The Shadow - 33 - The Living Joss by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1933-07-15T21:44:12+00:00

The Shadow knew!

CHAPTER XIII. THE SHADOW’S CLEWS

THE next day’s newspapers contained accounts of two murders. Westley Hartnett, prominent attorney, had been found slain in the living room of his apartment. Blaine Goodall, corporation president, had been killed while traveling along a lonely New Jersey road.

The difference in the circumstances surrounding these deaths was so apparent that no connection was made between them. Westley Hartnett had unquestionably been the victim of a fiendish killer. His case was one for the New York police.

Blaine Goodall, on the contrary, seemed to have been the victim of an unfortunate coincidence. Evidence in the form of tire tracks and dropped revolvers pointed to a gang fight between two mobs of gunmen.

Goodall, apparently, had been caught in between. Seeking escape, he had crashed through the side of a bridge. His case was one for the New Jersey State police.

Thus Joe Cardona, ace detective on the New York force, was concerned with Hartnett’s death alone.

The star sleuth required very little time to check up on the lawyer’s actions after he had reached his apartment.

Hartnett had spent the evening at Barton Schofield’s. Cardona corroborated that fact by telephone. He had arrived home shortly before midnight. Some time between then and morning - his body was discovered at eight o’clock, by the woman who came to clean the apartment - a slayer had entered to take the lawyer’s life.

When had the murder occurred? That fact was quickly ascertained. Medical inspectors affirmed that Hartnett must have been dead for nearly eight hours before his body was discovered. The fact that the lawyer was wearing his overcoat proved that he must have been slain shortly after he entered the apartment.

The murderer? On that point, Cardona could find no clew. His search of the apartment showed him nothing. The killer’s mode of entry and exit could have been by door or window. It looked like the work of a maniac.

But while Cardona pondered, with threads of evidence lacking, another in New York was engaged in more effective investigation. The Shadow, a peerless sleuth, had access to facts which would have amazed Detective Joe Cardona.

A BLUISH light was glimmering in the corner of a room which was pitch-dark save for that one illuminated spot. Beneath the focused rays of the shaded lamp, long white hands were at work upon a polished table.

From the third finger of the left hand glowed a mysterious gem which possessed a myriad of ever-changing hues. Its colorful depths - which fluctuated from crimson to azure, with all the shades between - flashed elusive sparks upward toward the light.

This stone was The Shadow’s girasol. A fire opal of priceless beauty, it served as the master’s lone talisman. Like The Shadow himself, the gem was a token of mystery and hidden power.

The right hand of The Shadow began to inscribe cryptic notations upon a sheet of paper. Moving like a detached thing of life, that hand set down important facts, beginning with the preliminary factors that had led to the sudden outburst of murderous crime.

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