The Red Blot s-31

by Maxwell Grant

  Silence persisted for long minutes. The trio waited patiently. Then a flashlight glimmered from along the passage. A frenzied mobster came staggering forward. He fell as he reached the widening of the passage. His flashlight dropped from his grasp. The man rolled over dead.

  A light glimmered from the waiting trio. It was held by the man who stood beside The Red Blot. The searching rays seemed to ask regarding this sudden return; but the man whose form that light illuminated could give no answer from his death-frozen lips!

  Cries - revolver shots - into the widened space came more men. With them was Socks Mallory, and the mob leader uttered a wild shout that told The Red Blot all.

  “The bulls!” cried Socks. “They busted in on us! We had to scram! They’re coming along - never mind the rest of the gang - they’ve been bumped! Block the way - quick!”

  A stern voice came from the darkness. The Red Blot gave his order to Dynamite Hoskins.

  “Pull the switch.”

  Hoskins responded.

  Less than ten minutes ago, he had released a charge to blow an upward hole at the end of the passage which curved a hundred feet ahead. Now came his second release.

  An explosion thundered in the curving passage. Walls caved in, entombing luckless gangsters who had staggered, wounded, after those who had escaped.

  Powerful fumes, driving dust. The Red Blot and his defeated remnants of a gang staggered away from the widened space, heading back to the central cavern. They had effectively stopped any progress on the part of the police.

  SOCKS MALLORY heard commands as they hurried along. He understood The Red Blot’s order. He was to lead the dozen men who remained; to conduct them through the best avenue of escape from the cavern.

  “The subway,” growled Socks. “We can pick up any way we want from there.”

  The word went to the gang. The mobsters hurried ahead, while The Red Blot and his other lieutenant followed at their leisure. Reaching the central cavity, Socks chose one of the passages and ran in that direction with his men close behind him.

  The long drive ended at a barricading wall. Socks turned his flashlight on the crowd. His horde had numbered nearly twenty; of these, twelve remained. They were ready to do their leader’s bidding in this getaway.

  Calling another man, Socks pried at the wall. It slid to the right; the mobsmen scrambled through the opening. They were in the subway, where they crouched as a local thundered past. This opening was the back wall of a flight of steps which served as the emergency exit below Eighteenth Street.

  “Come on!”

  The subway was strangely silent as Socks and his men invaded it. Had service been suddenly suspended after the passage of that uptown local? The train had just had time to get to the next station.

  The glares of bulls-eye lanterns swept through the gloomy depths of the subway. Shouts arose from everywhere. The mobsmen realized that they were trapped. Leaping for pillars, they began to fire at the lights.

  Bullets whined from echoing revolvers. Leaden missives ricocheted against subway walls. Scattering gangsters spread - up and down along the tracks.

  Well had Inspector Klein responded to Cardona’s word. The squad of police and detectives was a small one, but there had been time to lay a perfect ambush. The mobsters, clustered in a group, were spreading wildly; those who fought for the law were stationed in well-chosen spots.

  Groveling gangsters cursed as they coughed out their lives. One group - four together - ran the gamut and drove on toward the Eighteenth Street station. As they approached, policemen leaned from behind pillars to greet them.

  Face to face, the forces clashed. One officer went down from a bullet which ricocheted from a post. But the mobsters had no chance. One was dropped as he sprang to the safety of the wall. Another fell, pulling a trigger vainly upon emptied cartridges. A third staggered while leaping toward a pillar. Only the fourth, already wounded by a glancing shot, preserved his life by dropping his emptied gun and raising his hands in token of surrender.

  So far as the dozen mobsters were concerned, it was a complete triumph for the law against these wanted men. There was a thirteenth member of the group, however. He, alone, had effected a swift escape.

  THE first to open the door from the secret passage beneath the emergency steps, Socks Mallory had been the last to leave. When police shots had been loosed, the leader of the mobsmen had chosen the one way to safety - back over the route toward that hidden cavern which had served as headquarters for The Red Blot’s mob.

  As Socks scrambled along at top speed, he heard the sound of shots. Stopping at the entrance of the cavern, he observed the body of Dynamite Hoskins prone upon the ground.

