Looking at the clock, Lenstrom arose and put the money back in his pocket.
"I"m still interested," he declared, "but I think I"d better contact the farmers direct. Maybe they don"t trust you, Brett."
"Perhaps not," admitted Brett. "I tell you what I"ll do, Lenstrom. I"ll prepare a list of names right now. I"ll phone you at the hotel so you can start contacting them the first thing in the morning. These farmers get up early, you know."
Brett turned to the hallway that led to his study. Pausing, he offered: "If you want me to keep the money, Lenstrom, I"ll put it in my safe."
"They have one at the hotel," reminded Lenstrom. "Maybe I"d better carry the cash in case I meet any farmers who want to talk business." "I hope you don"t meet Bigby," said Brett. "He"s money hungry and could use that cash himself. Maybe you"d better have my chauffeur drive you down to Lamira."
The chauffeur was at that moment bringing in a plate of sandwiches, since he acted as house man in his spare time. Lenstrom obligingly declined both a companion and refreshments as he reminded: "Your chauffeur brought my car up here for me, remember, Brett? That was so I could leave when I wanted. I have an appointment at the hotel and I can"t afford to be late. Good-night, everybody."
As Lenstrom left, Brett shrugged as though he had expected such a departure. Turning abruptly, Brett went into the study to prepare the list of names. It was, at least, good policy toward continuing negotiations with Lenstrom. The chauffeur began to dish the sandwiches among the blue-prints which were engrossing Brett"s a.s.sociates. Hence, no one noticed that someone beside Lenstrom had left.
Gone through another of the mult.i.tudinous doors that featured this experiment in future architecture, Lamont Cranston stopped long enough to unzip a special compartment hidden in the bottom of his brief case. From a s.p.a.ce that formed an inverted V between two compartments stacked with papers, he was removing his favorite regalia: a slouch hat, a black cloak, and a pair of .45 automatics which were placed at the ends of the hidden interior to give it balance.
Up a short flight of stairs. Cranston had packed away the guns and was sliding his arms into the cloak before he reached the top. Planting the slouch hat on his head, he unlocked a window leading to a curious balcony. He stepped out. Lenstrom"s car was just pulling away. Cranston dropped to the ground in his other personality of The Shadow.
A few swift strides and the cloaked figure could have reached the departing car. But The Shadow did not take those strides. A flood of flashlights suddenly converged upon him! With that glare came a semicircle of men, armed with pitchforks and shot-guns.
These were Bigby"s farmer friends whose actions had been observed but not reported by Margo Lane.
On hand to see that Preston Brett remained where he belonged, they had mistaken The Shadow for the man they wanted.
VII.
WHEN The Shadow played hunches, he played them to the full. His present hunch was that trouble awaited Ralph Lenstrom. The man was riding around with fifty thousand dollars in cash. Having run into a violent problem of his own, The Shadow clung to his original premise.
Trouble for anyone might well mean trouble for Lenstrom, who therefore remained the chief issue.
Pitchforks, shot-guns, and flashlights were all trouble-makers, but the foremost were the pitchforks. Their p.r.o.ngs were extended toward The Shadow, ringing him against the wall. Being the nearest menace, The Shadow disposed of them first. From his cloak he whipped a brace of automatics. He brandished these in the faces of the pitchfork gentry, who gave the proper response.
Recoiling from the threat of the automatics, those foremost farmers left The Shadow to the shot-gun crew. These surged forward, promptly poking their weapons in between the gaps in the receding front rank. By then, however, The Shadow was a jump ahead in more ways than one.
In flourishing his automatics, The Shadow cloaked them all in the same move. He lunged forward as the farmers drew back. His dark form came under the pitchforks as their owners unconsciously lifted them.
His fists clamped upon the handles of the nearest pair. Slashing the pitchforks upward, The Shadowtwisted them from the farmer"s hands. The men dodged wildly to escape the p.r.o.ngs. The Shadow swung the implements in a wide-armed motion that cleared the remainder of the circle.
Shot-gunners dodged as flashlights flew aside, leaving a broad s.p.a.ce through which The Shadow flung himself into darkness. By the time the men with the shot-guns rallied, yelling for their comrades to lay low, The Shadow was gone.
So was Lenstrom"s car.
That was the unfortunate part. This delay had proven costly to The Shadow"s simple plan; namely to convey Lenstrom and his cash back to Lamira. There wasn"t a chance to overtake Lenstrom. His car was a hundred yards down Brett"s winding driveway. But it would be possible to intercept him, somewhere along the road that came back around the base of the hill.
