on the thick cane he was forced to use because of his ailing foot. He stared at
Dixon. Bruce was there, too, his handsome face set in anxious lines.
'Father - please! This horrible thing that's threatening you must be stopped at once! It can't go on any longer!'
Arnold Dixon's face was pale. He knew that the faithful Charles had found the note he had dropped in the hall from his overcoat pocket. Charles had phoned Bruce at Edith Allen's apartment in New York, catching him just before he left for the theater with the girl. That was how Bruce had be able to arrive
so miraculously at the cottage with the blue shutters.
Timothy also had told his story. He recounted his recent narrow escape from death at the hands of Snaper and Hooley.
Arnold Dixon had remained silent.
Now he changed his mind. He began to talk to them in a low, barely audible
voice. William Timothy listened as rigidly as a statue. Bruce leaned forward, as
if afraid to miss a single word.
There was another listener interested in the millionaire's halting confession. The heavy curtains at the window behind Dixon were parted slightly.
The Shadow's deep set eyes peered through, as he listened to Dixon's story.
THE story explained Dixon's fear of Snaper and Hooley. It made clear why he had been willing to pay the crooked pair two thousand dollars a month as the
price of their silence.
Blackmail!
It was a sorry story of crime that went back through the years, to Dixon's
younger manhood. He had been broke, desperate. He had joined a gang of four criminals. Together with them he had robbed a country bank. The robbery had unexpectedly turned into murder. Pete Spargo, the ugliest of the five, had killed the unfortunate cashier. All five, including Arnold Dixon, had escaped.
But all except Dixon were captured.
Spargo and a man named 'Trigger' Trimble were convicted of murder and executed. Snaper and Hooley were sentenced to long prison terms. But Dixon, who
had used an alias with the gang, managed to get away.
Frightened and repentant at the deadly outcome of his first attempt at crime, he reformed and went straight. He married, prospered, became wealthy and
finally a millionaire.
This was the situation that confronted Snaper and Hooley when they were released from prison. By grapevine information they knew that Arnold Dixon was now wealthy and respected. They recognized his picture in a newspaper. They kept silent about him. When they were released they called on him and demanded money to keep their mouths shut.
Dixon agreed to pay. It wasn't prison he feared, although Bert Hooley had proof that would implicate Dixon in the actual bank robbery. The thing that made Dixon agree to pay hush money was the thought of the scandal and notoriety
that would ruin the life of his son, Bruce, if the real story was spread in the
headlines of the tabloid scandal sheets. Two thousand dollars a month was nothing to Arnold Dixon. It was a cheap price to pay for security.
'There was no trouble, and no threats of death,' Dixon concluded feebly,
'until the appearance of this strange man in the brown beard. This man that Hooley calls Paul Rodney. I don't know who Rodney is, or what his game is -
but
Snaper and Hooley are in deadly fear of him. So am I, because I - I -'
He gulped, stopped talking abruptly. The tremor of his lips showed that he
was holding something back. Something that frightened him more than mere blackmail.
William Timothy sensed it. So did Bruce. They made him continue his confession.
'You sure that you don't know this Rodney?' Bruce asked him, quietly.
'No, son.'
'But you do know what he's after!' Timothy exclaimed. He had been watching
Dixon narrowly. As an old friend, he was not afraid to talk harshly to the millionaire, to point out to him the absolute necessity of complete candor.
'Have you ever heard of the Cup of Confucius?' Arnold Dixon said a queer, gasping voice.
'Of course.'
Timothy's tone was one of puzzled interest. The Cup of Confucius was almost one of the seven wonders of the world. It had its legendary beginning in
the ancient past of China. In that respect it was like the Holy Grail. To talk of something like that in terms of two jailbird blackmailers and a killer in a brown beard was preposterous, scarcely intelligible.
'I don't quite understand,' Timothy murmured. 'What has the Cup of Confucius to do with you, Arnold?'
'I think that's what Paul Rodney is after,' Dixon faltered.
'But there isn't any cup,' Bruce cried, sharply. 'It was burned, destroyed! Years ago!'
'It wasn't burned and it wasn't destroyed,' his father told him steadily.
Arnold Dixon's eyes were ablaze with the fanatical, almost mad, zeal of an art collector. 'The cup is mine! I brought it, paid for it - I own it! It's here!
Now! In this house!'
'You bought it?' Timothy breathed. 'But - if it were found, if it really were in existence, it couldn't be bought. It would be priceless! No millionaire
living would have money enough to pay for it!'
'He might,' Dixon said, steadily, 'if the man who had it in his possession
was a patriot badly in need of money. I bought it secretly from Sun Wang, the Chinese general who is now waging so desperate a fight against the invaders of his country. It was Wang's bandit troops who sacked the ancient Jade Temple where the cup was preserved for centuries.
'The temple was burned to the ground but the cup was not lost. Sun Wang himself saved it. I got in touch with him through my Oriental agent, when he sent me a secret bid for its sale. Sun Wang wanted bullets, cannon, airplanes.
I wanted the cup. I bought it - for a million dollars!'
Bruce's eyes were shining. He turned away for an instant, as if to hide from Timothy and his father the sudden glint that came into them. It was a queer expression. Caution was mingled with fear and a sort of hard anger.
'Where is the cup, now?' Bruce asked.
'In the tower room upstairs. With the rest of my pottery collection. It's standing on a shelf in a plain wooden box.'
'But that's madness,' Timothy protested.
'Not at all,' Arnold Dixon rejoined. 'Who is to know it except us three?
And even if Paul Rodney suspects I have it, he'd never dream of looking for it in a cheap wooden box standing openly on a shelf alongside a few valueless trinkets. It's safer there than it would be in a bank vault.'
Outside the curtained window, The Shadow's burning eyes were riveted on the pale face of Bruce. He paid no attention to his father.
Arnold Dixon, oblivious to everything but the pride of his possession, was
talking dreamily, like a drugged man.
'You must know the legend,' he said faintly. 'Confucius himself created the cup, out of a cracked earthen pitcher presented to him by a pious peasant.
He was weary and thirsty and the peasant offered him a drink of cold water after wealthy mandarins had driven the fainting holy man from their courtyards.
'Confucius blessed the pitcher, gave it back. The peasant fell on his knees when he saw it. It had changed to
