SPOILS TO THE VICTORS
IT was twenty minutes past five o’clock the following afternoon. The day was gloomy; overhanging clouds had brought on a premature evening. Lights were twinkling in the busy streets.
The upper stories of the mammoth Royal Building showed glimmering windows, which were steadily diminishing in number.
From the portals of the mighty skyscraper, the home-going throng of workers was pouring into the traffic-jammed thoroughfare.
High up, as far as the eye could see, were the rows of irregularly lighted windows. Thirty-four stories from the street, the building tapered to a single, monolithic tower.
Where the side portion of the building joined with the central edifice, a keen eye could detect a blank wall atop the thirty-fourth floor. It seemed a trivial bit of space, viewed from the street below. Actually it was eight feet high.
From the street, on this gloomy afternoon, that portion of the building was practically invisible in the gathering gloom and swirling fog.
A man sidled through the throng that was emerging from the building. His overcoat was muffled about his neck. In his hand he carried a large suitcase.
He was not the first who had thus entered the Royal Building during the past quarter hour. Like those who had gone before him, the man was inconspicuous in the crowd.
“Three — four — two — eight,” the man muttered.
He entered an express elevator, which had just discharged a load of living freight. In a few seconds, the man was whisking upward, to leave the elevator on the thirty-fourth floor, nearly four hundred feet above the street below.
He walked along a corridor, reached its end, and paused before a door which bore the number 3428. He tapped lightly. The door opened.
The man joined a group in the unlighted room. He threw aside his overcoat. The face of Bob Maddox showed dimly in the dusk.
THE men talked in low whispers. There were five in the room, now; five arch-plotters men of evil deeds and brutal methods.
Hiram Mallory stood in a corner, a quiet, deceiving smile registered upon his face. Beside him was Briggs, expressionless. The others were Moose Shargin and Garry Elvers.
The gang leader was hard-faced. His bodyguard appeared pale.
“Easy, now,” came Hiram Mallory’s whisper. He looked approvingly at the suitcases which the men had brought. “This is the clean-up, tonight. After this — we go our own ways.”
A low buzz of approval greeted his words.
“We have tricked The Shadow,” declared the evil old man. “I shall report for myself and Briggs. Then let me hear your statements.
“Last night, Briggs was captured by The Shadow. He was bound in a vestibule of the old Galvin house. He escaped and came to me.
“I had heard, by that time, of Robert Galvin’s escape. I decided that young Galvin had been taken back to his uncle’s home and was protected there. That proved to be correct.
“Briggs and I slipped away from my home. We have baffled all pursuit. We came here a few minutes ago, confident that we have not been followed.”
Mallory turned questioningly toward Moose Shargin.
“Garry and I have been hiding out,” declared the gang leader, in a low, gruff voice. “We got pulled out of that tunnel in Wing Toy’s place. I phoned you about it.
“You told us to lay low. We did. Nobody, The Shadow included, could know where we’ve been. We got here tonight, O.K. We’ve slipped it over on that wise guy!”
Hiram Mallory looked at Maddox.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Maddox. “I hit out for my hideout as soon as I got away from Mitchell’s joint. I dodged plenty, too. Maybe I left something for the bulls to find, but I don’t think so.
“I tipped you off, Chief. I’ve laid low, like you said, after I left the key where you told me.”
“You left no bit of evidence concerning this place?” Mallory ascertained.
“Not one bit!”
“You saw no sign of The Shadow?”
“None. Only a call that made Mitchell suspicious — a phone call. Maybe it was The Shadow.”
“That would mean he was a long way off,” commented Mallory, in approval. “You acted wisely, Bob. Do not worry about the police. Have you seen the evening newspapers?”
“No.”
“Robert Galvin has been arrested for the murder of Zachary Mitchell.”
“What!” exclaimed Bob.
“Certainly. The Shadow has played into our hands,” Mallory went on. “It is well that we let Galvin live.”
“How did they come to get him?”
“Robert Galvin announced his name when he entered Mitchell’s apartment house. He was also seen to leave hurriedly.”
“That was me!” Bob informed.
“Certainly,” Mallory continued, “but the police don’t know that. Inspector Zull made the arrest. Galvin is in jail. Getting the third degree now, in all probability.”
Bob Maddox chuckled. This was the final touch!
THE gloom had thickened in the room; Mallory could scarcely see the faces of his companions now.
“Raise that shade higher,” he ordered. “We need more light, but we don’t want to turn on the electricity.”
Briggs obeyed.
“To work,” ordered Hiram Mallory.
Bob Maddox took one side of a desk and signed to Moose Shargin to do likewise. They moved the piece of furniture to a spot indicated by Bob, who mounted upon the desk.