Therefore, The Shadow took to the sort of shelter that would speed him on his way. Flinging away the pitch-forks, he cut around the front corner of Brett"s fancy mansion. Shotguns roared a furious but futile blast somewhere behind him. The Shadow planned to cut down across the slope to Stony Run, where it flowed under a small highway bridge. The Shadow was confident that he would arrive there well ahead of Lenstrom"s car.
There was more trouble just around the corner.
Farmers with flashlights were moving along a fringe of trees that fronted Future Haven. They were turning toward the house to find out what was happening there. They spotted The Shadow against that pink-walled background. Shot-guns spoke a message that dented the vaunted plastic. The Shadow didn"t stay long enough to be included. He was around another corner, crossing the lawn to merge with the trees that fringed Stony Run.
It meant a wider detour, this cross-cut to Bigby"s lawn instead of Brett"s. It unfortunately took The Shadow right into the path along which reserve farmers were coming. Those around Brett"s had guessed his direction and a horde of them were in pursuit. Reaching the creek, The Shadow picked out stepping-stones that led to the sandy isle that had packed against Pow-wow Boulder. Hardly had he reached the middle of the stream before farmers appeared on both banks with the customary flashlights and shot-guns. In the style that made him famous, The Shadow blended with blackness. This time, he vanished into the shade of the big boulder to his right. The Pow-wow monument was a dozen feet high and proportionately wide, but it had a forward lean that was perfectly suited to The Shadow"s manoeuver. His scramble took him up the rock to its overhanging brow. Twenty feet below, the converging waters gushed into a natural basin. A slight twist in the creek brought one bank toward the pointed angle to the rock, over on Bigby"s side. Without an instant"s hesitation, The Shadow turned his rush into a tremendous leap.
Already shot-guns were peppering the top slope of the boulder on the chance that the ghostly fugitive might be there. The huge stone trembled with The Shadow"s take-off. It seemed to quiver further under the bash of slugs. Ahead of the wild fire, The Shadow landed at the end of his tremendous leap and kept right on his course across Bigby"s lawn.
Headlights twinkled around the curve in the highway from the right. They represented Lenstrom"s car, nearing the bridge that crossed Stony Run. The Shadow had lost too much time to double back and meet the car there; his logical contact point was the lower end of the driveway leading down from Bigby"s house.
Shouts and shots were still sounding from the distant background. The Shadow raced toward his goal, now with a double purpose. It wasn"t just a case of looking to Lenstrom"s safety. The Shadow wa.s.seeking an opportunity to complete his fabulous disappearance by riding away on the car that everyone else had forgotten.
Again, however, luck was against him.
During his dash, The Shadow noted other lights, speeding down Bigby"s driveway. The car that was coming from that direction was traveling much faster than it should have, from The Shadow"s recollection of that winding route. There was something ominous in the way that it was out-racing The Shadow, but there wasn"t a thing that he could do about it.
That car was going to meet Lenstrom"s ahead of The Shadow, because of a new factor; namely, Lenstrom himself.
Unquestionably Lenstrom had heard the shots from the slope and was worried by them. He, too, was speeding his car, covering the stretch of highway much faster than The Shadow had antic.i.p.ated. If he saw those lights from Bigby"s driveway he might slacken, but apparently Lenstrom didn"t see them. His car fairly lurched toward the final bend that would swing him into Lamira.
The man in the other car saw Lenstrom and behaved accordingly. The Shadow knew this meeting wasn"t a mere coincidence when he saw the way it happened. With a sudden spurt, the car from the driveway shot out into the highway. It twisted left at a well-timed moment. Lenstrom hadn"t a chance to avoid the crash that followed, nor to alleviate it.
Deftly, the driver of the mystery car clipped Lenstrom"s vehicle. The crash sent it off the road, b.u.mping over an embankment to the right. By the time The Shadow reached the highway, Lenstrom"s car had turned over twice. The machine that had delivered the crash was nosed half across the brink. Instead of stopping beside the car, The Shadow crossed the road. He dropped from the embankment and ploughed through a stone-obstructed thicket to reach Lenstrom. Coming finally beside the wrecked car, he saw immediate traces of a sequel to the crash.
The door of the toppled car was open. Lenstrom was lying half out of it, as though he had made a final effort to climb from the wreckage. The moonlight showed the pudgy man sprawled in a twisted fashion.
