The Star of Delhi s-225 Read online

  Lenfell's knowledge, however, was locked as tightly as the teeth that gritted from the midst of his wide death grin.

  The trouble was that Lenfell had known too little. Had he known enough, he would not have been lying dead.

  Thinking in terms of the unlocked door below, The Shadow came to a new conclusion. There was another reason why that door was open, and a good one. It could mean that Lenfell still expected visits from members of the secret six, not knowing that death was to befall them. A good explanation, since it gave a plausible reason for Lenfell's own death.

  Considering the complexities that Lenfell's death produced, The Shadow turned toward the large safe that stood at the rear of the financier's study. Catching the glow of the lamplight, the glistening bulk added challenge of its own.

  Like its owner, Lenfell, the safe refused to talk. But it might be possible to pry facts from the safe, instead of Lenfell's grinning jaws. Stepping to the safe, The Shadow crouched, pressed his gloved fingers against the dial.

  Before he could test the intricate combination, The Shadow was attracted by a sound outside the study.

  It came as a slow creeping, and it was close, yet elusive, as it traveled along the hall.

  Having heard no creaks from the stairs, The Shadow was sure that the creeping arrival must have been cautious while coming up from the ground floor, only to drop the guarded manner as he neared Lenfell's study.

  Adding that to previous facts, The Shadow found the answer.

  The man whose creeps were coming closer was the murderer of Armand Lenfell!

  Such logic was perfect. In his own approach, The Shadow had moved silently all the way. The newcomer had done the same only as far as the second floor. He was taking pains to avoid being heard by servants in the kitchen, but once near Lenfell's study, he did not care what sounds he made. It meant that the approacher knew that he would find Lenfell dead.

  Properly translated, the facts proved that this was Lenfell's murderer. If not, the creeper would still be using caution.

  Turning from the safe, The Shadow sidled into darkness, drawing an automatic, to await the appearance of the creeping criminal who was in the hall. Yet, even to The Shadow's skilled ears, the approaching sound was elusive. At moments, it seemed close, then far away until, when The Shadow did not actually expect it, a huddling figure showed itself within the doorway.

  Even when close, the creeping man's face could not be distinguished. The Shadow, himself, was partially to blame. He had turned the lamp so it no longer shone toward the door. Creeping footsteps entered, their maker with them, and the huddling man kept looking toward the desk for a sight of Lenfell. The action turned his face away from The Shadow.

  Of one thing only was The Shadow certain: that this was not Dwig Brencott, nor any of the slick crook's crew. This was the master criminal, in person, the conniver who had somehow managed to pass death along with the faulty sapphires that Lenfell had given out.

  So far, the chief criminal had not shown his hand on other scenes of death, but he obviously had business here in Lenfell's study.

  Drawing still farther into darkness, The Shadow watched. He saw the crouched man reach the safe and begin to thumb the dial without the need of extra light. Evidently, the interloper knew the combination, which indicated that he had visited these premises while Lenfell was alive.

  What the murderer was about, The Shadow did not fully know, though he could guess. To substantiate his opinion, he glided forward, moving close behind the man at the safe.

  Never before had The Shadow sought to trap an intruder who possessed such sharpened senses. Only the most suspicious of eyes could have spied the glide of darkness across the already dimmed floor. Few ears could have caught the slight swish of The Shadow's cloak.

  Perhaps the crouching safe-tapper possessed some uncanny ability to recognize the approach of a challenger. Whatever the case, he sensed The Shadow's presence.

  LIKE an uncoiling snake, the crouched man unlimbered. Spinning around, he flung himself straight for The Shadow, whipping out a revolver as he came. There wasn't time to sight the man's face, for the light was behind him. All that The Shadow could do was meet the lightning attack by as quick a counterthrust.

  Swinging his gun hand in a wide arc, The Shadow outdid his foe in point of speed. Guns clashed, automatic against revolver, before the unknown man could give a trigger tug. The force of The Shadow's stroke slashed the weapon from his adversary's hand.

  With the blow, The Shadow delivered a low but recognizable laugh - a taunt that would have fazed an ordinary criminal. The mirth did not work with this man.

