The Shadow - 324 - The Black Circle by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1949-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI. THE BROKEN TRAIL

If the architect who designed the Hotel Metrolite hadn’t earned a bonus by squeezing in an extra tier of rooms, The Shadow would have broken crime’s trail this night. The rooms had been added at the expense of the fire tower, which, though it met the requirements of the building laws, was just about as narrow as these laws allowed.

The tower stairs reversed themselves at every turn and to make everything all the more compact, each series of steps was short, making the turns frequent. Though the last members of Speed’s fleeing tribe had a start of only a dozen seconds, it was enough to keep them a turn ahead of The Shadow, all the way down to the street.

There the crooks scattered between parked cars and cruising taxicabs. They had waiting cars of their own, around convenient corners, and they fled to those cars, efficiently, despite their helter-skelter tactics. Speed Devlin was a leader who lived up to his name and expected his followers to do the same.

Nevertheless, the chase was by no means ended. Inspector Cardona had ordered a supply of squad cars to be in this vicinity and they were on the job. Rapidly, Cardona threw a loose cordon around the area, while plain clothes men, also present in large numbers, began stopping and inspecting all cars. It wasn’t long before they flushed the cars containing the fake waiters from the Metrolite and a new chase began in earnest.

Meanwhile, The Shadow had disappeared. This was Cardona’s party and Joe could have it. Contacting Shrevvy’s cab, The Shadow put his black regalia in a secret compartment beneath the rear seat and as Lamont Cranston, strolled into the hotel as a late comer. He found Commissioner Weston also just arriving on the scene. There, Terry Trent had taken temporary charge and was shrugging off the indignant criticisms that Quentin Langley heaped upon him because he had failed to prevent the theft of Mrs. Worthingham’s new tiara.

One man decided not to go back into the Hotel Metrolite. That man was Fred Blanding. Thrusting his red-ribboned badge deep in an inside pocket, Fred tried to look innocent as well as respectable as he headed back to his own hotel. For though he had only a vague idea of all the details, Fred felt that his own part would be too difficult to explain.

Worst of all, it would be bad no matter who questioned him.

Apparently some member of the Black Circle had been assigned to wear the red judge’s badge and thereby be seated in the chair connected with the special light switch. A neat coverup for the man in question, because the mere act of springing to Mrs. Worthingham’s aid was the thing that had blacked out the lights. At present, Fred didn’t connect Randy Royce with the scheme, for he had merely seen Randy and didn’t even know him by name. But whoever it was, the man had decided to alibi himself completely by picking Fred as a stooge.

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