That accounted for the bolt that Shark had shoved from the other side. It also meant that The Shadow could use his flashlight without Shark spotting the gleam.
Within a few minutes, The Shadow had completely learned the layout of the room. It was furnished, in poor style, to serve as a tawdry living room. On the left was the solid wall that partitioned this house from the one next door. Straight ahead was a window, with drawn shade.
On the right was the door to the inner room, where Shark had gone; and when he passed that door, The Shadow could hear a slight stir within.
EXTINGUISHING his light, The Shadow approached the window. The shade was a battered one, yellowish in color; hence The Shadow had carefully kept the flashlight away from it. With full darkness as his shelter, The Shadow drew back the shade and raised the sash. Peering outward, he took account of surroundings.
Across the darkened rear alleyway was the roof of a garage that fronted on the next street. It had a four-foot wall around it, and its two floors were evidently both used for storage, for there were three old automobiles on the roof. They were nothing but junk, stripped of tires and had probably been put on the roof because space was lacking on the floors below.
Looking along the house wall, The Shadow saw the small window of Shark's bedroom. It was dark.
Shark had decided that a light was unwise. Moving through the living room, The Shadow stopped at Shark's door. He heard a muffled scrape; then silence.
While that particular sound was almost indistinguishable, it told The Shadow that there was no time to lose. He remembered the thuddy sounds that he had heard while listening from the hallway. They had occurred here in the living room and The Shadow had identified them.
He turned to the solid wall opposite the door of Shark's bedroom.
There stood a narrow bookcase, built into a narrow niche. It was four shelves high and it was filled with books. The Shadow could not picture Shark as a reader, particularly of the old, badly mauled classics that the shelf contained.
Nevertheless, Shark had been busy with those books. He had dropped a few; they had made the thuddy sounds.
Picking a shelf where the books had been tightly jammed in place, The Shadow carefully removed a few volumes. He knew that this was the shelf where Shark had worked; in tugging at the books, the crook had let some fall. Behind the books, The Shadow's tiny torch showed exactly what he expected.
Frayed edges of the wall paper gave evidence of a secret panel, poorly contrived. The Shadow's fingers probed and found a hidden spring. It gave easily, for the spring was weak. Pushing the panel inward, The Shadow pressed it upward.
The hole in the wall was a deep one, backed with grimy woodwork. Squatting in the center of the cache was the ebony box that Shark had carried from Silsam's. Its carved front showed a long, chipped scratch. That furrow had been made by The Shadow's deflected bullet.
The Shadow's gloved hand raised the box lid. The flashlight shone into a plush-lined interior. The velvety cloth gave off a dull maroon color. Not a single glimmer caught the flashlight's glow.
The box was empty. Every stolen gem was gone!
IN an instant, The Shadow had the answer. The depth of the wall-hole told the story. Shark had not removed the jewels from the box. He had put the swag here intact. The back of this wall space was another panel, that could be opened from a room in the house next door.
This third floor apartment was not a hide-out. It was a special place that Shark Meglo visited after every robbery, long enough to store away his swag. The hole in the wall was good enough to baffle searchers for the short time it was needed.
All the while that Shark had been coming to this transfer spot, the cunning master-crook had been waiting in the house next door.
Stolen gems were off on another round of adventure. In the hands of their scheming owner, they would be peddled to some new dupe like Silsam and the victims who had preceded him. Once sold for a huge sum of cash, they would repose in the custody of some new millionaire, slated for death when Shark Meglo appeared.
So far as the swag was concerned, The Shadow's efforts had been nullified, The Shadow knew also that the master criminal had by this time cleared away from the house next door. The hand of that hidden crime chief had probably stretched for the ebony box as soon as Shark had placed it in the connecting hole.
Carefully, The Shadow lowered the panel that he had opened. His thoughts were concentrated upon Shark Meglo. Since this place was the transfer spot, Shark would have no reason to remain, unless he had been ordered to wait until his leader had safely removed the gems.
Assuming that to be the case, Shark should either have stayed on guard in the living room, or kept watch from the bedroom.
Instead, Shark had deliberately bolted the door of the inner room. That not only prevented him from keeping guard; it put him in a room that had all the semblance of a trap. The situation did not fit.
The Shadow began to see other purposes in Shark's barricade. That was why The Shadow promptly noted something that happened at the closing wall panel.
The coiled loop of a small wire poked into view. It went out of sight beyond the panel just as The Shadow finally shut the hiding place That wire was connected with the house wall. Shark could easily have fixed it so that it would send a signal if any one tampered with the panel.
His torch extinguished, The Shadow listened. He heard sounds that he had not noticed while stooped at the panel. Creeping noises, not from Shark's inner room, but from the hallway. A key was scraping slightly in the lock.
With a quick sweep, The Shadow came back from the wall, out toward the center of the room. As he whirled, the door from the hall rammed inward. Flashlights beamed from the outer gloom. Armed foemen were upon the threshold. They were members of Shark's cover-up crew, returned here to do battle.
The Shadow's trail was broken. Shark's flight had meant more than the delivery of swag to the master-crook whom the killer served. Shark had changed the trail into a trap for The Shadow!
CHAPTER VI. SNARES REVERSED
THE SHADOW'S guns spoke the instant that the lights glared. In his twist from the wall, the cloaked fighter had unlimbered a brace of automatics. Flashlights flew from hands as gunmen scattered for the shelter of the hall.
One wounded thug sprawled through the doorway, just as darkness again covered the scene. The Shadow had clipped the fellow's gun arm. Forgetting the wounded attacker, The Shadow spurted new shots toward the group in the hall, while they returned hasty slugs.
There was a momentary lull; during it, The Shadow started forward. He was taking bold tactics, but the only sort that would serve him. He intended to spring up from among his foemen; to cleave a path to the stairway before they could recover from their startlement.
One crook blocked that maneuver. He was the rogue that The Shadow had clipped. Through a desperate move, that wounded thug was to put The Shadow in a plight from which few fighters could ever have escaped.
Just as The Shadow neared the doorway, the room lights came on. With his left hand, the wounded man had found the light switch. Sinking down to the floor, he snarled an oath as he saw The Shadow. The crook's pained lips widened into a toothy grin.
Shouts came from the hall as four torpedoes aimed their revolvers. Almost to the doorway, The Shadow was too exposed to drop the four before they fired damaging shots. He made one of those remarkable shifts that had so often maddened hordes from gangdom.
With a quick spin, The Shadow was back in the room, away from the door, whirling toward the window.
When guns barked, he was gone from range.
In those split seconds, The Shadow remembered the triumphant leer that he had seen upon the face of the wounded thug. Three ceiling lights were glowing in the low-roofed room, showing The Shadow's cloaked form plainly, even though he had spun to a safe angle. Face to the window, The Shadow saw something else.
His figure had blocked the glow of the ceiling lights. His own silhouette was etched in blackness against the yellowish window shade.
One glimpse of that outline told The Shadow why the thug had grinned. An instant later, The Shadow had finished his whirl; he was turned toward the door, with his shoulders pressing the window shade behind him.
