Cardona grinned, cleared his throat, went into his song and dance. But his bluff about a "fresh clue" and his smiling hope that he could meet Mr. Stoner to discuss it, met with small success.
Helene didn"t know when Stoner would be back. She herself was in charge of office affairs and familiar with all the details. She"d be very happy to help Mr. Cardona in any way possible.
Her "help" was to dodge most of Joe"s quiet questions. The few sheanswered truthfully got him nowhere. She made no effort to hide the sneer on her heavily rouged lips. Cardona kept his temper, however, and stuck to his role of a slightly thick-headed police officer who didn"t know what it was all about.
Finally, when Malone was on the point of interrupting the farce with an angry exclamation, Cardona brought the unsatisfactory interview to a close.
"Thank you a lot, Miss Carfax," Joe said, blandly. "If anything breaks later on, I"ll give you a buzz on the phone. Tell Mr. Stoner I regret having missed him."
ON the sidewalk downstairs, Charles Malone said bitterly: "That girl treated us like a pair of fools! Just what have we gained by this visit?"
"Plenty!" Cardona said. "In the police business there are times when it pays to stall. If I didn"t do anything else, I"ve convinced that wise blonde upstairs that I"m just a dope. Maybe it will encourage Stoner to get a little bolder. That"s one of the ways we nab clever crooks. Don"t worry, Mr. Malone.
Take it from me, we haven"t wasted our time."
"What are we to do now?"
"Let"s get back to headquarters."
They walked along the curb, watching for an empty cab. Behind them, advancing closer and closer, came the figure of a tall, thin-faced young man in shabby clothes. There was a two-days" growth of beard on his sallow jaws. He looked like a panhandler. As a matter of fact, he had been begging outside the building that housed Stoner"s office. He had watched Cardona and Malone go into the building, and come out again.
The moment the young beggar observed their reappearance, he began to follow them along the curb, shielded by hurrying pedestrians.
His eyes alternated between Cardona"s back and the entrance of the building next door to Stoner"s. Suddenly he saw something that made him spring forward. He ran with the awkward stagger of a drunken man.
He seemed to trip and fall. But his arm, shielded by his body, struck Cardona in the small of the back and shoved him viciously into the gutter. Joe went headlong. So did Charles Malone, upset by the sudden impact of his companion.
Both men fell directly into the path of a speeding automobile.
There was a yell of horror from the crowded sidewalk. The front tires of the automobile skidded sidewise as the driver fought to swerve at the last minute. It was an impossible task; the wheels sped straight for the helpless head of Charles Malone.
Cardona had rolled to his knees with an instinctive jerk of police-trained muscles. In the split-second as the brakes squealed and the crowd yelled, his hand bunched itself in Malone"s collar, tossed him limply toward the curb.
Joe tried to follow, but it was too late. The fender of the car struck him on shoulder and thigh, tossed him forward like a bale of hay. He fell on hands and knees, rolled over on his back.
IN an instant, the avenue was a turmoil of excitement. The sedan slewed around in a half curve and halted. Malone rose dizzily from the curb, unhurt except for the sharp bang of his skull against the stone. A dozen men ran to the aid of Cardona.
But Joe, too, was on his feet.
"I"m all right," he panted. "Where did that b.u.m go? A young guy in shabby clothes. Looked like a tramp. Anyone see him scram?"
There was no sign of him in either direction. He had fled the moment hismurderous shove had sent Cardona and Malone under the wheels of the speeding sedan.
His desperate attack had a single, grim purpose. He had prevented Joe Cardona from observing a man who had just entered the office building that adjoined the one in which David Stoner maintained his modest detective suite.
The man was Stoner himself.
He ascended in the elevator to the nineteenth floor. He entered an office marked: "John Smith, Attorney." It was a large suite, but there was only one girl visible in the anteroom. She didn"t even raise her head as Stoner pa.s.sed down a short corridor and opened a door marked private. He locked it behind him.
The room looked as if it were seldom used. Stoner left it immediately by a second door, which he also locked. The inner room was completely empty, except for cigarette ashes and a few flattened b.u.t.ts on the floor. Beyond it was a short corridor and a blank wall paneled in carved wood.
Stoner bent hastily over one of the carved decorations in the design and a panel sprang noiselessly open. He stepped through the small aperture and the panel closed behind him.
He had now pa.s.sed through the building wall. He was in the structure that housed his own suite of offices - a suite larger than his clients suspected.
This was the secret of Stoner"s set-up that Cardona would have learned, had he been able to spot the fake detective and follow him.
Stoner entered a luxurious, beautifully furnished chamber. The lamps were lighted because there were no windows to this cunningly hidden room.
As Stoner appeared, a man who had been waiting nervously in one of the armchairs, rose to his feet.
