The Shadow - The Mask Of Mephisto Part 10

There were others who might know without stating it. The Shadow had played that chance. Of all the places in the limited area where Ferrand's hideaway might be, this was the only one that could be seen from the cupola, so The Shadow had resolved to try it.

Lights out meant that Ferrand had left, provided these were really his quarters.

They were.

The Mask of Mephisto said so without words as it stared from a heap of cloth that represented a crimson cape. This was the bundle that Ferrand had brought from Moubillard's shop, following a clandestine visit there. But it wasn't all that showed under the concentrated beam of The Shadow's probing headlight.

Of a stack of letters resting on a battered table, one was open. Its ink was dim, its writing old-fashioned, this letter that bore the signature of Dominique You. Dated May first, 1821, it was addressed to the editor of L'Abeille and was couched in the very phrases described by Rolfe Trenhue, the language, of course, being French.

His brief inspection of Ferrand's hide-out ended, The Shadow left by the conventional stairway route and soon appeared in his more prosaic guise of Lamont Cranston. The evening being young, Cranston still had time to call at some of the old coin shops that were staying open evenings because trade was so good.

Margo Lane was spared that ordeal. She had gone to a show with Joan and Ken. They were to meet Cranston later at the coffee stand and on Joan's account, he'd carefully specified which one. Cranston didn't want to stay waiting at the other end of the French Market, the way Trenhue had before he met Joan on Mardi Gras Night.

Cranston bought some old coins this evening. The dealers were quite surprised because previously he'd been selling items of this sort. He was a meticulous collector, Cranston, making very careful records of every transaction, even when he sold at bargain prices.

Tonight, Cranston was still in the last coin shop when it closed and finding that he had time to spare, he rode over to police headquarters to chat with Captain Selbert. In the midst of writing comprehensive reports, Selbert looked up with a smile of greeting, then switched to a disappointed frown.

"Sorry, Cranston." Selbert spoke in the manner of a man who suddenly remembered something. "I'm very busy. Suppose we have lunch tomorrow so we can talk over new developments. I know you're as interested in this Ferrand case as I am, but look at how I'm swamped!" Spreading his arms to indicate a desk-load of papers, Selbert promptly burrowed into them. This was Jim's way to let a visitor see for himself that there was plenty of work to do. Cranston evidently took the hint, for when Selbert looked up, his caller was gone. Selbert himself left shortly afterward, locking the office behind him.

A satisfied smile accompanied Jim's turn of the key. He hadn't bothered to look in the corner behind the door where the Mephisto costume hung, but he knew it would still be there, now that he had locked the door.

Chance was playing a hand tonight.

Coming from the theater, Joan Marcy lost her gaiety as she and her companions neared the Hoodoo House. Somehow the mere proximity of the place filled Joan with a sense of horror and she said so. Ken Langdon and Margo Lane agreed they didn't have to pa.s.s it on their route, so they took a detour to the old French Market.

That was why Joan saw the beardless man.

Though the weather was warm, his face was m.u.f.fled as he came from a cafe that Joan remembered. Adjusting his coat collar, he inadvertently let his gaunt face show. Joan remembered that face and too well. She lagged to watch where the man went.

Ken noted Joan's absence at the next corner and was worried.

"You'd better go ahead," Ken told Margo. "I can't imagine what happened to Joan." Uneasily, Ken looked along the building fronts and noted the most likely doorway. "I'll find her, though, and soon."

At the coffee stand, Cranston was waiting when Margo arrived there.

Finding that she was worried about Ken as well as Joan, Cranston volunteered to find them both. His departure left Margo wondering, considering that disappearances were in order.

There was a reason for those disappearances.

Joan was the first to learn it when she cautiously put her hand upon the door-k.n.o.b of a top floor apartment where she was sure Fred Ferrand had gone.

All the way up the stairs, Joan had been hearing footsteps creak ahead of her.

Right now, she wanted another glimpse of the gaunt man to make certain he was Fred.

The glimpse was easy, but the face was different.

Opening suddenly from the other side the door revealed the red-caped figure of King Satan, the mystery sensation of the recent Mardi Gras!

Joan couldn't cry out. Two red gauntlets grasped her neck in a relentless grip that didn't relax until she sagged weakly to the floor. When Joan opened her eyes, she was bound and gagged in a corner and the triumphant Mephisto was bowing an ironical good-night from the doorway.

Only the great Mephistopheles wasn't so devilishly clever as he thought.

Beyond him, about to deliver a hard, vengeful lunge, was Ken Langdon. Joan made a funny face, which would have been a smile if she hadn't been biting a gag.

Such as it was, the smile didn't last.

A doorful of blackness took Ken so suddenly and silently that he disappeared as though he had fallen through a trap-door in s.p.a.ce. Completely baffled, Joan could only stare at the vacancy behind the Devil Man whose costume hid Fred Ferrand. When King Satan turned and stalked from the room, Ken was still missing. It took another mystery to explain the first. At the end of a few minutes that seemed twice that many hours, the door opened and Ken came rolling in as tightly bound and gagged as Joan. When it came to taking meddlers out of circulation, King Satan and The Shadow were both efficient, but the score was in The Shadow's favor.

