The Shadow - 199 - The Scent of Death by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1940-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

He was looking squarely at a stone in the creek bed, one that would have given him an unpleasant reception had he slid a few feet farther.

Blackness drifted amid the moonlight that illumined the little creek. Everything that The Shadow saw was partial, and he couldn’t understand why. It was always that way after a hard jolt that brought a brain concussion. The Shadow had been through the very same experience before, but he could not remember it.

He managed, though, to grip fleeting thoughts that he repeated half aloud, until he talked himself into remembering them. Marr’s house, the golden flowers, the wild ride in the car—all those were facts, not fancies.

The Shadow made out a smashed thing beside the creek. It was the roadster. Crawling along the bank, he reached the car.

Half upright, the roadster was empty. The Shadow couldn’t understand why, for he was whispering the names of Morry and Koko. Stumbling around the car, he fell across one, then the other. The moonlight showed what was left of them, but even its gentle glow did not make them look pleasant.

The crushed figures distorted themselves before The Shadow’s gaze. They seemed to writhe and fling their battered, bloody faces upward. The illusion puzzled him, until he found that he was swaying. Getting a grip on the bent door of the roadster, The Shadow rolled into the car.

His fingers were slower, more helpless, than they had been at Marr’s when The Shadow made a new effort to find the button of the secret compartment.

At last, it seemed to pop open of its own accord. The Shadow drew out his cloak, his hat, his guns. With them came the rustling remains of the withered carnations.

CLUTCHING all those prizes, The Shadow rolled from the car, fell across Morry’s body. The jolt brought him a new train of thought. His lips repeated a name: “Gordy.”

Mechanically, The Shadow probed through Morry’s pockets, found odds and ends that he shoved into the pockets of his own trousers. He rejected a revolver that he did not need but, as he groped, he kept saying that there was something else to find.

The Shadow chanced on it at last, in the dead crook’s vest pocket. Fingers opening in the moonlight, The Shadow saw the token that Morry had shown to Koko. It was a gold carnation, of the smaller variety, the sort that Kreft wore in his buttonhole.

Clutching the little golden flower, The Shadow stumbled away from the wrecked car. He took the only course the ravine offered, the bed of the shallow creek. Floundering over rocks, The Shadow sprawled in the water; not once, but often.

Each spill revived him somewhat; but when he clutched his guns, his cloak and hat, he lost the evidence that he had brought from Marr’s.

A few at a time, large golden carnations left The Shadow’s hands and floated down the stream ahead of him. One flower, though, was constantly in his clutch.

It was the tiny coin-sized flower that The Shadow had found in Morry’s pocket.

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