  His gun lost, the creeper simply took advantage of his weaponless condition. In bashing the revolver, The Shadow had swung himself off balance, and quick eyes noted the fact. Long arms shot forward; one hand caught The Shadow's wrist, while the other sped to his throat. His own gun forced upward, The Shadow hadn't time to fire.

  He did the next best thing. A quick twist, a backward fling, and The Shadow was starting his opponent on a jujitsu flip that should have carried him to the wall. But the master criminal performed an amazing gyration in midair and did a side twist of his own. Though he struck the floor, the twist that he gave The Shadow's wrist was sufficient to yank away the cloaked fighter's automatic.

  Undaunted, The Shadow drove anew for his foe. By then, they were halfway to the door, well distant from the desk lamp.

  In this first battle with Jan Garmath, the creeper who had come to Lenfell's study, The Shadow was meeting with surprising opposition. But it wasn't the sort that could continue. Clutching his snakish adversary, The Shadow managed to get his gloved hands on the man's neck.

  A quick choke and Garmath would be helpless, his identity revealed as soon as The Shadow could drag him to the light. But Garmath, tugging at the gloved hand's that throttled him managed to raise an outcry.

  He shouted, not in his own voice but in excellent imitation of Lenfell's tone:

  "Help! Andrew - George - help! They are murdering me!"

  In the midst of his cries, Garmath managed a side twist toward the desk. He was still wrestling hard against The Shadow when Lenfell's servants arrived. They came with a promptitude that The Shadow had not expected.

  Piling through the door, they saw a writhe of blackness blocking off the light from the desk lamp. Hurling themselves upon The Shadow, they tried to haul him from a victim that they thought must be their master, Lenfell.

  The servants were only half successful, but Garmath supplied the rest. Out of The Shadow's clutch, he ducked around the desk leaving the cloaked fighter in the hands of Andrew and George. They were too ardent in their attack to observe Garmath's quick flight.

  Only The Shadow saw the running man who scooped up the revolver from the floor and kept on his way.

  But The Shadow had no chance to spy Garmath's face. The smart crook did not show it.

  Flinging Andrew in one direction, George in the other, The Shadow recovered his automatic and went after Garmath, with George and Andrew following. Garmath was at the bottom of the front stairs when The Shadow reached the top; he was slamming the front door when his cloaked pursuer arrived at the bottom of the stairway.

  Having a similar lead on Lenfell's servants, The Shadow seemed free for uninterrupted pursuit; but he was due for unexpected opposition. Garmath was across the street by the time The Shadow sprang from the front door, and from an arriving car blockers sprang up to cut off The Shadow's course.

  Had they been mobsters, like Dwig and his outfit, The Shadow would have dealt them a proper dose of bullets. But these weren't crooks; they were detectives, backed by none other than Inspector Joe Cardona!

  GUNS talked, as The Shadow jogged the hands that held them. Recognizing The Shadow, Cardona was shouting orders that the barking revolvers drowned. From the doorway of the house, Lenfell's servants were shouting: "Get the man in black!" Their cries were louder than Cardona's, after the roar of the guns ended.

  Tripping
one detective and tumbling him across the other, The Shadow made a dive for darkness, hoping that Cardona wouldn't suddenly change his opinion and decide that, for once, The Shadow might be in the wrong.

  Joe didn't decide so, but he wavered, and that was why The Shadow took to the darkness of the side passage leading past Lenfell's, instead of going across the street in chase of Garmath.

  Out back, The Shadow found Moe's cab and sprang into it, ordering the speedy hackie to round the block and try to pick up the trail of another car. But the lost time proved costly.

  Garmath was gone when Moe made the circuit. The only car that hove into sight was the official one belonging to Commissioner Weston. Sight of that bulky vehicle was cause enough for Moe to veer off in another direction, without awaiting The Shadow's bidding.

  The scene that Weston viewed in Lenfell's study was not a great surprise. The commissioner had come to Lenfell's in response to another tip-off. Weston was puzzled merely by the statements of the servants and the detectives. They all insisted that a black-cloaked fighter had fled the house, one who answered far too closely to the known description of The Shadow.