This blackness that lived had staged Ken's capture behind the very back of a crimson clad impostor who hadn't the least notion that The Shadow was even around!

Their official meeting was coming later. The Shadow in his guise of black, could travel directly and rapidly to his goal.

That goal was to be the scene where first the Mask of Mephisto had served to cover murder. The stage was set in the Devil's own Den, where a quest for treasure was a bait to lure men to their doom!

CHAPTER XIX.

THE last of the workmen had gone from the Hoodoo House, but one it seemed, had reason to return. He was carrying a pick over his shoulder as a bit of realism that didn't fit. First, the pick was rusty, proving it hadn't been used; again, the men who had left the house hadn't brought their tools with them.

Nevertheless, Jim Selbert's disguise of cap and dungarees was good enough to pa.s.s muster. What really bothered him was the delay after he knocked at the door. Aldion and Trenhue must have gone upstairs for it was several minutes before they heard Jim's guarded raps and answered.

Recognizing the returned workman, both nodded approval. Leaving the door ajar, they beckoned Jim to the center of the floor, and suggested that he lend a hand. Emerging from the earth was the end of an old coffer that came up heavily under their combined pull. Borrowing Selbert's pick, Trenhue cracked it open.

As the box tilted, from its interior came a shower of gold and silver coins that rattled across the broken paving. Dropping to hands and knees, Aldion began scooping the wealth like the truckers shoveled shrimp, paying no heed to the odd coins that rolled w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

"Dominique's treasure!" shrilled Aldion. "The money he left for us to find! It's ours, Rolfe - ours -"

Gesturing for Aldion to calm himself, Trenhue was none too soon. Above the clatter of the coins came the groan of the front door as it swung inward and with it listeners heard a grated laugh that lost nothing by its m.u.f.fled quality.

King Satan stood upon the threshold of his former domain.

The scene was much like that strange occasion when these premises had teemed with half-awed merrymakers who had been accepting this Satanic masquerade as travesty until it had proved tragedy. Tonight, however, the situation was in strict reverse; if the man in the Mephisto Mask had begun with shooting and on a wholesale basis, it might well have been in keeping with the circ.u.mstances.

However, he did not fire, even though his fisted gauntlet held a gun.

Instead, he simply kept people covered, with special attention to Selbert, whose presence was something of a surprise to the man in red. Toward Aldion and Trenhue, King Satan was somewhat disdainful, for they looked quite pitiful,half-crouched above their tilted treasure chest.

Only His Satanic Majesty was taking no long chances. He preferred to reveal his hand. With a sweep of his free gauntlet, he removed the huge disguising head and let his own come into sight.

Revealed, the face of Frederick Ferrand was as hard-set as the chunks of stone that lay in heaps about the broken floor. His eyes showed a glint that rivaled the ancient coins which were spilled from the treasure chest.

Ferrand's tone, too, was metallic.

"I am glad you are here, Selbert," announced Ferrand, with a side flash of his eyes. "Perhaps this evidence of a double-cross will convince you of my innocence. Or perhaps" - the eyes turned on Aldion and Trenhue - "perhaps I should term it double-double."

From somewhere in his cape, Ferrand whipped out a sheet of paper and flipped it toward Selbert. It fell at the police captain's feet.

"Pick it up," ordered Ferrand. "Read it. You will find that is a Dominique letter written to the editor of L'Abeille in the year 1821, but never sent. It covers the matter of this treasure which these friends of mine" - Ferrand's gun gestured toward Aldion and Trenhue - "coveted enough to deal in murder."

Appealing glances from Aldion and Trenhue were directed toward Selbert, who boldly took up their defence.

"n.o.body had to murder Chardelle to get this treasure," declared Selbert.

"The same applied to Moubillard. He didn't even know what was in this Dominique letter and he didn't even have it because it was with the stuff you left with Trenhue."

Ferrand didn't even sneer.

"Go on," he said coldly.

"Chardelle let you in on the Lottery deal," a.n.a.lyzed Selbert, "so you knocked him off and then went after Moubillard, because he knew too much about you."

"No more than anyone else did," put in Ferrand. "I was scheduled to play King Satan, but I told Chardelle not to count on me."

Selbert's eyebrows lifted; then he questioned: "Why didn't you tell Tourville?"

"Because Chardelle was the Messenger," returned Ferrand, "and it was his business to inform Tourville, who served as scribe. Only I don't think Chardelle did; he was too crooked. Somebody mooched into this game, somebody who played Mephisto in my place, and I'd suggest you talk to a chap named Kenneth Langdon."

Now Selbert had been thinking somewhat along those very lines, but in a trifling way. Knowing how trifles could build up to greater factors, Jim listened.

"Maybe Langdon was just a front," conceded Ferrand, "but he's interested in more things than sculpture, Joan Marcy for one. Understand, I'm not blaming Joan. She and I were quits and most of the fault was mine. But getting back to my own case; after I found this costume at Moubillard's, last night -"

"At Moubillard's!" broke in Selbert, "And last night! Why it was in my office only this evening. The only reason I wasn't surprised to see you walk in wearing it, was because you were smart enough to borrow it from my office once before."

