The Man From Shanghai Page 2

  “Forget it! There’s no dick on the force who’s smart enough to go to see the printer. But what if some one does? All you’ve got to do is sit tight. Just say that you never got any of the wrong labels.”

  DURLEW pondered. Spark pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lighted it while he watched Durlew’s expression. The druggist winced under Spark’s scrutiny.

  “The facts still remain, Spark,” whined Durlew. “I provided you with the planted bottle and the poison, too. I thought they were for a gang feud, to cover something that the police would soon forget. Actually, I had no proof that you intended murder at all.”

  “There’s your alibi, Durlew.”

  Durlew shook his head, despite Spark’s reassurance. He licked his lips, blinked owlishly. Swinging away from his desk, he pointed to the newspaper under Spark’s arm.

  “Tell me, Spark,” pleaded the druggist, “is there really a link between Hessup’s death and that of Blessingdale, who was murdered yesterday?”

  Momentarily, Spark’s facial muscles tightened in ugly fashion. Quickly, the crook relaxed. His growl lessened as he replied:

  “Sure! We bumped Blessingdale yesterday. That job was a cinch! Hessup was just as easy.”

  Durlew’s troubled expression changed to a look of shrewdness. Spark saw it; instead of betraying anger, he pretended, greater confidence. Leaning over the edge of the rolltop desk, he announced:

  “There’ll be another job tonight. Sweeter than either of those two! Ever hear of George Furbish?” Durlew shook his head.

  “Furbish is a Wall Street guy,” informed Spark. “Out of town right now; but he’s due back, maybe tonight. He’s coming to a new apartment; one of those big-dough joints that you’ve got to buy, because they won’t just rent them. It’s a ritzy place, called the Royal Arms.

  “Blessingdale and Hessup went the route. So will Furbish. This is a real racket, Durlew; I’m working for a big-shot, a guy who put a bank roll into the game. The fact that we’re knocking off blokes like Blessingdale, Hessup and Furbish ought to show you that we’re out to grab real potatoes.

  “Get over the jitters.” Spark clapped a brawny hand on Durlew’s frail shoulder. “If you’re worried, close up this joint and take it on the lam. I’ll see the big-shot tonight; and I’ll slip you a fistful of mazuma tomorrow. Well pay your freight wherever you want to go.”

  Durlew raised his head with a pleased smile. He nodded, as if eager to accept Spark’s suggestion. Spark grinned, dunked his cigarette in an ash tray and strolled to the door. He gave a wave of his hand as he departed.

  DURLEW listened intently to Spark’s fading footsteps. The crook was going out by a rear passage that led to a back alley. Durlew heard a door slam. It signified Spark’s final departure, for the rear door had an automatic latch.

  Quickly, Durlew reached into a pigeonhole of the desk. He produced a long-pointed pencil and a small prescription pad.

  Hurriedly, Durlew wrote the same of George Furbish; after it, the next victim’s address: the Royal Arms.

  Worry dominated the druggist’s owlish face. At last, Durlew drew a tense breath. He picked up a telephone book, found a number; he lifted a telephone that stood upon the revolving bookcase. Raising the receiver, Durlew dialed a number.

  The druggist was calling detective headquarters.

  From the moment that he had connected the deaths of Blessingdale and Hessup, Durlew had been hoping for a way to square himself with the law. The link between Blessingdale and Hessup was insufficient to amend Durlew’s deed of supplying Spark Ganza with poison. Durlew had wanted something that would better fortify his position. He had gained it, thanks to Spark.

  The crook had named a coming victim: George Furbish. Durlew could tell the law facts that would forestall crime. That would establish his sincerity. The police would believe him if he claimed to be an unwitting tool in the matter of Hessup’s death.

  Durlew’s shaky finger delivered the final twist to the dial. The druggist was holding the receiver clamped against his left ear. Suddenly, a hand planked itself upon his left. A snarl sounded, as the hand wrenched away the receiver and banged it down upon the hook.

  Gasping, Durlew revolved in his swivel chair. His bespectacled eye blinked into the muzzle of a leveled revolver. Back of the weapon were the ugly eyes of Spark Ganza.

