The Shadow - The Jade Dragon Part 7

But The Shadow had wheeled too far from that door to get back to its shelter. It wasn't misjudgment on his part; he couldn't retire without leaving Margo and Royce in jeopardy.

Again, the empty clicking of Chinese guns had given The Shadow a brief advantage; but that was all past.

At best, he could only blast a shot from each gun before revolvers spurted his way. So The Shadow fired them, not at his foemen but at the two lamps which threw their glare upon the posing platform.

The lamps crashed and their lights were gone. The studio became a haze of gloom, for those were the only lights, except for a glow that trickled through the frosted skylight. The Shadow's laugh, answering the blaze of enemy guns, might have been anywhere in the semidarkness. Certainly, it wasn't where his foemen aimed.

Any moment, The Shadow might have tongued a sharp return; but he was purposely withholding fire. He knew that the Chinese would expect him to draw their own fire from Royce and Margo; likewise, the Chinese would seek to finish The Shadow first, and settle the lesser victims later.

The Shadow crossed that up by wheeling first to Margo's corner, where he pressed her to the shelter of the costume closet, at the same time whispering for her not to use her gun, which he had just found.

Then, with a long, low fling, The Shadow went almost beneath the muzzles of the Chinese guns, as they kept up their probing barrage to the far walls of the studio, near the extinguished lights.

Reaching Royce, he shoved the artist under a heavy table, which The Shadow then tilted as a shield. He didn't have to tell Royce not to use his gun; it was already emptied from wild and wasted shots.

As he turned from his second safety spot, The Shadow heard the Chinese barrage slacken. He gave another of his taunting laughs, the kind that couldn't be located in the dark.

It was necessary, that challenge. Gunners had begun to believe that they had felled The Shadow, and would therefore start to aim for other corners where Margo and Royce were partly protected, but where The Shadow, himself, could be found. He wanted them to know that his turn was about to come, andwith it, keep them shooting the wrong way, until his stabs began to wing them.

The Chinese took the laugh more literally. To a man, the Oriental gunners couldn't understand how The Shadow had escaped their fire, unless he happened to be bulletproof. They didn't wait to probe the darkness further.

Four in a pile, they flung themselves out through the wide door just as The Shadow's guns began to thunder. Clatters from the stairway told that they were going down pell-mell, the other Chinese with them.

THE SHADOW issued a quick command to Royce and Margo. Neither was to venture from safety until he returned. They heard a swish, saw a patch of fleeting blackness, as the cloaked fighter went through the doorway in pursuit of the Chinese.

Wild clatter faded from far downstairs, followed by the trail of The Shadow's laugh. He was keeping his enemies on the run, so they couldn't turn and tackle him from ambush.

Margo heard Royce come from his corner. He reached a table and turned on a light, whereupon Margo hurried from the costume closet with a warning cry. His normal coolness returned, Royce simply smiled at the girl's cry and gestured toward the mirror, which had been near enough to Royce's corner to escape the barrage meant for The Shadow.

Pausing, Margo saw why Royce had smiled. She was, indeed, a wreck, with her jewels gone, her slippers missing, and her hair strewn over her eyes. Her tunic was awry, and the gauzy leggings were tattered from Margo's slide along the floor.

Deciding that she could prove as cool as Royce, Margo began to preen herself at the mirror, and Royce, obliging as ever, relieved her of the gun she carried, so she would have both hands to fix her hair.

When Margo looked for Royce, a few moments later, she saw him in the mirror. He was over by a window, leaning out, with Margo's revolver ready in his hand. At the same time, Margo heard a mad clatter coming up from the sidewalk below. The racing Chinese had reached the street ahead of The Shadow, and were still in full flight.

Heedless of Margo's call, Royce brandished his gun from the window. He brayed derision at the fugitives. One, at least, must have stopped, for Royce stretched farther out and began to pepper him with the gun.

Seeing folly in his action, Margo scampered across the studio and made a grab for Royce's shoulder, to draw him back. She was just too late.

A gun barked from below. The ascending whine of its speeding bullet finished as Royce's body jolted right up into Margo's grasp. Then dead weight was slipping from her grip, even though Margo climbed half through the window, to hold back Royce's bulk.

His body turned and hung sideward, over the ledge; Royce's face, its heavy features set in a sickly grin, looked up at Margo with gla.s.sy eyes.

