Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 259 by Maxwel l Grant

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

CHAPTER XIII

HEAD NO. 10

CRIME was striking everywhere at once.

For a week, such crime had seethed, hissing like the tongues of a dozen snakish heads about to rear themselves. There had been run-ins between The Shadow's agents and workers of the Hydra, but with no avail. Eyes and Ears had always been backed by Teeth who maneuvered their escape before The Shadow arrived upon the scene.

Then the strokes.

Sudden attempts at robbery, efforts at murder, always directed against wealthy men. All the more insidious, those crime strokes, because the hidden brains behind them were of the same class - men of substance and standing.

So greatly did the Hydra admire and seek wealth, that it enlisted money-minded men as Heads. That went without saying; the thing to prove was who

these men might be. They were the sort who had always upheld the law because it

protected their property.

Finding something bigger than the law - the Hydra - they embraced it and became its Heads because it also promised to protect their wealth and gain for them that of others.

Separating the good from the bad was the peculiar province of Commissioner

Weston, and he was at a total loss. At a secret conference in the Cobalt Club, he expressed his opinions to The Shadow, who had come there as Lamont Cranston.

Present also was Dustin Bardell, the one man of affluence that Weston could trust, because Bardell had been suspicious of Medor. Even though Glencoe's case was written off and its claims paid, Bardell was to be praised.

If Medor hadn't been wrong on the Glencoe matter, he had been plotting against

the Paragon Trust Co.

Thus Bardell was the nucleus of a group that Weston wanted to organize into a civic committee to help against the Hydra. So far, except for Cranston, who belonged without question, there had been only one safe candidate. He was present tonight, a man named Lloyd Casler, who couldn't be under the Hydra's influence, because he was bringing data that might ruin the insidious organization.

A broad-built man with an austere countenance, Casler looked both blunt and honest. Further, he preferred to sit back and listen to what others said, before pressing his own opinions.

"So far, we've blocked everything since the Paragon Trust robbery,"

affirmed Weston. "We stopped a penthouse robbery, a Wall Street holdup, and stalled three attempted murders. But we answered a thousand crank calls managing it. The trouble is, the crimes we did stop looked like feelers. The Hydra is too smart to let a whole crew be annihilated again. Lately, they've pulled out when things didn't seem too pleasant."

The Shadow could have corroborated that statement. The crimes mentioned, and several others, had been forestalled largely through his vigilance. But they weren't just feelers, as Weston chose to term them.

"Big crime needs opportunity," remarked The Shadow. "As soon as the right time arrives, you'll be in for it, commissioner."

"I know we will," groused Weston. "Gad! If we could only think ahead of these chaps. Remember, Cranston, how they tricked us at the Paragon Trust?"

"But The Shadow settled that one, commissioner.

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