Hildrow stared at the blinking countenance of Commander Joseph Dadren. The light was full
upon the prisoner's face. Hildrow saw a puzzled look in Dadren's eyes as the commander
stared at him.
The prisoner knew that this was Hildrow. Korsch's reference to the chief was proof of that.
But the astonishment that showed on Dadren's face was genuine. He had not expected
Hildrow to be in this disguise.
RISING from his chair, Hildrow stared across the desk. He examined Dadren's countenance
at close range. The others stared in unrestrained interest. Like a man inspecting his own
reflection, Hildrow was studying every detail of Dadren's face.
"Guns down," ordered Hildrow, lowering his own revolver. "There's nothing to worry about.
This is Commander Dadren, right enough. We still hold him"- a chuckle—"and Senator
Releston will pay high to get him back.
"Take him upstairs, Korsch, and keep a double guard. We thought you had fooled us,
Dadren. You made a good guess, Stollart"- without turning, Hildrow was speaking to the
man in the obscure corner—"but your hunch was wrong. The Shadow never located this
hide-out -"
Hildrow paused abruptly. Dropping back from the desk, he turned. With him swerved Korsch
and the other members of the crew. Commander Dadren, too, was staring with blinking,
astonished eyes.
From the corner had come a hissing, warning laugh. Sinister mockery, it taunted men of
crime. Turning to the source of that uncanny sound, Hildrow and his band found themselves
faced by a pair of automatics in the hands of Stollart.
No longer was the secretary playing a timorous part. He was not Stollart. He was The
Shadow. Though he wore the pointed countenance of Stollart, his real identity was plain.
Burning eyes were focused upon the men who stood in the path of the big automatics.
NOT a gun hand rose. The Shadow's laugh and his blazing optics were too great a threat.
Cornered killers shook.
Then came the sneering, gibing whisper of The Shadow's voice. Scornful words came from
his disguised lips.
"This ends your game," pronounced The Shadow. "Your plots are finished. The end began
when I entered Releston's, disguised as Commander Dadren. But that was only the first
step.
"I knew that Stollart was your spy. Alone with him, I took him from the picture. He lies
helpless, bound and gagged, in the closet of Senator Releston's living room. Ten minutes
was all that I required for a quick change.
"Make-up was in my suitcase. Stollart's face was in front of me, staring up from the floor. I
changed my disguise; instead of being Dadren, I became Stollart. I awaited your arrival."
The Shadow was speaking straight to Hildrow. The master plotter stood half stunned by this
revelation. He realized the supercraft of The Shadow.
As Stollart, The Shadow had deliberately argued Hildrow into a false belief. He had talked
Hildrow into bringing him here. Thus had The Shadow reached the big shot of the game;
through Hildrow himself he had found Commander Dadren and has performed a rescue.
Doom. Hildrow could see it. He expected no mercy from The Shadow. Hildrow, himself, had
tried to murder The Shadow on Death Island. With tables turned, the crook knew that he was
due to receive the punishment that he deserved.
Startled minions stood quivering. Hildrow could expect no aid from them. The Shadow's
laugh burst through the room; its triumphant mockery was ghastly amid those closed-in
walls, where ghoulish voices hurled back echoes of the sardonic taunt.
Then the door swung open. Framed in the portal stood a staring man whose right hand held
a flashing revolver. It was the odd member of Korsch's crew, the fellow who had met Hildrow,
that day in Washington.
Stationed off the island, the man had come here for instructions. He had heard the echoes
of The Shadow's laugh. Astonished, he had flung open the door. The leveled automatics told
him who the enemy must be.
"GET him, Pete!" blurted Korsch.
Pete fired as The Shadow spun back into the corner. A bullet buried itself in the wall. Flame
spurted from an automatic. The Shadow's answer found its mark. Pete slumped. But those
Hildrow and Korsch came up with guns. The Shadow whirled toward the door as Hildrow
fired. A bullet zimmed past The Shadow's shoulder. Before The Shadow could respond,
before Hildrow could fire again, a form came flinging forward.
Ferociously, Commander Dadren threw himself upon the arch-crook. He caught Hildrow's
gun hand. The commander had cleared the desk with a headlong dive. His forceful attack
bore Hildrow against the wall. The two men plunged to the floor, grappling.
Korsch's shot came simultaneously with a spurt from The Shadow's left-hand automatic. A
bullet whined through the doorway, passing an inch above The Shadow's head.
The Shadow's aim, however, had not failed. Korsch staggered, clipped by the leaden
missive from the .45.
The other men, four in number, were clustered by a corner near the door. They, of all
present, had been least ready. Unlike Hildrow and Korsch, they had not seen Pete arrive.
Events had happened with split-second rapidity, too swift for them to follow.
They were wheeling toward the door, however, when The Shadow neared it. Had the master
fighter kept on through the opening, swinging guns might have found him for a target. But
The Shadow, thoughts working with lightning speed, countered with the unexpected.
Abruptly ending his mad whirl, he doubled his tracks. Like a human juggernaut, he hurled
himself straight into the group of gunmen. With arms that swung like steel pistons, he used
his automatics like a brace of cudgels.
