Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 158 by Maxwel l Grant

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

CHAPTER XI. FOGGED FIGHT

APPROACHING crooks were speaking to a waiter. Harry heard their growled questions:

"You seen a guy named Barney Faskin?"

The waiter nodded, nudged a thumb toward Harry's door.

"Yeah. He went in there."

"Alone?"

"Sure. I saw him go."

"Anybody waitin' for him?"

The waiter shook his head. He looked around for Barney, but didn't see him. The dead man was sprawled out of sight.

Harry relaxed. He hadn't been noticed; that helped matters. Aside from Harry's present predicament, he knew that The Shadow wanted no one to suspect that Barney had been tapped for information.

Barney couldn't have talked to Relf; nor to any one, except to deny that he had met a person in that back room. The knife thrust had come too soon for Barney to have changed his story.

Harry's temporary elation ended as he heard the toughs confer.

"Let's case the place," suggested one. "Then we'll be sure."

"Yeah," agreed another, "an' all we gotta do is wait to see who shows up. We'll find out who

Barney wanted to talk to."

The pair were coming to the door, and they were backed by others. It meant a fight against big odds. Harry would have to use The Shadow's tactics of getting the start. But he held back for the moment, partly to be ready in surprise, partly in the pitifully slender hope that something would stop that crew before they reached the door. As long as there was any chance that Harry could cover the fact that Barney had talked, The Shadow's agent intended to stay with it.

The last instant arrived when a thug laid his fist upon the door knob. Harry drew back, leveling his gun, expecting the door to whip open.

Instead, there was interruption, the sort which Harry had thought impossible.

A fierce laugh riveted the crooks in the outer room. It pealed, mocking, from the side door of the grog shop. There, above Barney's corpse, stood a new challenger who had somehow managed to penetrate a mesh of outside watchers.

THAT invader was The Shadow.

He had received Harry's message, had correctly guessed his agent's destination. In his black cloak, with slouch hat lowered, The Shadow had come here to make his entrance through the outside fog. Sight of Barney's body told him enough. The Shadow knew that Harry was still in that inner room.

The Shadow's challenge had a double purpose. It defied his enemies, bringing them to battle. It made them think that The Shadow was the person expected by Barney Faskin, thus covering the fact that the dead man had talked.

Instead of being forced to imitate The Shadow's tactics, Harry was treated to a demonstration of his chief's swift measures.

The moment that the crooks turned in his direction, The Shadow opened fire. He was weaving along the rear wall, pumping bullets from guns that spoke alternately with split-second action. With each shot, he picked another opponent, taking no time for accurate aim.

His purpose was not to clip those foemen, but to scatter them, flaying them toward the front of the eating place. Moreover, the quick fire stopped the guns of crooks.

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