  When Cardona listened to those statements, he caught a glare from Weston. Remembering the alibi that he had given The Shadow at Sherbrock's, Cardona was definitely perturbed. With Lenfell's body in plain view, and The Shadow the only intruder on the premises, the cloaked investigator's reputation was encountering a severe strain.

  Joe only hoped that Weston would not think back to the Sherbrock case. To forestall such a prospect, Cardona gestured at Lenfell's safe.

  "Maybe we'll find the answer there," he said to Weston. "Whoever came here might have been after something important. Suppose we see what's inside."

  The idea appealed to Weston and took his full attention, for it wasn't easily accomplished. None of the servants knew the combination, and Weston's guesswork at the dial proved quite unavailing.

  Cardona, meanwhile, was consulting a little book that contained the phone number of a specialist in safes.

  The man proved to be at home, and he agreed to come right over.

  It took the legitimate cracksman fifteen minutes to arrive; another quarter-hour to solve the combination of Lenfell's safe. When the big door came open, Weston poked head and shoulders through and pounced upon the first object that he saw, which happened to be a squarish jewel case.

  Opening the box, Weston was too surprised to speak. Cardona had to look over his shoulder to observe what the commissioner had found.

  Gleaming from within the box, catching the focused lamplight with radiating streaks, was a giant star sapphire that answered the description of the famous Star of Delhi.

  It was little wonder that Weston was surprised. Had Lenfell's body come suddenly to life, it couldn't have amazed the commissioner more. For the Star of Delhi, according to the unimpeachable word of Raymond Walder, the now-dead jeweler, had been divided into the six gems that Walder himself had exhibited in his store!

  SUCH astonishment was something that Weston had to share. When he arrived back at the Cobalt Club, he made a call to New Jersey and spoke to his friend Cranston, who answered in a very sleepy tone.

  "Another murder, Cranston!" exclaimed Weston. "With it we have found the Star of Delhi!"

  "Good!" was Cranston's reply. "So you've solved everything. Good work commissioner."

  "But that only increases the mystery," Weston insisted. "The Star of Delhi was supposed to be cut up.

  But we've found out that it wasn't."

  "Too bad," responded Cranston. "I thought it was cut up. Saw it myself, all in pieces. How are you going to find the Star of Delhi when there isn't any Star of Delhi?"

  "But we have found it -"

  A click interrupted from the other end. Evidently, Cranston was too opinionated to give any credence to Weston's statement. At his end of the phone, the commissioner fumed and muttered a few comments regarding Cranston's obstinacy. He was sorry that he had bothered to call his friend at all.

  The Shadow wasn't sorry.

  At his end of the line, The Shadow stood with half-closed eyes, picturing the possible results to which the finding of the great sapphire might lead. Then, from the fixed lips of Cranston, came a grim but softly whispered laugh.

  It was the laugh of The Shadow, presaging new and curious quests along the trail to strangely hidden crime.

  CHAPTER XVI. TRAILS DIVERGE

  IRKED by Cranston's indifference to the finding of the great sapphire, and desirous of showing some success on an evening when murder had reigned, Commissioner Weston lost no time in informing the press that the Star of Delhi had been recovered in its original shape.

  The news created a vast sensation, and somewhat counteracted public criticism over the matter of six mysterious deaths.

  It was the sort of story that the newspapers liked. Every great gem had some curious past history, and the Star of Delhi was no exception. Journalists dug for facts, and produced them.

  Once famous as the principal gem in a Hindu rajah's crown, the Star of Delhi had undergone a century of travel and transfer, leaving slaughter and rebellion in its wake. Reaching the possession of a European collector, it had brought him ill luck, including the forced sale of the prized blue jewel.

  The jinx was still at work, and the fact that it had cost the lives of six men could be attributed to the greed of all. Each man, it so seemed, had shared a sinister secret - that of six false sapphires which had passed as portions of the Star of Delhi.

  How much Walder, the dead jeweler, had known; how deeply Sherbrock, the missing lapidary, was involved, were perplexing questions that bothered the press quite as much as the law.

