The bullets sprawled Garmath at The Shadow's feet, just as the cloaked fighter, with a sudden twist, was drawing a fresh gun to catch the blundering giant, Krem, from an unexpected angle. The Shadow had finally tricked Krem, though the giant, very shortly before, had seemed too formidable to be allowed his present leeway.
PROOF of The Shadow's foresight came in a barrage from the lifted trapdoor. Cardona and his squad had spotted their goal from the bridge, by following The Shadow's tip-off. With bullets that shattered the padlock, The Shadow had opened the way for the police, since his agents, blocked off by the steel curtain, could not reach the scene from below.
Riddled with bullets that Cardona's squad provided, Krem fell dead before The Shadow could personally settle the giant fighter.
In his fall, Krem sprawled across the body of his dead master, Jan Garmath. Dropped by bullets from his own gun, served by Roger Sherbrock, Garmath had met a proper fate at the hand of the man upon whom he had falsely foisted evidence of guilt.
Down through the trapdoor, Cardona and his detectives were finding crime's real proof. In the open crucible, they saw the false sapphire that only Garmath, free, could have manufactured - a fact which fitted with Crome's recent testimony - while Sherbrock, still a prisoner about to be released, was in a position which fully bespoke his actual innocence.
While the detectives were cracking open Sherbrock's cell, Cardona looked for The Shadow. Joe saw blackness, but it was only the open doorway to the stairway that led below. The Shadow had pulled the switch, raising the steel curtain, and was on his way to rejoin his anxious agents.
Back from the stairway came a sound as strangely untraceable as the creepy footsteps that Jan Garmath would never again provide as symbols of insidious approach. The sound that Cardona heard was not a token of advance. It was a sign of departure.
It was the laugh of The Shadow, fading off into the realm of night, though its echoes seemed to linger, as well they might.
For The Shadow's tone not only signified his triumph over crime. It was a reminder that with such conquest, he had solved the last riddle connected with the famous sapphire known as the Star of Delhi!
THE END
