Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 129 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER XIII. BELOW AND ABOVE

AS soon as a chunk dropped from the center of the steel door, Strampf and the others saw the glow of the laboratory lights. Cautious eyes took quick peeks into the inner room. Strampf stepped forward to view the sight for himself.

Those lights were clouded by a smoky vapor that filled the laboratory. Even the fizzing hydrometer jars were covered by the whitish gas. The roaring Bunsen burners made arrowlike tufts of flame amid the smoke. Strampf sniffed the heavy, sweetish odor. He stepped back.

That gas would put one to sleep, and more. Somewhere in the settling cloud, Strampf could picture The Shadow, prone on the floor. Rather than be met with bullets in a hopeless battle, The Shadow had chosen suicide. So Strampf reasoned, assuming that an oversupply of the sweet gas would be deadly.

There was another possibility. The gas might not prove fatal. Perhaps The Shadow hoped that his enemies would give him up for dead; and leave him to revive later.

Taking another look Strampf saw an obscure black object at the far end of the smoke-filled laboratory.

It was visible only when the gas took a chance swirl. Strampf was convinced that he saw the huddled shape of The Shadow.

If The Shadow wanted gas he could have it. Strampf beckoned to the men with the hose. They thrust the nozzle through the opening and pulled the lever of the cylinder. Deadly gas began to mingle with the white vapor in the lab.

Fortunately for Strampf, he had stepped back. That whitish gas had a purpose that Strampf did not suspect. The clue to it lay in the flames of the Bunsen burners.

The room had not quite reached its proper saturation when the drillers had finished making the hole.

Some gas had trickled through the opening; but the hydrometer jars were still increasing the amount.

Hardly had the underlings shoved the hose into the laboratory before the whitish vapor acted. The air was overcharged with gas. The burners ignited it. The whole air coughed with one fierce explosion that produced a blinding flash of flame.

The steel door shattered outward. The laboratory walls cracked; its floor collapsed. Down came the ceiling above it; the whole room became a crumbled pit. The floor of the sanctum quaked. Its stripped walls shuddered and began to cave.

The blasted door carried the two gas handlers with it. They lay dead, their bodies shattered. About them were crawling thugs, some crippled, others merely shaken. All were groping for the exit at the corner of the sanctum, to escape the scorching fumes that followed the flaming blast.

Strampf was by the ladder. He took one look at the ruined laboratory knew that no one could have stayed there and survived. He clambered up the ladder followed by two others. More had gone out by the other passage. The only ones who remained were dead.

Dead like The Shadow!

THAT thought strummed through Strampf's brain, as he reached the outside door. In the alleyway was a truck loaded with the trophies from the sanctum.

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