The Shadow - The Ribbon Clues Part 12

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 shining 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 ships 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 ships 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 ships 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 ships. 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 ships 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 Steamship Xerxes. Moored near the lower end of the decadent row, this squatly, old-fashioned 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 ship 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 ship, 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.

"That light," he explained. "I'd say it was an airplane in trouble. It's down mighty low, with these cliffs on both sides of the river. Do you agree to that, Jessup?"

"Guess you're right, captain. Only it's kind of odd, ain't it, a plane moving as slow as that?"

"May be an amphibian," decided Jund. "Trying to land on the water. Well, he's got over to this sh.o.r.e, anyhow."

The plane had traveled out of sight beyond a projecting cliff that was just below the ghost fleet. Jund and Jessup watched for the light. It did not reappear.

"Might have landed on the flat," suggested the seaman. "Just past them trees, captain. Plenty of s.p.a.ce there, between the trees and the railroad."

"It would be a bad landing spot, though. Maybe not with some of those new planes. After all, that was a slow mover. Might even have been an autogyro."

CAPTAIN JUND turned back toward his chair. Jessup followed and spoke in a cautious tone, just as the portly man sat down.

"Sorry to be bothering you, skipper," he remarked. "But the men ain't liking it so much as they did. Kind of itching to get ash.o.r.e. Guess this life is making them weary."

"There is no cause for that, Jessup," admonished Jund. "The work is easy aboard ship. They are well fed and well paid. Every member of the crew should have put by a tidy sock by this time."

"That's just it, skipper. You know what a sailor's like when he's got sh.o.r.e money. An' your orders is to stay aboard, all the time."

"Blow me down! Well, I guess there's no way to keep a sailor from grumbling. But I like it aboard, Jessup. I don't ever expect to go to sea again. Not unless it's on a pa.s.senger boat; and a good one. They can't make them too big for me to like them. No, sir, Jessup."

"If the men was knowing, sir, when this is going to wind up, they'd be less troubled, I'm thinking. It's the winter ahead that may be bothering them."

"So that's it, eh? Well, that's different, Jessup. I've kept that secret until now; but I guess I can give them the news. We're staying here until December fifteenth."

"That's different, skipper. All right for me to tell 'em, you say?"

"Yes, Jessup, yes. Tell them that if n.o.body buys this old girl before December fifteenth, I'll leave the Xerxes to rot with the rest of these tubs. Maybe I'll do it sooner; but you had better say the fifteenth."

"Thanks, skipper. That'll suit 'em."

Jessup started away; then paused. He turned again to Jund and mentioned a new subject.

"Lots of new faces along sh.o.r.e," remarked the sailor. "Some of them mugs look like they was crooks, too. Been banding together, sort of." "Down at this end?"

"No. Up by the old Santiago. Some of 'em have been living aboard there."

"Let them. So long as they don't bother us. They won't be trying that, Jessup. If they're looking for trouble, they'll find it around some town near here."

"Some of 'em was talking together about an hour ago, captain. Couldn't see who they was; they was too far away. But I seen one fellow going up toward the railroad, like he was reporting somewhere."

"Keep a look-out posted, Jessup. Find out what some of the other skeleton crews think about it. That fellow you saw might have been going into some town. He'd have to go across the railroad cut in order to get to the road above."

The captain looked upward as he spoke. A hundred feet above the railroad was the curved embankment of a highway. Pa.s.sing cars could not be seen from the ghost fleet; for the road was set well in; but there were clearings at spots where cars could stop between the road and the actual embankment.

SOME minutes pa.s.sed. Jund finished his pipe and strolled forward to where the bow of the ship nestled close to the sh.o.r.e. He stopped, fancying he had heard a light sound from the rail ahead. It came again; the clink of the anchor chain. Jund advanced through the darkness.