  The crook had faked his departure. He had sneaked in through the passage, to learn if Durlew had decided to use the information that had been fed to him.

  Spark saw the telltale pad on Durlew’s desk. With his left hand, he ripped away the top sheet that bore the scrawled name of Furbish. Wadding the paper, Spark thrust it in his pocket. All the while, his gun was straight between Durlew’s eyes.

  “Spark! I – I wasn’t – I – don’t kill me, Spark! I – I -”

  Durlew’s incoherent protest ended as the revolver shoved forward. Spark pressed the trigger. From a two-inch range, a bullet boomed into Durlew’s brain. Spark watched the victim’s head tilt back. The swivel chair spun crazily; Durlew’s form slumped toward the desk. His mutilated forehead thudded the woodwork.

  There was a tremble of the building. An elevated train was rumbling along the tracks that ran in front. Spark knew that the rear alley was deserted. No one could have heard the revolver’s blast. Pocketing his gun, Spark strode from the tiny office. This time, his departure was unfaked.

  THE muffled slam of the rear door was the last sound, except for the loud ticking of an alarm clock that stood upon a windowsill, in front of a drawn blind. Minutes passed slowly, solemnly, in this room of death. Seven had gone before a new motion occurred.

  Something stirred the frayed green windowshade behind the clock. An edge moved slightly, to a distance no greater than the width of a human eye. Motion stilled; then gloved fingers appeared uncannily beneath the windowshade. They were black, those fingers; they acted like detached creatures.

  The windowshade lifted. Solid blackness loomed inward. Eerily, it became a living shape. When the shade had dropped to its former level, it formed the background for a weird figure. A being cloaked in black had entered this room of doom.

  Above shrouded shoulders, the uncanny visitor wore a slouch hat, with downturned brim that hid his features. Eyes alone were visible; they showed like points of fire as they directed themselves upon the dead form of Durlew, half across the desk.

  The Shadow, superfoe to crime, had arrived upon the newest scene of murder. He had gained the trail that Durlew had feared; the one that Spark Ganza had thought too slim for any sleuth to follow. While the law had decided to quiz the employees of the Northern Drug Company, The Shadow had visited the printer who supplied the labels.

  The Shadow had come to make Durlew speak. Arriving, he had found the druggist dead. Nevertheless, a whispered, mirthless laugh came significantly from hidden lips.

  The Shadow had hope that he might learn a dead man’s tale.

  CHAPTER III – THE SUBSTITUTE VICTIM

  IN his survey of the tiny office, The Shadow recognized at once that Durlew’s death had been recent. Though blood had clotted on the apothecary’s forehead, it still dripped from the dead man’s spectacles. Moreover, the room held a distinct trace of the pungent odor that only revolver smoke could produce.

  Spark had flung the late newspaper into a wastebasket beside the desk. The Shadow could see the screaming headlines, with their guesswork announcement: “Police Link Deaths.” It was obvious that this was Durlew’s newspaper; a murderer, had he brought it, would have carried it away.

  That edition had been on the street for only half an hour. It was likely that Durlew had read the newspaper account. Likely, also, that his reading could have had some bearing on his death.

  A large ash tray lay in a corner of Durlew’s desk. It contained cigar stumps. Unsmoked cigars were bulging from the dead man’s breast pocket. In contrast to this proof that Durlew preferred cigars was a small ash tray on the top of the rolltop desk. It contained a cigarette butt.

  Th
e Shadow pictured events almost as they had happened.

  He visualized a visitor, accosting Durlew in the store. He pictured the apothecary closing his shop, coming voluntarily into the rear office. The Shadow could retrace a brief conversation; after that, a departure from the office.

  Durlew’s position told that he had been freely engaged when some one had entered to take his life.

  Though the druggist was slumped upon the desk, his feet were shifted to the left. His own weight had carried him back to his former position; but his feet had dragged. Moreover, the telephone interested The Shadow. It was not quite to the center of the desk. Its cord was too short to reach that far.

