The Shadow - Xitli, God Of Fire Part 5

His purpose was to hurl himself as a living bombsh.e.l.l into the cl.u.s.ter that was forming around Laboutard and Jaro.

They were across a street that ran beside a railroad track, and a stretch of light intervened. They spied The Shadow as he reached that last lap and began to scatter, some aiming revolvers, others hurling knives.

Had they remained grouped, The Shadow would have launched into their midst; but since they were scattering of their own volition, he simply went into the next stage of his clean-up.

Wheeling back into darkness, The Shadow jabbed telling shots at flashing guns, shifting his own position with such alacrity that his foemen were belated when they tried to pick his gun bursts as targets.

Nor did The Shadow's mocking laugh give them a key. It could have come from anywhere - or from nowhere.

Laboutard's baffled band was in a tight spot, when a big spotlight suddenly blazed in from a corner. It showed The Shadow, a sleek shape in black, dripping from his trip into the river. Guns began a haphazard tattoo in his direction.

The light was from a police car that covered the waterfront. Its occupants mistook The Shadow for the prime trouble-maker, and to add to the complication, other cars were coming up to follow the example of the first. The Shadow's only course was landward flight. As he sped in one direction to elude the revealing lights, Laboutard's fighters fled in another.

Still misguided, the cops in police cars tried to hunt down The Shadow. Those that stopped at the wharf learned of the mistake, but by then the pursuers were too far away. They spotted The Shadow at infrequent intervals as he took to alleyways.

Finally reaching his car, The Shadow managed to get a start to safety, but to avoid a clash with the police, he was forced to drive away from the city's center instead of toward it.

Meanwhile, order had been restored near the Amazonia. Laboutard's cripples had fought to the death; not one remained to name the leader who had ordered them into combat.

Andy Ames explained how he had happened to come to the wharf, and sailors from the Amazonia supported him with the testimony that the ship had boxes for the Mayan Museum in its cargo.

Accompanied by a police captain who had taken charge, Andy went on board to examine the boxes.

Not only did the shipment appear rifled, but sailors testified that they had seen marauders fleeing with loaded sacks. Nevertheless, the remaining contents of the boxes coincided with a list that Andy had brought from the museum. It didn't puzzle Andy. He remembered how Panchez and the mestizos had gathered loot on the way from Yucatan. It was plain that they had shipped it with the relics that the expedition had acc.u.mulated. Goods for the Mayan Museum had been pa.s.sed, almost unexamined, by Mexican officials and United States customs officers.

When the police decided that the sacks might have come from elsewhere in the ship's cargo, the men on the Amazonia admitted that such might be the case. But Andy was thinking in terms of Professor Hedwin and Fitzhugh Salter, wondering if one or the other could have been responsible for what had happened.

Accompanied by the police captain, Andy returned to the museum. Most of the guests had gone, but the rest were listening to a hectic argument between Hedwin and Salter on the subject of the fire G.o.d, Xitli.

Graham Talborn and Eugene Brendle were still present; so was Yvonne Carland.

Though Hedwin and Salter seldom agreed on anything, both the professor and the curator were satisfied when Andy announced that the list showed nothing stolen. Hedwin couldn't remember precisely what had gone in various shipments, and Salter declared that all typewritten lists were precise copies of those that Hedwin had sent him.

Hence, Andy's quandary still continued until a new and rather startling element developed. It came when a police car arrived, bringing a darkish, ugly-faced prisoner whose arm was bandaged.

Andy recognized that the fellow must be the Cajun who had grappled The Shadow by the rail of the Amazonia. The man's wound was from the bullet that Andy had triggered.

FISHED from the river by the police, the prisoner was in a mood to talk. He was telling a certain amount of truth because he thought it would be for his benefit and Laboutard's.

The Cajun insisted that he hadn't been on the Amazonia at all, but had simply been strolling along the wharf when trouble began. That much was false, but the fellow followed it with facts.

He said that men from the Amazonia had started all the trouble; strange men, whose faces looked like copper and whose garments were the rough hides of animals. When he came to the description of their sloping foreheads there was an interruption from Hedwin.

"Aztecs!" exclaimed the professor, as if quite pleased. "Stowaways from Mexico. Do you know why they are here?" He shot the question at Salter. "They have heard that the temple of Xitli has been restored. My theories are proven!"

