darkness. He had been given a tiny flashlight and he sent its beam into the gloom. The gallery continued upward for a few yards farther. Its stone floor was dry.
There were muddy footprints, showing that some one had preceded Clyde into
this queer crypt within the cliff. Perhaps more than one, if The Shadow's warning had been correct. Other footmarks had evaporated. Only Timothy's still showed.
Clyde was very careful with his tiny light, as he moved onward. He descended a suddenly steeper slope to what looked like a natural doorway in the
rock tunnel. The round hole was open, but the means for closing it was close at
hand.
A rounded boulder was propped against the wall, midway down the slant.
Beside it rested a rusted crowbar.
Both boulder and crowbar were relics of an earlier day of criminal activity. This cliff and the house above it had been the headquarters of a powerful gang of rumrunners. The Shadow had uncovered the story from backfiles of newspapers, after he had penetrated to the secret of the underground cave.
It had once contained barrel upon barrel of contraband liquor. Now it hid men who were feverishly searching for a million-dollar cup - a priceless relic from the ancient civilization of China.
With the crowbar, Clyde pried the boulder loose. The incline took care of the task of shifting it. It rolled downward with a faint rumble on the smooth floor of the slanting tunnel. It struck the opening in the rock and wedged itself there. No man within could budge it without tools.
The exit of the lawyer and those who had preceded him into that underground labyrinth was now definitely closed. There was another entrance, but only The Shadow knew of it. He alone had explored every nook and cranny, on
a previous visit.
The last act of the drama was now about to commence.
Clyde again filled his lungs, dived into the water-filled gallery and swam
back to the dark ripple of the Sound.
He followed The Shadow up the cliff steps to the brink of the sheer precipice. The two disappeared into the blackened ruins of the foundation walls
where the Carruthers house had once stood.
For an instant, their creeping figures were dimly visible. Then there was no movement at all. Both men had vanished.
CHAPTER XVIII
EDITH TAKES A HAND
EDITH ALLEN lay stretched on the floor of the tool shed, where her uncle had left her bound hand and foot.
She was working tenaciously to free her hands from the loops of twine that
fettered them. In this activity, she had more than a mere forlorn hope. When her
uncle had jumped at her, she had a second's warning of his intent by the look in
his eyes.
Wisely, she had made no effort to struggle. But she held her hands together in such a way that the wrists overlapped slightly. Timothy had not noticed the girl's stratagem. But the trick had given her a precious fraction of an inch in which to slide her wrists back and forth.
She had slim, supple wrists, muscular from golf and tennis. The cords bit deeply into her flesh as she worked to loosen them. She gritted her teeth and tried to forget the pain. Already, one of her wrists was almost free. In another moment, she gave a sobbing cry. The cord fell to the floor. Bending, she untied her ankles with scarcely a pause.
She had a definite plan of escape in mind. Unlike her uncle, she had had ample time, while she lay straining on the floor, to notice the formation of the tool shack. The front and sides were a formidable obstacle to freedom. But the rear was a different story. Behind the shelves that lined the rear wall, the planking was very thin.
She concentrated her efforts on a single plank. It was rotted by rain and moisture, and field mice had gnawed part of the crumbling wood away. Edith hooked her fingers into the tiny aperture and tried to rip the board away. But the task was too much for her strength.
She got to her feet, ran desperate eyes along the length of the shelves.
Suddenly, she saw the glint of a hammer-head. She seized the implement and went
grimly back to her task.
It took several hard blows before she was able to split the crumbling plank. It was thin enough to split in several places. She was able now to rip it out, piece by piece.
A nail gashed a furrow in the flesh of her neck as she crawled through, but she paid no attention to the sharp pain.
She ran toward the home of Arnold Dixon. The thought of the old man's peril was like a draft of cold water. It steadied her pounding heart.
LIKE her uncle, the first thing Edith noticed was the open window on the ground floor of the silent mansion. But approaching it, she made an additional discovery. A gun lay in a patch of trampled grass. She picked it up, examined it, found that it was loaded.
Clutching it with a repressed sob of determination, Edith climbed swiftly through the open window and crept like a noiseless ghost up the broad staircase
of the mansion.
So gently did she ascend that she reached the upper floor without disclosing her presence to whoever was in the lighted room at the end of the corridor. The door was partly open, but it was impossible for the girl to see who was within.
That some one was inside with Arnold Dixon, she was certain. For she could
hear the faint groaning voice of the millionaire, and another voice she had never heard before.
A cautious glance at the crack of the door showed her the profile of a stranger. He was whispering grimly to Dixon. But Edith had no knowledge that this was Harry Vincent, an agent of The Shadow. She didn't realize that Harry's
presence here was to defend Dixon from his own foolhardy impulses.
Edith sprang through the doorway without warning. She had the drop on Vincent before he was aware there was any one inside the house except himself and his frightened host.
'Drop your gun!' Edith cried. 'If you move an eyelash, I'll shoot to kill!'
She meant it. Her taut eyes warned Vincent instantly that a move meant death. He did the only thing possible. The gun slid from his fingers and thumped to the floor.
'Back up!' Edith commanded. 'Against the rear wall! Turn your face to the wall! Palms flat!'
Dixon cried hoarsely from his chair: 'Edith! Don't be a fool! This man is not a crook! He's - he's here to help me!'
The girl paid no attention. Dixon, she thought, was merely repeating some thing the desperado had taught him under pain of death if he refused.
Also, her eyes saw something that made them harden like ice. She moved quickly toward the bureau where a small stone lay, partly covering a piece of paper. Her gun was ready to kill Vincent, if he changed his helpless pose against the rear wall of the room. She snatched the note, backed toward the open doorway.
Holding the paper over the barrel of her gun with a free hand, Edith was able to read it with a lightning glance. It was the same note that The Shadow had hurled from the ground through the open window, ordering Clyde Burke to join him at the fire-blackened ruin of the Carruthers house.
Edith uttered a clipped cry of comprehension. She darted swiftly from the room.
'Stop!' Harry cried. 'Don't go! You'll be killed!'
Arnold Dixon added his shrill cry to the warning of Vincent. Harry ran to the hallway, but Edith was already on the floor below, racing away with every atom of speed in her lithe, young legs.
Had Vincent been free to rush from the house and pursue the girl through the grounds, he might easily have caught her. But he dared not stir a step outside. The Shadow had ordered him to remain on duty at the side of the