  Obviously, the telephone belonged either on top of the desk or on the revolving bookcase. The Shadow knew why Durlew had been slain. The man was making a hurried telephone call when the murderer entered.

  The telephone book immediately concerned The Shadow. The fat directory was lying on the desk, closed. The Shadow thumbed its pages, on the possibility that the book would open readily at the page last used. That chance failed; nevertheless, The Shadow could divine the purpose of Durlew’s call. The apothecary had certainly intended to spill some news of crime.

  THE SHADOW had already placed Durlew’s part in the death of William Hessup. The druggist had supplied the poison and the little bottle. Whether he had done so with knowledge of their purpose, did not matter. A man of Durlew’s status would probably have preferred to say nothing.

  This East Side apothecary’s shop was of a doubtful sort. It was the type of place that thugs would frequent; a place where required medicine could be had for wounded hoodlums. It also had the qualifications of a “blind” establishment that would be useful to dope peddlers.

  Durlew, despite the pitiful aspect of his dead face, was a man for whom The Shadow held little regret. The odds were that he had dipped his hand into criminal activities whenever the risk was not too great.

  Durlew had become a man who knew too much. Murder had frightened him; particularly after he had read the rumor of a link between the deaths of Blessingdale and Hessup.

  The Shadow had seen the possibilities of such a link; until now, he had gained no evidence of it. Thugs had been employed to kill both men; but that was not sufficient to prove that the same hand of crime was behind both murders. The Shadow had chosen to investigate Hessup’s death, in preference to Blessingdale’s. He had known that if the two were linked, he would find clues along the trail. He had gained good evidence here at Durlew’s.

  The ways of gangland called for quick death to any traitor. Durlew had been killed because he had decided to squeal. Many sleuths would have formed that conclusion and let the case rest with it. Not so The Shadow. He saw reasons why Durlew would have preferred not to talk. Definitely mixed in Hessup’s death, the apothecary needed something to square him with the law.

  The mere naming of the murderer would not be sufficient. Durlew would have done that previously, if he had thought the course a good one. Linking Hessup’s death with Blessingdale’s was not enough. The police had already taken that for granted. Durlew must have known more; possibly he had facts concerning future plans for crime.

  The fact that Durlew’s telephone book lay closed was oddly to The Shadow’s advantage. It made the cloaked investigator speculate upon the telephone call itself, since he had no proof that Durlew was intending to tip off the police. The possibility that Durlew might have been calling some one else – perhaps a man whose life was threatened – was sufficient for The Shadow to search for further clues.

  A CORNER of white paper was visible under Durlew’s left elbow. The Shadow raised the dead man’s arm. He found the prescription pad from which Spark Ganza had torn the written sheet.

  The long-pointed pencil rolled into view as soon as The Shadow removed the pad. There were other pencils like it in the pigeonhole. Durlew kept his pencils sharpened to a point. The one on the desk, however, showed a slight variation. Its tip was broken to the tiniest portion of an inch.

  Durlew had written something before he died. The pressure of his hand had broken a minute fragment from the highly sharpened point.

  With gloved fingers, The Shadow broke the tips completely from three pencils. He let the chunks of graphite fall upon the pad. There was a sharpener attached to the top of Durlew’s desk. The Shadow resharpened the pencils and put them all away in the pigeonhole.

  Finding an odd ash tray, The Shadow dropped the pieces of graphite into it; using a small paper weight, he ground the black chunks into powder. He poured the black grains upon the prescription pad.

  Polishing paper weight and ash tray with his fingers, The Shadow removed traces of his action. He took off his left glove; a brilliant fire opal glimmered from a ring upon his third finger. Using his finger tips, The Shadow massaged the powdered graphite into the surface of the pad.

  Spark Ganza had removed the top sheet with its telltale scrawl. The second sheet, however, told its story. It had taken the pressure of Durlew’s pencil. The Shadow’s process brought unnoticed words to view. The graphite found the impressions. From the grayish blur that streaked the paper, words stood out like a carbon copy of Durlew’s last scrawl.

  The Shadow read the name and address: George Furbish, Royal Arms.

