At the other side, he depressed a tiny handle at the end of the queer suspension bridge. The wheeled ring returned across the pit to where Cardona and Vincent waited.

In a few moments, they had joined The Shadow. They knew now how the golden G.o.ddess had bridged that death gap.

The Shadow proved it. His tiny torch swept the floor of the tunnel. just beyond the far edge of the pit was a smear of white powder, scattered on the tunnel floor. There were marks in that powder. The bare footprints of a woman!

They led onward into the tunnel.

A sibilant laugh sounded as The Shadow's hand dipped beneath his cloak.

Itcame out holding a bottle. The bottle was half filled with pulverized powder.

It looked like finely divided chalk. It was this powder that had enabled The Shadow to verify certain grim suspicions.

Replacing the bottle beneath his cloak, he led the way onward. The tunnel dipped and turned in a bewildering maze through the bowels of the earth.

Occasionally, The Shadow flicked on his torch. There was no sign of life ahead.

But, suddenly, The Shadow beckoned. A glimmer of light became abruptly visible as Cardona and Vincent followed their guide around a sharp turn in the pa.s.sage. The light came from the wall itself. Beyond that wall was a room. Its door was open.

The whisper of The Shadow conveyed the information that he had never seen the door or room before, although he had pa.s.sed this point in his preliminary survey.

Gliding forward, he peered warily. The light came from a single frosted bulb in the ceiling. The room was as bare as a monk's cell - except for two things in the farthest corner. A metal bench was fastened to the wall. And on the bench, bound and gagged, lay the helpless body of a man!

His face was livid. His eyes bulged toward the figures in the doorway. It was Rodney Mason!

THE SHADOW suspected a trap. But it suited his purpose to ignore the trap.

He was still not quite certain about the position of Rodney Mason in the well-organized murder syndicate that was headed by an unknown master criminal.

So The Shadow entered the room. Vincent and Cardona followed. Harry rushed toward Mason and began to fumble at his bonds. But the voice of The Shadow halted him. Words came from those calm lips. The order was strange, but Harry obeyed at once.

He removed Rodney Mason's left shoe. He also removed his sock. Then he loosened the gag from the chemist's stiffened jaws.

For a second, Mason tried to talk, and failed. Then terror loosened his tongue. He began to talk wildly. None of his disjointed words made sense.

"Don't kill - You - don't - know who I am - Beware of the - sapphire death -".

Mason was glaring toward the doorway. Cardona saw, and leaped. His hand darted outward. But he was too late. The open doorway leading to the tunnel was gone. The closing barrier had slid shut without sound. It was locked, immovable.

The next instant the frosted bulb in the ceiling went out. The room was plunged into pitch blackness.

In the darkness came a sharp, tinkling sound - the shattering crash of gla.s.s. The next instant The Shadow felt a curious numbness stealing over his brain. His eyelids dropped. His hearing began to fade.

He threw himself flat against the floor. His voice cried out a warning as he stuffed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. He could hear Vincent and Cardona throw themselves flat in the darkness, obedient to his order. He hoped fiercely that they, too, were protecting their throats and noses.

Then - with startling abruptness - the frosted light bulb in the ceiling was again lit.