Berkland nodded.

"You'll find it cut, too," promised Cardona, grimly. "We know now why those telephone calls didn't come through."

Berkland stormed at Ungler.

"Why didn't you examine the wires?" demanded the magnate. "You should have known that something was wrong, when there were no calls. You should have tried to get the operator; failing that, you should have left the house and reported that the line was out of order. Why didn't you come to Pettigrew's to find me?"

"I was puzzled by the fact that no calls came," admitted Ungler, "but I thought that my place was here, sir. Besides, I could not have gained admittance to the auction."

"Why not," snapped Berkland. He yanked open a drawer of the desk, lifted some papers and found a card. "Here is the extra admittance card that Pettigrew gave me. You knew that it was here, Ungler."

"I had forgotten it," returned the secretary. His tone was steadier than before. "In fact, I thought that you intended to give the card to some friend, Mr. Berkland. It never occurred to me that you might have left it here. Thatwas natural enough, because I had forgotten the card to begin with."

CARDONA took the card from Berkland. The Shadow was standing beside Joe; he noted that the card bore the words: "Admit Bearer." The usual cards given out by Pettigrew carried the names of individuals. Berkland explained that Pettigrew gave special bearer cards only to patrons whose jewels were on sale.

Though Cardona was perplexed about the cut telephone wires, he could see no purpose in remaining longer at Berkland's. His chief reason for coming to the oil magnate's residence had been the possibility that crime had struck there also; that Ungler might have met with foul play. The cutting of the telephone wires indicated that some person might have entered; but nothing else had been disturbed.

With the wires cut, Cardona could not receive reports from the men whom he had left near Pettigrew's. Duty called Cardona there. Moreover, the inspector had another hunch - one that he kept to himself until he entered the taxicab outside of Berkland's. It was then that Cardona confided in The Shadow, who had accompanied him.

"I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Cranston," stated Cardona, glancing back toward Berkland's as he spoke. "There's somebody in that bunch who knows more than he told us. Whoever cut those phone wires knew the inside of the house.

"That's why I decided not to stay around. The best way to reach the person is to say nothing; to keep him thinking that the matter is forgotten. Crime has been done; the haul was enough to satisfy the big-shot who's in back of it.

The best game is to stick close on the case.

"There'll be a trail before we're finished and that trail will take us to Berkland's, to somebody who knows what goes on there. But until I've got some evidence on the murderer, I'm letting it ride. Sooner or later, he'll have a chance to show his hand."

Cardona said no more. Staring stolidly ahead, Joe did not see the smile that fixed itself upon the thin lips of Lamont Cranston. The Shadow had concurred with Cardona's opinion.

The Shadow, too, could see the finish of the trail. His policy was to be the same one that the law had chosen. When the time came for a showdown, The Shadow would have evidence that would leave no doubt concerning the ident.i.ty of the murderer who had struck tonight.

CHAPTER V.

THE THIRD NIGHT.

IT was the third night following the murder of Kirk Pettigrew. Newspapers were still headlining the details of the police hunt for the killer who had stolen Tobias Berkland's rubies. The law was coming in for criticism. So far, no trail had been opened.

On this evening, Police Commissioner Ralph Weston was seated at the desk of a little office which connected with his apartment. Opposite him was Inspector Joe Cardona. There was a third person in the room. The visitor was The Shadow, here in the guise of Lamont Cranston. Weston had invited his friend to the conference.

Brusque, military of appearance, the commissioner was stormy as hepounded a pile of report sheets.

"You have accomplished nothing, Cardona," insisted Weston. "Those crooks closed their trail completely. We know that some of them must be wanted criminals; yet you have located none of them. As for the man who murdered Pettigrew and his a.s.sistant, he might be anybody. Even a Hindu, for all you know."

"I have one hunch," insisted Cardona, stolidly. "Someone at Berkland's must have known that crime was due. I don't say that such a person is the actual murderer. He might just have been an informant -"

"Bah!" Weston was angry with his interruption. "You can count Berkland out. He lost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars through the theft of his rubies. That eliminates him as the supercriminal. If he had collected insurance, we could consider him a suspect. He couldn't have been the master crook, because he was there in the auction room. What's more, a thug tried to kill him. That wasn't faked."

