This time, the bird had decided to mimic Cardona, instead. Weston thought it
rather funny, when he heard the parrot imitate someone else.
"Perhaps the five thousand dollars is lost," declared Shawnwood, "but I am
wealthy enough to charge it off to experience. What really troubles me, though,
is this."
HE showed them a letter signed by Isaac Loman. It stated that the inventor
had decided to deal through a representative, whose name was not mentioned.
Evidently acting on the representative's advice, Loman stated in the
letter that twenty thousand dollars was not enough. He wanted ten times the
amount: namely, two hundred thousand dollars. Shawnwood was to agree to the new
sum, or return the original contract.
"The man must really have something!" exclaimed Weston. "Nevertheless, his
proposition is outrageous. Outrageous!"
"Outrageous!"
"You must ignore this letter, Mr. Shawnwood," continued the commissioner,
with an angry side glance at the interrupting parrot. "Leave the matter in our
hands. When we have located Loman, you can demand the return of your five
thousand dollars, or delivery of the process which you bought from him."
Shawnwood sat back, pleased. Gradually, the happy look left his face. He
shook his head in a troubled manner, and his thin hands trembled as they
pressed the table edge.
"I have heard from the representative that Loman mentions," whispered
Shawnwood, hoarsely. "He talked to me over the telephone, but did not give his
name. He asked me if I would return the contract. I said no."
"Did he say where to deliver it?"
"No." Shawnwood shook his gray head. "I don't know where Loman is, and I
have no idea who this so-called representative may be. I suppose that if I
offered to settle, they would let me know how to reach them."
Weston pondered; then asked: "About this representative - what did his
voice sound like?"
"It was a croak!" Shawnwood's tone was awed. "He chuckled while he talked,
almost like" - the bearded man paused, then pointed to the bird cage in the
middle of the room - "almost like that parrot!"
The parrot did not seem to relish the reference. For the first lime, it
remained quite silent, tilting its head from side to side as though waiting to
hear more before voicing an opinion. Again, Weston started to smile, then
straightened his lips, for he saw that Shawnwood was very serious.
The elderly man reached for the square cardboard box and opened it with
trembling hands. Cardona helped him lift out a metal contrivance about the size
of a typewriter.
"This was delivered at my house today," declared Shawnwood. "A young man
left it, and said that it came from Isaac Loman. What it means, what its
purpose is, I cannot begin to guess."
Neither Weston nor Cardona expressed surprise at the statement. They, too,
were puzzled by the squarish machine. Its whole top was a large metal cylinder,
at the front of which were six little windows, each showing a printed letter.
At present, those letters spelled:
G R A N D E
Below the cylinder, and in front of it, was a keyboard consisting of six
rounded metal buttons which bore no letters at all.
"There you are," wheezed Shawnwood. "What the contrivance is for, why it
was sent to me -" He shrugged; then added: "Perhaps you can answer those
questions. I can't."
Neither could Weston nor Cardona. They sat there staring puzzled at the
machine, their expressions as blank as Shawnwood's. In fact, all three looked
as dumb as the beady-eyed parrot which peered through the wires of its cage as
if it also sought some answer to the riddle.
CHAPTER IX
DEATH STRIKES AGAIN
IT was Joe Cardona who offered the first suggestion regarding the curious
machine that had been delivered to Cyrus Shawnwood.
"I wonder what happens," mused the inspector, half aloud, "if you press
any of these buttons."
"I can tell you that much," volunteered Shawnwood. "We tried it this
afternoon, my guests and myself, while we were in my little study."
He pressed the buttons one by one. Each stayed down, until the sixth was
pressed. There was a whir inside the machine, produced by the revolutions of
inner cylinders. The buttons sprang up automatically, but there was a blur from
the little widows that had shown the letters: G R A N D E.
Finally, the spinning wheels clicked to a stop. The letters showed, but in
different order. They formed a jumble that spelled no word at all: ERNGDA.
Cardona started to press the buttons again, but Weston stopped him. The
commissioner pulled out a pencil and a sheet of paper torn from a notebook.
"We must write down all those combinations," he said. "Perhaps the letters
will produce a coded message."
"Sometimes words appear," wheezed Shawnwood, as he took the paper and
pencil. "Shall I list them in a separate column?"
"A good idea."
With Cardona manipulating the buttons, Shawnwood wrote down every new
combination when the wheels stopped spinning. Suddenly, Shawnwood exclaimed:
"There's a word!"
Weston peered across the table. Shawnwood was right. The six letters
formed the word: RANGED.
"List it in a special column," said the commissioner. "Press the buttons,
Cardona -"
Stopping suddenly, the commissioner looked about in surprise. He heard the
whirring noise begin before Cardona had time to start the wheels. Grinning, Joe
pointed to the parrot cage. The polly was imitating the sound that came from
the machine.
