'You think that Bruce is mixed up in some way with this ghastly plot against his father's life?'
Edith wrung her slim hands, cried, 'Bruce isn't a killer! He can't be -
he
can't!'
'Suppose he is. What then?'
'That's why I'm here,' Edith replied, drearily. 'I've got to know! This doubt, this suspicion is slowly killing me. I have a horrible feeling that the whole thing is coming to a climax tonight! Unless you and I do something to save him, Arnold Dixon will be killed! That's why I drove here at top speed after - after Bruce acted so queerly!'
SHE amplified her statement, while her uncle stared at her attentively.
Bruce had visited her late that afternoon, just before dusk. His manner was strained. He acted as though he regretted having an appointment to take Edith to dinner, although he himself had suggested it. He explained that it was again
necessary for him to break his date.
He made a glib excuse that was completely unconvincing. But the girl accepted it, as she had accepted similar excuses in the past fortnight.
This time, however, she determined to test Bruce's truthfulness. She followed him to the street. He had told her his business was taking him immediately downtown. It was a lie. He got into his car and drove rapidly away uptown!
Edith signaled a taxicab and followed. The chase continued steadily north through the Bronx. It was in the Bronx that Bruce became aware that he was being trailed. His car ducked in and out of streets, finally shook off the pursuing taxicab.
'And you think -' Timothy prompted Edith, slowly.
'I don't think, uncle. I know! He was taking a route that would bring him to only one spot - the home of his father in Pelham!'
'Nothing very strange about that,' the lawyer said.
'But there is! I called Arnold Dixon, asked to speak with Bruce. His father said that Bruce wouldn't be home tonight, that he was spending the night
in New York. I asked him if there were police on hand to guard the mansion in the event of - another attempt against him. He laughed - you know how stubborn he is - and said no. He said that a loaded gun would be his best protection.'
Timothy's jaw set in a sudden hard line. He slipped into his overcoat, donned his hat.
'You wait here,' he told Edith. 'I'll go over to Shadelawn and see if I can persuade Arnold Dixon to hire guards.'
'I'm going with you,' Edith asserted.
'Don't be silly!' he snapped. 'To-night may turn out to be very dangerous.'
Her answer was to walk stubbornly with him toward the doorway.
Timothy hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
'Very well,' he said, a touch of fatalism in his voice. 'I've warned you of the peril we may run into. I wash my hands of any consequences!'
THE lawyer's car swung into the road. It made the short run to Dixon's mansion in a few minutes. All the lights on the ground door were extinguished, but there was a light in an upper bedroom - Arnold Dixon's room.
Timothy was about to ring the bell when a cold hand on his wrist restrained him. Edith had backed a few paces from him. She was staring around the silent corner of the house. Her expression was one of amazement and fear.
She pointed silently. Timothy gave a faint exclamation under his breath.
A
figure was attempting to enter a ground-floor window of the mansion. The window
was wide open and the man was raising muscular hands to swing himself through the square aperture.
Faint as the lawyer's exclamation was, the figure heard him and whirled suspiciously. His face was a white blur in the darkness, but Edith and her uncle recognized him at once.
It was Bruce Dixon.
While they stared, unable to determine what to do, Bruce approached them.
Edith shrank back as she saw his face at close range. It was twisted with apprehension - and fury. The lips were drawn back from the teeth. If ever murder glittered in a man's eyes it was visible in the narrowed glance of Bruce
Dixon.
A gun menaced Timothy and his niece.
'Hands up!' Bruce snarled harshly under his breath. 'If either of you make
a sound, I'll kill you!'
Edith uttered a low moan. 'Oh, Bruce - Bruce!'
'Look here,' Timothy gasped. 'You can't do a thing like this! It's your own father you're plotting against! You can't -'
'Oh, can't I?' Bruce's laughter was like the crunch of frozen pebbles.
His gun forced them to turn, to walk silently past the shadow of the house. He made them proceed to the rear of the grounds. In the darkness, the squat shape of a toolhouse became visible.
Bruce unlocked the door, flung it open.
'In!' he growled. 'Both of you!'
Timothy obeyed. But Edith made no move to follow. Instead, she faced her captor with a low, pleading cry that seemed to come from her very heart.
'Bruce! Are you mad? I - I love you! You love me! Or is it all a lie?'
'Love you?' His voice was like steel. 'I'll kill you, if you don't do as you're told!'
Ruthlessly, he sent her spinning forward into the pitch blackness of the tool shed. The door shut, and an instant later the key turned.
BRUCE waited to make sure that his prisoners' cries could not be heard far
from the shed.
Satisfied, Bruce hurried through the silent grounds. He retraced his steps
toward the open window where he had been surprised by the unexpected arrival of
the girl and her uncle.
Everything was exactly as he had left it. The sash was still lifted halfway. The room within was black and utterly silent.
Bruce replaced his gun in his pocket, took something else out. It was a blackjack. Bruce didn't anticipate further trouble on the ground floor of the house; but if trouble came, he was prepared to deal with it silently. He wanted
no betraying noise to alarm the old man in the lighted bedroom upstairs.
Bruce climbed through the window. The rug masked the sound of his advancing feet. He began to move toward the door that led to the corridor and so to the floor above.
Halfway to the door, he stopped. His sharp ears had heard a faint creak.
It came from a corner of the room where the tall shape of a highboy was barely visible in the darkness.
A tiny funnel of light shot from a flash in Bruce's left hand toward the corner of the room. It lighted up the dark outline of a figure that had stepped
from behind the highboy. The figure moved slowly forward along the beam of the brilliant torch.
For an instant, Bruce quailed. There was something unreal, eerie about the
slow, silent approach of that black-cloaked figure with the flaming, deep set eyes.
'The Shadow!' Bruce gasped.
The sound of his own voice restored his shaken courage. He leaped forward,
grappled with The Shadow.
A STRANGE duel followed - a furious battle between blackjack and clubbed gun. For The Shadow made no effort to fire. He merely used his weapon as a parry to ward off the furious blows that rained at his skull from the