"Nonsense!" returned the curator. "Your talk of Xitli is all fol-de-rol. I've let you go too far with it, Hedwin, merely because I didn't want to argue."

"What about the mask and robe?" queried Hedwin narrowly. "The costume that you were unable to identify when you put labels on the rest?"

"It is merely an uncla.s.sified exhibit," defined Salter. "There is nothing to prove that it represented Xitli. It could belong to any unknown Mayan deity."

Hedwin retorted that there were no unknown Mayan G.o.ds, with the possible exception of Xitli. The discussion brought smiles from Talborn and Brendle, who were anxious to see how far it would go. But the police captain wasn't interested in Mayan lore.

"Let's drop this X G.o.d," he stormed, "and talk about the Aztecs. They sound phony to me" - he was turning to glare at the Cajun - "and unless somebody else got a look at them, and I mean somebody reliable, we'll count them out." Looking for someone reliable, the captain noticed Andy Ames and decided that his opinion would do.

"You were there at the start, Ames," he said. "You have already stated that you saw a bunch that looked like Cajuns, along with a crowd of roustabouts. This man" - he nudged toward the prisoner - "and the dead ones at the dock support that statement. But did you see any Aztecs?"

Stolidly, Andy shook his head. He did not feel that he was telling a silent lie. In his opinion, the squatly man who had thrown the stone hatchet was a member of some unknown tribe and could not be cla.s.sed as an Aztec.

Coupled to that was Andy's recollection of the Xincas who had served The Shadow. They fell under Andy's cla.s.sification of an "unknown tribe." Andy was sure that the hatchet man had come after him by mistake. There had been other mistakes later in the battle at the wharf, and by rectifying one, Andy felt that he was returning a favor to The Shadow.

It never occurred to him that he might be making a greater mistake than all the rest combined, that there had been many stone-faced men on board the Amazonia, and that those stowaways, all actual Aztecs, were now loose in New Orleans, forming a murderous flock.

"No Aztecs," decided the police captain. He turned to the Cajun: "Come along, you, and keep your trap shut until you're ready to give us a straight story."

Trucks had arrived with the boxes from the Amazonia; all were unloaded and safely stored in the cellar of the museum. Fitzhugh Salter was preparing to close the big pyramid for the night. Ready to leave with the rest, Andy Ames was wondering what had become of The Shadow.

It did not occur to him that The Shadow's trail should rightfully have led back to the Mayan Museum, but that it had been delayed by the interference of the police. Nor did Andy realize that The Shadow was the one person who could have properly judged the statement of the captured Cajun.

This was a time when something that The Shadow had not learned was to prove a hideous factor in schemes of monstrous crime!

CHAPTER X. THE CULT OF XITLI.

ALL was quiet outside the Mayan Museum, but the calm itself was so intense that it gave Yvonne Carland the shivers. She pointed to the shrubbery surrounding the pyramid and remarked to Andy that she could almost see the bushes move, as though lurkers were creeping from them.

The comment brought a cackly laugh from Professor Hedwin. He squinted at the bushes, then nodded wisely in support of Yvonne's opinion; but he made no mention of Aztecs.

"Perhaps she is right, Andy," declared Hedwin. "I would advise you to look out for Miss Carland and see her safely home. From all reports, you handled yourself well down at the wharf. If other dangers are abroad, you can protect Miss Carland from them."

With a bow that signified good night, the professor entered a cab and rode away, leaving Andy with Yvonne. Smilingly, Andy asked if he could see Yvonne home. The girl started to nod, then shook her head.

"It wouldn't be best, Andy," she a.s.serted. "My uncle might be up, and he wouldn't like to know that I was really friendly with anyone connected with the recent expedition."

Graham Talborn was standing by. He had heard all the comments. The affable exporter gave adisappointed smile.

"I was going to offer to take you home," he said to Yvonne, "in case Andy did not qualify. But it seems that I am on the blacklist, too. Good night."

Eugene Brendle stepped up when Graham Talborn had strolled away. Brendle offered a prompt solution to the dilemma.

"Come in my car," he told Yvonne. "I'll drop you off at the apartment. If your uncle is watching, he will recognize the car. He doesn't regard me as connected with the museum. I'm only a contractor who couldn't help myself."

Yvonne left with Brendle, and Andy strolled glumly to his car. He took a look at the shrubbery as he drove away and noticed that huddling clumps did seem to move, as Yvonne had suggested. But Andy attributed it to the swing of the car lights.