He reached the bow. There, the captain looked over the rail and made out the rusted chain against the dim side of the Xerxes. A man could reach that chain from the deck of an old scow that was jammed close to sh.o.r.e, beside the Xerxes. Anyone who reached it might be able to clamber up to the rail of the steamer.

Listening, Jund heard no sound of prowlers. He produced a flashlight and flickered its beams upon the rotting deck of the scow. No one was about; the captain decided that no one could have actually come aboard the Xerxes while he was standing so close. His final opinion was that a slight motion of the ship had caused the chain to clank.

Captain Jund went back toward the stern. He reached a hatchway and descended. He came to the door of an inner cabin. He unlocked it and turned on a light. There was electricity here, supplied from storage batteries.

Inside was a grill door. Its presence made the cabin a strong room. In an alcove on the farther wall was the ship's safe, large and formidable. Jund turned out the light and locked the door.

He chuckled at thought of the strong room and its bars. Such a cabin was not unusual aboard a ship that had sailed in pirate-infested waters off the Chinese coast. Jund had kept the Xerxes intact, ever since the vessel had gone out of service.

Turning about in the darkened pa.s.sage, Jund listened, wondering if his ears had again deceived him. He thought that he had heard another sound.

He blinked his flashlight, then laughed at his own qualms. Jessup's talk about suspicious characters on sh.o.r.e had caused Jund to imagine things; that, at least, was the skipper's own decision.

Shortly afterward, Captain Jund emerged from the hatchway and strolled out on deck. He saw other lanterns swinging and knew that his men were about. Jessup's word had apparently ended their apathy toward duty aboard this moored vessel. Jund strolled to the bow; from that point, he glanced along the line of abandoned ships. Far up along the curve, the captain of the Xerxes saw a firelight on sh.o.r.e. It was near the old freighter Santiago. Tiny figures, pacing in the glow, were proof of Jessup's statement that hoodlums had convened.

A northbound train came pounding up the railroad pike. It was a fast freight; Jund watched the black cars as they clattered past. Motion and travel were recollections of the skipper's past. He stared in meditation after the train had gone by. His gaze remained toward the embankment. Jund uttered a sudden, puzzled grunt.

A LITTLE light was blinking from the tracks. It was descending the embankment. Apparently someone had come from the highway above, waiting to cross the tracks because of the pa.s.sing freight.

Jund's perplexity was caused by the fact that the bearer of the flashlight was descending a steep slope where there was no path.

Visitors to the ghost fleet invariably climbed the embankment from a spot at the other end of the row. A footpath led upward from the place where the old Santiago was moored. Either this newcomer was unfamiliar with the terrain or he was seeking to avoid those men who had made their camp fire on the sh.o.r.e.

Jessup arrived by the skipper, swinging a lantern as he came. He, too, had spied the flashlight coming down the bank. The man who carried it had nearly reached the sh.o.r.e.

They saw him approach the grounded scow and turn its flashlight toward the dilapidated craft. Then the torch swung in their direction. The man on sh.o.r.e had seen Jessup's lantern.

"Ship ahoy!" The halloo was guarded as the visitor gave it. "Ship ahoy! h.e.l.lo, aboard there!"

"Ahoy!" growled Jund, as the flashlight approached. "What ship do you want?"

"The Xerxes," came the reply from below.

"Who is with you?" queried Jund.

"I am alone," returned the man from the dark.

"This is the Xerxes," informed Jund. "Stand by while we let down a ladder."

Jund spoke to Jessup. The sailor went to the side of the boat and pulled a rope ladder from beside the rail. The ladder had wooden rungs. It clattered as Jessup hove the lower end down to the deck of the scow.

Jund, standing in darkness, drew a revolver and strained his eyes while he watched the visitor clamber across the scow. The man had spoken the truth; he was alone.

The arrival clambered nimbly up the ladder. He vaulted the rail and came into the light of Jessup's lantern.

Jund thrust his revolver into his pocket; but still retained his grip on the handle of the weapon.