Payne knew Doctor Hanson was a master of this art and had suspected him.
He had agreed to meet "Dawson" in his home because he had been informed over the telephone that he could buy evidence that would brand Doctor Hanson as a crook.
"Yet you worked as a member of Foxhound"s gang," Cardona said, grimly.
"Why?"
"Because," Hanson replied, dully, "Foxhound threatened to expose me to the police as Payne"s murderer, unless I obeyed his orders. I had no way out and heknew it. It wasn"t my own safety that I feared, but that of Madge. My arrest would have implicated her in the murder. My theft of the Colette, everything else I did, was dictated by a masked man I knew only as Foxhound."
CARDONA nodded. It fitted in with what he already knew. Not one of the henchmen of Foxhound had ever seen their leader except in his silver mask.
Kelsea was the legal end of the conspiracy. Stoner and Helene took care of strong-arm stuff behind the front of a detective agency paid for by Foxhound out of his hidden wealth.
Foxhound - or Springer - had a.s.sumed his role of the dead Pat Malone"s brother, with cunning ease. He had flown by airplane to the hunting camp in Wisconsin where the real Charles Malone had been on vacation. He had lured him away, killed and buried him, flew back to New York in time for the trial of Dawson.
It gave him a perfect role - one in which he could keep in constant touch with the police to discover their plans. If they chanced to suspect Stoner, Foxhound could always pose as the grief-stricken brother of Pat Malone, hoodwinked by a fake private detective. Stoner not knowing who he really was, could never squeal.
Foxhound had staged the death of "Charles Malone" to wind up his campaign.
He was certain that he was now sitting pretty. He had kidnapped Madge and Hanson and Joe Cardona. He was ready to kill his other henchmen. All he needed was The Shadow. He would then be in the clear.
The genius of The Shadow had wrecked Springer"s cunning coup.
Madge turned. "The Shadow!" she gasped. "He"s gone! Where is he?"
The sofa on which The Shadow had been reclining while Cardona was talking was now empty.
Joe grunted with amazement. He rushed toward the corridor beyond the room.
At the doorway he stopped. A small, white card was pinned to the casing.
Printed on it in black lettering was an inked message: CASE COMPLETE. NEWSPAPER.
CREDIT TO CARDONA. SUPPRESS.
FACTS CONCERNING MADGE AND.
HANSON.
Beneath these two lines was another, scrawled by a hand tremulous with weakness: THE REST IS SILENCE.
Joe Cardona pulled the card loose and placed it in his pocket. There was a queer expression in his brooding eyes. He came slowly back to the room.
"Aren"t you going to follow him, help him?" Madge whispered.
"You can"t let him go like that," Hanson urged. "He"s wounded. He needs attention."
Cardona was smiling thinly.
"There"s no man on earth I"d do more for than The Shadow. I know he"s wounded. If there was any way I could help him, my life and the last drop of blood in my body would be at his disposal. But his orders are clear. He doesn"t wish to be followed. And I"m loyal enough to respect his wishes."
There were tears in the lovely eyes of Madge Payne. "If only I could have - have thanked him, told him what I - I feel deep in my heart -"
"Haven"t you any idea at all who he really is?" Hanson asked.
Cardona shook his head. "To me he always has been - The Shadow. But I can tell you one thing" - his voice grew stronger. "He"s the greatest detective that you or I will ever see in this world! A genius who has dedicated his life to the cause of justice!"
IT was dark and very chilly at the edge of a sheer cliff that rose from the rocky depths of a deep ravine. Stars flickered overhead in a black sky.
They looked cold, remote.
There was no sound in that desolate stillness except a faint gasp of exertion, the sc.r.a.ping of unseen feet against the rocky wall of the cliff.
Someone was climbing slowly, painfully, up the rope that hung from a steel hook at the lip of the precipice.
Presently a face showed. It was haggard, smeared with blood. The deep-set eyes were pits of exhaustion. But the tight lips, the powerful hawk nose, indicated that this was a man whom neither wounds nor weakness could conquer.
The hands groped, seized a firm grip. The Shadow squirmed to the safety of level ground. He lay flat on his stomach, breathing deeply.
After a minute or two, he rose to his feet. His steps were wavering, but not his purpose. He moved straight into darkness toward a dense clump of trees where he knew a sedan was parked.
The car was still there, the same as he had left it, even to the broken gasoline gauge on the instrument panel. The Shadow slumped as he opened the door, but the weakness was only temporary. The smooth feel of the wheel under his hands was like a reviving draught of strong liquor. He forgot his bleeding face, the bullet wound in his body. With eyes burning feverishly, he backed the car from concealment, turned it about in the lonely lane.
He drove it to the main highway beyond and turned it toward the distant Hudson River. Its speed increased. Headlights bored steadily into darkness.
Behind the wheel, the eyes of The Shadow were just as steady.
His expression was an exact duplicate of the look that had been on the face of Lamont Cranston when he had stared, many days earlier, at an emblem of justice in a courtroom where Jimmy Dawson had been triumphantly acquitted for murder.
The thought of Lamont Cranston, suave member of the exclusive Cobalt Club, amused The Shadow. Cranston"s absence from the club would cause no comment - and it would coincide with the convalescence of a wounded man who was very, very tired.
Other thoughts pa.s.sed, dreamlike, through The Shadow"s mind.
Joe Cardona - Joe was destined to receive a rather queer gift. A paper-weight sent to him from an unknown friend: a flattened lead slug mounted on a heavy base of sterling silver. Joe"s friends at police headquarters would stare curiously at his desk. Reporters would try to pump him. Joe would tell them anything but the real truth - that the slug had come from the body of a man who chose to call himself The Shadow and to dwell forever in darkness.
The ruddy glow of the automobile"s tail-light vanished into the night.
Except for the murmur of wind among leaves, the night was utterly still. The sigh of the wind was soft, barely audible, filled with drowsy peace.
The peace would be broken abruptly when "The Loot of Death" broke through glaring headlines in New York newspapers. A million dollars was "The Loot of Death" - and it would fall on The Shadow to trace each dollar to its restingplace in the heart of crookdom and make a master looter confess his part in crime!
THE END.