Blood was dripping from his shirt front - tiny blobs of it, that fell upon a nerveless hand whose opening fingers let Margo's gun go from them, to drop to the street below. It was the metallic echo of the landing weapon that really brought Margo's numbed senses back to understanding.

Tragedy had stalked in the wake of victory, because of Royce's foolhardy effort to resume a gun duel with the invaders who had quite easily escaped his short-range fire. At long range, Royce had not onlyshown greater inefficiency, but had laid himself open for a demonstration of a foeman's skill.

Across the street, a gloating Chinese gunner was still pointing a smoking revolver upward.

The Shadow had saved the life of Burton Royce, only to have the rescued man force murder upon himself!

CHAPTER XIII. THE BOXED TRAIL.

FROM a doorway below, The Shadow was wheeling out into the street in quest of the departing Chinese. He didn't stop on the lighted steps; instead, he cleared them at a bound and cut over to darkness across the street.

Darkness that offered a bas.e.m.e.nt shelter that might be needed, if the fugitives were taking their only chance to spring an ambush.

Not a shot came The Shadow's way. He heard only the scurrying of feet from the darkness farther along his side of the street. Looking in that direction, The Shadow caught the glint of a revolver, pointing upward, a wisp of smoke curling from it. Like the hand that held it, and the yellow face just above it, the gun slid down behind a pair of steps, some fifty feet away.

The gunner hadn't seen The Shadow. He'd been looking upward. Following the angle that the gun had shown, The Shadow saw the studio window, with Royce hanging from it. He saw Margo, too.

Quite oblivious to all below, she was crouched on the window ledge, trying her utmost to haul Royce's motionless form back into the studio. Against the light that Royce had turned on, the brunette was clearly outlined.

Snapping his gun upward, The Shadow fired. His shot crashed a windowpane three feet above Margo's head. In a twinkling, her shapely figure vanished from the ledge. Margo had dived back into the studio, thinking that Royce's a.s.sa.s.sin was taking aim at her.

The guess was not far wrong, for another gun spoke amid the echoes of The Shadow's shot. It spurted from beyond the other steps, and its slug whined through the s.p.a.ce where Margo had been. Unable to clip the killer who was aiming Margo's way, The Shadow had fired a quick-enough warning to send the girl from danger.

The frustrated a.s.sa.s.sin was off to new flight, keeping close to the house walls as he took to the direction his friends had gone. The Shadow was after him, driving bullets that should have scored, but didn't. One shot ricocheted from stone steps; another clanged an iron fence rail hidden in the darkness of a bas.e.m.e.nt entry. The third bashed the frame of a doorway just as the bloused killer went through the door itself.

At least, the third shot revealed the rathole through which the Chinese had fled, with the satchel load of loot from Royce's. The Shadow wasn't many yards behind, but he paused as he reached the doorway, because he saw the lights of a police car wheel the corner.

For once, The Shadow wanted those lights to spot him. He fired a shot in the air, and as the car stopped, with its glare fixed upon him, The Shadow went through the door, slamming it behind him.

He hoped that the police would have sense enough to know that he was going through the block. In that case, the car would speed around the block and cut off the Chinese. Keeping to his own route, The Shadow dashed through an empty store, across a courtyard, where he spotted a door on the other side.

He spotted it by a gun muzzle poking through its crack, and he made a side sweep to avoid it. The gungave a belated spat; the door was promptly slammed and barred. But The Shadow wasn't wasting time on doors. He crashed right through a bas.e.m.e.nt window, carrying away sash and all.

Another door was slamming, and this time The Shadow had to blast it. He knocked its lock off with a single shot, ripped another bullet through the center of the door to scare away men beyond it, then threw his full weight on the barrier in an attempt to lunge through before his enemies could rally.

It took three jolts to make the door give way, because things were piled against it from the other side.

Heaving through, The Shadow scattered a great ma.s.s of bulging bags that were light but well packed.

He saw a counter, sprang past it and looked around. He was in the front room of a little Chinese laundry, which was apparently open, for the place was lighted.

No fugitives were in sight, however, so The Shadow sped out from the bas.e.m.e.nt laundry and up into the street. The police car was coming by, but it didn't stop. Instead, it was after a car that had started from farther down the street.

In the wake of the police car came a cab, that shrieked to a stop when its driver saw the red blink of a tiny flashlight.

IMMEDIATELY, The Shadow was in Moe Shrevnitz's cab and active in the chase, one of the strangest that he had ever undertaken.

