'This is horrible business, Cranston, but we're getting to the heart of it. I wouldn't be surprised if this man Raft is the murderer!'
The Shadow deemed quite otherwise, but did not express his real opinion. As they were alighting from the commissioner's car, he helped Margo out and remarked that she was looking pale.
'You'd better stay outside,' said The Shadow, 'and get some fresh air.'
'A good idea,' returned Margo. 'I'll walk to the corner, Lamont, and get some cigarettes.'
A gesture of The Shadow's hand had given her the cue. As Margo stepped away, she heard Cranston's undertone:
'Try to get Shrevvy here.'
Margo knew how that could be accomplished. It meant a call to a man named Burbank, who always seemed to be on duty. He was a contact with Harry Vincent, Moe Shrevnitz, and other agents. If they were available, Burbank would summon them. But Margo really felt sick as she walked toward the store.
She'd received her first indication that Cranston did not consider the chain of death ended. She realized that he was hoping for another link from Raft's, further on, and that this time he would seek some pretext to get away from Weston and speed ahead of the commissioner, in an effort to forestall some other tragedy. That was why Shrevvy would be required. His cab would help.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Weston was striding into Raft's real-estate office with an air of self-satisfied importance. He saw a girl seated at a desk and introduced himself, along with Cranston.
The girl said that Mr. Raft was working late and didn't like to be disturbed, but that she would ring his private office. Stopping her, Weston said that he would go into the other office without such unnecessary formality.
The commissioner drew a gun as he opened the door. Just why he pictured Kirk Raft as a hand in crime, was something that Weston couldn't explain afterward. His mistaken confidence, however, reversed itself in a fashion that jarred him worse that at Halden's. Half into the lighted office, Weston actually dropped his gun and clamped a hand to his dampening forehead.
KIRK RAFT was a worse sight than any of the former victims. He was a scrawny man, with tight-skinned face, and the effects of the poison had changed his dead face into a human skull.
Lips were scarcely visible above and below his grinning teeth. His eyes seemed sunken in their sockets, but small though they were, they carried the ugly death glisten that Weston had viewed before.
One of Raft's hands, his right, was stretched so far across the desk that it dangled from the edge. Its fingers were spread like a starfish, but none of them wore a ring. However, the left hand was still to be considered. It was doubled beneath Raft's slanted body, quite out of sight.
Helping Weston to a chair, The Shadow rounded the desk and started to draw the doubled left hand into sight. It was then that Weston's wits returned.
'No, no, Cranston!' he exclaimed, rising. 'Touch nothing for the present! I must call Inspector Cardona and have him catch up with us, bringing the police surgeon. Four deaths within a half-hour! They are more than I can stomach!'
The Shadow could have suggested that Weston get over his weakness and prepare for further shocks, but he was more interested in the ring, that now showed on Raft's partly raised left hand.
It was another specimen of cheap jewelry, a smooth, roundish stone like those that had adorned the other victims, but this one had a trifling lavender tinge. It was a poor variety of domestic amethyst, nothing more, and as The Shadow tilted a light toward it, what little color the stone had faded very promptly.
The girl was corning from the front office. The Shadow stopped her on the threshold. He used Cranston's way of breaking the news calmly, but he was glad when Margo appeared, for Raft's helper had gone white and limp, even without seeing her employer's body.
Margo produced some smelling salts, but before bringing the stenographer from her fainting spell, she thought it wise to mention something that Cranston wanted to know about.
'You can expect Shrevvy,' she whispered, 'in about ten minutes.'
Back in Raft's office, The Shadow found Weston rummaging through the realtor's desk. He'd reached Cardona by telephone, and the ace inspector was on his way. When things became desperate. Weston sometimes relied on Cardona's hunches - for which Joe was famous; though, ordinarily, the police commissioner scoffed at guesswork.
Being in one of his hunch-accepting moods, Weston still insisted that Raft's body be left untouched, on the chance that Cardona might learn something when he viewed it as it was.
The wait actually worried The Shadow. He was looking at Raft's right arm; beneath its elbow, he saw something that appeared to be a memo pad. It was very possible that such a pad would show a notation leading to someone else. However, since The Shadow was depending upon Moe's cab, it was as well to wait.
Had Moe arrived first, The Shadow might have done some deft work, sneaking the telltale pad from under the dead arm. But it happened that Cardona was the first man to appear. He entered the office and stared glumly at Raft's body. The Shadow was about to point out the memo pad, when an interruption came.
A telegraph boy had entered the real-estate office and was arguing with officers outside. They sent him in to the commissioner, and the messenger stared blankly at Raft's body.
He was an oldish chap, the messenger, well over twenty-one, of the jockey type that never seemed to outgrow the job of delivering telegrams. He handed the telegram envelope to Weston, mentioning that it was for Mr. Raft.
The telegram wasn't very important. It was from an upstate real-estate concern, quoting prices on some lots. Cardona crowded in to have a look at it, while the commissioner was showing it to Cranston.
The messenger inquired drearily if there was a reply. When Weston told him no, the fellow shambled from the office, clamping his hat upon his head.
Looking outward, The Shadow saw Moe's cab pulling up in front. Officers were going out to order it away, and it was Cranston's part to explain the cab's arrival.
He motioned Margo toward the outer door as the messenger passed through; then, following, The Shadow quietly told the officers that the cab had come for Miss Lane.
HELPING Margo into the cab, The Shadow was about to tell her to have Moe cruise around the block, when a better idea occurred to him. In this weird trail of death, the merest trifles might prove important.
Certainly, anything that the police ignored was worthy of observation.
At the corner ahead, The Shadow saw the telegraph messenger turning from sight, whistling as he went.
On a hunch less justifiable than most of Cardona's, The Shadow said to Margo:
'Have Shrevvy follow him.'
Returning through the outer office, The Shadow indulged in one of the slight smiles that sometimes showed themselves on the usually immobile lips of Cranston. He'd supplied another little touch, to dispel Margo's long-held belief that Cranston was The Shadow.
Sending her with Moe along the route of a sauntering messenger-boy wouldn't strike Margo as worthy of The Shadow. She would regard it as real stupidity on Cranston's part, when the trail wound up at a telegraph office.
Of course, the cab would then return, and The Shadow would have it later; at least, so he thought, until he reached Raft's private office again. He came just in time to see Cardona reach for the dead man's right arm, raise it and look beneath.
The memo pad was gone!
Only one person could have taken it: the telegraph messenger! Small wonder that he had looked so old; the fellow was a fake, a crook disguised in uniform, like the men in the truck at Sherbrock's!
The Shadow recalled instantly how Cardona had blocked his view of the messenger while the fellow was in Raft's office. That was when the pretended messenger had snagged the memo pad and slipped it into his cap!
Like other planted clues, the memo pad had been a link arranged by murderers to carry the death trail farther. For some reason, men of crime had found it necessary to eliminate that lead. But the stolen link still existed, and The Shadow had sent Margo along the trail!
It was fortunate that she was in Moe's cab, for Shrevvy was a very clever hackie, a good man at dodging