"Proceed!" snapped Weston. "Pay no attention to the bird!"
The wheels resumed their spinning under the pressure of the buttons. New
combinations appeared, always showing the same six letters, differently
arranged with occasional repeats. At last another word appeared: GANDER.
Cardona waited while Shawnwood listed the word in both columns. The
parrot, meanwhile, kept up a constant whir whenever the machine stopped. The
result was a continuous sound, with the machine and the parrot talking turns.
A few more jumbles; then another word: GARDEN.
Quite interested, Weston began to keep a word list of his own on a
separate sheet of paper, but when no more words appeared, the commissioner
began to regard the process as foolish. The parrot's echoes were annoying him,
and he was about ready to call off the silly game, when the machine clicked a
new word into sight: DANGER.
Weston regarded the new word as highly important. So did Shawnwood. They
both added it to their lists of words, then Shawnwood began to count down the
entire column of combinations, to find out at what number the word "danger" had
appeared.
Distracted by the parrot's imitations of the whirs, Shawnwood lost count,
until the polly finally decided to wait in patient silence, like Joe Cardona,
who was resting his thumb and fingers loosely on the buttons.
Footfalls were sounding from the boxlike marble staircase leading down
into the grillroom, when Shawnwood nodded and said:
"Thirty-eight combinations. The word 'danger' is number thirt
y-eight -"
Cardona's fingers tightened on the buttons just as Weston, looking toward
the stairway, recognized the person who had reached the bottom. The
commissioner exclaimed:
"It's Cranston!"
There was a shrill squawk from the parrot. It forgot the whir to render a
new imitation.
"Cranston... Cranston -"
AT that moment, Cardona pressed the buttons, starling a new spin of the
lettered wheels. This time, however, the machine acted in a most rapid and
unexpected fashion. As the rotary motion sped up, the whole top of the outer
cylinder sprang open.
Lettered wheels were ripped to fragments, as the machine released a solid
inner cylinder and scaled it almost to the ceiling. The cylindrical projectile
was made of some transparent substance that contained a greenish liquid. As
large as a tomato can, it was traveling like a bomb shot from a mortar. It's
long arc was carrying the missile straight for the boxlike steps where The
Shadow stood.
There wasn't a chance for The Shadow to dive into the grillroom or take to
the stairway. Neither course would take him far enough from the spot where the
bomb was due to strike. But The Shadow supplied a different move, that served
perfectly in the emergency.
All eyes were toward the scaling cylinder. None saw Cranston's hand whip
upward from the coat-tail pocket of his full dress suit. There was a gun in
that quick fist, and The Shadow pressed the trigger of the big automatic the
instant that the muzzle pointed toward the flying cylinder.
The roar from the .45 sounded like an explosion from the bomb, for the
bullet met the cylindrical object at the highest point of its flight: near the
ceiling at the very center of the large grillroom.
From the smashing cylinder came a fountain of greenish liquid, that turned
instantly into a spray of thickish vapor. Through that cloud, which filled the
center of the room, it was impossible for the men at the table to see Cranston
at the foot of the stairs.
In fact, they did not wait to look for him through the greenish haze.
Cardona was shoving Weston with one hand, dragging Shawnwood with the other,
getting them through the door to the kitchen. The Shadow, full about, was
bounding quickly up the stairway, dropping his automatic into his coat-tail
pocket as he went.
All were beyond the range of the gas cloud. The greenish vapor settled
rapidly, becoming nothing more than dampness on the grillroom floor. Cardona,
peering gingerly from the kitchen, sniffed the air and found it clear. He
beckoned to Weston and Shawnwood.
As they returned to the grillroom, the three saw Lamont Cranston strolling
down the stairs. He joined them and was introduced to Shawnwood. While Weston
was relating all that had happened, Shawnwood interrupted with a wheezy gulp.
"If that gas was deadly," he expressed, "it would have killed all of us -
myself and my friends - this afternoon! We were toying with the machine in my
study - a very small room, where none of us could have possibly escaped!"
"There is still a question," declared Weston, "as to whether or not the
chemical compound formed a deadly gas."
Cardona nodded agreement. Weston fumed to The Shadow and inquired:
"What is your opinion, Cranston?"
"The gas was deadly," came Cranston's calm reply. "So deadly,
commissioner, that it actually took a victim. Look!"
He pointed to the parrot cage. Weston gaped. The green-hued bird was rigid
in its cage, fixed to its perch. Its beak was wide, frozen in the midst of an
undelivered squawk. The bird's eyes were like solid bits of glass.
COMMISSIONER WESTON went to get his cane. Returning, he poked the cane tip
through the cage wires. Not only did the stick fail to budge the rigid parrot;
the metal ferrule clicked when it struck the bird's wing.