One man alone remained at the museum: Fitzhugh Salter. The curator was locking the huge front door, and all the while he was wearing a half-smug smile. He glanced sharply about the premises, then walked away on foot. Salter lived in the vicinity of the museum and never used a car.

The stir about the grounds became actual. Squatty figures approached the museum itself. Probing along the walls, they must have found secret places of entry, for they gradually disappeared. Then came a half-hour of profound calm, until another visitor appeared upon the scene.

He was crouched, and he kept his face well buried in the collar of a light overcoat that was turned up about his chin. If he had come from a car, he must have left it a few blocks away. His tactics were rapid, as well as sneaky. Rounding the corner of the museum, he disappeared.

Within the terraced walls of the great pyramid, creeping men were moving upward by degrees. They were the Aztecs from the Amazonia, and they were feeling out their new preserves.

Clever enough to find some secret route that had been left open for them, they were looking for suitable lurking spots in the museum itself, and were discovering them among the pa.s.sages and rooms of the lower floors. But always their path continued upward.

Only once did the Aztecs pause when the rumble of an elevator told them that someone was ascending more rapidly, pa.s.sing them on the way. Tightening their grips on the stone axes that they carried, the Aztecs kept on toward their top-floor goal.

Ahead of them, the man with the concealing overcoat reached the exhibit room that held the costumes.

He unlocked it quite readily with a master key. With a flashlight, he picked out the uncla.s.sified costume that Hedwin had identified with Xitli.

Disposing of his overcoat, he clad himself in the ancient garb. Turning on a light in the inner corridor, the masquerader stepped into the glow.

HE was both hideous and imposing in his new attire. The mask was greenish, composed from bits of jade, but with black lips and eyes formed of jet. His robe was crimson, with streaks of vermilion and dashes of yellow, including varying shades of scarlet and orange.

The whole effect was one of vivid flame, the symbol of Xitli, the fire G.o.d.

In fact, the masquerader was Xitli - to the Aztecs, when they saw him. Arriving from the stairs, they lowered their stone axes and stood in respectful silence as the fire G.o.d addressed them with a hiss. Hiswords, plucked from the vocabulary of the ancient Mayan, p.r.o.nounced him as the true Xitli.

Then, in case his words did not suffice, Xitli advanced with extended hands which were encased in rough gauntlets that had come with the costume. From one clenched fist he flung a small vial, which cracked on the floor in front of the stolid Aztecs.

There was a burst of dazzling flame that left a quant.i.ty of pungent smoke. Their eyes dazzled by the flash, their nostrils stifled by the fumes, the Aztecs drew away with startled babbles. When their sight was clear again, Xitli was gone.

A few minutes pa.s.sed while the crouching Aztecs waited. Where Xitli had gone was a total mystery to them.

He could have retired along the corridor or he could have pa.s.sed right through their midst to reach the stairs. However, their blinking eyes were fixed upon one given spot: the door of the throne room.

It was suddenly swung open from within. The hand that shoved it was withdrawn. Approaching, the Aztecs stared into the room itself, to see Xitli standing beside his throne. His pointing finger indicated the black stone that formed the throne's seat.

As his followers entered the room, giving deep-throated tones of elation, Xitli calmly seated himself upon the basalt slab.

Immediately the Aztecs huddled to the floor. To these descendants of the Xitli cult, whose worship of the fire G.o.d had been transmitted down through successive generations, mere possession of that throne established the flame-costumed man as a living deity. Tradition had it that if a usurper sat in the throne of Xitli, fire would destroy him.

Such was the legend of Cuicuilco. Once, so the story ran, a Mayan emperor had taken the throne of Xitli with the approval of his people. The fire G.o.d had therewith destroyed the entire city, along with its human ruler, by an overwhelming outpour of green-hot flame and molten rock from the volcanic crater which, therewith, had been named Xitli, in honor of the fire G.o.d who controlled it.

Those excavators who worked with Professor Hedwin were men of sufficient Aztec blood to fear the basalt throne slab when they uncovered it. In fact, Hedwin had hazily indicated such facts in a pamphlet which he had written and given to Salter.

Amused by the professor's literary effort, the curator had shown the pamphlet freely. One of Hedwin's "daydreams," Salter had termed it; something that no one could believe.

