All Middletown was amazed by the revelations that followed the end of the Five Chameleons. The first inkling of their dastardly work had been the finding of the dead and crippled vigilantes in the home of Martha Delmar.
Then came a phone call that led police to Harvey Bronlon's strong room. They found the bodies of Judge and Deacon. Jake Critz was dying. Harvey Bronlon was suffering from wounds from which he died two days later.
Had the hand of The Shadow purposely allowed this man to live a while? That might have been the master fighter's design. For Harvey Bronlon, taken with the cases of well-packed bills and gold certificates, weakened under the quizzing of his captors.
It was he who gasped out the confession of the crime — virtually the story which The Shadow had recounted when he had held his last foes at bay. Bronlon, cowed by impending death, told of the secret passage in the block that he had built.
The investigators found the bodies of Major, Ferret, and Butcher. They were laid in the morgue, and with them were placed the forms of Judge and Deacon.
The Five Chameleons united, in the room which they had used as base of operations.
Together there in life, they were together now, in death.
The money at Bronlon's was brought back to the vault of the County National Bank. State officials arrived to take charge. Government men came to Middletown to investigate the spurious money that had flooded the entire district.
While the bodies of the Five Chameleons lay on their slabs, some unknown hand placed envelopes there — one on the form of each man. The officer who discovered the envelopes opened them one by one. Each contained the pretended name of the victim upon which it had lain. David Traver, Howard Best, Maurice Exton, Joel Hawkins, George Ellsworth: all were listed. But as the officer stared at the writing, an unexplainable change took place. The writing faded, and new words immediately appeared. The nicknames: Judge, Deacon, Major, Ferret, and Butcher were revealed by the invisible hand. These names gave the government agents a working clue. They quickly dug up the past records of all the notorious crooks.
That was not the only strange episode that followed the clean-up of the counterfeiters.
The other was observed by only one other person — Martha Delmar.
She was back in Middletown. The truth of her father's suicide was explained, for the first sheet of his last note had been found in Bronlon's home. The girl's friends had all returned. She had forgotten the past.
Why not? Hubert Salisbury's story had been substantiated by the finding of the secret passage. The young man was free — and he and Martha Delmar celebrated his release by a wedding. It was among the many gifts received that Martha observed the strange token. A beautiful clock — the finest of all the gifts — stood upon the mantelpiece. It had come without the donor's card. All wondered who had sent it; and only Martha knew.
For in the evening, when the lamps above the mantelpiece were lighted, the tall clock threw an odd, mysterious shadow on the floor before the fireplace.
It was the shadow of a tall, slender form that terminated in the silhouette of a face with a hawklike nose, the broad brim of a slouch hat above the profile.
It was the shadow of The Shadow! Like the flashing girasol, a symbol that Martha Delmar could never forget, it told, more graphically than words, the identity of the donor who had sent the valuable gift. Martha looked at the shadow often. It brought back a weird memory. It spoke of that eventful night when The Shadow himself had come in response to her call.
The Shadow! The man of retribution!