Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 014 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER XIII. HOMER SPEAKS

THE stout door was yielding as The Shadow approached it. The tall man moved swiftly.

He laughed softly as he pressed his form against the door, and reached for the knob of the strong latch.

The knob turned beneath his fingers.

The door gave inward. A mass of surging men plunged down the steps. Two of them sprawled headforemost in the glare of flashlights.

Others piled over them. The lights were turned directly on the inner door ahead, at the end of the short, wide entry.

That door was closed. Guns in hand, mobsmen scrambled for it.

As the door opened, a shot came—not from the inner room—but from the entrance at the alley. One gangster fell at the door of the inner room.

Another turned angrily, and his light glared back toward the faces of those who still stood at the top of the steps.

Crash! A bullet shattered the glass of the flashlight. Another shot followed. Cries came from the men who had dashed to the inner room.

All they knew was that the shots were coming from the top of the steps. Were they trapped by other mobsmen? Was this a phony scheme perpetrated by double-crossers of the underworld?

Gangsters all, they did not wait to ask. Sharp barks responded, and the men at the top of the steps scattered away from the danger spot.

Those who had gone before were returning the fire. They had not seen that the first shots had come from behind the door—not from the open doorway.

There, The Shadow had swung, with the opening of the door. Hidden in the niche of the wall, he had dealt the initial stroke.

Now his automatics raked the cursing mobsters who were at the inner room. Quick, staccato shots came from behind the door.

Each bullet found a living target. Outside, wounded gangsters were being tended by their fellows. Others were waiting, away from the door of death.

They did not know what was happening within, they were waiting until some one tried to come out.

Of ten men who had entered that pit of death, only two staggered forth. The trap that had been laid for The Shadow had proven a trap for those who entered.

Some had been laid low by shots from excited gangsters at the outer doorway, but The Shadow himself had accounted for a full half dozen.

The odds that were against The Shadow had proven in his favor. Not one bullet had been aimed toward his place of safety.

The number of men that he had encountered was better than a mere two or three. He had thrown consternation into the midst of his enemies; and with that consternation had come disaster.

Not a light glowed into the death trap, for no one dared approach. Friends could be mistaken for enemies, there.

Only now, since the last echo of the final shot had died away, two grim-faced gunmen were cautiously approaching to peer within.

The Shadow worked more rapidly than they. From his place behind the door, he sprang forward and stopped beside the dead body of a gangster that lay at the foot of the stone steps.

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