Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 156 by Maxwel l Grant

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

CHAPTER XI. THE QUARTER HOUR

WHEN the last tinge of red glare faded like a dying sunset, a new light came to Wenz's death room. The Shadow had found a small desk lamp in the corner. Its bulb threw a direct glow upon the body.

From all appearances, Wenz had been dead for some forty-eight hours. That fitted with The Shadow's immediate theory: that Wenz had died like Purling. Instead of merely eliminating Member 9, a murderer had disposed of Member 10 as well.

That was not a surprise to The Shadow. It only showed that the whole case had graduated from the simple to the complex.

Until the present, The Shadow had been willing to accept the simple setup; the theory that one member of the Green Hoods—namely, Wenz -had murdered another—Purling—to cover his tracks when it came to the major stroke of crime. That stroke had been the murder of Professor Smedley Breer, to acquire the old inventor's Truth Inducer.

Scaled to the complex, the game showed the master hand of an evil craftsman who looked far beyond such primitive methods. Someone, conversant with the organization of Green Hoods, had secretly delved into the affairs of that society.

That master crook had eliminated two human links in the chain -Purling and Wenz—blaming the death of one upon the other. That meant that he could be any one; perhaps an absolute outsider. Obviously, he had some purpose in killing off two of the Green Hoods, in addition to Breer.

What that purpose was, might be as difficult to answer as the finding of the actual murderer.

One thing was evident to The Shadow. Neither Purling nor Wenz had been at the meeting of the Green Hoods, two nights ago. The Shadow had not had time to note the actual number present at that meeting.

No one could tell if two members had been missing, with one replaced by a nonmember who had attired himself in green; that was, no one but the murderer himself.

Intuitively, The Shadow found himself thinking of the letters in the mysterious monogram. Those initials,

"TMS", had bobbed up with the deaths of Breer and Purling.

Would there be a trace of them here, in the room where Wenz lay dead? This was the chance for The Shadow's advance probe before the law arrived. The cellar shots had not been heard outside; but The Shadow could foresee a quest here, after Atherland went over Cardona's list of Purling's friends.

For his present search, The Shadow allotted fifteen minutes. After that, it would be time to return to Weston's.

ON Wenz's desk was an old-fashioned typewriter. The Shadow studied it, tested some of the keys. The machine was badly out of line; it would be easy to identify any work done on it.

In the desk drawer, The Shadow found some papers that Wenz had typed. They had to do with the subject of handwriting. With them were letterheads that pronounced Wenz to be an expert in graphology.

Doubtless, that was the reason why Wenz had been chosen by Purling to join a society of crime detectors.

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