But these Aztecs accepted such facts, and more. They were of the pure strain that composed the long-smoldering Xitli cult. Presumably extinct, like the crater near Cuicuilco, they had been awaiting the eruption that would bring them back into their own. That time had come, thanks to the green-masked man who occupied the Xitli throne.

Above the mask, Xitli wore a feathered headgear that matched the rest of his barbaric costume. Those feathers had the dye of flame that gave added bearing to the pose of Xitli. By way of emphasizing his power, the pretended fire G.o.d repeated the trick that he had performed in the hall. He threw another vial and let it burst into flame.

To the untutored Aztecs, who had no knowledge of modern chemicals, the act was some of Xitli's magic.

They expected the fire G.o.d to disappear; instead, this time he remained.

From the black, frozen lips of his mask he spoke again, slowly, forcing his words, yet making them plain.He was telling the members of his cult that a duty lay ahead.

It was a task that pleased them.

Voices mingled in obedience. Hands gripped stone weapons with new fervor. A wave of Xitli's hand brought his worshippers to their feet. A dozen or more, they were waiting only the fire G.o.d's departure before proceeding with the task a.s.signed. They expected another of Xitli's remarkable demonstrations, and he did not disappoint them.

A fling of Xitli's hand, a puff of fire more vivid than the one before. When the smoke cleared, Xitli had vanished. The Aztecs left the throne room and started for the stairs.

When they had gone, Xitli himself appeared surprisingly from the room that they had left. Closing its door, he went back to the costume room and disposed of his flame-hued garb.

Again wearing his m.u.f.fling overcoat, he descended in the elevator, once more pa.s.sing the Aztecs, who were taking the slower stairway route.

THE modern Xitli had overlooked one detail. In leaving the throne room open while meeting with his followers, he had supposed that the glare of his chemical flame could not be seen from the windows of the top floor.

He was right, so far as a view from the ground was concerned, because a series of broad terraces intervened.

It happened, however, that an observer was much closer at hand. The Shadow had returned to the museum; desiring to visit its interior, he was scaling the smooth walls at the time the flash came.

The Shadow was using his favorite method for the climb. He was wearing rubber suction cups on hands and feet, squidging those concave disks against the smooth wall that rose from one terrace to the next.

His eyes, looking upward, caught the reflection of the final flash - dim, yet sufficient to tell that something was amiss. The Shadow paused, clinging to the wall; then, on the theory that he might find an inner route from some hidden entrance below, he started downward.

He made rapid progress, for the terraces were only a dozen feet in height, each an easy drop to the one below it.

By the time The Shadow reached the ground, the man from the elevator had gone. But The Shadow's keen eyes picked out the swift-moving figures of the Aztecs who had just come from the pyramid. On foot, The Shadow took up their trail, to find it one of the shiftiest that he had ever attempted to follow.

Had there been less of the Aztecs, The Shadow would have lost them. But with a dozen or more, he was able to gain fleeting glimpses of different natives at sufficient intervals to remain upon their route. It led through dilapidated districts, where houses were thicker, until finally it reached the narrow streets of the French quarter.

There, under a line of balconies, The Shadow found the trail was gone. His only course was to eliminate the places that the Aztecs would have avoided, particularly lighted streets. Choosing alleyways and courtyards, The Shadow soon narrowed down his search, but still he was hunting in the dark.

It was too late to give any sort of alarm that would arouse the neighborhood and bring the police. If the Aztecs were true followers of Xitli, they would hurry whatever deadly work had been a.s.signed to them.

Grimly, The Shadow kept to his silent task, yet in the stillness of the alleyways he sensed the ominous. Death was on the move tonight. Murder insidious, which even the hand of The Shadow might be too late to prevent.

CHAPTER XI. KILLERS BY NIGHT.

YVONNE CARLAND wasn't sleepy, though she had gone to bed immediately upon arriving home. The brisk ten-minute ride in Brendle's car had fully roused her by the time she reached the French quarter - Vieux Carre - where her uncle's apartment was located.

The reason Yvonne had gone to bed was because her uncle was asleep when she arrived. She knew that if he awakened and found her still up, he would start to quibble because she had gone to the museum reception.

So Yvonne had undressed in the darkness of her room, to spend the next three quarters of an hour lying in bed, listening to distant sounds of merriment which pervaded the Vieux Carre.