"The same applies to Lenore Berkland," inserted The Shadow, with a slight smile. "You can count her out, too, Cardona."

Joe nodded his agreement. Weston thumbed his short-clipped mustache to hide a smile of his own. He regarded The Shadow's remark as a subtle jest at Cardona's expense: one that Joe had missed. Weston never suspected that his friend, Cranston, was simply leading him on to further a.s.sertions.

The Shadow wanted Weston to disagree with Cardona. He knew that if the commissioner should believe that the murderer could be reached through Berkland, Weston would immediately give orders for a general arrest. Such a step would ruin The Shadow's waiting game.

"Take Glen Mogridge," proceeded Weston. "He came to the auction house bearing his own admittance card. Your report, Cardona, states that he arrived less than ten minutes after the fleeing crooks had bombed their tunnel. During those ten minutes, those crooks were in wild flight, riding in a pair of automobiles.

"Patrol cars were spreading out in pursuit. The crooks, though away before they were spied, could not have halted within three miles. It would, therefore, have been impossible for Mogridge to have arrived as soon as he did. He could not have transferred from his car to a taxi."

WESTON thumbed the papers before him, then continued: "As for Lawrence Woolford, he arrived at Pettigrew's after he had been drinking. Though he did not appear for nearly half an hour, he could not have acquired his intoxicated condition in that short period."

"Unless he had an edge on earlier," disputed Cardona, "or was faking -"

"Possibilities - yes," admitted Weston, "but not enough to consider Woolford as a serious possibility until matters clear further. As for James Ungler, his own actions show his innocence. You would have me believe that Ungler clipped those telephone wires himself?"

"Why not? If he ducked out of the house, the clipped wires were as good as an alibi. Since phone calls couldn't go through, there was no way of proving that Ungler wasn't at the house."

Weston shook his head at Cardona's opinion.

"A possibility again," declared the commissioner, "but not a likely one.

I.

shall tell you why. If Ungler possesses sufficient cleverness to be the master crook, he is also crafty enough to know that he has placed suspicion upon himself. He would have preferred to travel along with his band. Those crooks have certainly demonstrated their ability to stay out of sight."

Cardona did not agree with Weston's opinions concerning Woolford andUngler, particularly the latter. However, the commissioner did not give him time to raise objection. Weston had produced a new point; he intended to pursue it.

"Why have those rogues eluded us?" he demanded. "We made a round-up, but we gained no suspects. Yet the whole band cannot have left New York. Already, we have identified some of the stolen jewels as goods peddled in p.a.w.nshops."

"That's because the fences have reorganized their racket," a.s.serted Cardona. "Those jewel s.n.a.t.c.hers certainly picked a ripe time to stage their job. I'll tell you why we haven't bagged any of the crowd, commissioner. Every man in that outfit was a picked one. Each has got his own hide-out. Six henchmen, sitting back and laughing at us. There's one, though, who won't laugh long."

"The man The Shadow wounded?"

"Yes. In the courtyard, on the floor of the garage, we found blobs of blood as red as those rubies of Berkland's. That fellow won't live long without medical attention, and there's no way for him to get it. We rounded up every phony doctor that works with the underworld.

"Yet you have not located the wounded man."

"No. Chances are he's dead by now. There's still a long chance that some stool pigeon will locate him. If he's alive, we may get a break. He's the only one of the crew that might be found."

THE telephone bell rang as Cardona finished speaking. Weston lifted the telephone, found that the call was for Cranston. He handed the instrument to The Shadow. The call was from the Cobalt Club, a reminder that Mr. Cranston had an appointment.

The Shadow took his departure, leaving Weston and Cardona still discussing the subject of the wounded crook. Outside the apartment house, The Shadow entered his limousine and rode to the nearest drug store. There he entered a telephone booth, dialed a number and waited until a quiet voice responded.

"Burbank speaking."

In whispered tone, The Shadow gave the word: "Report."

