drop of nearly twenty feet. Silently, he had waited; then had gone.
Rodriguez Zelva shrugged his shoulders when he stepped back into the room. His interest in that fleeting
shadow had faded. He said nothing about it as he motioned Pete Ballou toward the outer door.
Ballou was cautious as he left the Goliath Hotel. He walked down a few flights before he summoned an
elevator—a plan that he had used when he had come here. He rode to the Hotel Oriental in a taxicab
and went immediately to his room.
The hallway was dim, due to a burned-out light. As he pushed the key into the lock with his right hand,
Ballou encountered the surface of the door with his finger tips. Entering his room, he noted a stickiness on
his fingers and thumb.
Ballou turned on a table light and pressed his fingers upon a newspaper that lay there. His fingers left a
dark smudge. Ballou decided that paint must have been applied to the door. He did not bother to
investigate. He tossed the newspaper into the wastebasket and went into the bathroom to wash the paint
from his fingers.
The moment that Ballou had stepped from the room, a tall figure emerged from the corner. Stooping, the
unseen visitor plucked the newspaper from the basket. Deft, black-clad fingers tore away a portion of
the front page and replaced the newspaper so that the damaged part was beneath.
The figure of The Shadow was revealed as the strange visitor glided past the opened door of the lighted
bathroom. Then the outer door of the room opened and closed without the slightest semblance of a
sound.
The Shadow had arrived here before Pete Ballou. Now he was gone. At Zelva's, he had learned the
plans of the conspirators and had discovered that they knew nothing of the trick by which Legira had
deceived them. Here, at Ballou's, The Shadow had laid a simple but effective trap that Pete Ballou had
not suspected.
Once more, The Shadow was on his way. Somewhere, amid the silent, early morning streets, he was
planning new work for the morrow. His plans concerned more than Alvarez Legira and Pete Ballou. For
now, The Shadow knew both the identity and the ways of Rodriguez Zelva—the man higher up.
CHAPTER XIX. CARDONA RECEIVES INSTRUCTIONS
DETECTIVE JOE CARDONA was not in a pleasant mood when he strode into the office of Inspector
Timothy Klein, the morning after the murders in the apartment of John Hendrix. The sight of the
inspector's face did not raise the detective's spirits.
“You've seen this, Joe?” was Klein's first question.
The inspector indicated a newspaper which lay upon the desk.
“Guess I've seen it,” responded Cardona. “I read all the morning papers.”
“This is an evening edition,” said Klein, quietly. “I just bought it.”
Cardona picked up the sheet and stared at the headlines. Then he began to scan the paragraphs below.
“Nothing new,” he growled. “This stuff about Hendrix having negotiations with South American interests
don't mean anything. I looked into that last night.”
“Read here,” remarked Klein, leaning forward and pointing to a paragraph set in bold-face type.
Cardona's eyes flashed angrily as he perused the lines. He threw the newspaper on the desk and stared
sullenly at Klein. The inspector's face was serious.
“Panning me, eh?” grumbled Cardona. “Playing up the fact that I let the murderer get away. Fine guys,
