had earphones on his head; the table was littered with sheets of paper. Here, almost in the shadow of
Legira's home, a man was keeping watch.
A voice clicked through the earphones. Burbank uttered a reply. He disconnected a wire in a small
switchboard. Upon a sheet of paper he wrote the report that he had just received from Harry Vincent.
It was after eight o'clock. Darkness had settled outside. Burbank, oblivious to day and night, was
proceeding with his affairs in the quiet, methodical manner that had made him useful as The Shadow's
contact man.
“Burbank.”
A whispered voice spoke the name. It came from the darkness itself. Burbank never moved. He
recognized the voice of The Shadow. The strange master of the night had entered here without Burbank's
cognizance.
“Yes,” said Burbank quietly.
“Vincent's report,” said the voice.
“Legira still waiting,” responded Burbank. “All quiet. The three will be ready.”
“No wireless dispatches from the Cordova?”
“None but the original which I forwarded this morning. Here are numerous codes that I have overheard
from other sources. This one that came in at five o'clock—”
Burbank picked up a few odd sheets and held them at arm's length. They left his hand as though
swallowed by the darkness. A tiny light glimmered. Eyes in the dark were studying the code as though it
were written in ordinary words.
The papers rustled as black-gloved hands went through the other sheets, seeking some dispatch that
might give a clew to this one. The search ended. The earlier paper rested in the glimmer of the light. The
papers dropped back on Burbank's table.
“From what ship?”
The whispered question sounded in Burbank's ear. It referred to the message which the man had picked
up at five o'clock.
“The message was interrupted,” said Burbank. “It's source was not given.”
“Stand by,” said The Shadow, in a foreboding voice. “Watch the street. Call Legira's home in
emergency.”
“Understood,” said Burbank.
The room became silent. The Shadow was gone. Burbank extinguished the light and lifted the bottom of
a window shade. He peered out into the street. His scanning eye watched for vague shapes, lingering in
the darkness.
Burbank was staring from a corner window. Looking in the opposite direction, he sought to distinguish
objects between the two houses— the one where he was located and the residence of Alvarez Legira.
He saw nothing.
YET there was a person moving in that blackness—a strange being whose ways were as dark as the
night itself. A living figure was approaching the side window on the second floor of Legira's house— not
from below, but from above.
Suspended momentarily from a thin, almost invisible line that stretched from one building to the other, this
creature of the gloom left his perch and began a precipitous descent of the brownstone wall.
Invisible from every angle, he clung like a huge bat to the projecting surface. Foot by foot he edged
