lost sight of it as he peered toward the darkness of the alley opposite. Had Legira watched the blackish
shape, he might have seen it momentarily assume the form of a living man as it neared the side of the
house.
The consul returned with his secretary to the room with the shuttered window. Again, Legira stood
before the mirror, with Lopez peering from beside him.
Minutes rolled by. The drawn shade fluttered slightly, as though the shutter outside had been opened by
an unseen hand.
Legira did not notice the movement of the shade. Nor did he see the long, narrow shadow that had
appeared upon the floor, stretching from the window to his feet. Instead, Legira turned to face Lopez.
“It will not be difficult,” was his cryptic remark. “Not very difficult. It would be so if I were you, Lopez.
Very difficult then, perhaps.”
The secretary appeared bewildered. Legira laughed knowingly. He strode from the room, leaving Lopez
wondering. Then the secretary followed.
The window shade fluttered. There was a slight, almost inaudible noise. The shutter was closing. In the
blackness, on the wall outside the house, a figure that clung like a mammoth bat, began a downward
course, pressing close to the projecting stones.
The form was lost in the darkness below. It appeared momentarily in the light near the front wall of the
house. A tall man, clad in black, was revealed a moment; then his figure vanished in the night.
Only a low, soft laugh marked the strange departure of this mysterious personage. The figure was
invisible as it drifted across the street and stopped near the entrance to the alley opposite.
The Shadow, man of the night, had been searching here. Shrouded in darkness, he had observed the
departure of Pete Ballou. He had witnessed the approach of Martin Powell. He had spied upon Alvarez
Legira and his secretary, Lopez.
Now, at the entrance of the alley, he detected the presence of “Silk” Dowdy, the hidden watcher.
Unseen, unnoticed, The Shadow slipped away into the dark.
CHAPTER V. THE EYES OF THE SHADOW
ONE week had elapsed since the eventful night when Alvarez Legira had swung his ten-million- dollar
deal with the New York financiers. Seated in the secluded room of his residence, the consul from
Santander was talking with his thin-faced secretary, Lopez.
“Ten days, was it not?” questioned Legira smoothly. “Let us see— six have passed. There will be four
more.”
“Yes, senor,” replied Lopez. “It is four more days. Yet you have done nothing, senor.”
“Nothing,” returned Legira, with a smile. “Nothing, Lopez, yet I am not worried. I had expected some
change before this evening. However” - he shrugged his shoulders—“to-morrow is another day.”
“You have some plan, senor”—Lopez spoke in a cautious voice— “some plan that you have not told to
me. Is it not so, senor? Why is it that you have not spoken to me?”
Legira arose and clapped his secretary upon the shoulder. The consul's face broke into a scheming smile.
Lopez grinned in return. These two understood each other, from long experience.
“I shall tell you, Lopez,” declared Legira. “Soon, but not now. You remember the night that Pete Ballou
came here. When he left, I asked you to bring me—”
His words ended, and he pointed his thumb toward the telephone. Lopez nodded. He remembered the
brief conversation which Legira had held on that night, but he could not recall the number that the consul