  A wisp of smoke was trickling through the crevice of the door that led to the Red Blot’s office. Detective Joe Cardona had downed the first man who had attempted to come that way.

  Madly, Socks Mallory answered the challenge. His revolver burst forth toward the crevice. A lucky shot! It found the opening and clipped Cardona’s shoulder. Hearing a sour grunt beyond the door, Socks Mallory sprang across the cavern and yanked open the door.

  It was the gang leader’s last deed. Joe Cardona, wounded, still could fight. The detective had staggered away from the door; but as the barrier opened, he fired a shot with a hand that was pressed close to his body. The bullet felled Socks Mallory. The gang leader’s form fell forward, and jammed between the door and the wall.

  Cardona was in retreat. His left hand supporting his crippled right arm, the detective staggered back into the office.

  He was just in time. Two figures leaped from passageways where they had fled. Together they invaded the corridor.

  The first one stopped at the office door; then entered. Joe Cardona, slumped in the chair, his right arm useless, looked up to face Detective Merton Hembroke.

  For a moment, Joe was dazed. He thought that this was a rescue; then he realized that he was mistaken. There was an evil look upon Hembroke’s countenance; a look that was by no means friendly.

  “Thought you’d spring one on The Red Blot, eh?” jeered Hembroke. “Well, you got away with a lot - but you didn’t know I was working for him, did you? Socks Mallory and I - we were the boys who put the idea across for him!”

  Hembroke held a gun, but he made no effort to cover Cardona, who was helpless. Instead, Hembroke turned to the doorway and pointed to a man who was entering - a gray-haired individual, whose eyes glared maliciously.

  Joe Cardona gasped as he recognized Dobson Pringle, president of the Amalgamated Builders’ Association.

  “Meet The Red Blot!” grinned Hembroke.

  Pringle was holding an automatic. Cardona realized that only his helpless state had prevented these two villains from taking his life immediately upon their entrance. They were now prepared to make up for that brief lapse.

  Cardona’s automatic was lying on the table, where it had dropped from his weakening fingers. With a determined effort to go out fighting, the detective made a mad effort. He grasped the gun with his left hand, expecting as he did so, to receive a bullet in the back.

  Dobson Pringle had stepped within the doorway. He was on one side of the room, Merton Hembroke on the other. As both men raised their weapons to end Cardona’s life, a strange sound from the doorway made them turn. A whispering laugh - an uncanny announcement of a sinister presence - this betokened the arrival of The Shadow.

  With an automatic in each black-gloved fist, The Shadow was here to prevent the murder of Joe Cardona. His powerful guns covered Dobson Pringle - now known as The Red Blot - and Merton Hembroke, the sleuth whose double-crossing activities had aided the master plotter.

  With a savage cry, Hembroke hurled himself upon the tall figure at the door, raising his revolver to fire as he leaped. Swift, vicious, and determined, the false detective hoped to end the menace who had blighted The Red Blot’s schemes.

  An automatic spoke, as Hembroke tried to press the trigger of his revolver. The detective’s leap ended in collapse. Ha
lf rising to his knees, Hembroke again attempted to use his wavering finger. The effort was in vain. The man sprawled face down upon the floor.

  NOT for one instant had The Shadow’s keen gaze lost track of Dobson Pringle. As a plotter, the Red Blot had shown amazing prowess; as a man of action in this crisis, his powers were not so apparent. Pringle had halted, counting upon the success of Hembroke’s onslaught. Seeing the detective fall, The Red Blot backed away, raising his automatic in desperation.

  The Shadow had him covered. Tauntingly, the black-garbed master awaited Pringle’s action. The gray-haired man was afraid to fire; he could not beat that looming weapon which faced him. But as he hesitated, another factor came into this conflict.

  Joe Cardona, his automatic successfully gripped in his left hand, rose from his chair and leaped toward The Red Blot.

  With a harsh cry, Pringle acted. He leaped to the right to gain the cover of Cardona’s body. His hand, its forefinger upon the trigger, thrust outward, to put an end to Cardona’s clumsy effort.

  Whether Pringle or Cardona would have gained the first shot, none could ever tell. For while their fingers pressed against the triggers, The Shadow’s automatic sounded in advance.

