THE name of the sleek-haired brunette was Thara Lamoyne, which went with her exotic appearance, at least in Phil Harley’s opinion. During dinner she had proven reasonably talkative, always with that unusual accent which Phil couldn’t quite trace back to its origin.
She thought strange things were ludicrous, this Thara.
“How very funny!” Thara exclaimed, reverting to a topic of the dinner. “You meet a blonde lady and pouf she vanishes! Then you meet Thara. But tell me” - Thara leaned across the table in a fashion most intriguing - “the name of this blonde girl. You still remember it?”
Phil nodded and said:
“Her name was Arlene Forster.”
Annoyed, Thara leaned back.
“By now you should have forgotten it!” she asserted. “Tell me, why do you still think of this other girl, who disappears like - like” - Thara couldn’t find the word at first - “like that thing they talk about, the banshee.”
That opened Phil’s eyes really wide.
“Say, maybe that was it!” he exclaimed. Then, with a laugh, Phil added. “No, that couldn’t be. According to the descriptions of the banshee, Arlene would have left her clothes in the telephone booth if she evaporated in person.”
Thara took that statement seriously, or in another sense, she was serious enough to think that Phil was gullible.
“You believe that nonsense?” she queried. “It is very foolish if you do. Maybe the moonlight played some tricks with people’s eyes, as in the country where I have lived so long. Or perhaps some girl wearing a bathing suit was going swimming in the pool, just because it was not allowed there.”
“She wasn’t wearing a bathing cap,” reminded Phil. “The newspapers spoke of her long, flowing hair, like Arlene’s, except that it was dark.”
“You mean the night was dark,” argued Thara, “except for the moonlight, which plays so many tricks. But if you wish to find out more, go to the park - in daytime.”
“Why in daytime?” parried Phil. “Are the banshees liable to catch me?”
“The banshees? No! The police! You read the newspapers and you will find out they have put many of them there. Too many police - no banshee. You see!”
With that, Thara laughed in her really musical style; then, resting her elbows on the table, her chin between her hands, she gave Phil all that serious glow of her dark, breathtaking eyes and came back to prosaic matters.
“It is a friend of mine who asked that I should meet you,” said Thara. “Just a business friend” - seemingly she added this so that Phil would lose no budding thoughts of romance - “but it is better it should be that way, because the business should be good for you.”
Phil gave an approving nod.
“You were in the army,” stated Thara. “You were with what they call the engineers, doing special work?”
Another nod from Phil.
“The job will be one hundred dollars a week,” asserted Thara. “It is to study some papers that they call patents and give reports if they are practical.”
“Sounds great,” enthused Phil. “Whose office do I work in?”
“Some office?” queried Thara. “No, that would be too much expense. The hotel room is reserved for you, along the street here, at the Sans Souci.”
“The Sans Souci,” repeated Phil. “That sounds expensive in itself. Still, since I’m starting at one hundred a week -”
“None of the expense is yours. The hotel room; it will be paid for each week in advance, by the person who will wish the work done with the patents.”
If money had come floating through the air, Phil Harley couldn’t have been more amazed. Still, he’d heard of fabulous business dealings in New York, and getting off to a quick start like this was probably the type of break that occurred every day.
They were rising from the table, Phil and Thara, the girl awaiting the decision that she was to take back to her unknown friend. Phil wasn’t long in rendering it.
“I’ll take the job,” he said, “and gladly. Maybe we should go out and celebrate right now.”
“Not now,” reproved Thara, as they crossed the lobby. “Later, when you have the money. To get to the Sans Souci, you walk to the east, two blocks. Good-night.”
Thara was turning away when she spoke and Phil turned too, hoping that the girl hadn’t vanished like Arlene. Momentarily, Phil saw an elevator with its door open, but Thara hadn’t stepped into it; the only darkish face that he saw belonged to a stolid, brawny man who looked as wide as the door itself, and his features were tawny, compared to Thara’s delicate olive.
Odd people, these New Yorkers; perhaps Phil was right in that supposition, but he shouldn’t have included Dom Yuble in that category. The Caribbean sea captain was purely a portion of Manhattan’s passing show.
Then, as the elevator door clanged shut, Phil saw Thara over by the newsstand, giving him a parting smile so thoroughly alluring that he hoped she wouldn’t vanish.