His face was turned upward and his coat pulled inside out. The pocket where he had stuffed the money was empty.
It had all happened very swiftly. The half minute that The Shadow had spent in taking the difficult short-cut had been enough for the driver of the other car to leap down and finish his ugly deed. Lenstrom had helped his enemy by trying to climb out. When The Shadow clutched Lenstrom"s shoulders and tried to lift him, something slipped from beside the inert figure. It clattered down into the front seat of the car.
The thing was a heavy monkey-wrench. On Lenstrom"s head was the mark of a heavy blow, the coup de grace that the killer had delivered. A swipe from the wrench, a s.n.a.t.c.h at Lenstrom"s open pocket, and a double deed of murder and robbery had been completed almost in a single action.
Shouts were coming from the slope above the highway. They seemed very distant, like sounds from a far-off world. Silent in the darkness, The Shadow was listening for closer sounds. His attention was focused toward the brush up toward the embankment. There, the moonlight showed a jagged path that had been hewn by Lenstrom"s rolling car.
It was marshy there. The clatter of the crickets formed a chorus to the dismal kerplunks of deep-throated frogs. But those were simply a background of curtained sound against which any disturbing elements could easily be noted. All The Shadow wanted was a token from the brush above, by which he could locate a murderer who could not be far away. This time The Shadow was close upon the heels of death. He was prepared to prove that the appearance of an accident was but the visible surface of a deep-laid scheme.
VIII.
IT was tense, that wait in the darkness; every second lingered. The only way of judging time was from the shouts of the men along the road. They were constantly coming closer, yet their approach seemed painfully slow.
Such was the effect the situation produced, but The Shadow was accustomed to this sort of vigil. His policy was to let the other man worry and thereby betray himself. The longer the wait, the tougher it usually became to an adversary"s nerves.
A keen calculator of both time and distance, The Shadow was confident that the murderer could not have reached the scrubby brink where the nose of his stalled car jutted from the highway. The lights of that car were off, another testimony to the murderer"s foresight, but if he hoped to make a getaway in that crippled car he was playing too long a chance.
Something else was in the lurker"s mind. In those brief seconds, The Shadow sensed the game. But before the cloaked watcher could move to prevent it, the trick was staged, with a surprise result.
There was a scramble, high in the brush. Locating it, The Shadow fired quick, probing shots. If The Shadow had gained the benefit of even a slight angle, his bullets would have clipped the figure. But a heavy ma.s.s reared itself among the bushes, overshadowing them both. The Shadow"s foe made a darting crawl beyond the hoisting object. The thing was coming in a straight line, squarely into the path of fire.
The thing was a man-sized stone that the murderer had located just below the road edge. He was sending it on a plunge that duplicated the rolling tumble taken by Lenstrom"s wrecked car.
A freak of luck in a killer"s favor!
Lenstrom"s slayer didn"t know that The Shadow had reached the overturned car below. Only briefly had the cloaked investigator blotted the glow from the car"s dash-light. This business with the stone was for another purpose. That was to attract the attention of the arriving farmers and hurry them down into the gully. That would leave the road clear for escape.
The farmers would have fallen for it, without The Shadow"s shots.
Halting when they heard the gun-bursts, they remained stock-still until the crash came. That crash was the impact of the bounding stone against the battered car below. The murderer had aimed the missile hard and well. He had planned the crushing of Lenstrom"s body along with the clatter. As he dived for the road, the killer must have been hoping for a double hit: a living figure with a dead one. He knew from the shots that somebody had reached the car.
Looming larger with each jounce, the stone was obstructing The Shadow"s aim all along its path. As he shifted, the thing took freakish bounds that tallied with his change of angles. The broken brush veered it back to its course. Only when the stone was hopping squarely at him, did The Shadow heed his own security.
Lunging Lenstrom"s body clear of the car, The Shadow made a low, head-on rush at the crushing stone.
He flattened with a sideward roll, just as it gave a last hulking heave. The rolling stone skimmed across him, brushing his shoulder with the moss that it had gathered through its stationary years. Its leap wa.s.stopped by the larger bulk of Lenstrom"s car.
The farmers didn"t stop to reason what the unseen stone was, nor where it came from. Using the crash as a direction finder, they blasted the brush with shot-gun fire. They clambered down the slope at angles. By then, The Shadow was scaling straight to the road, retracing the broken path of car and boulder. When he reached the top, he heard the shot-guns blazing down below. The farmers were hoping to silence an unseen gunner before investigating the boulder"s crash.
