upon it, repeating them to himself as a man who found it difficult to read:
'Find out what Duncan knows. Investigate personally. Prevent all interference. Plans are working perfectly.'
Abdul read the message several times. Then a look of understanding appeared upon his dark face. He nodded, as though to himself. He folded the paper carefully and slipped it in a pocket of his jacket.
CHAPTER IX. THREE MEN MISSING
HARRY VINCENT raised his head and opened his eyes. He found himself staring through the windshield of an automobile. The car was standing still. Its gleaming lights revealed a rough dirt road that curved away among the trees.
He placed his hand to the side of his head. There was a throbbing pain there. The back of his head ached, too. Somehow it was difficult to think. He could not remember entering the automobile; yet here he was, slouched over the wheel.
Harry closed his eyes and slumped aver the wheel again. The throbbing continued, more painfully now.
He gave up trying to remember what had happened.
The whistle of a locomotive sounded through the silent night. Four short blasts, some distance away. The whistle of a standing locomotive.
Two minutes passed. The throbbing bothered Harry, and he shifted his position. He sat up again. He opened his eyes; this time his consciousness was more alert.
A bell had commenced to ring - a loud bell - not ten feet away. Its continued dingle increased the throbbing of his head. What did the bell mean? He rubbed his forehead and looked around.
The glint of metal on the ground attracted his attention, but his confused mind did not identify it as the rails of a single track until he detected a singing sound. Then the connection came. The automobile was stalled upon a railroad crossing; the bell meant that a train was approaching!
As the horror of the situation dawned upon Harry, a bright glare burst the darkness. Out of the night came the headlight of an onrushing locomotive!
Instinct came to Harry's rescue. He thrust his foot forward. By sheer luck it pressed squarely against the pedal of the self-starter. The car had been left in gear; the ignition switch was on; and the response was instantaneous The automobile jolted forward; its front wheels rolled down the incline from the crossing.
The motor started because of the added impetus.
For the fraction of a second the fate of Harry Vincent stood undecided. The car had come to life; the slope had enabled it to start in high gear; yet the mighty monster of the rails was bearing down upon the moving automobile at whirlwind speed.
The glare of the headlight was dazzling; the heavy locomotive was almost upon the fragile car that barred its path. But the very instant that the huge engine clattered on the crossing, the rear wheels of the touring car slipped over the incline. The plunging piston rods almost grazed the back of the automobile.
A new danger threatened momentarily. As the train shot by, Harry urged by the terror of his close escape, pressed the accelerator. The touring car whirled along the bumpy road. Harry's hands lost their clutch on the wheel. The automobile lunged into the ditch at the side of the road, then the driver regained control. He swung back to safety and brought the car to a stand-still.
Harry leaned forward against the wheel as he listened to the roar of the train off through the distance. The sound became less, then it ceased. His brain began to work; the incidents of the evening flashed in rapid memory.
Steve Cronin - the man on the train. The room in the hotel, where he had been discovered. The offer that Cronin had made with his account of Elbridge Meyers, the man that Cronin sought. These facts were clear now.
Harry's head still throbbed. He knew that he must get somewhere. So he drove the car cautiously along the road and turned off at the first crossing, finding a better highway that paralleled the railroad. After several miles the road turned beneath a trestle and curved up a hill. At the top Harry stopped and alighted beside a railroad station.
The ticket agent was behind his window. His clock registered the time as ten minutes of twelve. Harry felt for his watch. It was gone.
'When's the next train?' he asked.
'Where to? Harrisburg?' questioned the man at the window.
'Yes.'
'To-morrow morning. The last one left here fifteen minutes ago.'
'How far is it to Harrisburg?'
'Only about ten miles. You've got a car out there, haven't you?'
'Yes.'
'Drive into town, then. You can't get another train to-night.'
The station agent laughed.
'You're way after train time, anyway,' he remarked. 'The train that just left was forty minutes late. They were having trouble with repair work on the trestle. Had to flag the train at a little station about six miles up the line. Held it there more than half an hour.'
The whole of Steve Cronin's fiendish scheme unfolded itself to Harry as he drove, half dazed, along the road to Harrisburg. Helpless, in the touring car on the railroad crossing, he had been left for what promised to be certain destruction. The fact that the train was to be held for thirty minutes at the station before the crossing was something that Steve Cronin had not known.
Harry had regained consciousness in the nick of time. Yet he was still groggy, and the lights of the city streets danced before his eyes as he drove into Harrisburg. He managed to locate the station. He left the touring car in a parking space.
There was a sleeping car in the station, waiting to be attached to a through train bound for New York.
The seven dollars in Harry's wallet was about sufficient for the railroad fare; in with his change were some silver dollars that he always carried. So he engaged a berth and was soon asleep, for the throbbing in his head ceased when he lay down.
MORNING found Harry Vincent in the Pennsylvania Station in New York. He registered at the Metrolite Hotel, had breakfast, then set out for the office of Claude Fellows, the insurance broker in the Grandville Building.
Fellows greeted Harry with a cordial smile.
'I am glad you arrived to-day,' he said. 'I have something to discuss with you.'
Harry watched the chubby-faced insurance broker as the man went to a filing cabinet. His connection with Fellows was a simple one. The insurance broker was The Shadow's detail man. Giving instructions and receiving reports seemed to be his entire work.
Fellows returned to the desk with two clippings. One was from a newspaper in Trenton, New Jersey, the other from a journal in Richmond, Virginia.
Harry read them. The first was an account of the strange disappearance of a commercial artist named Arthur Hooper; the other told of the mysterious vanishing of J. Howard Longstreth, a druggist.
'Note the similarity of those two items,' remarked Fellows. 'Both men left suddenly. They stated that they would be back within two or three days, yet neither has returned. Hooper left Trenton, slightly over two weeks ago; Longstreth left Richmond just about one week ago.
'You could transpose the names of the men, yet the facts would serve for both cases. A strange coincidence, isn't it?'
'Very strange,' replied Harry, 'yet it can be nothing more than coincidence.'
'Do you think so?' said Fellows. 'Well, Vincent, I spend a great deal of time looking through out-of-town papers for coincidences such as this. In the majority of cases they have meant the beginning of important events.'
'Involving The Shadow?'
'Of course. Those clippings indicate something unusual. I have sent copies of them to the empty office on Twenty-third Street, where The Shadow receives his messages. I have received instructions to watch for any further news of similar disappearances.'
