The Shadow 258 The Murdering Ghost by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1942-10-31T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII. THE BARREN TRAIL

MILTON SUFFOLK was in command of the psychic laboratory when Lamont Cranston arrived there with his friend, Commissioner Weston. Inspector Cardona arrived, too, and it was like Old Home Week with Joe Cardona on the job. All that Cranston had to do was sit back and watch Cardona reconstruct.

Joe was really good at such work. He could build up a case until it was as solid as a doughnut, and The Shadow always admired such workmanship, particularly the hole.

Tonight, Cardona took everything into consequence. Don Tarkingham was dead, shot through the back at a time when he had been about to expose the spook trickery of the medium, Tanya Yonina. She claimed that she couldn’t have shot him, because she didn’t have a gun and he was facing her at the time the shot was fired.

Against Madame Yonina was the fact that she was loose from the bonds at the time; but she refuted that by stating that she couldn’t have been outside the cabinet, else Hayne’s scales would have revealed the fact. This brought up the question of where the shot was fired from, a thing on which everybody disagreed because they agreed.

Everybody said that it had been fired “from the right,” which didn’t help Cardona, since the group had been seated in a circle. Except for Madame Yonina, who had been at large but definitely cramped, the only person on the loose was Professor Hayne, but he was far outside the circle and the fatal shot had certainly been fired from closer range.

Tarkingham had been loose, too, but he couldn’t have committed suicide by shooting himself in the back. Which left only the ghost that had appeared after the lights came on. The ghost that only two persons present, Harry Vincent and Margo Lane, had identified as The Shadow.

There were times when Inspector Cardona played hunches in the style of old King Solomon. He did just that on two occasions. This wasn’t a case of two women claiming one child. It was a matter of ghosts, two of them, with a lady present who had a reputation as a ghost caller.

Madame Yonina had produced one ghost and spied the other. One remained—a contrivance faked from cheesecloth, the other had dematerialized into darkness. Since the fake ghost had brought Tarkingham to the spot and the real ghost— according to Tanya—had slain him, Cardona held Tanya Yonina responsible for both and decided to arrest her.

Nor did Madame Yonina have a comeback. She’d talked herself right into it, so far that she couldn’t talk herself out. While she babbled useless protests, Cardona searched the other parties present, and finding no gun; made another hunt through the seance room. He hoped to find a gun tangled in the cheesecloth, but there was none.

Suppressing Tanya’s comments with the remark that the gun had probably dematerialized with her pet ghost, the black sheep of the spirit world, Cardona summoned a taxicab with strong springs and took the medium on the long ride to headquarters.

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