From Ferrand's cold stare it seemed he didn't believe any of this. It took the quick wits of Aldion and Trenhue to supply the simple answer.

"Langdon was fronting all right!" exclaimed Aldion. "He was fronting for Ferrand!" "In another Mephisto Mask," added Trenhue, "so Fred here would have an alibi."

"Only Fred couldn't wait to kill Chardelle -"

"Maybe he was trying to toss the crime on Langdon. Now we're getting the right answer!"

That theory clicked with Selbert, particularly because it awoke Ferrand's rage. Of course anger was a common thing with Ferrand, but he was a rough man when his temper ruled him. And now, glaring unmasked from the crimson collar of his Mephisto cape, Ferrand's face was demoniac in the lantern light. His rage showed all the venom of a murderer's as he wheeled toward Aldion and Ferrand.

They weren't to be taken by surprise, the way Chardelle had been. They'd provided for this very emergency by dint of their successful treasure hunt.

They dropped, not just behind the money coffer, but down into the pit they'd dug it from. Drawing guns, they were set to wither Ferrand from their improvised foxhole.

The complication was Jim Selbert.

With Ferrand's wheel, Selbert lunged. Not wasting time to draw his own gun, Jim was going after Ferrand as the most efficient way to prevent new ma.s.sacre and at the same time gain a needed weapon.

Before either Aldion or Trenhue could aim at Ferrand, the grappling had begun. Two brawny men were stumbling about the upheaved floor, with Selbert doing right well by himself. So well in fact, that Selbert hoped to take Ferrand alive and therefore was using craft as much as strength.

There was one point, though, that Selbert overlooked. Aldion and Trenhue, half up from their fox-hole were waiting only until Ferrand twisted in their direction, before letting their guns rip. Then the interruption came.

It was a hollow laugh, almost a replica of the Satanic mirth that Ferrand had himself delivered, but it came from the high stairway echoing from the very landing where a crimson murderer had made his first entrance on Mardi Gras Night.

Hearing such defiance, Aldion and Trenhue turned. There stood the living proof of the double Devil game, another King Satan clad in crimson, his features hidden within the ample scope of a duplicate Mask of Mephisto!

Arms folded, crime's new candidate seemed to regard himself the real master of this show, but Aldion and Trenhue were no respecters of persons - or demons. Anyone who wore the crimson garb of murder was ent.i.tled to quick death.

As guns swung up toward the stairway, the crimson menace seemed to realize it, for he flung himself forward in a t.i.tanic dive toward the broken floor below.

Guns blasted the hurtling Satan and amid the hail of bullets, His h.e.l.lish Highness disappeared completely in mid-air!

CHAPTER XX.

It was the impossible realized.

This new candidate for Satanic honors had lived up to his part.

It seemed that he had plucked aside a curtain in s.p.a.ce and let it swallow him. Not only were Aldion and Trenhue nonplussed; Selbert and Ferrand forgot their struggle and froze like a posed movie still.

Out of somewhere came an echoed laugh, no longer hollow. It rose to a chilling taunt and with it, there appeared another figure from the semi-gloom of the stairs. He was cloaked in black, visible when he reached the spot where the flying Satan had evaporated. By then, his guns were visible too, and they were big ones, automatics of .45 caliber.

The Shadow was holding the whole scene static with those looming muzzles.

When he reached the bottom of the steps, he kicked something that had wedged from sight between two upturned chunks of cement. Bouncing across the roughfloor, the object revealed what it was.

The costume of the vanished King Satan!

Now for the first time, Jim Selbert was realizing the chief feature of such a costume. The great head was attached to the cape collar, the long gauntlets hooked to the flowing cuffs. The lining of the cape was black, of cheaper stuff than the crimson satin that formed the outside.

A matter of economy, such a lining, but it served another purpose when required.

An upward peel of the cape and the whole thing not only turned inside out, but could gather the Mask of Mephisto within its folds! There was the evidence on the floor, where The Shadow had kicked the bundle apart to let the Mephisto Mask peer from the reversible cape.

More potent still was the thought that drilled through Selbert's mind, as though The Shadow's laugh, as well as his cloaked garb, inspired it.

Because of its ample head and sizable cape, the Devil's costume allowed the wearing of another masquerade beneath! The Shadow had demonstrated it, though his attire was not strictly a masquerade. He'd come down the stairs layered as Mephisto; his whip-fling of the crimson costume had left him as himself. The hurl had turned the red cape inside out, swallowing the Mask inside it.

No wonder the Devil had disappeared amid the flay of bullets! No eyes had followed the downward fall of the black bundle, any more than they had looked up to probe the higher gloom wherein The Shadow had remained.

But The Shadow's laugh told more. Catching the inference, Jim Selbert relaxed as he stared at the half-spread bundle.

"So that's how the Devil went!" exclaimed Jim. "Out through the little window on the second floor! All that had to go was the costume, but somebody else stayed."