each some fifty yards from the entrance to the building which Squint was watching. With his helpers thus prepared, Squint emitted a grunt of satisfaction.
He had studied the arrangement of that building. Walled in between two other structures, backed by a warehouse, with only a well to let light into the inner offices, the building could not be entered except by the front door that opened on Twenty-third Street. The thoroughfare was dim before the building, but the rays of a flickering light showed through the transom above the blackened door.
The vague illumination varied constantly, and its obscurity made it of little value, so long as the door was closed. Nevertheless, Squint was counting upon that light to betray the presence of any one who might enter or leave the building. The opening door would surely cause a telltale glow.
Gats Hackett had not underrated Squint's ability as an under-cover watcher. But despite all his skill, Squint was cautious, particularly because he was watching for The Shadow.
Familiar with all the lore of the underworld, the frail, fang-faced gangster knew well the menace of The Shadow. Bold though he was, Squint feared the dread presence of which he had heard tell. He also had high respect for The Shadow's reputed ability to sense the existence of a snare.
To-night, while minutes dragged slowly on, Squint was taking no chances. He was confident that when The Shadow came, he would be seen, unless—this fact alone annoyed him—The Shadow had already come and gone, while Squint was away.
That seemed hardly likely. Four sharp eyes had been watching from these subterranean steps during Squint's absence.
A BLANKET of mist was settling along the street. A slight chillness of the night air was surging slowly in from the river. Squint grumbled to himself, hoping that the visibility would not be destroyed.
The fog gradually seemed to end its increase. It remained a blackish haze, and Squint still watched unhampered.
Yet with the mist and the night, the beady squinting eyes of the evil gangster were balked without his knowledge. A form was coming along Twenty-third Street—a form that seemed without human frame.
Scarcely more than a flitting shadow, it slipped by a little alleyway where one of Squint's watchers was peering out into the gloomy fog. As it neared a street lamp, this form lengthened into a long patch of blackness that stretched along the pavement.
The flitting shape merged with the darkness. Only intermittently did it appear; then it was no more than a fleeting splotch that escaped discernment.
Into the shrouded front of the black-faced building moved the shade of blackness. There it was totally invisible. It crawled, like a shapeless thing, along the wall, to stop directly before the door that Squint was watching.
Now there were sounds—so scarcely audible that they could not have been heard six feet away.
Standing in front of the building, so perfectly merged with its front that no human eye could have noted his presence, was a tall being in black. Every inch of his sinister form was hidden. His hands were invisible, for they were gloved. His face could not be seen, for it was lost beneath the protecting brim of a slouch hat.
Two eyes, alone, were apparent. They glowed like coals of fire. No one could see those eyes, however.
They were focused directly upon the door of the building.
The Shadow had arrived!
Out of the darkness, through the fog, the man who moved by night was paying his anticipated visit to this building on Twenty-third Street!
An invisible hand inserted a black key in the lock of the door. The slight click of the metal was one of the sounds which an ear—less than six feet away —might possibly have heard. Another noise was the opening of the door—the faintest imaginable token that The Shadow was about to enter.
The door opened, inch by inch. With that opening, The Shadow moved slowly inward. His tall form slipped into the widening crack as though the inky blackness of the night were pouring itself into a container. The dampish fog seemed to project a portion of its mass through the newly formed crevice.
The tall form in black reached nearly to the top of the doorway. Its squeezing action enabled it to fill the space entirely. A tiny flicker of light gave evidence above The Shadow's head; then the door was closing as the black form oozed completely through the doorway.
Squint's vigil had not ceased across the street. Yet the shrewd-eyed gangster had not detected the entrance of The Shadow. The only clew that might have served him—the slight change in the rays of illumination—was not sufficient. Before Squint's eagle gaze, The Shadow had gone into the building!
NOW the tall form in black was visible but not where spying eyes could see it. The Shadow, traveling along the wall of the inner hall, came momentarily into the sphere of light.
His shape made a fantastic picture. Tall, uncanny, and noiseless, it had all the semblance of a figure from the beyond.
The folds of the flowing cloak swished as The Shadow gained the stairs. The slight flutter of the garment revealed its deep crimson lining. The face, tilted slightly downward, was quite obscured underneath the hat brim. The Shadow disappeared on the stairs.
The silent figure came into view, being beneath an upstairs light. With sinister, soundless step, it moved into a side passage. There The Shadow completely disappeared. The passage was empty. Not even Squint, had he been stationed here, could have spotted The Shadow's destination.
A glass-paneled door that fronted on the passage bore, upon its smudged surface, this name: B. JONAS
It was through the mail chute of this office door that Rutledge Mann had thrust the envelopes Harry Vincent had given him. Squint, cautiously in the rear, had not seen the action that afternoon.
It was Mann's custom to visit this deserted office whenever he had messages for The Shadow. Mann knew that The Shadow must come here at times.
Yet even to-night, when The Shadow was actually in the building, there was no semblance of his presence within that office. The faint rays of the hall light showed the painted name upon the door, but not even the slightest sign nor sound indicated that any one had entered the room which 'B. Jonas' was supposed to occupy.
Indeed, The Shadow's sudden reappearance would have belied that he had even visited the proximity of that particular office. The phantom shape emerged eerily in the hallway where he had disappeared, outlined in fantastic form by the flickering upstairs light. Then came another vanishing—this time in the direction of the stairs.
On the ground floor, The Shadow reversed the weird procedure that had marked his entrance to the building. He approached the door and blackened himself against it. The barrier moved inward inch by inch, The Shadow's form crowding into the slowly yawning space.
Then the door began to close, seemingly shutting of its own accord. An invisible form stood outside the building; but it did not remain there long. It detached itself from the blackness and flitted away into the foggy night.
Squint, watching as carefully as ever, was again deceived. He did not catch the tiniest glimpse of the departing shape. He still stared patiently, long after The Shadow had gone, waiting in hopes that if he saw nothing, one of his comrades might be more successful.
In this, too, he was disappointed. Only fleeting patches of black marked The Shadow's route, in the direction opposite that from which he had come. This time it was the other crouched man who did not see The Shadow pass his lookout post.
From then on, The Shadow's course was as untraceable as before.
It was not a sense of existing danger that had caused The Shadow to approach the building in such an amazing manner. The Shadow was indifferent to all danger. Always, by long-practiced custom, did he utilize this method when he neared a favored habitat.
To The Shadow, stealth was an instinctive possession. When garbed in his accustomed attire of black, he became a part of the night itself. Therein lay one genius of The Shadow.
SOME time after The Shadow had left the neighborhood of Twenty-third Street, a new scene transpired in a silent room located far from the building where Squint Freston and his yeggs lay waiting the advent of The Shadow.
The soft click of a light switch brought a strange illumination to an apartment which until then had been dark. A bluish bulb, suspended in the corner of the room, threw an eerie, unreal glow upon the polished surface of a table