  Its target was Pringle’s arm. The gun fell from The Red Blot’s hand. A moment later, Joe Cardona’s shots roared forth. Dobson Pringle dropped to the floor and lay face upward.

  A sardonic laugh awoke vague echoes. Cardona turned as he heard the creepy, chilling sound. He saw no one at the door. The Shadow had departed. The detective bent above the body of The Red Blot. Dobson Pringle’s lips were moving weakly.

  “I - I am dying.” Pringle’s gasp came wearily. “I - I am beaten. You will find - find the millions - in the floor - beneath the desk -“

  Cardona could see that the man was speaking the truth. Mortally wounded by Cardona’s haphazard shots, Dobson Pringle had lost his malicious expression.

  Rising, Cardona thrust himself against the desk and pushed it toward the side of the room, The effort was weakening. Cardona’s head began to swim. He steadied himself and stared at Pringle.

  The man who had termed himself The Red Blot was propped upon an elbow. His trembling finger was pointing to the crevice in the floor. Cardona saw the indicated mark.

  “There!” gasped Pringle. “Beneath - beneath that stone. You - you have won. The money -“

  The exhausting effort was too much. Pringle’s elbow gave way. Falling upon his side, the defeated villain watched the detective claw with his left hand at the movable stone.

  “The lever,” murmured Pringle. “The lever on the wall -“

  Cardona noticed Pringle’s attempt to point. The lever which the gray-haired man indicated was just below the spot which the top of the desk had covered. Reaching up, Cardona pulled the lever.

  He heard a fiendish chuckle. He stared at Dobson Pringle.

  No longer placid and weary in expression, Pringle was glaring with malicious eyes. The evil personality of The Red Blot was in his gruesome stare. His lips, foaming, spat insidious words of hateful triumph.

  “Your friends” - The Red Blot’s voice was spasmodic in its insidious tone - “the prisoners - the ones you have left - are doomed. You - you have slain them - rats - drowning in a deluge -“

  As the voice broke off, Cardona could hear the roaring surge of a cataract far below. He realized the malice of The Red Blot’s last action. Dying, Dobson Pringle had tricked him into loosing a hidden torrent of water into the dungeon where The Shadow had left the prisoners!

  Was it too late?

  Cardona staggered away from the wall. He slipped to his knees, weakened by loss of blood from his wounded shoulder. He could hear The Red Blot’s death rattle - a gargling sound that carried a tone of glee.

  As if in answer came a whispering echo - a sinister challenge that sounded from beyond the outside corridor. It was The Shadow’s triumph laugh - the symbol of the departing victor. Cardona, resting upon his left hand, waited, too weak to move.

  A clatter in the corridor. The voices of men. Four persons came into the room. Cardona did not recognize them; but they knew him.

  The detective had been groggy during his imprisonment in the pit beneath; these men had not. They were the prisoners, freed from the dungeon - on their way up the steps at the moment when Cardona had unwittingly released the tide intended for their doom.

  Selfridge Woodstock; his secretary, Crozer; Carlton Carmody - with them was a tall, elderly man, with pale face and stooped shoulders, whose facial muscles twitched as he observed the scene in this bloody room.

  They helped Cardona to his feet. Then came other rescuers; Detective Sergeant Markham and a squad which had come in from the corridor to the East Side subway. Markham recognized that these were friends.

  The tall, eccentric individual spoke. His statement cleared the confusion as he named his identity.

  “I can explain everything,” he said. “I am Hubert Craft, chief architect of the Amalgamated Builders’ Association - supposed to be dead - actually held prisoner by this fiend -“

  Craft pointed toward the inert form of Dobson Pringle. Joe Cardona, still game, added the final words.

  “The Red Blot,” gasped the detective. “Pringle - The Red Blot -“

  Dobson Pringle’s form was now on its face. Markham raised the body to learn that the man was dead. Clutching the motionless corpse, Markham stared - the others followed his gaze.

  Where Pringle’s body had lain, the floor was stained with a pool of crimson blood. Spreading slowly, gushed forth from a wound that still oozed, that fluid formed a grotesque pattern.

