Half diving toward the floor, The Shadow dodged the missile. On hands and
knees, he was ready to come up again, to complete his spring toward the
workbench where the brewing mixture had begun to bubble. But The Shadow did not
complete that spring, nor did Parringer hurl the hydrometer jar that he had
grabbed as a new weapon.
At that moment, the bubbling broth exploded with a roar that could be
heard for blocks. With the force of TNT, it crumpled the walls and roof of the
laboratory. Ignited chemicals gushed flames of all colors, while the tumbling
walls engulfed Ray Parringer and the rescuer who had arrived too late to save
him.
Crime had moved ahead of The Shadow, and had scored a double gain. Not
only was Ray Parringer gone, into a flaming pit beneath his abolished
laboratory; but The Shadow, arch-foe of crime, had taken a similar dive into
those same depths of doom!
CHAPTER IV
BLASTED EVIDENCE
THERE was a difference in the way they went, The Shadow and Ray Parringer
- a difference that meant the dividing mark between life and death.
On hands and knees, below the level of the workbench, The Shadow escaped
the direct force of the blast. Though he was jarred by a blinding concussion
that seemed to buckle his skull and wrench his brain, The Shadow was still
alive when he plunged through the spreading floor of the crashing laboratory.
Parringer's fate was the opposite. Close to the bench where the explosion
occurred, and above the level of the blast, the chemist was killed instantly.
Like his equipment and the walls about him, Parringer was blown into chunks.
Crime's evidence vanished with the ill-fated chemist. As for the lone
witness to the catastrophe - namely, The Shadow - he likewise seemed destined
for oblivion, despite the lucky factor that had temporarily prolonged his life.
The Shadow's plunge was carrying him into a pit represented by the vacant
garage below the laboratory. After him came tons of tumbling debris bringing
masses of flaming wreckage that threatened The Shadow with a hideous death
should he be unfortunate enough to survive his fall.
The fact that The Shadow did survive was due entirely to the mushroom
action of the explosion. With the spread of the upstairs laboratory, lower
walls caved under the building weight. Old beams, crashing and splintering,
criss-crossing one another like a pile of jack-straws, received the ruins of
the laboratory walls and roof.
In the space of a dozen seconds, the two-story building was reduced to a
pyramid pile that bulged up from the ground level. Flames were mounting to form
a great pyre, and beneath the very center of that fiery mass lay The Shadow!
HALF stunned and partly crippled by his impact with the cement floor of
the garage, The Shadow was in a pitiable plight. He was wedged beneath
shattered timbers; when he tried to crawl, chunks of crumbled masonry blocked
his path.
The flames were rising away from the imprisoned victim. But it would not
be many minutes before burning fragments dropped through to The Shadow's tiny
nest, to consume him. The one merciful prospect was the likelihood that he
would be dead before the cremation began. The fire was sucking air from the
space below the pyre. Chances were that The Shadow would die from suffocation,
if nothing came to aid him.
Drilling through The Shadow's disjointed thoughts came the crackle of the
flames, echoing along with shrieks and clangs that grew louder every few
seconds. Unable to analyze that discordant medley, The Shadow did not guess
that it promised rescue.
Fire engines were on the scene, summoned from a firehouse only a few
blocks away. Illuminated by the glare of the furious flames, firemen were
attaching hoses to hydrants close beside the ruins of Parringer's burning
laboratory.
Streams of water brought vicious hisses from the flames. Remaining
chemicals exploded with little spurts like tiny bombs. But the mass of the fire
disappeared, changing to clouds of steam. This type of blaze was made to order
for the firemen, for they could reach it easily.
Partly recuperated from his daze, The Shadow gained the illusion that he
was stranded in a roaring surf, surrounded by timbers from a wrecked ship.
Deluged by water from the fire hose, he revived sufficiently to try to grope
his way toward what he thought was shore.
All strength was gone from his left shoulder, but he used his right arm to
shove the broken beams aside. Bricks and mortar fell about him, but none struck
his head. Drafts of fresh air, sucked in through the debris, gave him added
energy for his painful crawl.
Hauling himself one-handed through a narrow space, The Shadow found his
feet. Through knee-deep rubbish, he stumbled toward the street, reached it with
a final stagger and sprawled in front of a pair of astonished firemen.
It was a sight of a self-rescued victim that amazed the smoke-eaters; not
anything unusual about The Shadow's garb. He was cloaked in black no longer.
His hat was gone; only a few straggly remnants of his cloak clung to his
shoulders. Even the evening clothes that he wore beneath were scarcely
recognizable as the immaculate attire that had adorned the person of Lamont
Cranston.
Closer scrutiny might have enabled the firemen to identify him as The
Shadow, but with the flames subsided, they lacked the chance to fully view the
groggy victim from the pit. Besides, there were others who had seen The Shadow
sprawl upon the sidewalk: men who occupied a sedan that was blocked by the fire
engines.
