The Cup of Confucious s-125 Read online

  there.

  Suddenly, a warning thought struck him. He turned, glanced toward the sheltered spot where the unconscious body of Charles had lain. He uttered a frightened oath as be saw that the trampled grass was empty.

  Charles was gone! He was not unconscious, as he had pretended to be. The hasty cords that had bound his ankles and wrists were lying under the bush where the butler had been trussed.

  HARDLY had the significance of this disaster flashed on the mind of Bruce when a sound from the road itself made him whirl about. It was the noise of an automobile approaching the curve at high speed.

  That distant roar was echoed by a shriller sound; the scream of a man desperate with determination. It came from the wide open throat of Charles. He had leaped suddenly into the road, was racing at top speed toward the bend of the curve, waving his arms high above his head. Screaming a warning -

  It was remarkable how the old servant could run. Before Bruce had time to squeeze his rifle trigger, Charles had turned the curve and was hidden by the steep shoulder of the slope that formed the outer side of the hairpin.

  Bruce raced after him.

  A louder sound drowned out the piercing yells of Charles. It was the squeal of tortured brakes. The motor of the approaching car had been cut off.

  It was sliding with locked wheels to an abrupt stop on the unseen straight-away

  that preceded that first sharp curve of the quarry highway.

  Bruce Dixon dropped panting to one knee. His face peered around the boulder that marked the bend in the road. His rifle leaped to his shoulder.

  The speeding car had already jerked to a halt. Broad black tire-marks on the pavement behind it testified to the sure power of those brakes. Only the steering gear was damaged, and the straightness of the approach had given no occasion for Arnold Dixon to twist the weakened wheel.

  He was already leaping from the stalled automobile, his face set in frightened lines. Charles was still out in front, waving his arms like a madman.

  His voice echoed clearly to the hidden murderer.

  "For God's' sake, don't get out! He means to kill you! He's got a rifle!

  It's your own -"

  Bruce's finger tightened on the trigger. He knew what Charles was about to

  yell. That yell would end his hope for profit forever. Charles was trying to cry

  out: "It's your own son - Bruce!"

  But the final words were never uttered. The rifle cracked with a report that echoed among the circling hills. Charles's waving hands jerked high above his head. They remained stiffly upright for a horrible instant, then the butler

  plunged forward on his face in the road.

  ARNOLD DIXON was barely a step away when his faithful servant died. He saw

  the gaping hole in the back of the prone butler's skull. He stood rooted in horror, his eyes glaring at the turn in the road from whence the murderous bullet had whizzed.

  He was an easy target. But the fear of discovery that was in Bruce's heart

  saved the old man's life.

  Bruce didn't dare run the slightest risk of recognition. He could see Arnold Dixon's eyes staring straight toward him and, with an oath, he sprang back out of sight. He jerked a handkerchief from his pocket, knotted it over his nose and the lower part of his face so that only his sullen eyes showed.

  Quick as he was, his victim had vanished when again he raised the rifle to

  his shoulder.

  But a loud report revealed the whereabouts of the resolute Arnold Dixon.

  He was crouched behind his car, firing with an automatic pistol.

  The sound of the firing was sure to bring help almost immediately. Again, Bruce changed his plan. He swung the muzzle of the rifle sideways and concentrated on a new target. There was an explosive report from the left front

  tire of the stalled automobile. The tire blew out with a bang.

  Bruce had failed in his primary purpose, but he had preserved his anonymous identity. Charles could never betray him now. Arnold Dixon would have

  only a handkerchief-swathed face to recall when he tried to remember details of

  that murderous ambush. And it was now impossible for Arnold Dixon to pursue the

  death car and try for a glimpse of the license plate.

  Bruce fled like a deer. He backed his own car out of concealment far down the road. It began to roar away at top speed.

  Arnold Dixon had rounded the bend, was racing on foot past the steep brink

  of the quarry. He made no effort to shoot the automatic pistol that wavered excitedly in his upflung hand. He was leaning forward, trying to establish the identity of that fleeing car.

  The distance was already too great for any one to read the numbers on the smudged license plate. The car rounded a turn. Another - and another -

  Bruce sighed. He slowed to a more sensible pace. The sound of his oath was

  unpleasant.

  He was now safe. He drove steadily toward the city, as though in a hurry to reach a certain destination. Once he glanced at his watch and his eyes lifted toward the pale sheen of the afternoon sun. He still had ample time before the day would dwindle away into darkness.

  CHAPTER XV

  MILLION-DOLLAR BAIT

  THE lights were on in the home of William Timothy. Outside, a cold gale blew with a mournful sound. It ruffled the parted curtains and roared through the bare branches of the elms outside the house of the lawyer.

  He shivered and walked to the window. Outside, the darkness was profound.

  With a clipped exclamation, Timothy drew the curtains and faced his visitor.