The murderer was gone, but there was only one path he could have taken. That was the gravel driveway up toward Bigby"s antiquated mansion.
The highway itself was clear in the moonlight. The fringes of Bigby"s lawn were soggy and would have left too many foot-tracks. The gravel was the only course for speed without traces, so The Shadow made for it. He was still endeavoring to overtake the fugitive who had stirred up a hornet"s nest with his storm of buzzing bullets.
More of those stingers sang from The Shadow"s automatics by the time he was half-way up the drive.
The moon-flecked gravel showed him a huddled fugitive, darting well ahead. The figure was losing ground despite the urge that The Shadow"s gunfire gave him. Even on the rush The Shadow could normally clip a running target with a well-aimed .45. But the irregular ground provided chance embankments under which the fugitive stooped as he went by.
Not until he neared The Gables did the murderer reach open moonlight. There he veered successfully to the shelter of some trees. Beyond them lay a rocky terrace that proved an even better barricade. The Shadow"s shots were deflected by trees and rocks. He made a sharp cut across the lawn to the left. The plan was to cut off the fugitive when he came around Bigby"s house, which was the next and final bulwark.
That was final, unless the man fled indoors. That was a logical place for him to go. Just as Brett was a likely suspect in the murder of Zeke, so was Bigby a proper man to cla.s.s as Lenstrom"s killer. All this of course was based upon the proviso that either of these worthy citizens would stoop to the crime for which the other would be prompt to blame him.
Being both neutral and independent, The Shadow was simply following his own task through. That was why he sped around Bigby"s house on the side toward Brett"s. he intended to invade The Gables if he found the killer gone. Pa.s.sing a recess in the house wall, The Shadow saw the back door. Before he could reach it, however, the door flung open.
Out came the male members of the rural younger set. They were armed with everything from fire-tongs to frying pans. The Shadow"s last shots had stabbed louder than the music of the orchestra. The crowd was coming out to learn the cause. With them was Claude Bigby. He was gesturing in the general direction of Stony Run, as though set in the notion that any trouble must have come across the creek.
That happened to be The Shadow"s direction, so he whipped back into sheltering darkness. In choosing the deepest section of the recessed wall, he chose the world"s worst spot. A moment later, The Shadow was greeted with a flood of light. It came from the little side door that Margo had noted earlier. Some of the local huskies had found this short-cut.
They found The Shadow with it. They paused just long enough to identify him as a human figure. They quickly changed that opinion. There was a whirl of blackness among three of the lunging forms. Out of that swirl flew a poker, a candlestick, and a heavy cane. All were followed by the reeling men who had tried to wield them. The open door momentarily revealed a spinning blur. It was spotted by the crowd with Bigby. It suddenly became a black streak that sped across the moonlit lawn. It sped toward thePow-wow Boulder in the middle of Stony Run.
This time The Shadow didn"t stop at the Indian monument. He cleared the stepping-stones and zigzagged toward Future Haven. He was hoping to dodge the few remaining farmers who were on sentinel duty around the polychrome mansion. All The Shadow needed was a reasonable break. He gained one just as he was blending with some bushes.
A balcony door clattered open from the near side of the dream mansion. Out to the railed s.p.a.ce two and a half floors above the ground, stepped Preston Brett. He gazed with folded arms upon the silvery lawn.
He awaited the human hounds from The Gables.
Motionless, The Shadow let them pa.s.s, Bigby with them. They pulled up below the balcony and stared at the man who stood there. Shaking his fist upward, Bigby stormed: "This is your work, Brett!"
"What work?" inquired Brett, coolly. "Staying home and minding my own business?"
"I mean that shooting over by The Gables!"
"The shooting was around here," retorted Brett. "It started right after one of my guests left. When I recognized the sound of shot-guns, I came up here."
"Kind of scared you, huh?"
"Yes," acknowledged Brett. "I felt that if your friends were in a shooting mood, they"d want me as a target."
Faces began to appear at the windows of Brett"s odd-shaped living room. They belonged to guests who had crawled under the futuristic chairs and tables. By then, another guest was on his way to rejoin them.
Moving around the house, The Shadow found a grip on the wall and returned to the low balcony that had been his original exit.
Brett must have excused himself, for he had come down to the living room by the time The Shadow looked in through the doorway. Back in his guise of Cranston, The Shadow strolled into the room. He stood by with the other guests while Brett opened a broad window. Cranston heard him resume his argument with Bigby.
