THE SHADOW LAUGHS
THE gentleman left the dining room and walked slowly across the spacious lobby of the St. Thomas Hotel. He stopped at the desk, and spoke to the clerk. He received a key that bore the number 1216.
“No messages, Mr. Arnaud,” said the clerk.
Henry Arnaud nodded pleasantly and went to the elevator. He rode upstairs in silence. His face was inscrutable — as calm as it had been the night when its owner had first arrived in San Francisco.
Henry Arnaud’s shadow moved along the twelfth floor beside the man who cast it. Cleve Branch had noted that shadow in the dining room. A difficult thing to recognize — a person’s shadow. No wonder that Cleve had failed to identify the shadow with the one that had flitted through Chinatown.
Calm, deliberate, Henry Arnaud was not the type of person whom one might expect to see garbed in a black cloak and slouch hat, with smoking automatics looming in his hands. The Shadow, as Cleve had seen him, was a personage who had answered the last named description.
Yet Henry Arnaud was The Shadow!
The artifices of Moy Chen — the dabs whereby the Chinese merchant had transformed the visage of Cleve Branch into that of Hugo Barnes — these were childlike when compared to the craft of The Shadow.
As a master of disguise, The Shadow had no equal. His personality of Henry Arnaud was assumed. So were a hundred others — each as effective as this one. The Shadow was a man of changing countenance, and he alone in all the world knew his true identity.
The only guise to which he constantly resorted was that of a figure clad in black — a sinister, menacing figure, that brooked no opposition. Many had seen the man in black, but the countenance beneath the brimmed hat had remained unviewed by them.
The flash of piercing eyes — that was all that ever showed, between the turned-down brim and the upraised collar of the long black cloak.
One man had seen The Shadow’s face — seen it against The Shadow’s will. That man had sought to thwart The Shadow, and for a time his schemes had availed.
But that man no longer lived! Like other foemen of The Shadow, he had gone to deserved oblivion.
For The Shadow, whether in his customary black or in the guise of some adopted personality, was the sworn enemy of those who plotted crime. With law and lawlessness swinging in the balance, The Shadow was the factor who turned the scales in favor of justice.
A master of detection, a man with vast resources, a swift-moving phantom of the dark, The Shadow sought the source of crime and obliterated it.
Of all his amazing abilities, his greatest was his power of action. No odds were too great for The Shadow. His rescue of Cleve Branch, at the Sun Kew, was proof positive of that fact.
AS Henry Arnaud, this man of the dark was now entering his room on the twelfth floor of the hotel. The room contrasted greatly with that room in the Aldebaran Hotel, where Henry Arnaud had disappeared so strangely.
This apartment was a luxurious one — a small suite in itself. One of the most expensive rooms in the St. Thomas, it was furnished in completely modern style. Yet it had one factor in common with Henry Arnaud’s former abode; a factor that was apparent to Henry Arnaud alone.
The tall, dignified man extinguished the light after he had entered the room. He was silent in the darkness. No noise told of his presence, until a click sounded in a corner of the room.
A small light shone above a glass-topped mahogany writing desk. Its rays, covered by a green shade, were spread upon the surface of the desk.
The light gave no sign of Henry Arnaud. That individual had vanished with the darkness. Another personality had replaced him. It was The Shadow who now occupied this room.
Two long, white hands appeared within the glow of light. They were hands that moved as of their own accord — hands that belonged to no visible wrists. For the arms beyond the hands were masked within black sleeves.
The hands, though slender and perfectly shaped, were hands of strength. Buried muscles vibrated beneath their skin. They were the hands which, encased within black gloves, had loosed destruction upon the hordes of the Tiger Tong.
There was a difference in the hands, as they now appeared. One was unadorned but on the other — the left — a gleaming gem shone from the base of the third finger.