  His visitor was Edith Allen, his niece. She was playing nervously with a tiny lace handkerchief in her hands. The loveliness in her face was deepened, rather than blurred, by the evident terror that filled her.

  "What - what are we going to do?" she whispered.

  Timothy was silent. He rubbed his chin as if doubtful what to say or do.

  "Have the police found any trace of the assassin?" Edith breathed.

  "None," the lawyer replied, dully. "They combed the roads. The trouble is there is nothing in the way of a clue. All the police have to go on is the dead

  body of poor Charles and the confused story of Arnold Dixon."

  Again he hesitated. He seemed to be afraid to ask the next question.

  "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 whizzing blackjack.

  The electric torch had fallen to the floor. Its beam still sent a narrow patch of radiance across the room.

  The feet of the two antagonists made no sound on the soft rug. The Shadow kept giving ground, foot after foot. Once, he had a good chance to smash Bruce's skull with a quick blow of his gun butt. But he contented him with that

  same peculiar defensiveness - a slow retreat.

  He was almost at the open square of the window when the chance came for which he had been watching. The Shadow swerved. His free hand darted like lightning to the hollow of the young man's collar bone. He dropped his gun and clamped the other black-gloved hand on Bruce's forearm.

  It was perfect jujutsu, but The Shadow did not apply pressure enough to cause his foe to scream with agony. He merely threw Bruce backward so that he sprawled full length on the soft rug.

  The Shadow immediately bent and recovered his own dropped gun. As he did so, he made an intentionally awkward movement. A scrap of paper fell from his pocket to the floor. The Shadow took no apparent notice of his loss.

  With a gasp of simulated terror, he escaped through the window. It was the

  only cry he had uttered during the whole strange combat and he took care to keep

  it low-toned.

  By the time Bruce reached the window, The Shadow had fled into the darkness of the grounds.

  Arnold Dixon's son turned away with a snarl of triumph. He had beaten The Shadow at his own game. He was free now to press his criminal plan to completion. He was certain that his father had heard nothing of the silent fight down here on the ground floor.

  But as he turned to hurry to the staircase, he saw the scrap of paper that

  had fallen from The Shadow's pocket. It lay in the light of the electric torch,

  crumpled and white. Bruce's eyes gleamed as he saw it.

  He picked it up, smoothed it with trembling fingers. It seemed to be the identical paper that The Shadow had obtained when Paul Rodney dropped it in the

  house of the dead Snaper and Hooley.

  Bruce read the awkward printing of the first two lines with eager attention. He didn't know it, but the lines were a perfect reproduction of the original; a photostatic copy:

  When the Indian is high follow his nose and reach under It wasn't the cryptic sentence that made Bruce's eyes gleam. It was the typewritten paragraph that followed:

  Memo: The "Indian" is a rock formation at the base of the cliff below the house that was burned. It is only "high" when
the low tide exposes it. By sighting in a straight line from the nose, a spot is reached on the surface of the water that covers the entrance to a submerged tunnel leading inside the cliff itself. Reaching under at this exact spot will disclose the existence of the tunnel. It must logically lead to the place where the stolen Cup of Confucius is buried.

  Bruce read the typed memo with a hissing intake of his breath. He darted to the open window and sprang out. His form disappeared in the blackness outside.

  It was exactly what The Shadow had wanted him to do. Bruce had swallowed the bait and was off to retrieve for himself the million-dollar treasure from the ancient past of China.

  Crouched close to the ground, The Shadow watched the panting young man flee.

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHANGED ORDERS

  A MAN was crying out bitter words in the lighted top-floor room of the Dixon mansion. The man was Arnold Dixon himself. He sat bound and helpless in a

  chair, glaring at two other men who sat a few feet away from him, guns in their

  alert hands.

  One of these silent captors was Clyde Burke, of the Classic, famous New York reporter and a loyal agent of The Shadow. His companion was Harry Vincent,

  another agent, who was also there by orders received over the telephone from Burbank. It was those orders that had resulted in the tying up of the millionaire by these resolute intruders.

  Clyde and Vincent had been told to guard Arnold Dixon and prevent, by whatever means they thought necessary, his leaving the house. They were to stay

  with him, their guns ready to repel an attack, until they received orders from The Shadow.

  "You're liars!" Arnold Dixon cried. "You're not trying to help me. You're here to rob me, to kill me!"

  "You're mistaken, Mr. Dixon," Harry Vincent told him, curtly. "We're neither thieves nor murderers. We're here at the orders of a man you have every

  reason to thank for being alive and unharmed at this very minute!"

  "Who?" Dixon demanded.

  "The Shadow!"

  Dixon's eyes bulged. He seemed struck with awe. He started to reply, and stopped short.

  The reason was the quick palm of Harry Vincent that flung itself across the millionaire's mouth, stifling his words. Into the trembling millionaire's ear he whispered a swift command: