Shadow 148 - Serpents Of Siva 04-15-38, 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 battle ended more rapidly than The Shadow had expected. There were mobsters in the courtyard below; they began to fire upward, even though The Shadow was protected by the steel platform. They stopped promptly, when police whistles shrilled in the distance.

Other guns began to speak. Crooks were in flight, shouting that the bulls had arrived. Only The Shadow knew the real identity of the new attackers. His agents had arrived. Easing downward, The Shadow continued toward the courtyard.

Almost at the bottom of the fire escape, The Shadow sensed a muffled clatter above him. For the moment, he forgot the dacoit that he wanted to find. This was the man from that other room: the trouble-maker who had switched on the lights!

Though ordinary hoodlums had shown ignorance when quizzed by the police, The Shadow knew that every mob required a leader. There were brains among those cover-up squads; and any man smart enough to invade Bolingbroke’s apartment, would certainly have intelligence.

That man who followed The Shadow was one who could tell facts regarding recent murders, as readily as any dacoit.

The Shadow waited. His quarry arrived. With a swish, the cloaked fighter was upon the fellow, smothering him in the darkness of that lower platform.

The thug had supposed that The Shadow was gone; nevertheless, he was alert - enough so to put up a frenzied struggle, as he hit the platform. Ordinarily, such resistance would have been short-lived. Once The Shadow had the edge in a combat of this sort, an opponent seldom rallied. Tonight, the case was different.

Shifting to gain a complete clutch, The Shadow let his adversary writhe leftward. The Shadow swung in the same direction, jolting hard against the rail. The jounce came squarely on those ribs that had deflected a marksman’s bullet.

The hard shock brought immediate agony; instinctively, The Shadow pressed his hand against his side.

The crook caught the rail, came upward. He felt The Shadow’s slump, took advantage of it. The conflict underwent a swift reversal; the mobster had the superior position. It was his own luck that made him overeager, plus his ignorance of The Shadow’s wounded condition.

Figuring that his advantage was temporary, the crook tried to end matters in a hurry. They were a single flight above the ground, battling close to the hinged steps that hung from the fire escape. The crook shoved The Shadow for the space below.

In those split-seconds, The Shadow showed quick strategy. Instead of fighting back, he let himself go. Flung backward to the ladder, he twisted to the right, to land on his unwounded side. He struck the ladder arm first; grabbed hard for a metal step.

It worked as The Shadow calculated. His sudden drop made the crook’s forward motion a long one. The fellow couldn’t halt himself; he came plunging for The Shadow. But The Shadow wasn’t there when the thug landed. The ladder was swinging downward with the cloaked fighter’s weight. The crook found emptiness.

Head first, the fellow pitched clear over The Shadow, clutching the air as he went.

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