"The parrot is more than dead!" voiced Weston, in an awed tone. "It is
petrified; turned to a thing of stone! If that bomb had reached you, Cranston -"
"The Cobalt Club would have had a human statue," interposed The Shadow,
with a slight smile, "instead of a petrified bird. It was very fortunate,
commissioner, that the bomb exploded in midair and never reached the stairway.
That is, fortunate for me, not for the poor parrot."
Turning, The Shadow clapped his hand on Shawnwood's shoulder.
"You were lucky, too," he told the bearded man. "If you and your friends
had kept on tinkering with that machine, you might have turned your study into
a hall of statuary."
Shawnwood nodded, very shakily.
Gesturing to the corner table. The Shadow coolly suggested that they have
dinner while they talked over the mystery. All during the meal they kept up a
steady discussion, but arrived nowhere.
Whether the death machine had come from the missing chemist, Isaac Loman,
or from his so-called representative, was still an open question. There was the
possibility, as Weston suggested, that some third party had entered the game,
with designs on Shawnwood's life.
The point that all seemed to overlook, was the fact that doom could have
originally been intended not for Cyrus Shawnwood, but for Lamont Cranston. Only
The Shadow held that theory, and he did not express it.
The last to leave the grillroom. The Shadow picked up a piece of paper
that had fluttered to the floor. It was Weston's list of words, all formed from
the same letters on the spinning wheels. At the bottom was the word that the
machine had registered just before it had cracked apart and flung the whirling
bombshell.
That word was: DANGER.
Transposing the letters, The Shallow made his addition to the list; but he
inscribed a name, not a word. It was the sobriquet used by a hidden master foe:
R. G. DEAN.
Danger and R. G. Dean: the two were the same, so far as The Shadow was
concerned. From this time on, The Shadow's own ways could have to be as fully
camouflaged as those of the supercrook that he sought to foil.
CHAPTER X
BEHIND THE SCENES
LAMONT CRANSTON did not return to his New Jersey home that night. Instead,
he stopped off at Newark Airport and took a plane bound for Miami. Next morning,
the newspapers announced that Cranston had gone on an exploration trip up the
Amazon River and would not return for six months.
That story was arranged by Burbank, the contact man, in accordance with
orders that The Shadow gave him over the telephone before leaving Newark.
Actually, Burbank knew that The Shadow would return within a week or less. He
had made the trip south merely to throw crooks off his trail.
In view of his various experiences, The Shadow had decided that this was
one campaign wherein direct tactics would not work; at least, not until after
he had made further progress. He was dealing with a very crafty enemy, whose
chief ability lay in creating blind trails and using his hirelings as decoys.
It was highly probable that none of the men who had tried to assassinate
The Shadow had any idea who their evil chief really was. Even the man who had
delivered the death machine to Shawnwood was
probably in the dark. There would
be no advantage in meeting up with human tools who could testify only that they
worked for R. G. Dean.
It would be a blind quest, and during it there was always the chance that
one of Dean's death devices would succeed. Even The Shadow, intrepid though he
was, considered it mere folly to risk his neck for nothing. Besides, he felt a
responsibility for innocent bystanders. The Shadow rather regretted the loss of
the talkative parrot at the Cobalt Club.
For the present, The Shadow's agents were better placed than himself, when
it came to ferreting out facts regarding R. G. Dean. The fact that The Shadow
had been identified as Cranston, was a very good reason for him to leave town.
It would give crooks the impression that they were unwatched.
The newspapers did not heavily stress the matter of Cranston's departure.
Globe-trotting was his hobby; he frequently made excursions to places like the
Amazon jungle. Moreover, no one supposed that the death thrust in the Cobalt
Club had been for Cranston's benefit.
From the facts that were given to the newspapers, it seemed that Cyrus
Shawnwood was the man endangered. The police were looking for a crazed inventor
named Isaac Loman, supposedly the master hand behind the death plot. Nor did
anyone connect the matter of the death machine with tragedy at the Chem-Lab
Co., only a few days before.
That was past history, much to the relish of Eugene Bristow, the Chem-Lab
president.
PRESENT attention was centered upon Cyrus Shawnwood. His three-story
brownstone house was under police protection. A crowd of reporters went to see
him, the morning after the near-tragedy at the Cobalt Club, and he showed them
the little study where he had first tinkered with the death machine, in the
presence of his friends.
Photographs of the little room appeared in the evening newspapers,
together with Shawnwood's statements. Other pictures showed officers on duty in
front of the brownstone mansion, and a few cameramen took shots of the rear
alley, where detectives had been posted.
Among the scribes who visited Shawnwood was Clyde Burke, who worked for
the New York Classic. He not only made a carbon copy of all the notes he took,
Wizard Of Crime.txt Page 6