  In death, as in life, Dobson Pringle had left the signature which he had chosen for the key mark in his villainous campaign of crime. That pool of blood remained as the final signature of The Red Blot!

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE COMMISSIONER EXPLAINS

  “THE most astonishing case of criminal activity in the history of the New York police!”

  This assertion regarding The Red Blot came from Police Commissioner Ralph Weston. It was uttered with emphasis as the commissioner sat with his millionaire friend, Lamont Cranston, in the grill room of the Cobalt Club.

  They were keeping the luncheon engagement which Cranston had jocularly arranged a few days previous. When the newspaper had blazed forth the triumph of the law over The Red Blot, Cranston had telephoned Weston to congratulate him - and to remind him of the suggested meeting.

  “I have read the newspapers with great interest,” observed Cranston, after he had heard Weston’s all-inclusive definition, “My own experience - observations at the Club Janeiro - made me understand the remarkable features of this case -“

  “That was but the surface, Cranston,” interposed Weston. “The whole affair was incredible. The motive was a relentless scheme for ill gain. A criminal intelligence masked by a most disarming exterior.

  “Who could have suspected that Dobson Pringle, kindly and prosperous gentleman, was The Red Blot? Yet, once the scheme was uncovered, the machinations became as plain as day. Let me give you a summary of it, Cranston.

  “Dobson Pringle was a man long experienced in building. He gained access to old city maps and records; to facts that had been forgotten. He noted that Manhattan was honeycombed with abandoned conduits; with blocked-off excavations. Below the surface of the city streets were the nucleus for a remarkable underground system of passages - not to compare with the catacombs of Rome or the sewers of Paris, yet an arrangement that could be put to definite use.

  “Pringle was in a position to develop that system. He saw in it the making of a real underworld. The Amalgamated Builders’ Association was erecting skyscrapers, all within a short radius of Times Square. By a tie-up with Socks Mallory, then an enterprising racketeer, Pringle peopled his catacombs with a squad of wanted men - chosen ruffians who stayed below ground gladly, and who served as the advance workers. They were The Red Blot’s sappers.

  “Pringle made Hubert Craft, the archit
ect, his unwitting aid. In the plans for new buildings, he urged special arrangements for hidden outlets from the structures. He explained to Craft that these might later be used for connecting links with other buildings - subways and the like - and that they would prove of value in the future.”

  “Craft was easily duped,” observed Cranston.

  “For a while, only,” returned Weston. “The first of these hidden entrances to the cavernous domain was placed in the office of the Club Janeiro - beneath the Stellar Theater Building - an Amalgamated enterprise.

  “That enabled Socks Mallory to go in and out; to add replenishments to his workers. Each new building had another outlet to be tapped. In the Hotel Gigantic it was an elevator shaft that descended more deeply than supposed.

  “The most artful of these secret openings was in the fifth floor of the Amalgamated Building. The structure pyramids” - Weston began making a diagram upon the back of an envelope - “and the first set-back comes above the fifth floor. For five floors, there are corner rooms - like the conference room of the Amalgamated Builders, shaped thus. A narrow anteroom allowed for a hidden wall space, like a large air shaft. Pringle’s hidden workers installed an elevator there; one which could be reached through a secret panel in the anteroom wall.

  “Galladay’s jewelry store was neatly designed so that one spot would allow access to all parts of the ground floor. That, of course, was protected by installed alarm apparatus; but Pringle had made full allowance. Craft was not suspicious even then - it was when Pringle made him put in a secret entrance to the ground floor of the Soudervale Building that the architect raised an objection. He knew that the space would give access to a banking institution.”

  “DID Craft speak to Pringle?” questioned Cranston.

  “Yes,” allowed Weston. “That was the deed that started The Red Blot into action. Mobsters abducted Craft. Pringle framed what looked like a disappearance of the architect. Then trouble broke loose.

  “From the central cavern of his underground realm, The Red Blot had taken a large conduit as a course to the East Side subway. Other old underground passages, considerable distance from Pringle’s domain, were tapped from spots along the subway line. To build up a reputation, to gain funds which he needed, The Red Blot launched crime attacks in parts of Manhattan where his men could escape by hidden outlets to these underground channels. After each raid they returned to their base.