Shadow 144 - The Murder Master 02-15-38, The by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Street and Smith
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE girl’s whisper ended with a sharp gasp. Imperceptibly, The Shadow’s shoulder blade had edged backward beneath his cloak. The twist that he made was swiftly unexpected. His shoulder blade clipped the gun muzzle, joggled the revolver in the girl’s hand.

Before she could recover it, The Shadow’s fist was clamping the weapon. His digging fingers forced the girl’s clutch from the trigger.

The girl put up a fierce, but silent, struggle. Her left hand clawed for The Shadow’s throat, only to be gripped by his free fist. Her efforts to regain the revolver failed; it was slipping farther from her grasp. Frantically, the girl tried to wrench loose toward the storeroom door. The Shadow let her take that direction; in her eagerness, the girl lost the gun entirely.

Once in the storeroom, she tried to gasp a cry. The Shadow prevented it by tilting her head with easy throat pressure. Looking upward, the girl stared straight into The Shadow’s eyes. She still had fight, but he held her helpless, with a clutch that was almost velvet.

The girl realized, though, that those easy fingers would turn to steel, if she forced it. She quieted; but her eyes flared with anger, as she panted long deep breaths. It was her turn to play a waiting game. She withheld the useless cry that The Shadow could so easily prevent.

For the first time since he had left Quedden’s office, The Shadow took a deep breath of his own. The effect was more startling than his encounter with the girl. Compared with the stuffy office, this air had the sting of tart wine. The strong scent of ozone tinged the entire atmosphere.

Another breath; it came with intoxicating strength. The Shadow found himself gulping the air with an instinctive eagerness that he could not resist. The room swayed; the girl seemed to melt from his grasp. Confused thoughts drilled The Shadow’s brain.

He had to hold the girl; to question her. It was vital to learn who she was; why she had come here. With his campaign against the Murder Master dependent upon his own disappearance, The Shadow could not afford to let it be known that he still lived.

Conflicting with those impressions was a flash-back to the scene in Quedden’s office. The Shadow remembered the dank air; the whirling fan that he had discovered near the door. They fitted with the information that The Shadow had noted in Quedden’s safe, but to which he had given too little attention.

The office was a trap; rendered so by an odorless gas that Quedden loosed every night, when he closed the door. That fan had stirred the vapor through the office. A person breathing it would neither suspect it nor feel immediate effects.

It took draughts of clear air to make the gas effective. Anyone who inhaled it would experience the results on the way out from Quedden’s office. Had The Shadow gone to the lower laboratory, he would be swaying there, instead of here in this storeroom.

Old Quedden might have lost

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