The room had a low ceiling. It was fitted with panels. Maddox pressed his hands against a spot above. As he pressed, a panel budged upward and slid to one side. A dark hole was revealed.
Briggs was on the table now, hoisting Maddox into the opening. Hiram Mallory, displaying remarkable agility, came next.
“Leave Garry at the door,” he said, as Briggs helped him upward.
Then came Shargin, and finally, Briggs was drawn upward. The panel closed.
Garry Elvers shrugged his shoulders. He drew an automatic from his pocket and stood on guard beside the door.
This afternoon, the gangster was determined to leave nothing to chance. Any intruder would meet his doom.
Garry half hoped The Shadow would appear.
A flashlight clicked above the closed ceiling panel. Exclamations of triumph came simultaneously from the four men above.
They were in a small, square room. Each corner had a short, angled wall. But these corners did not interest them. Before them, on the floor, lay two locked boxes.
Moose Shargin dropped on his knees and pried away the lock from one of the containers. Bob Maddox did the same with the other. Hiram Mallory held the flashlight and looked on with Briggs.
The lids of the boxes came open. The light revealed piles of paper, masses of bank notes, and a hoard of glittering gold coins!
“Galvin’s pile — the old hound!” exclaimed Maddox.
The spoils came out upon the floor. Briggs was with the others, now, helping them stack up piles of twenty-dollar gold pieces, and sheaves of bank notes of large denominations.
“Divvy now?” questioned Shargin, looking toward Mallory.
“Go ahead,” said the Chief. “Six piles. Two for me; one for each of you — and one for Theodore Galvin, to be divided equally among us.”
Bob Maddox was examining the pile of papers. He handed them over to Hiram Mallory.
“Bad stuff, these,” he declared. “Evidence that could be used against us if—”
“I’ll take care of them,” declared Hiram Mallory.
Maddox crept over to the trapdoor and slid it open. He peered into the darkness below; hissed and received a response from Garry Elvers.
“O.K.?” whispered Bob.
“O.K.,” came the reply.
“Hoist up those suitcases.”
THE bags came up. Garry returned to his post. Maddox closed the trap. The suitcases were opened. The work went on.
Briggs, usually taciturn, grunted with satisfaction as he began to count off a handful of thousand-dollar bills. Maddox rejoined the workers.
“Eighty grand in each pile,” declared Moose Shargin, in a pleased growl. “Pretty close to half a million bucks.”
Moose began to place the various piles in the suitcases. He stopped to note which one belonged to Hiram Mallory. He put two portions in that one. He laughed as the gold coins jingled.
“Those yeller boys sound nice,” was his comment. “But I’m glad there aren’t too many of them. They weigh too much.”
Bob Maddox divided the sixth portion into four groups and handed them, one by one, to Moose Shargin, to deposit in the different suitcases.
Briggs watched with gleaming eyes. He was slowly calculating amounts. Eighty thousand dollars in each heap — twenty thousand from the dead man’s share — one hundred thousand dollars for each underling, and one hundred and eighty thousand for the Chief!
The suitcases were closed now. But one thought was in each mind — the getaway. Hiram Mallory motioned to the trapdoor. Bob Maddox placed his hand upon it. The old man turned out the flashlight as a precaution.
“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Moose Shargin, in a greedy tone. “Let’s look around some more — those corners—”
Before he could complete his statement, a ray of light swept into the room. The four men were blinded by the glare of a powerful electric torch. They held their positions as though petrified.
Instinctively, their hands rose above their heads. The light shone from a corner. In the fringe of its illumination, they could see that the tiny nook had been opened like a door.
They could not see the man behind the light; but a low, weird chuckle reached their ears — a chuckle that became a mirthless laugh which brought shudders to their quaking bodies.
“The Shadow!” gasped Hiram Mallory.
“You fools!” came a sinister voice. “Fools, to think that you could elude me! You thought that I did not know what you had learned — instead, I was waiting for you to find out what I already knew!
“The paper which you thought was a code, I recognized as a map the same night I saw it. I traced this building and found this place. How? By looking up at the building and observing this very spot — a windowless space.
“I have been watching it since then through the eyes of a trusted agent. I have been here. I have discovered the secret of the ceiling.
“I have examined this wealth; and have left it — as a snare for thieves.
“Last night, you added another to your list of murders. First, Theodore Galvin — a member of your gang.
“Second, Reynold Barker, the man you hired to win his confidence, but who learned his secret after poisoning Galvin by your orders.
“Third, Hodgson.
“Fourth, Richard Harkness.
“Fifth, Zachary Mitchell.
“The last three — all innocent of any wrongdoing.”