The man was wearing dark-colored gla.s.ses. There was a trim, close-cropped mustache on his upper lip and something had happened to change the appearance of his eyebrows. They were dyed to match the new color of the man"s hair and mustache.
But had Joe Cardona taken a long careful look at him, he would have known who he was. It was Jimmy Dawson.
DAWSON had been drinking. The bottle of whisky on the table at his elbow was a third empty. Liquor blurred his voice, but it failed to hide the lurking terror in his eyes.
"Anything new?"
"I told you to lay off booze," Stoner snapped.
"I can"t help it. I"m scared! Cardona and Malone called on Helene today."
Stoner"s eyes remained on the trembling gunman, as if weighing and measuring him.
"Are you still sure you don"t know where the Colette painting is?"
"I swear I don"t know a thing about it!"
Stoner smiled. He walked to the table, poured himself a drink. He turned, his cold eyes lifting toward the wall behind him. There was a framed painting on the wall. He raised his gla.s.s in an oddly humorous gesture of a silent toast.
The crouched figure of a magnificent dog seemed almost alive on the canvas. The eyes gleamed, the jaws hung open, displaying the curve of white, powerful fangs.
It was the portrait of - a foxhound.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE JUNK YARD.
A THIN young man in cheap and rumpled clothes was begging on the sidewalk in front of the pretentious town house of Alonzo Kelsea. He made no move to leave the neighborhood. Nor did he stray very far from the entrance to Alonzo Kelsea"s home.
Clyde Burke had been watching this young man for nearly ten minutes.
Hidden by the stone overhang of a near-by doorway, he had noticed the beggar"s interest in the house of the famous criminal lawyer. Kelsea"s limousine was parked at the curb and Clyde noticed this, too.
The hand of the beggar kept moving nervously toward a ragged pocket of his coat. Clyde caught a glimpse of what looked like the corner of an envelope.
Kelsea came hurrying out of his home.
Abruptly, the beggar started forward. So did Clyde Burke. Out of his doorway with one swift stride, he began to approach the two men who now were converging near the parked automobile at the curb.
Their backs were to Clyde. He heard the beggar say something in a low voice and extend a plain white envelope to the lawyer. Kelsea reached for it.
The next instant, Clyde had s.n.a.t.c.hed it from Kelsea"s pudgy hand and was racing at top speed down the avenue and around the corner.
"Help! Stop thief!"
The quiet street was shrill with the cries of Alonzo Kelsea. He raced at top speed after the fleeing figure of Clyde, and so did the young man in the shabby clothes.
But Clyde knew the neighborhood. While waiting in the doorway, he had formulated his plan of escape. Rounding the corner like a deer, he crossed the side street diagonally and vaulted a wooden fence in the rear of a row of two-story frame buildings.
Clyde"s only thought now was to get rid of the note unseen. Ducking through a hole in another fence, he flitted swiftly down a narrow alley. He could hear the thudding feet of his pursuers as he rounded a turn, sped past a heap of rubbish and approached the alley entrance to the next street.
There were three empty ash cans standing a few feet from the sidewalk beyond. Clyde halted briefly, raised the middle can, shoved the flat envelope beneath its bottom. His left hand jerked a fountain pen from his pocket. With a swift dart of his wrist he sent a blob of ink splashing against the side of the can he had selected for his emergency hiding place.
The thing was done almost in the flash of an eye. Clyde gained the street before his pursuers came in sight. He slowed his pace immediately to a walk.
He braced himself for an unpleasant scene, and it came without delay. A hand caught him by the arm, spinning him around.
IT was the thin young man. Behind him, puffing from his recent exertion, was Kelsea. But worse still, a uniformed policeman was at Kelsea"s side.
"That"s him!" the lawyer shouted. "He"s a thief! He stole a very valuable paper from me!"
Clyde Burke grinned with sudden relief as he saw the face of the policeman. Here was a lucky break he hadn"t bargained for. As a star newspaper reporter, he knew hundreds of cops, had done favors for lots of them. This one was Pete Maguire.
"h.e.l.lo, Pete," he said, calmly. "What"s all the rumpus?"
The cop turned in puzzled fashion toward the angry Kelsea. "Are you sure this is the guy who pulled the holdup?"
"Of course! He went over the fence and through the alley."
"If you mean a fellow in a gray suit, about my build," Clyde said,softly, "he came tearing out of that alley a minute ago. He hopped into a taxi and went around the next corner on two wheels.
"This lad is okay," the cop said, curtly. "He"s a newspaper reporter. One of the best in town, too. His name is Clyde Burke."
At the mention of newspaper reporter, Alonzo Kelsea"s whole att.i.tude changed like magic. He smiled, apologized. With the perspiring policeman, he went back into the alley. So did the thin-faced man.