Jumping from their car, they offered to take the crippled victim to a
hospital. The firemen helped them put The Shadow into the sedan. The car was
waved through the fire lines; with its horn sounding loudly, it headed for the
nearest avenue.
SLUMPED in the middle of the rear seat, The Shadow could hear the
conversation of men on each side of him, along with the buzz of voices from the
front. At first their words were vague, drowned somewhat by the loud honks of
the horn. Then the horn had stopped, the car was gliding smoothly. Voices were
plain; eyes shut, The Shadow listened.
"It's The Shadow, all right!" The man beside the driver was speaking, as
he looked back into the rear. "The chief thought he might be clever enough to
drop in and see Parringer."
"What do you suppose he was doing there?"
The query came from the man on The Shadow's right. The speaker in front
gave a cryptic answer.
"Parringer's death was necessary," he said. "That is all that any of us
need to know. But it is equally necessary that any witness should die,
particularly The Shadow."
The man on The Shadow's left entered the discussion. His tone was very
matter-of-fact.
"Then here goes," he announced. "One bullet will settle our friend, The
Shadow!"
A gun muzzle poked The Shadow's ribs, close to his heart. Too weak to
respond, The Shadow was unable to gather strength before an exclamation came
from his right
"No, no! Don't shoot him. There's a sim
pler way than that. We'll simply
strangle the chap and deliver him at the hospital. Let them find out who he is,
while we testify that he died on the way."
"A good idea!" came the voice from the front seat. "Here - pass me that
gun, while you fellows settle the blighter."
Reluctantly, the man on the left extended his hand toward the front seat.
Eyes half opened, The Shadow saw the revolver's glitter as the man in front
reached for it. The Shadow could not make out faces, for his eyes were still
dazzled from the fierce glare of the laboratory explosion; but sight of the gun
was enough.
The Shadow had been gathering all his strength for a supreme effort, and
this moment was his opportunity. Mechanically, he shot his own hand forward. It
seemed to go of its own accord, impelled solely by his will, but it functioned
under that remote control.
Clamping the gun with a fist that was powerful through sheer instinctive
action, The Shadow yanked it away from the hands of his captors. His lips
voiced a quavery laugh, as he rolled his body forward from the seat.
With hissed responses, three captors were upon him: the two men beside
him, plus the fellow from the front seat, who was coming over to help them.
WITH all their urge to suppress the recuperating prisoner, the three were
too late to stop the toss that The Shadow's hand gave to the gun. It flipped
over, thanks to a move that The Shadow had long practiced, and his finger found
the trigger. He knew that he was firing, for he could see the flashes of the gun
and hear its reports. But he wasn't shooting anyone.
The Shadow's captors had shoved his gun hand upward. His bullets were
merely denting the top of the sedan; They had hold of his hand and were trying
to wrench the gun from it. Yanking his fist away, The Shadow swept it downward;
the revolver went from his fingers.
They were upon him, all three, ramming him against the door on the left.
With a wild grope, The Shadow tried to find the gun, and thought he had
it. The thing that he actually gripped was the door handle. He caught it, just
as slugging fists knocked him to the floor. But his hand kept its grip.
The door handle clicked downward. The Shadow's weight, impelled by the
shove of hands that were going for his throat, gave the door an outward swing.
With a writhing twist of his right arm and shoulder, The Shadow turned his
pitch into a plunge. Before hands could grip him, he had literally catapulted
himself from the rolling car.
He struck the paving head first. The shock brought a flash of imaginary
light as vivid as the blast in Parringer's laboratory. The Shadow had completed
his sprawl for freedom, but it had knocked him senseless.
The sedan was stopping, thirty feet ahead. One man was already on the
step, gun in hand, ready to settle The Shadow with bullets if there proved to
be no easier way.
The gun that talked first did not come from the sedan. It spoke from the
window of a taxicab that spurted in from a corner on the sedan's trail. The man
on the sedan step dropped back into the car just as a bullet skimmed the
driver's ear and cracked the windshield
Shoving the sedan into gear, the frantic driver wheeled it around a corner
just ahead, while the spurts of an automatic, coming closer, beat a tattoo
against the sides and fenders of the fleeing car.
One marksman, supplying a timely barrage from the taxi, had driven off The
Shadow's captors, who were totally unprepared to meet such a stanch attack.
The cab stopped beside The Shadow. Two men leaped from it. One was Moe
Shrevnitz, the driver, who used this cab in The Shadow's service as a secret
agent. The other was Harry Vincent, ace of The Shadow's agents. Harry was the
marksman who had supplied the effective gunfire.