Sober-faced farmers, arriving from the highway, put an end to verbal hostilities. They reported finding Lenstrom"s car "hove off the road" with its owner dead beside it. Reluctantly, they admitted that it had been cracked by a car that came from Bigby"s drive. They had heard gunshots that must have been fired by the missing driver of the death-dealing car.
"It does look like your work, Bigby," declared Brett, coolly. Then, his tone becoming anxious, he queried: "What about Lenstrom"s money? Was it in his pocket?"
The farmers looked at each other, puzzled. Finally one remembered seeing the victim"s empty pocket, inside out.
"So it was robbery!" accused Brett, staring straight at Bigby. "I should have known that would be your motive!"
"My motive!" returned Bigby. "Why, I"ve got a dozen witnesses who will swear I didn"t leave The Gables!" "But the car came from your driveway--"
"And there were a couple of dozen cars up there. Anybody might have been driving it!"
"Anybody except myself," reminded Brett, coolly, "and that goes for my guests, including Lenstrom, who happened to be driving the wrong car. But what about your guests, Bigby?"
"I"ll check on all of them," promised Bigby, in a gruff but defensive tone. "I"ll see to it that justice is done."
"You should have seen that crime wasn"t done," returned Brett, tartly. "The burden of Lenstrom"s death is on you, Bigby. You claim you own this county; very well, find the man who owns that car and make him tell his story."
Bigby and his tribe were turning back in the direction of The Gables. Closing the big window, Brett faced his guests and reflected their solemn gaze. Grim with thoughts of tragedy, these men were also awed by the mystery of the murder car that had deliberately hurled Ralph Lenstrom to his doom.
One man alone could have named the owner of that car. He had remembered the vehicle that was standing on the road. A pa.s.sing glance in the moonlight had reminded The Shadow of a car that he had seen in the fog.
Lamont Cranston could have stated that the murder car belonged to Herbert Creswold.
IX.
ANOTHER inquest was over. A verdict of accidental death was reluctantly delivered. There was more to the case of Ralph Lenstrom than met the eye; of that the local coroner was certain. But the question of the missing money, the mysterious shots, and the wild chase of an imaginary phantom, all could be cla.s.sed as things apart from the actual accident to Lenstrom"s car.
The inquest at least proved one thing: If Herbert Creswold did not rate as the most important man in Kawagha County, he could certainly boast that he was the smartest--had he chosen to risk that t.i.tle by turning braggart.
n.o.body could have played a craftier hand than Creswold when questioned on the matter of his car.
The car had been undergoing repairs in a local garage. This, he said, was due to slight damage incurred at the time when Creswold had driven back from the fire at the Old Bridge Tavern. Creswold had left orders that the car should be delivered to him as soon as the repairs were completed.
Now it happened that someone had phoned the garage to leave word that Creswold would be at Bigby"s party. So a garage mechanic had driven up to The Gables. Finding the open house, he had joined the party, intending to look for Creswold later. But Creswold hadn"t been at the party; therefore he could only have picked up his car by waiting outside for its delivery. However, anyone else could have done just that. The key had been left in the ignition, as was customary in these parts.
According to Creswold, he"d been in his office at the Star Theater. He had been awaiting a phone call from Lenstrom after the latter returned to the hotel. Creswold operated the theater and had a private way in and out. He usually left orders not to be disturbed. In fact, the personnel of the theater seldom knew when he was there, unless he announced it.
So there was n.o.body to support Creswold"s alibi. Equally important was the fact that no one could disprove it. This gave Creswold the benefit of the doubt, which was all he needed. The doubt involved the biggest thing in Kawagha County, the current feud between Bigby and Brett. Each of those gentlemen was vociferous in his denunciation of the other, but neither could present a sensible argument. Brett said that Bigby wanted cash to lend the farmers. That, he contended, was sufficient reason for Bigby to personally knock Lenstrom off the road and take his money. Bigby stifled that charge with proof that he hadn"t left The Gables. In return, Bigby charged Brett with having somehow tried to frame him. That didn"t hold, however, considering that the burden had been tossed on Creswold.
By the time the argument had circled back to him, Creswold looked very innocent and much maligned.
He said that he and Lenstrom had been the best of friends. The clerk at the Kawagha Hotel vouchsafed the fact. That swung the hearing back to Brett"s original statement: that Lenstrom had left his house carrying the cash which Bigby could have used but wasn"t going to get.