Experts hopped to the job when Strampf shouted the command.
Five minutes later, there was a silent, deserted area in the midst of the wide circle where hordes of crooks skirmished with squads of arriving police. The truck was ten blocks away, finding a route that a convoy of thugs had hewn. Looking from the rear of the truck, Strampf saw the sequel.
The night air was ripped by a tremendous upheaval of flame. The volcanic blast tossed chunks of masonry above surrounding buildings. Ground shook; even the elevated posts seemed to rattle from the vibrations that shuddered through the solid rock that formed Manhattan's base.
Then the muffled roar of the settling debris. The shudder was ended. Tons of masonry had crushed all remnants of the hollow chamber that had once been The Shadow's sanctum. It had gone, with his ruined laboratory.
Even the body of The Shadow, like those of the buried crooks, would be consumed by the scorching gaseous flames that seared through the shattered foundations of the blasted building.
The truck was away to safety. It rolled southward, into Manhattan's financial district. It reached a skyscraper that pointed far into the darkened sky. The building occupied a full block; at one corner was a special entrance for vehicles. Big doors opened; the truck rolled through.
In a gloomy confined space, picked men worked as Strampf ordered. They removed everything that had come from the sanctum; they loaded the goods into a freight elevator. They rode forty stories upward.
They unloaded the cargo at the end of a short corridor. A door stood open at the left. The load went through; up a steep stairway.
SOON afterward, Strampf stood alone in a squarish room that his men had carpeted with black. The walls were hung with the sable draperies from The Shadow's sanctum. The table was in one corner, the archives coffer beside it and the bluish light above. The file cabinet was in the corner opposite.
Strampf broke open the coffer that contained the archives; made a brief study of the books that it contained. He went to the file cabinet. He opened each drawer and made a quick, but methodical, run through the index cards.
Strampf was working by a regular light that hung in this room. That light and the vaulted roof were the only features that made the place differ from The Shadow's sanctum, as Strampf had found it.
Satisfied with his general inspection, Strampf left the tower room. He closed a heavy door behind him and bolted it solidly from the outside. His footsteps rang out on the steep metal stairs. Strampf had finished with that room for tonight. He had other duties to perform.
Strampf would not have credited his own senses had he remained to learn what happened afterward in the tower room.
First there was a dull metallic sound from the file cabinet - a sound that came like some unruly echo from the past. There was a swish, somewhere in the room; a flashlight formed a gleaming beam.
A whispered laugh echoed in the darkness as the sweeping ray completed its circuit from the room. That laugh was ghostly.
It was the laugh of The Shadow!
No longer was The Shadow a mere wraith from the past. He was himself; his hand turned on the bluish light. Beneath that glow came black-gloved hands, the gloves peeled off. A gleaming gem showed from a finger to throw back the blue light's sparkle in many varied hues.
That gem was The Shadow's girasol - the rare fire opal that he used as token of his identity. Those hands produced the vital documents that The Shadow had bundled from his files before the explosion.
In the past, The Shadow had returned in amazing fashion from depths to which powerful enemies had consigned him. Tonight's ruins had been greater than any before. Often, The Shadow had come into strange places after escapes from death; never before had his first outlet been so unique as this one.
The Shadow had returned to his own sanctum!
Its location was changed but the fittings were the same. Strampf had taken them as trophies, for Marvin Bradthaw. Tomorrow the crime-insurance man would view this transplanted sanctum.
Tonight the sanctum was again The Shadow's own abode!
AFTER a short while, The Shadow returned to the file cabinet using his flashlight. The glow explained the clever method by which he had so completely deceived Strampf.
The drawers of the cabinet were deep; but they did not extend clear to the back of the cabinet. They were short enough to allow a six-inch space between them and the rear wall.
Strampf had not noticed that difference; for the rear space was too cramped to hold a hidden person.
That space told only half the story.
The base of the cabinet was heavy; it formed a six-inch platform that seemed shorter because it tapered.
That base was hollow; moreover the bottom of the lowermost drawer was raised a matter of a few inches.
The space in the bottom of the cabinet was large enough for a person's legs when that person was seated cross-legged. The space at the back was deep enough for torso and head.
Though neither the base nor the back space could have concealed The Shadow alone the two together had been ample. In seated position, he had been half in the base, half in the back. With the drawers locked so they could not be pulled clear from the cabinet, The Shadow had remained secure from discovery.
The cabinet was where The Shadow had gone after fixing the gas machinery in the laboratory. All that Strampf had seen through the smoke was one of the low black benches that had been part of the lair's equipment.
Relocking the cabinet so that the drawers could not be completely taken from it, The Shadow made another inspection of his files. He had taken the most important papers that he needed; he had decided on a few others, having gained plenty of time to look for them. He replaced several that he had taken in his hurry, but kept the bulk.
Extinguishing the blue light, The Shadow moved through the darkness of the restored sanctum. He found openings in the drapery; used his flashlight on the walls behind the curtains. There were spaces in back, for the walls curved downward from a dome. Irregular and unfinished, they had steel struts and rafters.
The Shadow found a steel-shuttered window. He loosened it. He swung outward, while wind whipped through to sway the black curtains. The Shadow closed the shutters, jamming them tight.
He was on a ledge forty stories above the street. Far below lay myriad lights that stretched like a gleaming carpet miles to the north.
From depths below the city's streets, The Shadow had traveled to heights, along with his transplanted sanctum. The altitude and the location told him that he was atop the Solidarity Tower. Below, ornamental cornices, ledges and windows offered footholds.
The descent was a dizzy one, but The Shadow accepted it as a simple route to some convenient office a few floors below, where he could enter and find an inside stairway.
The Shadow swung downward from the ledge. He was starting his return to earth to begin a twofold campaign. Supposedly dead, The Shadow intended to preserve the illusion. His tasks might intertwine; but the first would be the rescue of his agents.
After that, The Shadow would be ready for a thrust against the supercrook who had so relentlessly sought his life. Despite the protection that he could command from hordes of crime, Marvin Bradthaw would feel The Shadow's wrath.
CHAPTER XIV. BRADTHAW MAKES A DEAL
EARLY the next afternoon, Strampf appeared in Bradthaw's office. The rugged-faced insurance magnate greeted the cadaverous investigator with a smile and a cigar. Strampf sat down wearily. His haggard appearance showed that he had been up most of the night.
'I read your report, Strampf,' approved Bradthaw. 'I commend the manner in which you handled matters.'
Strampf looked pleased. He had not been entirely satisfied with everything that had happened.