They put The Shadow into the cab. With Moe at the wheel, skimming corners
at breakneck speed, and Harry in the back, ready to meet all comers with his
reloaded automatic, the agents were on their way again.
Though stunned and crippled, The Shadow was being carried to safety, from
which he could begin a new campaign against the tribe of enemies whose unknown
chief had ordained The Shadow's doom - and failed to obtain it!
CHAPTER V
CRIME'S LINKS
IT was three days before Lamont Cranston appeared at the swanky Cobalt
Club, where he spent so much of his leisure time. On the afternoon that he
arrived there, various members greeted him and expressed their pleasure at his
return.
The news was about that Cranston had cracked up one of his sport planes in
making a forced landing, and had gone to a hospital as a result. Such an
accident, like his early return to circulation, was nothing unusual. Cranston
was frequently running into such complications, and getting out of them with
very little damage.
Nevertheless, the club members were glad that the latest episode had not
been severe, and among those most ardent in congratulations was Eugene Bristow,
president of the Chem-Lab Co. Bristow had come into the club to attend a
business luncheon, and, although he did not know it, his presence was the
reason why Cranston had also come to the club this afternoon.
Soon, the two were chatting in a secluded corner of the reading room.
Dropping his pompous manner, Bristow discussed the very facts that The Shadow
wanted to ream.
"Our formula failed us," declared Bristow, ruefully. "Just as Thurver said
it would. He is the chief chemist at the Plant. I was afraid that Thurver was
wrong, so I gave the formula to Parringer, a consulting chemist. You heard what
happened to him?" The Shadow nodded.
"I warned Parringer to be careful," insisted Bristow. "It was horrible,
Cranston, that tragedy at the plant; but I never supposed that Parringer would
meet with a similar accident! I should have listened to Thurver in the first
place."
Though he cared little for Bristow, The Shadow credited the corporation
president with being sincere. Business came first in everything Bristow did,
but the man had a certain amount of human sentiment. It was conceivable, of
course, that Bristow might have some reason for ruining his own plant and
blowing up Parringer's laboratory, but the chances were quite remote.
Bristow's repeated mention of Thurver offered a more plausible solution of
the mystery. In the casual tone that suited Cranston, The Shadow inquired what
Thurver's present opinions might be.
"Thurver blames me for everything," said Bristow, bitterly. "He was
terribly shocked by Parringer's death. There was nothing I could do but tell
Thurver to take a long vacation on full pay, hoping that he would view matters
more reasonably when he returned."
"Thurver has gone?"
"Yes; he left this morning. He won't be back for two months. Yesterday, I
completed the purchase of another formula, offered us by the Experimento Co.
It's sheer robbery, Cranston! Paying those Experimento people half a million
dollars, in six installments of a hundred thousand dollars each."
"You have made the first payment?"
"Yes. To a man named R
. G. Dean, who has an office in the Harmon Building.
I went there to see him this morning, but the office was closed."
"How did he communicate with you?"
"By telephone. He mailed the contracts; I signed them, and mailed him the
first payment. The formula arrived this morning and is satisfactory. That's why
I tried to see Dean today."
DESPITE his mask-faced expression, The Shadow was in a thoughtful mood.
Whatever Thurver's part in the scheme to milk Chem-Lab of half a million
dollars, it was merely a step to the more important operation managed by the
mysterious Mr. R. G. Dean. Therefore, Thurver's departure on a so-called
vacation did not matter. The Shadow could hunt up "Dean" instead.
One detail needed to be settled. Before The Shadow could mention it,
Bristow brought up a point of his own.
"I understand that you telephoned me the other night, Cranston," he said.
"The call must have come while I was at Parringer's. Was the matter important?"
"Not at all," replied The Shadow, in an indifferent tone. "I merely wanted
to express my regret over the accident that occurred at your plant."
"I thought that you might have wanted to be present when I talked to the
New Jersey authorities," remarked Bristow. "But, very oddly, when I went to see
them, I found that they did not expect me."
A sudden glint came to Cranston's eyes. It was gone before Bristow noticed
it.
"Of course," added Bristow, "I told no one that you called. I know that my
servants are discreet, so I decided to keep the matter entirely confidential."
Lamont Cranston bowed his appreciation. Then, calmly, The Shadow brought
up his own question:
"What have you done with your old formula, Bristow?"
"We regard it as worthless," returned Bristow, "as well as dangerous. All
copies have been destroyed. That is" - he corrected himself - "all except this
one."
He brought a folded sheet of paper from his wallet. The Shadow glanced at
it; then, about to return it, he asked in casual fashion:
"You're through with it?"
Bristow nodded. For answer, The Shadow crumpled the paper and tossed it
into a wastebasket. Rising, he clapped Bristow on the shoulder and remarked:
"Sorry to have detained you, Bristow. I know you're anxious to get back to
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