This was Greenwich Village, the part of it where the streets were winding. So winding that, as Moe described it later, you couldn't go fast without having a head-on collision with yourself, coming around the wrong corner.

These streets seemed made to order for an escaping car, but such was not the case. The very factor which should have helped the fugitives, tended toward their downfall. No matter how well they threaded, there was always a chance that pursuers, through luck or design, would suddenly come across their path again, The Shadow left the job to Moe, who had acquainted himself with the entire area. Moe was wheeling out and in again, playing a game of ring-around-the-rosy that meant business well as fun. For it happened that this section, by virtue of its troublesome streets, demanded more patrol cars than most. Attracted by reports of gunfire, police were wheeling in from many angles.

Each time Moe identified a new police car, he a.s.signed it to a portion of the area, and sped to another spot. All the while, distant sirens were approaching, telling that more patrols were coming up. At last, when Moe was zimming back toward Royce's, he heard a whispered laugh from within the cab and knew exactly what it meant.

Unless the Chinese had luckily slipped the fast-forming cordon, they were boxed in. The Shadow knew, because, by this time, he was in the same situation. So were others, for when Moe wheeled into the street in front of Royce's, they found a cl.u.s.ter of cars that must have entered the area during the chase.

Police were ordering their occupants to step out, to learn if any were Chinese. None was.

Most of them were guests invited to Royce's studio party, and the police showed them special favor. So The Shadow decided to become one of the same. He stepped from Moe's cab in the guise of Lamont Cranston, and nodded to acquaintances who greeted him.

Two men, had already learned a few things that had happened, and were telling the rest. The two were Errol Garvin and Don Feldon. "They say that Burton Royce was murdered," stated Garvin. "Chinese again, the same as with Herb Dayland. No wonder we haven't been able to spot that bunch around Chinatown! They weren't there; they were here!"

"A lot of people saw them," added Feldon. "They ran along this street and into the next, where they were operating from a Chinese laundry. A couple of customers who had just left the laundry saw the Chinese jump into a car and get away."

Casually, Cranston inquired if anyone had actually witnessed Royce's death. Both Garvin and Feldon nodded.

"Margo Lane did," said Garvin. "She was up in the studio, posing in a costume with a lot of jewels."

"Royce's whole collection," explained Feldon. "Worth as much as Dayland's. The Chinese made her shed them, and took the whole lot."

It developed that Margo had phoned the police from the studio, and that Inspector Cardona had arrived to take charge of the case. As a friend of the police commissioner, Cranston took the privilege of going up to the studio. He found Margo giving a graphic account of the battle there, with an exact description of Royce's death.

After recording the details, Cardona suggested a trip to the laundry where the Chinese had fled. There was no delay in starting, because Margo was wearing her own clothes instead of the Javanese costume.

"Quick work, Margo," Cranston complimented, on the way downstairs. "You must have had to hurry, getting dressed before Cardona arrived."

"Not at all," replied Margo. "I changed back from the princess getup before I phoned the police."

THEY reached the Chinese laundry, and there Cardona questioned the proprietor, who was huddled in a chair, his head wrapped in an improvised bandage.

He said his name was w.a.n.g Wu, that he didn't live in Chinatown, and that he had never seen the Chinese who invaded his premises during their flight.

He used the word "never" in a very full sense, because, according to w.a.n.g Wu, the invaders had piled in from the rear room, slugged him before he could turn around, and had rolled him under the counter, where he awakened to find himself buried beneath a heap of laundry bags.

A patrolman corroborated the finish of w.a.n.g Wu's statement. He had found w.a.n.g Wu crawling out, very groggy. Nevertheless, Cardona decided to hold the laundryman, as the first suspect of Chinese nationality that the police had managed to arrest, even as a mere witness to any phase of the recent crime wave.

Residents of this section were crowded outside the laundry door, and some of them came in to report what they had seen. Most of those who spied the fleeing Chinese had spotted them on Royce's street.

Everyone put in a good word for w.a.n.g Wu. When cross-examined, none of them could remember any mysterious Chinese who ever visited their local laundryman.

Some of the local people were rummaging among the laundry bags. They were looking for their own, since with w.a.n.g Wu under arrest, his shop would be closed and they would have to send their laundry elsewhere.

The patrolman told Cardona that he had already let half a dozen bags go out when people claimed them,so Cardona let the newcomers take theirs.