  The Shadow ripped the sheet from the pad, just as Spark Ganza had taken the original. He dropped a pencil beside Durlew’s outspread hand.

  Donning his glove, he strode from the little office. He found the passage that Spark had taken. The Shadow reached the blackness of the alleyway.

  HALF an hour later, The Shadow alighted from a taxicab in front of the Royal Arms. The place was a pretentious one, twelve stories in height; but it was located in a rundown neighborhood. Like many of Manhattan ’s best apartment houses, the Royal Arms had been built in a neighborhood where many new structures were planned. The building boom had halted, leaving much of the district still unimproved.

  There was a uniformed doorman on duty under the waterproof canopy that formed a marquee to the Royal Arms. He was the only man in sight.

  The Shadow was no longer attired in black. He looked like an ordinary arrival at the apartment. He was wearing light overcoat and gray fedora hat. His features were plainly in view. Though they bore a slightly hawklike aspect they were full and rather rounded. The Shadow’s nod was genial; his smile a friendly one. The doorman saluted, taking this visitor for the sort who would have friends at the Royal Arms.

  “Good evening,” greeted The Shadow, in an easy tone. “Can you tell me which apartment belongs to Mr. Furbish?”

  “Mr. Furbish has not occupied his apartment, sir,” returned the doorman, politely. “His furniture has been installed; but he has not informed us when to expect him.”

  “I see,” remarked The Shadow, with a smile. “Of course, you know Mr. Furbish when you see him?”

  “No, sir,” confessed the doorman. “Mr. Furbish has never been here. For the moment, sir, I thought that you might be Mr. Furbish; but when you asked about his apartment -”

  “I was asking about my own apartment.”

  The doorman gaped; then queried, “You are Mr. Furbish?”

  “Certainly,” replied The Shadow. “But since I have never been to my new apartment, I had to inquire.”

  “Then you have no key, sir?”

  “Of course not. I left that here, so that the furniture could be placed in the apartment.”

  The Shadow’s precise tone; his important manner, impressed the incredulous doorman. The fellow’s doubts faded; The Shadow took quick advantage.

  “Come,” he ordered. “Help me remove my luggage from the taxi. Who has the apartment key? The janitor?”

  “I have a key, Mr. Furbish.”

  “Good. You can unlock the apartment for me.”

  TWO men had sauntered into view during the brief conversation. They were presentably dressed; but their faces showed them to be rowdies. They had come from a doorway adjacent to the Royal Arms. They had arrived
in time to hear the doorman call The Shadow by the name of Furbish.

  Though faced toward the taxicab, The Shadow was aware of the two men who approached. He saw one take a cigarette from his lips and wigwag it, as if in signal to some one across the street. The Shadow kept his head turned away. There was a chance that some observer might know George Furbish by sight.

  The pair passed. The Shadow turned to follow the luggage-laden doorman. They entered the Royal Arms, boarded an elevator and rode up to the tenth floor. The doorman unlocked the door of a corner apartment. The Shadow tipped him; the man departed.

  Alone, possessed of Furbish’s key, The Shadow took stock of the apartment. It was well furnished; the windows of living room and bedroom opened to a balcony that clung above an old eight-story building. Evidently the adjoining structure was slated for removal. The Shadow studied the lower building by the glow of the city lights. That done, he began to unpack.

  The Shadow had come here to protect George Furbish; for the man’s address had indicated that he might logically be a victim to follow Blessingdale and Hessup. The Shadow’s plan had been to gain Furbish’s friendship; to warn him of danger and remain here with him. Finding that he had arrived ahead of Furbish, The Shadow had quickly evolved a new procedure.

  Roaming the apartment, he looked for signs that might mean a threat of death. The Shadow examined drinking glasses in the bathroom. He found no trace of any poison. He looked for other threats; his search seemed futile until he made a final inspection of the bedroom. There, he discovered something tangible.

  There were two windows, each of the casement type, with frames that swung outward. The catch was missing from one window. The frame was held shut purely by pressure of the woodwork. The Shadow knew that some one had deliberately removed the catch.