OUT on the promenade deck, David Tholbin was standing with three men. Two bore uniforms of stewards. The other was a passenger aboard the ship.
Close by the door of Stateroom 7-D, Tholbin held up a warning hand. His sallow face paled as he heard a fusillade of muffled shots from the other side of the barrier.
For a moment, the young man seemed incapable of action. Then sharp words came from the men who crouched beside him. Nodding, Tholbin pressed a key into the lock and turned it. The door opened inward into a darkened room.
Tholbin’s companions surged eagerly forward. They shoved the young man ahead of them into the cabin.
They pounced upon a large trunk that stood in the nearest corner of the room.
Struggling, they jammed the big object through the doorway, scraping the edges of the woodwork. On deck, their burden seemed to lighten. With one accord, they staggered to the rail and pitched the trunk over the side!
The falling container splashed into the waters below. One man, standing by the rail, saw it shimmer as it bobbed upon the surface.
The strange action had been witnessed by only one person other than those who had accomplished it. A crouching man, coming from a passage door, was there to see. One of the false stewards spied him and uttered a sharp cry.
The others turned. With one accord, they bounded toward this unexpected witness, determined to stop him before he could escape.
Their attack was short-lived. Their adversary opened fire. Two of the attackers fell. The other dropped to the deck and returned the fire. The spurt of his revolver showed his position. Ruthlessly, the man at the passage door shot him dead.
The killer scurried along the deck and dived into another passage. Descending a stairway, he reached the door of a cabin and opened it. He locked the door behind him and dropped, panting, into a chair.
It was Ivan Motkin. Fleeing from The Shadow, he had encountered the men allied with David Tholbin. A paradox of cowardice and bravery, Motkin, who had fled from the terrible presence of The Shadow, had not hesitated to fire at these others. He was safe, through miraculous luck, but his henchmen had been eliminated to the last man.
BACK in Betty Waddell’s cabin, David Tholbin was crouching in a panic. He had heard shots in the other stateroom; he had heard shots on the deck. Here, he was safe, between two fires. Revolver in hand, he did not know which way to turn.
The door of the outer cabin burst open. Tholbin, terror-stricken, thought that the end had come. Leaping to his feet, he fired wildly. Two men dropped back as his shots spattered the door.
Escape! There was only one way now. Wildly, Tholbin sought the door that led to the deck. His hand faltered as he tried to find the knob. At last he managed to yank the door open.
His form showed plainly in the light of breaking day. Shots came from the door of the inner cabin. David Tholbin lurched forward, staggered across the deck, and fell against the rail. He sprawled crazily on the deck, shot in the back.
Two men hurried to where his body lay. They wore the uniforms of ship’s officers. They had tried to stay this fleeing man, after he had fired at them. Their bullets had found the mark. David Tholbin was dead.
Consternation reigned on the Gasconne. Hundreds of passengers had been aroused. Officers were in charge. A hasty investigation was being made.
As daylight increased, squads of men searched the ship, looking for those who had participated in the fray.
A few of the victims remained alive. Two of Motkin’s men were wounded, but not dead. They were obdurate, and refused to talk. One of the false stewards still lived. He gave an alibi and it worked. He said that he had been shot down by a man entering the outer door of Cabin 7-D. That placed the blame on David Tholbin.
Betty Waddell could furnish no clews. She told her story from the beginning. She had heard a shot; had come to see her father lying dead. She spoke in praise of a strange man clad in black, who had saved her from death.
The one clew was an absent one. An oddly shaped trunk was missing from Betty Waddell’s cabin. But she did not know of the loss. Hysterical after her terrible ordeal, she was placed in the doctor’s care, and did not return to Cabin 7-D.
The quizzing of the passengers revealed nothing. By the time the questioners had come to Ivan Motkin, who took his turn along with the rest, the suave Russian had regained his composure. He knew nothing.
He had been in his cabin. That was all. He passed inspection.
AS the Gasconne neared New York harbor, Ivan Motkin kept to two places. One was the smoking room, the other was his cabin. The Red agent was in constant dread — not of discovery by the ship’s officers, but of a new encounter with that strange apparition in black.
He had only one hope; that his archenemy had been one of the slain. But that hope was faint. Ivan Motkin was constantly on guard.
He identified this man in black with the American whom he had captured in Moscow, and who had eluded him. But nowhere on the ship did he encounter any one who would have passed for Henry Arnaud.
With his trepidation, Motkin felt elation. In New York, he would find new Red agents. They would be there to help him. He had seen what no one else had seen — the three men pitching the big trunk overboard.
That action, Motkin had been sure, was not one of destruction, but of safety. Somewhere, in the vicinity of where the Gasconne had been, a small ship must have been waiting to pick up the precious object.
For Motkin was sure that he knew the contents of that trunk.
His idea was partially correct. It was wrong in one detail. Motkin pictured a lowlying yacht as the boat which had been waiting. Motkin was wrong in another belief. He was sure that he alone knew that the trunk had gone overboard.
On the Gasconne was a keen mind that knew what Motkin did not know. A figure was standing by the rail as the ship neared the American coast. Leaning on his cane, a kindly-faced old gentleman was beaming at the broad Atlantic.
The picture that he formed was the correct one. His mind was visioning a submarine under the guidance of Silas Helmsworth— traveling beneath the surface of the swelling ocean.
No detail had escaped The Shadow. Disguised as a ministerial old man, who was deaf, and who walked with a cane, he could have answered the questions that were perplexing crew and passengers alike.
The stolen contents of the Moscow storage vault were on their way to New York, to be delivered into the keeping of Frederick Froman.
The Shadow knew all!