The Shadow - 160 - Vanished Treasure by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1938-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

against the turf. They looked rigid, motionless, but The Shadow’s opponent was yielding, when shouts came from the lawn.

Three men were coming from the direction of the mansion. Two of them were carrying improvised weapons - one a pickax, the other a spade; the third, some distance back, was brandishing an old-fashioned revolver.

The Shadow gave a twisting heave that sent the last grappler on a long curve beside the rutted roadway. The jolt that the fellow took would have been a backbreaker on a solid floor, but the thick-tufted grass saved him from serious injury.

Seeing The Shadow, the newcomers kept toward him; but he was far from reach of pickax or spade. The fellow with the revolver stopped. He opened fire,

shooting wildly from long range.

As the first shots came, The Shadow blotted into blackness toward the woods. He fired spasmodic return shots that kept the revolver-armed man coming toward him, continuing the duel. The Shadow could easily have picked off that lone enemy with a bullet, but that was not his purpose.

He was cutting off at an angle, to draw pursuit away from the gates. He wanted Harry and Roger to be well away before a search started in that direction.

Emboldened by the nerve of the man with the revolver, the scattered servants scrambled for their shotguns. Reloading, they spread out, forming a wide semicircle, to close in upon The Shadow.

His gunfire had ceased. He was somewhere amid the trees. Closing in with guns and flashlights, the searchers themselves had the advantage of the darkness.

They reached the line of a high sharp-spiked picket fence. They were confident that the barrier had blocked the man they wanted. Gruffly, they shouted for him to reveal himself; to surrender, or take the consequences.

Flashlights rounded tree trunks, to pick out lurking spots. But nowhere did Hugh Claymer’s servants see the black-cloaked shape they sought. They began

to wonder if the mansion ghost had roamed at large, to trick them. When the searchers came close together, they were forced to agree that The Shadow had managed a complete disappearance.

They were close by the thick trunk of a huge oak, when they heard an evasive creak from a bough above. They looked upward, to the lowest branch, a full fifteen feet above their heads. They saw that the eight-foot fence was close to the tree trunk; that by using both, an acrobatic climber could have reached the top of the pickets. They sped lights in that direction.

The long bough, thick as a small tree, gave a quiver that denoted heavy leverage. There was a light thud past a cluster of saplings twenty feet beyond the other side of the fence. The searchers realized that The Shadow had done more than scale the pickets. He had stretched to the branch, and crawled along it.

Dropping from the end, The Shadow had reached new cover. Angrily, the servants shouted, discharged their shotguns into the innocent saplings. The frail trees quaked; there was silence; then came a trailing laugh from below a little knoll.

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