Diamond Mart. Flush Tygert had used his cigarette lighter to touch off crime of a most unusual sort.
Things about to come would reveal the planning of a master plotter whose tricky schemes were to convince The Shadow that a real brain had designed them.
Crime was due, in the very presence of The Shadow, before he could reach the main scene of its action!
CHAPTER VIII
CRIME IN REVERSE
IT took The Shadow just three minutes to reach the vantage point he wanted: the rear street in back of the old arcade. During that interim, the elevated train stopped at a station and an oily faced man stepped off.
The passenger was Grease Rickel; he had caught the signal given by Flush Tygert with his cigarette lighter.
In his turn, Grease was spied by crooks below. He didn't have to leave the
elevated platform. He merely stepped to the rail and gave a quick gesture. It started the real fireworks. Flush had supplied the flame; Grease was the fuse.
Instantly, a brawl broke loose outside the old arcade. It looked as though
two bums had started to grab for a loose dime that they saw in the gutter and their scramble brought a flood of others, like sparrows flocking for a crust of
bread.
The sudden strife brought shouts from policemen, followed by the pound of footbeats. Then, as the brawl increased, a whistle sounded.
Fighters accepted the police signal as their own. Not only did they break apart; there was a flash of revolvers, followed by quick-stabbed shots in the direction of the officers. Diving for shelter of doorways and elevated pillars,
the police pulled their own guns, to return the fire.
Like a thing rehearsed, the swirl of shabby men went into the entrance of the arcade. Thinking the opposition poorly armed and in retreat, the officers followed, their own fire bringing up reserves, who were prompt to aid them.
No outside aid could have stopped the coming slaughter. The charging police were thrusting themselves into the ugliest ambush ever designed in the badlands.
Seldom did crime's success depend upon such wholesale killing. Few big brains of crime, no matter how fiendish or desperate, cared to stir the vengeance of the law by a massacre of policemen. But tonight's crime had a reverse twist which slaughter would aid, and it was being managed by a supercrook who could laugh at the law after the deed was done.
The police would never find Five-face, no matter how far they looked for him. He had wiped out one personality, that of Jake Smarley. He could as easily
dispose of his present guise. With crime done, Flush Tygert would no longer exist.
Five-face had given the word for slaughter in the name of Flush Tygert, and gleeful mobsters were eager to deliver death. Banked within the entrance of
the old arcade were two squads of marksmen, four to a side, waiting for the decoys to bring the police into the fatal mesh.
No longer posing as bums, the killers held big revolvers of .45 caliber.
They had chosen the 'smokewagons' as weapons in order that their bullets would produce a fuller share of carnage. As the last batch of decoys came diving into
shelter, a harsh voice gave the word:
'Give it!'
With the signal, assistance came to the officers, who were already in full
sight. It didn't come from outside the arcade; that was impossible. The men who
sprang the surprise were in the very midst of the crooks.
Four in number, The Shadow's agents. One pair had entered the arcade earlier; the other two had hurried in with the decoys. But all four had the same objective.
Whipping out guns of their own, they flung themselves upon the firing squads, slashing hard at heads and arms, determined to prevent the reception that the crooks intended for the police.
Guns blasted, wildly. The whole arcade roared, its confines magnifying the
fusillade to the tumult of a cannonade. Stabs of flame issued in all directions,
except the one that crooks intended.
Bullets were digging the low roof and walls of the arcade; slugs were whistling over the heads of the police and ricocheting from the sidewalk. But the charging police were still coming, unscathed by the fire!
They saw what had happened; how a few valiant men had hurled themselves on
twice the number. The officers weren't shooting any longer; they didn't want to
harm their friends. But the police were blocked when they tried to return the rescue.
A veritable flood of howling hoodlums gushed from the arcade, pouring down
upon the forces of the law. Guns were everywhere, slugging at close quarters.
In
a trice, the officers were fighting for their own lives against a formidable horde. It looked like sure death for the four unknown valiants who had spoiled the ambush.
Then, supreme amid the tumult, came a battle challenge that drowned all cries and shots. It broke from the very heart of the arcade, signifying an attack that was coming from the rear.
It stood for a lone fighter; a champion of justice who cared nothing about
odds, a warrior whom crime had never conquered. Alone, he was more formidable than an entire squad; his very strength lay in his solitary ability to be everywhere, yet nowhere, when he hurled himself against a mass of foemen.
The battle laugh of The Shadow!
IN answer to that taunt, crooks forgot all else. The Shadow's agents were hurled aside by men who wanted to get at crime's archfoe. Fighting police suddenly found that they were struggling only with thugs who couldn't get loose
to return into the arcade. Like a massive tide, the pour of killers had reversed
itself.
Mobsters couldn't see The Shadow. They knew only that he was somewhere in the darkened arcade, and they wanted to smother him en masse before he could escape. They had turned themselves into a living juggernaut, numbering more than a score. No one, not even The Shadow, could stand against such a surge.
So
crooks thought, but they were wrong.
They were met by blasting guns, a brace of .45 automatics that The Shadow handled with utter ease. His shots were directed at the very center of the overwhelming wave, while thugs were clumsily trying to get their big revolvers into play.
The tide broke as men stumbled, and The Shadow lunged into its very vortex, like a diver going beneath a sweep of surf.
Snarling crooks wheeled from the flanks. The thing had happened at what seemed the very start of battle. The Shadow had gone almost before they realized it, but they knew where to find him: somewhere in their own midst.
A clever trick on The Shadow's part, but only a temporary stopgap. A suicidal move, if ever a fighter had made such.
Crooks had forgotten the cops out in the street. Outnumbering the few thugs who had remained to battle them, the police were free for another charge.
They made it, at the very moment when the billow of crooks reversed itself to trap The Shadow. Under the unexpected drive, the maddened thugs were caught entirely off guard.
They were surging again toward the rear of the arcade, but not at their own desire. They were being propelled by a storming mass of blue-coated warriors, whose guns were stabbing devastating close-range shots that thinned the swirl of hoodlums.
Given a foothold by The Shadow, the police were turning the fight into a rout. Mobsters, not officers, were