The report came through. Burbank, The Shadow's contact man, had news upon which The Shadow had counted. Agents of The Shadow had been busy; following leads given them by their chief, they had finally learned the whereabouts of a man named Marlow Rund.

Police records listed Rund as a crook who had done a stretch in Atlanta.

The government had implicated him in connection with a counterfeiting case.

Since his sojourn in the Federal penitentiary, Rund had followed a respectable career as a salesman of dental equipment. The police files told little of his past.

Government records were also meager regarding Marlow Rund. That was because the former counterfeiter had glibly given an account of his past that tallied with facts that Federal agents gained.

The Shadow, in his intensive study of criminal records, had looked further into the case of Marlow Rund. The Shadow's records showed that Rund had been an honor student at the medical college of a large university, but had been expelled just prior to his graduation for selling examination papers that had been entrusted to his care.

Even at that, The Shadow would not have picked Rund as a member of the gang that had pilfered Berkland's rubies, except for a significant fact. Awounded crook was at large; Cardona could find no doctor who had treated him.

This, despite the fact that the police had recently gained a line on nearly every fake medico in Manhattan.

The Shadow knew that he was hunting the members of a band that was equipped for every emergency. The leader of that crew had certainly foreseen the possibility of wounded henchmen. He must also have known of the tabs that the police had previously made on disbarred members of the medical profession.

In choosing his picked henchmen it was likely that the master crook had looked for one who could serve both as thug and as surgeon. Marlow Rund was suited to the part.

BACK in his limousine, The Shadow gave a destination to the chauffeur.

When the big car stopped on a darkened side street, a cloaked figure alighted.

Picking his route between two buildings, The Shadow came to a blocking wall.

He found a closed door; worked upon it with a pick - his lock-opening tool - and silently entered a gloomy hallway.

The Shadow was on the ground floor of a house that had been converted into a small apartment building. He moved forward, paused by a stairway. Satisfied that the place was unwatched, The Shadow ascended. He came to a side door on the second floor.

No light showed beneath the crack. The Shadow handled the lock in noiseless fashion, and entered a darkened room. Windows showed their dull outlines. The Shadow lowered the shades and turned on a light. He recognized immediately that Burbank's information was correct. This apartment was the lodging of Marlow Rund.

Torn envelopes lay on a table, addressed to the man in question. Beside the table was a large, square-cornered suitcase, the sort that a salesman would carry. The Shadow opened the suitcase, found that it contained a complete line of dental equipment. The Shadow's gloved fingers touched dust on the surface of the bag. Studying the envelopes on the table, he noted that the latest postmark was three days old.

Evidently, Rund had temporarily abandoned his job as salesman. He had certainly not been in the apartment for two nights. Perhaps he had stayed here overnight after the robbery. There might be evidence to tell that fact. The Shadow moved into a small bedroom that adjoined the living room.

A locked closet caught The Shadow's attention. His gloved hand used a pick to probe the lock. Opening the door, The Shadow found the closet empty. He used a tiny flashlight to study walls and floor. At the bottom of the closet, he discovered a board that gave slightly to his touch.

The Shadow loosened the board; the sparkle of gems reflected the glow of his flashlight.

The Shadow recognized jewels that he had seen at Pettigrew's; but none of the more valuable stones were among them. The Shadow came to the immediate conclusion that these were a portion of Rund's share from the robbery; that the fake salesman's absence indicated that he had taken others with him.

Rund was probably staying at some hotel under an a.s.sumed name, while he fenced the supply of gems in his possession. That job completed, he would come back here for the rest.

Carefully shifting the jewels, The Shadow saw a wad of paper in a lower corner of the cache. He opened it, read an address that was in the East Side tenement district. That could not be Rund's present location; nevertheless,the crook had considered the paper important enough to stow it with the jewels, so that he could refer to the address.

The answer was plain enough: the tenement must be the place where crooks had stowed their wounded pal. They had given Rund the address; he had looked after the crippled crook.

PROMPTLY, The Shadow replaced the jewels as he had found them and covered the swag with the loose board. He went out into the living room, extinguished the light and raised the shades. A minute later, he was cautiously descending the stairway, like a mammoth blot in the gloom.