One weapon cracked the skull of an aiming foeman; another lost his revolver as a swinging
automatic smashed his wrist. A third, aiming, dodged instinctively as he fired. His bullet
buried itself in the ceiling.
The fourth fighter, balked of aim as The Shadow came upon him, made a wild effort to
grapple with this powerful foe. With the upward sweep of a powerful forearm, The Shadow
hoisted this fighter from the floor and sent him spinning upon the fellow who had dodged.
The man with the numbed arm dove for the door, unable to regain his gun. Of the two whom
The Shadow had sent sprawling, one rolled over and took hasty aim. As his gun was coming
up, one of the automatics was swinging down. The Shadow, moreover, was fading to the
floor.
Revolver and automatic loosed their belching tongues of flame. The two shots roared
together. As a bullet singed the surface of The Shadow's shoulder, a big slug found the
crook's heart. The Shadow, dropping clear to the floor, was face to face with the last of the
four.
The man pounced toward him. They gripped and rolled in a struggle that rivaled the fight
between Hildrow and Dadren, over by the further wall. They came to a deadlock. The
Shadow had dropped one automatic. The other, still held tight in his right fist, was beneath
his foeman's arm.
BLOOD was flowing from The Shadow's wounded shoulder. His adversary was powerful.
The Shadow, for the time, could not fling him free. Staring over his enemy's shoulder, The
Shadow saw Hildrow and Dadren come staggering from
behind the desk.
Faces that looked alike; yet The Shadow could tell the real from the false. He saw Hildrow
twist partly free, then send Dadren crashing against the wall. The commander sank halfway
to the floor. Hildrow aimed to kill.
With a mighty effort, The Shadow twisted the body of the man with whom he fought. As he
swung the foeman as a shield, he pressed the trigger of his automatic. A bullet skimmed
past Hildrow's neck.
The plotter spun about. The involuntary move saved him. The Shadow, loosing another shot,
could not turn his wedged gun soon enough to follow the moving target. But the bullet
splintered woodwork less than a foot from the big shot's body.
Hildrow sprang for the door to escape that moving gun muzzle. His only target was the body
of his own henchman. He could not reach The Shadow. But the automatic, thrust past a
human rampart, was dangerous.
The Shadow fired again as Hildrow neared the door. With that effort, he twisted free from
the man who grappled him. Hildrow had paused for an instant. A sizzling bullet; sight of The
Shadow's burning eyes and a glimpse of the rising form—these were too much. Hildrow
sped for safety.
Turning quickly, The Shadow swung toward the man whom he had spilled, expecting final
trouble from that foe. The crook, coming up from the floor, was aiming while he leered. The
Shadow sought to beat him to the shot.
A race that was almost instantaneous. One of those hazards which The Shadow had risked
time and again. A contest that depended upon the last instant. Such was the quick, grim
drama that came to an unexpected end.
Commander Dadren, crawling from the wall, had plucked up a loose revolver. Resting on
one arm, the commander had aimed for the rising gunman. Dadren's shot came in that tiny
interval of time that yet remained.
As the revolver flashed, the crook hunched. His gun arm wavered and his snarling face
dropped. The flame from The Shadow's automatic stabbed through the pungent smoke that
filled the room. The bullet sizzled just above the crook's drooping head.
No need for another shot. The last foeman was plopping to the floor. Plucking up his second
automatic, The Shadow wheeled toward Dadren, who was rising with a firm clutch on his
smoking automatic.
Nodding, the commander came to his feet. As The Shadow headed through the doorway,
Dadren followed. The Shadow and the man whom he had rescued were hot on the trail of
Eric Hildrow.
CHAPTER XXII. PURSUIT DELAYED
AS The Shadow and Commander Dadren reached the ground outside the cottage, they
heard the roar of a motor. Eric Hildrow had gained his coupe. He was on his way to the
bridge that led from the little island.
Dashing through bushes, The Shadow spied a second car parked well across the clearing.
It was Pete's sedan. Hildrow, in his mad flight, had forgotten it.
The Shadow clambered aboard. Dadren leaped in beside him.
The key was in the ignition lock. Hildrow had either been seized by panic or had counted on
his last henchman to slay The Shadow. Perhaps both possibilities were correct. All that
mattered was the pursuit which The Shadow took up at once.
The tracks through the trees took a sweeping curve on their way to the bridge. It was a wide
detour that The Shadow remembered. Ignoring it, he drove the sedan straight through a
clump of bushes.
The thicket crackled as the car ripped through on level ground. The wheels spun on a slimy
spot, then took hold. Whining in second gear, the sedan jounced up a slight embankment
and came crashing through more bushes, out to the traveled path. The Shadow shifted to
high.
The Shadow had clipped off a third of the distance to the bridge. Hurtling forward, the sedan
was on the trail of the coupe. Dadren, hanging to the ledge of the window, had not noticed
the blood that stained The Shadow's shoulder. He was blurting out the facts that he knew.