Clyde continued onward to the corner and entered a drug store. He watched for the cop to reappear. In five minutes or so, he saw him emerge alone and continue on his interrupted beat. As soon as he was gone, Clyde left the drug store and reentered the alley.
There was no sign of the tramp or of Kelsea. Clyde approached the three ash cans, was about to bend over the middle one and recover the paper, when a sixth sense warned him he was being observed. Instead of stopping, he walked past the hiding place.
He had taken only a step or two when a curt voice said: "Stick "em up, wise guy! Don"t move, or I"ll let you have it!"
FROM the darkness of a cellar entrance came the ruthless figure of the fake panhandler. A gun was now in his grip, rigidly aimed, menacing.
"You didn"t think you could fool us that easy, did you?" he taunted, in a hard, bitter voice. "Where"s that envelope?"
"I don"t know what you"re talking about."
"No? Keep walking in front of me. If you try to run, I"ll blow your spine apart! - and I got an easy get-away, too, in case you"d like to know."
Clyde understood, when he walked the length of the alley and reached the street where he had first scaled the fence. Kelsea was standing at the curb in front of the opened rear door of his limousine. He stepped aside and the gunman shoved Clyde headlong into the car.
The newspaper reporter fell sprawling and Kelsea followed him with a quick leap, slamming the door of the car behind him. A gun showed for an instant in the lawyer"s hand.
"Take it easy," he grated, "if you want to live, Mr. Clyde Burke!"
The thug circled the car and slid behind the wheel. The automobile started. The dusk through which Clyde had vainly hoped to escape was now deepening to darkness. Lights flared and receded as the automobile raced steadily downtown. Kelsea asked only one snarling question on the ride.
"Where"s that envelope?"
Clyde didn"t answer. The time for lying and bluffing was now past. He knew that both his captors were desperate enough to fill him with lead, if he attempted to cry out for aid.
The ride led southward and then east. The car came to a halt almost in the shadow of a huge stone abutment of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Kelsea"s goal was a long fence that shut in the wide, sprawling expanse of a junk yard. Clyde could see towering piles of sc.r.a.p metal over the top of the fence. The thin-faced gunman at the wheel unlocked a door in the barrier with a key that Kelsea tossed to him. The reporter was hustled inside the inclosure and the door slammed.
He was taken through the deserted junk yard, past aisle after aisle of rusted and twisted sc.r.a.p metal. In the very center of this area, hidden fromsight of the street, was a small wooden shack. It proved to be a bare-looking office with a dusty rolltop desk and two very ancient wooden chairs. The only modern thing in sight was the telephone on top of the desk.
Kelsea wasted no time. "I"m going to the nearest drug store," he told his companion, "to get the necessary materials that will make a smart news hawk do some rapid talking. Before I get through, he"ll be d.a.m.ned glad to talk! If he gets tough, sock him. But I don"t want him killed, understand?"
"Don"t worry," the thin man said. His grin was wolfish. "I"d rather hurt a guy than kill him, any day. It"s more fun."
Kelsea left.
"Sit down," the man with the gun said.
CLYDE pretended to be scared, confused. He knew it was now or never. If he waited until Kelsea returned, he was doomed. He had a plan in his mind, a plan that had occurred to him the moment he had caught sight of the telephone on the desk. He had to get a message to The Shadow, to warn him where the envelope was hidden and to tell him the whereabouts of the junk yard where he was now a prisoner.
As he stumbled blindly toward the chair which the thug pointed out with a wave of his gun. Clyde seemed on the verge of fainting with terror. But his mind was crystal-clear. He whirled with a sudden, double gesture. His left hand swept the gun aside with a sweep of his palm. His right, closed into a hard fist, struck the surprised thug squarely on the angle of his upturned jaw.
There was a crash, as man and chair went over backward. In two swift jumps, Clyde reached the window and went headlong through in a jangle of broken gla.s.s. He was on his feet in an instant, racing through the dark aisles between mountainous piles of junk. He dived under a piece of moldy tarpaulin and waited breathlessly.
The thug did exactly what Clyde had antic.i.p.ated. He ran pellmell through the dark junk yard toward the locked gate in the fence, to prevent the escape of his vanished prisoner.
Clyde went back like a noiseless streak toward the empty office. He vaulted inward through the smashed window, seized the telephone in trembling, blood-smeared hands. He had cut himself severely going through the window, but he didn"t care about that. He called a private number known only to the loyal agents of The Shadow.
A voice replied, almost instantly: "Burbank speaking."
Clyde poured out his message in breathless gulps. He described the alley and the position of the ink-spattered ash can where he had hidden the envelope so eagerly desired by Alonzo Kelsea. He told the whereabouts of the junk yard.
Then with a brusque click the receiver of the telephone was replaced, and Clyde Burke was again leaping noiselessly through the broken window to the yard outside.