Reaching the rear street, The Shadow reentered his limousine. He did not lay aside his garb of black. Instead, he merely spoke through the speaking tube using the quiet tone of Cranston. The new destination that The Shadow gave was only a few blocks distant from the address that he had found among Rund's share of the stolen jewels.

The Shadow was on his way to interview the wounded crook whom Joe Cardona sought to find. Whatever The Shadow learned would reach the law soon afterward.

The Shadow was simply blazing a path toward the goal of justice. A soft laugh, suppressed within the confines of the limousine, told that The Shadow expected prompt results in the task that lay ahead.

Chance alone could intervene to balk The Shadow's plans; and chance could always play a tricky hand. Even as The Shadow traveled to his immediate goal, events were shaping elsewhere to bring new factors into being.

Had The Shadow suspected those existing circ.u.mstances, he would have changed the plan of action that he had so quickly formed.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DROP OF DEATH.

TWENTY minutes after his departure from Rund's apartment, The Shadow stood in the shrouding darkness of a side street near the Bowery. He had pa.s.sed two buildings in coming from the corner. The first was a two-story structure that had once been a p.a.w.nshop, but which was at present vacant. The next was a narrow-fronted garage, still used for the storage of cars.

The Shadow had found a convenient s.p.a.ce after pa.s.sing the grimy-walled garage. From his present vantage point, he was looking upward to the windows of a blocky old tenement house that reared itself five-stories high.

This was the building that was indicated by the address on the paper at Rund's. Somewhere in that teeming tenement lay a crippled crook, hiding out from the law. Viewing two sides of the building, The Shadow was endeavoring to locate the hide-out.

A clue was present; it stood out conspicuously. The glow from the Bowery showed a third-floor window that was fitted with a new green shade. Such was unusual. Most of the other windows had no shades at all; the few that boasted them had shades so old that stretches of gaslight showed plainly through them.

An elevated train rumbled above the Bowery. Its roar was terrific; its pa.s.sage must have shaken the old, abandoned p.a.w.nshop, for The Shadow could feel a distinct quiver even from the more solid walls of the garage. By the time the drowning noise had ended, The Shadow was away from his post. When the elevatedtrain had screeched into the distance, he was at the base of a rickety fire escape that adorned the rear of the tenement house.

When he had scaled to the third floor, The Shadow noted a rear window that matched the one on the side. It was heavily shaded; only the slightest strip at the edge showed a line of light. The back window could be reached from the fire escape, which was quite close to the corner of the building; but The Shadow chose another entrance. This was a window that led into a gaslit hallway.

Inside the hall, The Shadow observed the door to the corner room. Though the door was old, it was fitted with a new lock - another proof that the room could well be a hide-out. Studying the keyhole, The Shadow saw that it was empty. Light showed through the tiny opening.

Inserting a clipperlike pick, The Shadow worked smoothly with the lock.

His progress was slow, for he wanted no betraying sound to reach the room within. The clippers probed; The Shadow added a wedge-shaped key. The lock responded. Pocketing his instruments, The Shadow drew an automatic and slowly opened the door inward.

ACROSS the room, in a position where it could not have been seen from a view through the keyhole, was a cot. The improvised bed was close to the side window. A gas jet, flickering above it, showed the cot's occupant: a long-faced, hard-jawed man whose features were unnaturally pale.

A tight bandage bulged beneath the wounded man's pajama jacket. The crippled crook was on the road to recovery, for his wound did not bother him.

He was holding a tabloid newspaper under the gaslight; as his beady eyes read the columns, his leathery lips pursed and contorted in a manner that seemed an unconscious habit.

The Shadow had seen that face in photographs. The twists of the crook's lips completed the identification. The wounded rogue was "Twitcher" Killick, a Chicago bad man who had gone to cover after a machine gun ma.s.sacre near the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan.

Like Marlow Rund, Twitcher was a specialist in crime. This proved the theory - held by both The Shadow and Joe Cardona - that the band of jewel thieves were lone wolves, grouped under the leadership of a master criminal as individual in his methods as the crew that followed him.