A strange, weird stone, it glowed with many changing colors. From deep crimson, its flashes turned to darkish purple. It was a rare jewel — a girasol, or fire opal — this stone that The Shadow wore. Its very appearance betokened mystery — the symbol of The Shadow’s mysterious existence.
The hands were busy. A paper and pencil were brought into the light. A clipping lay upon the table. The right hand took the pencil and marked a circle around words in the clipping. Then those words were transcribed to the sheet of paper.
The dying statements of Stephen Laird had been copied by The Shadow. There they stood, in tabulated form.
In the box. See. Tag A. T — A - G — A - Green Eyes.
Cryptic, unexplainable statements. Perhaps the ravings of a fevered mind. The Shadow’s pencil paused above them. The hand crossed out the top line. At the right it inscribed, in capitals:
IN BOX C.
Moving to the second tabulation, the hand crossed out the statement “Tag A”; but the letters still remained. Now, a whispered voice spoke softly in the gloom of the room.
“T — A - G — A.” The letters were repeated. “T — A - G — A. T — A - G — A…”
The pencil poised. It wrote as the voice spoke:
“T — A - G — A…”
Once more the voice pronounced the letters that the dying man had uttered. But this time, the hand made a most important change.
“T — A - G — A…” came the whisper!
“T — H - E — A…” wrote the hand!
Phonetically, both spellings were the same! Spoken aloud, the letters “T — H - E — A” sounded identically with those which the newspaper account contained!
“Tag A” was a myth. Stephen Laird had not talked of it. He had uttered a word which the conductor could not catch. To make it plain, the dying man had tried to spell. What he had said was: “T — H - E — A”; what the conductor had heard was: “T — A - G — A.”
Perhaps it was the pause, the gasping pause that Laird had made before the final letter that had caused the deception. The result had been an error by the listening conductor. His ears had caught the syllables exactly; but his mind had misinterpreted them.
The Shadow had divined the meaning. The completion of the unfinished task required the addition of only a few letters. The pencil made its marks.
After the letters T — H - E — A appeared the letters T — E - R. The message was complete. Stephen Laird’s misinterpreted statement had been understood.
“In box C. Theater.”
The only remaining tabulation was the bottom one.
GREEN EYES.
The Shadow had capitalized these words.
Were they a name?
The light went out above the desk. Its click signified that The Shadow’s task had been completed. But nothing had been written to explain that last notation!
A FORM was moving silently in the darkened room. It stood, lost in blackness, beside the open window. It was from this spot that the similarity between Room 806 in the Aldebaran Hotel, and Room 1216 in the St. Thomas became apparent.
From this window, an observer commanded the same view of the city that one gained from the window in the Aldebaran Hotel. The Shadow, now, was gazing straight toward Chinatown, exactly as he had gazed on the night when he had come to San Francisco!
In the distance, the watcher saw the crawling lights of the sign that topped the Mukden Theater. The luminous ring of stationary lights was aglow above the moving lines. From the center of that circle glowed two green spots, side by side.
Green eyes!
They sent a message — a message meant for others, not for The Shadow! But he received their message.
Those luminous spots were aglow for the first time since that other night. Like focused eyes, they seemed to glare into the blackness.
Green eyes of Chinatown, peering forth across the city!
What was the message that they sent?
That might be learned tonight. The Shadow knew that fact.
The man of the dark was preparing to accept the challenge. Those spots of green were the instruments of some unknown personage. Like The Shadow, that man had a veiled identity. He, too, possessed a strange, descriptive name.
Green Eyes!
Amid the darkness of the hotel room, a whispered sound arose. It shuddered softly. It reverberated from the walls. It mocked and taunted as its eerie tones were carried forth into the night.
It was the answer to a challenge. The distant spots that shone like glowing emeralds were the visible symbol of Green Eyes. The sardonic laugh that issued from this silent room was the audible reply of The Shadow!
The echoes of the sardonic laugh died away. The sinister mirth was ended. Silence, alone, prevailed. The Shadow was gone. The Shadow had laughed!