Nevertheless, Scorpio's escape could still be blocked and the evidence against him reclaimed. That chance was diverted by a woman's cry, that came from near the window. The shouting girl was Lois Melvin.
With the lights in the room extinguished, Lois could see the scene outdoors. From the window, she spied bobbing lights heading in the direction of the lake front; the starlight showed the figures of scurrying men.
The girl told all as she shouted:
'The jewel thieves! There they go!'
Instantly, Professor Scorpio was forgotten. A wildly shouting throng made for the veranda door, and Harry was swept along with them. He went willingly, because of his accepted theory that the gems were more important than the professor.
Shots stabbed from the direction of the Lodi dock as pursuers arrived on the veranda. Those were warning shots; they betrayed the escaping crooks, but also indicated that it would be dangerous to follow.
The sheriff had reached the veranda; he was finding his first real chance to take part in the strife. Pulling his gun, he answered the fire from the shore.
Then, at the foot of the veranda steps, the sheriff grabbed the two men closest to him, who happened to be Niles Rundon and Harry Vincent. He was telling them to organize the rest and follow his lead, when new shrieks from the house made everyone turn.
The living room was lurid with light, far greater than the torches could produce alone. Flames were snatching at the woodwork. producing a first-class blaze. Crooks had to be forgotten, to save the hacienda. The sheriff pointed back to the house, telling the others to fight the fire, while he took up the chase alone.
Harry and Rundon reached the living room. The entire alcove was ablaze. Carradon, back on his feet, was yelling something about a fire hose in the hallway. The fire could be stopped before it spread, but the alcove and its outer wall were sure to go.
Professor Scorpio was lying on the floor, with one eye open. He let it close, as Harry stared in his direction. Paula Lodi and some of the other women were dragging the professor from the danger spot; still murmuring their belief in him. A bland smile showed on the bearded lips.
Scorpio had played an almost hopeless game; yet he had won. His toss of the torch had been a lucky trick. He could alibi it easily, by claiming that he had lost the torch in a struggle that had left him senseless.
The damage could be blamed on his attackers, instead of himself.
But the damage was exactly what Scorpio wanted.
Already, the flames had consumed the spirit robe and the cloth which the spook had used to cover it.
The alcove was going, too. From charred floor and flame-swept wall, no one could gain proof of the trapdoor through which the spook had made his escape.
A clever trick, Building the trap here in Paula's house during her absence. The professor had rigged it long ago, for an occasion like this evening. His game had turned into a boomerang, but he had managed to save the situation. The flames were killing the evidence. No one could brand Scorpio as an absolute faker.
As for the missing jewels, Scorpio was clear on that count. He hadn't touched Paula's gems. To Harry Vincent, the situation was disheartening. Harry felt that he had failed The Shadow: but that was not all. It seemed that The Shadow, too, had failed.
In fact, The Shadow's disappearance from the scene provided a very ominous touch. It made Harry forget the fire and start outdoors, gripped with the unreasonable dread that crooks had carried off his chief, along with the Lodi jewels.
This was the situation where everything seemed totally wrong. As Harry pictured it, there had been robbery in The Shadow's very presence: and that, in itself, indicated that something worse had happened.
Others could worry about the jewels and the fire: Harry was thinking only of The Shadow, wondering what fate awaited him.
No qualms were needed from The Shadow, though Harry did not know it. The Shadow had chosen his own route, and was seeing it through. The persons who most deserved sympathy were those whom The Shadow might meet along the way.
CHAPTER VI. THE LAKE MONSTER.
THE SHADOW was on the trail of a ghost. The ghost, however, happened to be a very human one, quite confused in the darkness. The ghost was Edward Barcla.
There had been a few lights in the cellar beneath the hacienda when The Shadow landed there. By their glow The Shadow had spotted a scrambling figure reaching for the main switch that controlled all the lights in the house.
In one brief glimpse The Shadow had recognized the pasty features of Barcla, spread in their eager weasel- like grin. Then darkness, as Barcla pulled the switch. After that, The Shadow had kept along the trail.
Shouts from above, thumps upon the floor, meant that things were happening in the living room that The Shadow had so suddenly deserted. But there had been no shots. Nothing less than gunfire seemed enough to demand The Shadow's aid. With the fight a mere brawl, with crooks outnumbered, it was better to trail Barcla.
There was much that the professor's tool could tell, under The Shadow's persuasion. How much was a question; but it would be enough to make Barcla's capture worthwhile. Barcla would tell facts that Professor Scorpio would stoutly deny, if questioned. What was more, Barcla would reveal them without Scorpio's knowledge.
In a game like this, it was best to attack the weak links first. Once they were gone, the stronger ones would fall through their own sheer weight. That was why The Shadow kept to Barcla's trail.
Audible through the darkness, Barcla was easily followed by his stumbles. The puzzling thing was the length of the trail. The cellar seemed to be an absolute labyrinth, an almost endless maze, until The Shadow suddenly realized the ludicrous truth.
He had spent nearly ten minutes following Barcla in and out of passages, simply because the fellow had lost himself in the blackness!
It was no use lagging after that. Pressing forward, The Shadow closed in upon his prey. With shouts and roaring sounds coming from the floor above, Barcla was madly anxious to be out of the cellar that had become his self-made trap. The Shadow decided to conduct him out-at the point of an automatic!
There was another stumble, followed by a sprawl. Barcla had come across a flight of steps, leading upward. The Shadow was almost upon him, when Barcla, through sheer desperation, decided to take his newly-found route, wherever it might lead. He started upward with the speed of a scared rabbit.
Moving swiftly, The Shadow was right behind him at the top. Barcla didn't have time to yank open the door that he thumped against; but The Shadow, in his turn, lacked time to seize Barcla.
The door was ripped from the other side while Barcla was grabbing for the knob. Off balance, Barcla pitched out into the hall, scrambled madly past two men who were starting down into the cellar.
They were a pair of guests, coming to get fire extinguishers from the cellar. Though the flickers from the living room were guiding them, they failed to see Barcla because of the thick, swirling smoke. But they found The Shadow, when Barcla tripped them.
Headlong, the pair plunged down the steps, lurching squarely against Barcla's pursuer. From then on, it was a three-man tumble, with The Shadow beating off the flay of arms. Other faces appeared in the clearing smoke above the stairs, but the darkness of the cellar offset the fading light from the alcove fire.
New arrivals could only hear the shouts of the tumblers, claiming that they had grabbed one of the jewel thieves. More men came pounding down the stairs, toward crashes that they heard below.
The Shadow had used his attackers as buffers at the finish of the sprawl. Both still showing fight, he flung one foe into a wood bin; the other into an open closet. The clatter of tumbling logs, the smash of shelves loaded with preserves, were aftermaths of The Shadow's rapid action.
But The Shadow's route was blocked.
ILL LUCK had brought the attack in The Shadow's direction, instead of Barcla's. Half a dozen men were leaping down the stairs, intent to capture the unknown marauder. Against the last flickers of the fading fire, The Shadow saw their faces, Harry's among them. From darkness, The Shadow delivered a weird laugh.
The mirth carried no challenge, nor did it voice triumph. It was a ghostly laugh; one that would have fitted well in Scorpio's seances. There was a double purpose behind the trailing tone. The Shadow wanted to mystify these ardent, but misguided, attackers-with one exception; namely, Harry Vincent.
He knew that Harry would recognize the laugh, despite its disguise, and act accordingly. Harry did. As the others sprang for The Shadow in the darkness, Harry was with them. In blundering fashion, he began to trip his