"He'll head for Releston's," stated the commander. "We must stop him. His name is Eric
Hildrow. He told me. Eric Hildrow—a pretended friend."
THE SHADOW laughed softly as he heard the name. Hildrow had been listed among those
who had visited Senator Ross Releston. Dadren's statement supplied the one point that The
Shadow wanted. He knew his many-faced enemy by name, at last.
The bridge. As The Shadow whirled the wheel despite his numbed arm, he gripped it with
his weakened hand and yanked an automatic from the pocket of the coat that he was
wearing.
The sedan shot upward over the raised approach, like a ski-jumper on the take-off. It
ploughed down upon the loose planking with terrific force. The reinforced bridge held. The
Shadow, gun in hand, leaned from the opened window by the driver's seat.
He took steady aim for the coupe which he now saw for the first time. It was on the far side
of the bridge, within range of The Shadow's fire. Just as Hildrow's car reached the ground,
The Shadow pressed the trigger.
The coupe jolted with the shot. The Shadow had picked a rear tire. As the crippled car went
bouncing onward, The Shadow aimed for the other wheel. The sedan was midway on the
bridge. Commander Dadren delivered a chuckle as he also drew a gun. Another shot by
The Shadow and the master marksman would have Eric Hildrow at his mercy.
Just as the sedan had passed the center of the bridge, at the very moment when The
Shadow's finger was about to press the trigger of the level gun, a terrific roar thundered
upward from beneath the bridge itself.
The center of the structure lifted. The end portions heaved, then tilted downward from the
force of the explosion. The sedan went skidding on the shore side of the shattered bridge.
A sidewise tilt would have plunged it into the Potomac, but for The Shadow's skill. His foot
pressed the accelerator as his left hand dropped its gun and yanked the wheel. The sedan
leaped forward as it crashed through the flimsy rail. It toppled on its side and crashed on the
stony bank of the river.
For a moment, the car seemed on the point of rolling back into the water. Then it stopped,
tilted at a precarious angle. The Shadow turned the key; then opened the door and edged
out.
Commander Dadren followed. Both had escaped injury, it seemed. Then The Shadow
slumped as his left leg gave beneath him.
Commander Dadren saw the bloodstained shoulder. He realized for the first time that his
companion had been wounded in the fight.
Resting on the bank, The Shadow pointed weakly ahead. Dadren shook his head.
The coupe had made an escape, despite its jouncing wheel. It was too late to overtake it on
foot. It must be more than a mile ahead. The sedan was badly wrecked. Two wheels were
broken; the radiator was driven back upon the motor. Rust-colored water was forming a
slow, trickling rivulet down the bank of the Potomac.
BACK in the office of the cottage, a man was leaning heavily upon the desk. His head was
lowered; his eyes were glassy. But a leer showed on his hatchetlike face. It was Korsch.
Though mortally wounded, Hildrow's lieutenant had revived for a final effort of evil. His left
hand was supporting him. His right was dipped into an open drawer. There it still clutched a
little lever.
&nb
sp; The bridge had been mined as an emergency precaution. Korsch, knowing that Hildrow was
pursued, had pressed the switch that controlled the charge. Seeking to block The Shadow
from the mainland, he had nearly succeeded in eliminating the master fighter.
Korsch began to weaken. His fingers loosened from the lever. His right hand went to his
chest; his left arm wabbled. A cough racked his frame; then Korsch toppled and went rolling
on the floor. A final gasp; the lieutenant was dead.
MORE than a mile beyond the bridge, Eric Hildrow had stopped the coupe upon the
stone-jagged road. Feverishly, he was removing lugs from the left rear wheel. The man who
had fled ahead was with him. His numbed arm was recovering; he was jacking the car while
Hildrow worked to remove the ruined tire.
Both had guns in readiness while they hastened to put on the spare. They were ready to
take to the woods should The Shadow and Dadren appear. As minutes passed, Hildrow
began to chuckle.
"Korsch did it," he announced to his companion. "They're trapped in the sedan, both of
them. Dead, perhaps. But we have no time to return and see. We'll be on our way inside of
three minutes. More important work lies ahead."
BACK by the shattered bridge, Commander Dadren had completed first-aid upon The
Shadow's wounded shoulder. Though not serious, the wound had bled profusely. The
Shadow had held up despite the weakening from loss of blood. The crash; an injured
leg—those had been added to the wound.
Endurance had failed at last. Commander Dadren, realizing the amount of blood that his
rescuer had lost, was amazed that The Shadow could have kept on to the bridge. As he
stared at the pale features which counterfeited those of Stollart, the commander was due for
more astonishment.
The Shadow's eyes began to burn. Dropping his right hand to the ground, he thrust his form
up from a reclining position. He reached his feet and began to limp on his weakened leg.
Despite the pain, he delivered a soft laugh.
Resting his arm upon Dadren's shoulder, he raised his right hand slowly and pointed off
through the trees. Dadren began to object. The Shadow would not listen.
"Come!" ordered The Shadow, in a quiet, steady tone. "Take up the trail."