Which reverted Phil’s thoughts to Arlene as he went out the street door. Wondering if anybody chanced to remember the missing blonde, Phil glanced to his left and saw a most amazing thing.
Drawn up to the curb was an old-fashioned hansom cab, its driver half-asleep on the high box. As Phil approached and paused, the man opened one eye beneath his old plug hat and looked down. Figuring that from such an elevation the hansom driver should have witnessed much. Phil called up:
“See anything of a girl about an hour ago? A blonde, wearing lilacs - like this?”
Plucking the blossom from his buttonhole, Phil showed it, then tossed the wilted flower away. The hackie waved his whip toward a doorway at his right; then wagged it across the street toward the border of the park.
“She came out and somebody called a victoria for her,” stated the hansom driver. “She was kind of breathless, like she needed fresh air. This hansom was too cramped for her; that’s why she took an open carriage.”
“Where did she go?”
The man gave Phil a stare, then gestured with his whip.
“For a ride in the park,” the man stated. “Where else would she want to take a carriage?”
Nodding to prove he’d learned something, Phil started along Central Park South. Impressed with the very sudden notion that Arlene might really be the banshee, Phil thought of turning back and asking the hansom driver what else the girl had been wearing besides lilacs. It struck Phil then that Arlene certainly wouldn’t take to sylvan costumery until she reached her favorite pool.
Wondering about that pool and its allure, Phil went west instead of east. Failing to see the name of the Hotel Sans Souci, he paused to make inquiry. Phil was right in front of a hotel called the Parkside House, when he witnessed what seemed a trifling incident.
A man with a large suitcase was coming from the doorway brushing away a bellboy who offered to carry the bag to a waiting cab. Poor policy on the man’s part, for of a sudden, his burden became too heavy, and he sagged toward the sidewalk. Phil caught him as the bag clattered, steadied the fellow and looked at his thin, peaked face.
“Very sorry,” the man muttered. He gave Phil a look with gray eyes that were watery, but appealing. “I guess - guess I was just a bit dizzy.”
“Blind staggers,” diagnosed Phil. “Ease your head back. I’ll get you into the cab.”
There was something about the man’s long face that was vaguely familiar to Phil. Drawn though they were, those features had a trace of the aristocratic. As Phil helped the fellow to the cab, the man fumbled in his pocket and a wallet fell out, spilling some loose papers. Phil recovered them and in the light of the marquee, saw both a calling card and an addressed envelope that bore the man’s name.
That name was Winslow Ames.
The door man now was giving Phil a hand with Mr. Ames. In his turn, Ames put away the wallet and its papers, to bring out a smaller envelope that contained a railroad ticket.
“Penn Station,” he muttered. “Going to Boston.”
“Boston?” queried the door man. “You want Grand Central.”
“Couldn’t get a ticket on the regular train,” argued Ames, apparently recuperated. “Have to take the car that gets picked up at Penn by the through train from Washington. Pennsylvania Station” - this was to the driver - “and take it slowly. I’ll feel better if you do.”
The cab pulled away and another drew up. Muttering to himself, the door man opened the cab door, thinking Phil wanted it.
“Oughtn’t to have let him go,” the door man was saying, referring to Ames. “He may be wrong about that sleeper. Somebody ought to have gone along with him.”
That gave Phil an idea of his own. He took the cab and told the driver to follow the one ahead. Rather than have it seem that he was trailing somebody, Phil explained:
“A friend of mine. He isn’t feeling well, but he wouldn’t hear of my going to the station with him. I’m going anyway.”
It wasn’t just a good deed on Phil’s part. He wanted to see some of New York anyway. It happened that he was going to have that wish fulfilled. Both cabs did a lot of turning around corners and finally wheeled through a gateway composed of two great stone pillars.
“Your friend must be going to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street,” announced Phil’s driver, gesturing ahead, “considering that his cab is going through the park. That’s the only station, the way he’s headed.”
Odd, thought Phil, that this should happen. Intrigued as well as puzzled, Phil kept his gaze glued to the cab ahead and therefore didn’t notice that a third such vehicle had fallen into the procession.
Except for its driver, the last cab seemed empty, but it wasn’t. Riding in it was a figure cloaked entirely in black.
That passenger could only be The Shadow!