He asked w.a.n.g Wu if he wanted to make sure that the customers took the right bags, but w.a.n.g Wu decided to leave it up to them. There wasn't any fakery on w.a.n.g Wu's part; he really had a headache from the slugging he had taken, and was in no mood to worry about anybody's wash.

Cardona decided to take w.a.n.g Wu to a hospital, instead of headquarters. He didn't hold Margo as a witness, but let her leave in Cranston's custody.

They were riding in Moe's cab, when Margo told Cranston about the falsity of Royce's gem collection, and as evidence, she supplied him with a few of the ruby beads that she had found on the floor.

Cranston tested one with a knife, found that it could be easily scratched. Judged by the necklace, Royce had spoken the truth when he said his jewels were imitations.

The matter of the jade pendant interested Cranston still more. He nodded his agreement, when Margo insisted that the tooth-shaped carving must have been the chief object they were after. Royce had been murdered because of it, in Cranston's opinion, but he doubted that Margo would be in future danger.

"a.s.suming that each victim owned a prize piece of jade," Cranston a.n.a.lyzed, "we can readily understand why the robbers committed murder, too. If one man had an inkling of the jade's real value, whatever it may be, others would have been forewarned by his testimony. Your life was threatened, Margo, because one raider suspected that you knew too much.

"Simply do not mention the jade pendant, and, as a minor precaution, say nothing about Royce's other jewels being false. Shang Chou has ways of learning whatever the police uncover. If they show ignorance on these subjects, he will presume that you had nothing to tell them."

Margo still had qualms, on the basis that she had been a witness both to the robbery and Royce's death.

Cranston eased those qualms by reminding her that she had served in precisely the same capacity at Dayland's. He added, rather pointedly, that if Shang Chou decided to eliminate all persons who had seen his raiders in action, he would need a regiment of helpers.

One thing was certain: the Dragon Cult men were dealing death only where it counted, and Margo, by being discreet, could count herself out.

After dropping Margo at her apartment, Cranston rode to the Cobalt Club and chatted with Weston.

Later, as The Shadow, he visited Dr. Tam. He learned two things that he expected - two things that were the same.

Neither the Chinatown police squad, nor Tam's patrollers, had discovered any absentees among the Chinese who wore the blouses favored by the Dragon Cult. Nor had Chinese been noticed moving out or into Chinatown before or after the robbery at Royce's studio.

LATER, in his sanctum, a hidden room lost in the heart of Manhattan, The Shadow let his hand appear beneath a bluish light. From that hand trickled three ruddy beads, the imitation rubies that Margo had given Cranston.

As the beads clattered onto a polished table top, the Shadow's laugh whispered through the black-walled sanctum.

Tonight, Margo Lane had supplied clues more valuable than she realized. Parts of an important pattern, they needed other facts to fit them. There was another girl who might supply the extra portions: a Manchu princess by the name of Chenma. She had made a serious error this evening; one that The Shadow had partly amended by stopping off at Royce's studio on his trip to Walstead's apartment. Knowing Chenma, The Shadow was confident that she could explain her mistake.

More than that, she would by this time have obtained new information, The Shadow's course was therefore plain. He would take up Chenma's standing invitation to visit the hidden abode of Shang Chou.

CHAPTER XIV. BEFORE THE MEETING.

IT was the third night since Royce's death, and The Shadow had not yet fulfilled his self-given promise of entering Shang Chou's headquarters. He was abiding by a wish expressed by Dr. Tam, who felt that such an excursion would be unwise.

They had come to an agreement on the question, The Shadow and Dr. Tam. It was this: that if they heard no word from Chenma by the third night, The Shadow would seek her out.

And this was the third night.

Reluctantly, Tam watched The Shadow leave the little office. No word had come from Chenma; hence The Shadow was on his way. Tam's own men were to guard the alley beneath the little window from which Chenma had tossed her last message, while their friend Ying Ko let himself down from the roof and effected a silent entry.

Not only silent, but unseen.

The evening's crop of Chinatown tourists, pa.s.sing an obscure alley, looked curiously at the few Chinese who lounged there. Seeing nothing strange in the American garb of those Chinese, the sightseers glanced into the alley itself and totally failed to see a sight that was worth ten times the price of the bus trip.

A batlike shape of human proportions was hovering beneath the eaves of a projecting roof, but it was blended too closely with the blackness of the wall to be observed. Then, as that same blackness swallowed the shape in question, the panes of a little window gave a faint reflection of the street lights. It was as if the window had appeared suddenly in the wall.