The Shadow 231 by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

DURING the few hours that followed, the impassive Mr. Cranston made some calls to Burbank, using the voice of The Shadow. Reports were coming in regarding the Loftus Annex at the Central Park Zoo, but that matter could wait. The Shadow’s main interest concerned the coming visit of Howard Felkin.

Murder will out.

It was a rule that often worked; one that definitely applied to the combined deaths of Bendleton and Eldwald. The Shadow had assisted the law in satisfying itself on the exchange of murder, but The Shadow wasn’t at all convinced that the thing was just a simple open-and-shut case.

There were loose ends in many cases, and this double tragedy promised them. The Shadow hadn’t been disappointed. He was convinced that Felkin’s information would apply to Bendleton or Eldwald, perhaps both. For The Shadow was working on a theory so far below the surface, that the law hadn’t even scratched the veneer.

Potential swindlers like Felkin might pick victims from persons heralded in the newspapers, but they didn’t choose the friends of police commissioners.

At half past four, Lamont Cranston was strolling outside the Cobalt Club. He was watching for a taxicab, and at the same time keeping a lookout for Weston’s official car, which might arrive before five.

Minutes passed, and it was nearly quarter of five when a cab swung around the corner. As chance had it, Cranston spied Weston’s big car just as the cab halted.

It would have been easy for The Shadow to whip open the cab door and whisk Felkin into the confines of the club ahead of the arriving commissioner. But when he took one glance at the cab, The Shadow preferred to retain the leisurely style of Cranston.

Deliberately, he turned and waved to Weston as the commissioner approached. They met, while the doorman was stepping to the cab that had stopped in front of the club.

“You wanted to meet Felkin,” remarked The Shadow in Cranston’s most casual tone, “so I asked him to come here, commissioner. I think he is in this cab.”

Weston stared.

“But that cab is empty, Cranston!”

It wasn’t empty. The Shadow had spied a telltale hat poked just above the window edge. Through his mind was running that earlier thought: “Murder will out.”

The adage was to have dramatic proof. The doorman was at the cab; both The Shadow and commissioner were watching as he opened the door.

Out from the cab plunged a figure that struck the sidewalk, floundered on its shoulders and landed face upward, to show peaked features that had once been sallow, but were now as white as chalk.

It was the visage of a dead man, who could be none other than Howard Felkin.

Until the cab had actually arrived, The Shadow did not expect this dramatic result. He’d assumed that Felkin had arranged his plans to escape disaster. Apparently, Felkin had been lax on that essential point.

Howard Felkin was just another man who knew too much. An additional pawn in the game that had taken the lives of two more important men: Richard Bendleton and Kirby Eldwald.

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