  Certain it was that six smaller gems had been exhibited as parts of the great sapphire, stones so well matched that they must have been of the same origin. The question of the false gems led to a discussion of synthetic sapphires, which offered the only solution to the fraud.

  At late breakfast in the quiet of his New Jersey home, Lamont Cranston read the newspaper reports and made comment to Louis Talney, who was seated across the table.

  "They seem more stirred by the finding of the Star of Delhi," said Cranston, "than by your death, Talney, and those of six others."

  "Five others," reminded Talney. "I wasn't killed."

  "Six others," Cranston corrected. "You are forgetting your own servant: Glevin. It seems that his body was found, but was mistaken for yours."

  Talney's face showed an expression of relief. As circumstances stood, he preferred to be counted as dead.

  "Any other news?" he queried. "Anything about the man who fled from Lenfell's?"

  "You mean The Shadow?" queried Cranston, glancing at the newspaper. "No. They aren't sure that he's to blame. His case doesn't puzzle me so much, Talney."

  "Why not?"

  "He may have gone there investigating the chain of crime. What does surprise me is the matter of the poisoned rings."

  "You're surprised because the police have not suspected them?"

  "No." The Shadow shook his head in a leisurely fashion. His steady tone was Cranston's. "I can't quite understand why murder was so necessary."

  The remark was meant to draw an opinion from Talney. It succeeded.

  "I understand," expressed Talney. "There wasn't any need for Lenfell to murder us. We trusted him too much. But whoever else wanted to steal the Star of Delhi, had to kill Lenfell in order to get the gem. That meant murdering the rest of us, because we all knew Lenfell."

  "Who do you think the murderer is?"

  "Probably Roger Sherbrock. Maybe Lenfell made a deal with him, to fake six sapphires instead of cutting the large one. When the police found out that Sherbrock was the brain behind the jewel robberies, it put Sherbrock outside the law. So he decided to go after the Star of Delhi."

  The Shadow nodded, even though he knew that Talney's theories were very wide of the mark. In The Shadow's opinion, Sherbrock was quite innocent, though the police, like Talney, thought
the opposite.

  Sherbrock was the scapegoat for the crimes of others, which The Shadow could appreciate, since he was getting into the same class of the falsely accused.

  "I'll drop into town," The Shadow decided, "and have a chat with my friend, the commissioner."

  "The sooner you come back," returned Talney, "the better I'll like it, Cranston. I'm eager to know what else develops."

  DEVELOPMENTS were under way while Cranston's limousine was starting to Manhattan.

  In his office, Commissioner Weston was receiving a delegation of prominent jewelers, all eager to see the Star of Delhi. Among them was a dryish-faced man named Jan Garmath, known as an expert on artificial gems. It was Garmath who supplied some facts that Weston wanted.

  "Synthetic sapphires are quite common," declared Garmath. "They are produced by fusing aluminum sesquioxide and the necessary chemical coloring. Only under the microscope can they he told from natural gems."

  "Ah!" Weston exclaimed. "Then we could detect the six false sapphires, should we regain them!"

  "You could," agreed Garmath. "You must look for the structural lines. You will find them curved, instead of straight. Furthermore, synthetic sapphires contain bubbles. Look at the Star of Delhi, commissioner" -

  Garmath provided a powerful lens - "and you will see straight lines, but no bubbles."

  Weston studied the great gem through the glass.

  "You said curved lines," he remarked, "and bubbles. Was I right, Mr. Garmath?"

  "Yes, commissioner. Synthetic sapphires fit that description."

  The commissioner was idly laying down the glass and replacing the Star of Delhi in its plush-lined box.

  He stopped abruptly, popping up in his chair, looking from one witness to another.

  "Synthetic!" he exclaimed. "Did you say synthetic?"

  "I said -"

  Garmath couldn't complete it. Others were pouncing for the Star of Delhi, all bringing out their magnifiers.

  In half a minute, Weston's office was teeming with confusion. The great sapphire, seen under the glass, had curved structural lines and bubbles.