'Very well,' replied Fellows.
The head turned, and two eyes peered searchingly at Fellows. Under that glance the insurance broker felt uneasy. Cranston was pale and weak, but his eyes seemed twin fires that pierced through the wanness.
'Fellows,' said the millionaire, in a slow voice, 'in my vest pocket you will find a slip of paper. It bears a telephone number. Call it. Tell the man who answers you that I am - that I am not well. Ask him to come here. He is a wireless operator. I want him to take charge of my set - upstairs.'
Lamont Cranston closed his eyes wearily.
'The man I want,' he said, 'is an old friend of mine - a friend whom you have never met. I shall ask him to write you - regarding insurance policies - and other matters. Be sure that he comes here. Be sure to reply immediately to any letters that he sends you.'
The millionaire ceased speaking. He seemed to be half asleep.
'Come,' whispered Doctor Wells.
The insurance broker found the paper in the vest pocket. He opened it at the telephone table downstairs.
He called the number. A quiet voice replied. Fellows explained the situation.
'I shall come to-night,' said the man at the other end of the wire. 'You may count on my arriving within two hours.'
Fellows was thoughtful as he rode back to Rahway in Lamont Cranston's car. He was wondering about the phone call he had made. The voice that had answered was one that he had never heard previously.
He felt that he would like to meet the man to whom he had spoken.
The phone call had relieved Fellows's worries; not because of the voice, but because of the call itself.
Fellows had a remarkable memory when telephone numbers were concerned.
The number which he had called was the same number that he had given to Harry Vincent, the night that young man had kept watch at the home of Isaac Coffran.
CHAPTER XXVII. NEW DISCOVERIES
HARRY VINCENT stared gloomily at Bruce Duncan while they were eating their breakfast.
'Next Tuesday is coming soon,' remarked Harry.
'Why remind me of it?' replied his friend. 'If we don't do any more than we have during the last three days, next Tuesday can come and go without meaning anything to us.'
'What can we do? We've lost contact by radio, and we've been instructed to use caution. We can't go prowling through the woods without exciting suspicion, can we?'
'Did you send a wireless message last night?'
'Yes, and I listened for a reply. Up to ten o'clock. No result. So I gave it up.'
'You received a letter when we were in town yesterday morning. Whom was it from?'
'Fellows. He simply said to keep on lying low. I think something has gone wrong, Bruce. It's Saturday now, and we've been kept virtually idle since Tuesday night. It seems to me The Shadow has slipped out of the picture.'
'Maybe he ran into trouble, Harry. He's looked for it often enough. He ran some big chances that night he pulled me out of Isaac Coffran's house.'
'The Shadow usually manages to win out, Bruce. But this time it looks different. I'm going to run down to the village to see if there's another letter there. Unless Fellows gives us some definite instructions, we'll have to act for ourselves.'
Bruce Duncan was thoughtful.
'Harry,' he said, 'we can't be far wrong in our location. The bus driver told us that he stopped at Ridge Road to let a man off on Tuesday night. The only reason that we haven't found the place is because we haven't looked.'
'I agree, Bruce. But if we run into Chefano again, he'll be wise to the whole thing. You know that.'
'If we had a plane, we could fly over this locality and make observations. You can see a lot from above.'
Vincent grunted contemptuously.
'Sure you can, and what would Chefano think if he heard a plane buzzing in circles overhead? But wait!
You've given me an idea. You know that mountain in back of us?'
'The one they call Rocky Summit?'
'That's the one. When I was in town yesterday, I saw one of the natives pointing it out to a stranger. He said that there's a path up the mountain. There's a clearing near the top, and you can see the whole valley from there. That's better than an airplane.'
'We'd be pretty far away to observe anything.'
'Not if we had powerful field glasses. We'll go downtown and see if we can buy any.'
THEY were fortunate when they arrived at the village. Josh Stevens had an excellent pair of field glasses for sale.
'I had an order for them two years ago,' he said. 'When they came in, the customer had left town. I kept them anyway.'
The morning mail had brought no letter from Fellows. So Vincent and Duncan set out for Rocky Summit.
Reaching the highest point on Mountain Pike, they turned up a side road and reached the path that led up the mountain. Very few persons made the ascent; the climb was not difficult, but the mountain was infested with rattlesnakes. The young men wore leather puttees and carried long sticks.
They found that the top of the mountain formed an excellent lookout. In a short while, they located the top of their cottage. The cabin on Seth Wilkinson's property could not be seen because of the trees.
'That's the trouble,' observed Bruce. 'We're looking down at an angle. I can't even see the Ridge Road.'
'There's a portion of it, where it leaves the pike.'
'Yes. That's plain enough. Look there, Harry. What's that below the road - that old gray building?'
Harry adjusted the glasses.
'It looks like a mass of ruins,' he said. 'There's a little white building alongside of it.'
Duncan took the field glasses and made observations.
'It looks like an old stone house,' he said. 'Stone base, probably, with the top floors wood. There's been a fire there. Not much left of it except the ground floor. I can't figure what the white building is.'
Harry Vincent drew a paper from his pocket.
'This may tell us,' he said. 'It's a back number of Culbertville's weekly newspaper. I was in their office a few days ago, making careful inquiries. I mentioned that I was interested in this part of the country, and they told me they'd obtain an old copy of their paper that contained information about this locality. I picked the paper up this morning, after I left the post office. Put it in my pocket and forgot it.'
He found the desired article and read halfway through it. His face showed sudden interest as he exclaimed:
'Here it is, Bruce!'
'Read it,' replied his companion, still looking through the glasses. Harry read:
'Not far from Culbertville is the Marsden house, now a blackened heap of stone. It was built on the site of an old Mennonite church that had been abandoned many years before. About fifty years ago, Harper Marsden, an eccentric resident of Culbertville, purchased a tract of land adjoining the old church property and chose that spot to build his home.
'The first floor was of stone, raised above an extensive basement, but the upper stories were made of wood. The building was erected close beside the old cemetery, which was all that remained after the church had been torn down.
'Harper Marsden lived there for several years; he was a wealthy bachelor and seemed to like his melancholy abode. He said that it would be his resting place, and in anticipation of his death he erected a mausoleum near his home. His prophecy that he would be buried there came true, but not as he expected it. The house was destroyed by fire, and Harper Marsden died amid the flames. His body was never recovered; it was probably lost beneath the stone wall at the rear, which crumbled into a mass.
'Since that event, no attempt has been made to restore the property. The front of the basement was not