The voice paused while the trapped men trembled.
“You failed in two crimes,” declared The Shadow. “You did not kill Thaddeus Westcott. You did not kill Betty Mandell — although you thought you succeeded in that cold-blooded murder.
“I saved both of them!”
NOT a single one of the four had made a move. All were dominated by their terrible enemy, the man whose face they could not see, and whose voice came like tones of doom.
“I need not dwell upon your former crimes,” said The Shadow. “I know them all — thanks to those papers which Theodore Galvin left with his ill-gotten gains.
“Some of the wealth was rightfully his. It will go to his heirs. The rest will be returned to its owners; those who were robbed by your crimes and schemes — Hiram Mallory and Theodore Galvin.
“You were master minds of crime, aided by such lesser crooks as Maddox and Briggs, eliminating enemies with the aid of Shargin and his gang. Covering clews with the help of—”
The sentence was never finished. One of the four had acted. Strangely enough, Briggs was the one to combat The Shadow’s strategy.
The big man had been kneeling beside a bag when the blinding light had come. Moose Shargin was beside him. Briggs, with upraised hand, had nudged the gang leader’s hip pocket. He had struck the butt of a gun.
Briggs had been waiting. Then, realizing that his hand was virtually out of sight, he had suddenly snatched the gun.
Luck played a great part. Briggs was not only a remarkable shot; he was also left-handed. Shargin’s gun was on his right hip. Briggs, seizing it, instantly found the trigger.
As his hand came into view, he fired directly at the light. The cannonlike roar of the automatic ushered in darkness. Briggs had hit the light that The Shadow held!
There was confusion while the roar of the automatic reverberated through the square-walled room. Hiram Mallory’s light flashed on, to reveal a black-clad figure prone upon the floor in the corner.
Moose Shargin, weaponless, leaped forward with a snarl. As he did so, two black-clad hands came up from that form. Shargin’s leap ended in mid-air as two automatics spurted their flame.
The Shadow had been holding the light away from his body! The shot fired by Briggs had done him no harm!
The Shadow’s new strategy had saved him. Briggs had been about to fire when Moose had leaped. Now, as he pressed the trigger with deadly aim, the bullets found a mark, not in The Shadow, but in Moose Shargin, for the gangster’s body lay as a protection to the man in black.
Another shot came from the corner. It struck Briggs in the wrist. The big man uttered a cry as the blue gun fell from his hand.
Hiram Mallory, cold and determined, was entering the fray. He had drawn an automatic. So had Bob Maddox.
As Mallory came forward, shooting, The Shadow’s bullets smashed the light which he held, and the leaden harbingers of death spelled the old man’s doom.
It was more than a battle for possession; it was a fight for self-preservation. Briggs knew it. Clutching his gun in his right hand, he snarled to Bob Maddox, “Come on!”
MORE shots followed. Groans and cries were uttered in the smoke-filled chamber of death.
In the midst of all the furor, a slight grating noise was scarcely audible. Bob Maddox, still crouching, slid open the trapdoor, and pulled the two nearest suitcases with him as he dropped to safety. He shoved the trap behind him.
Garry Elvers leaped beside him.
“What’s happened?” demanded the gangster.
“The Shadow!” exclaimed Maddox, staggering toward the door with the suitcases. “He’s up there! Get him!”
Garry leaped upon the table. As he did, a black form seemed to envelop him.
The trapdoor had opened. Garry was wrapped in the folds of The Shadow’s cloak.
To the startled eyes of Bob Maddox, staring through the dusk, the man himself had come from above. Maddox held his automatic in readiness.
The Shadow came down with his cloak. He was struggling with Garry, and Maddox could hear the gangster grunting like an enraged beast.
The fighting men were by the window. Maddox could discern the flapping cloak. Simultaneously he heard two sounds — a choking, and a cry from Garry. He knew that the gangster was throttling The Shadow.
Then, as though propelled by a desperate effort, the black-cloaked form was uplifted. The cloak fell free, but the man crashed, head-foremost, through the pane of the window — off on a four-hundred foot fall to the street!
Garry had finished The Shadow!
But Maddox did not wait to extend congratulations. He had realized that one of the suitcases which he held contained — because of its weight — the share of the swag that belonged to Hiram Mallory. In his hands, Maddox held no less than two hundred and eighty thousand dollars!
The shots above had been muffled. Yet some one might have heard them. Maddox did not know who might be alive in that room above. Why should he wait to share, when every instant might bring discovery closer?
Even as the form in the black cloak was crashing through the glass toward its terrible doom, Bob Maddox turned the knob of the door.
In another instant, he was gone, with a fortune in his grasp!