The Shadow - The Mask Of Mephisto Part 4

The sounds that came were creeping footsteps, yet so irregular, so uncertain that Ken could not define them. Somehow, they seemed like echoes of Ken's own footfalls that had brought him through the shop to this box-like office that formed a hollow, windowless cell.

Maybe this was a trap, planned as a conclusion to the bizarre but senseless mission which Ken had so foolishly accepted for a sum that now seemed a pittance!

If Ken Langdon had known of the Krewe of Hades and what had happened in the Devil's Den, he would have realized that the web was tighter, more purposeful than anything he could imagine. Yet though his impressions were vague, Ken was almost sensing the truth behind it, as he crouched there in the tiny office, awaiting the unknown.

Footsteps here, footsteps there - occasionally quick, then hesitant, or blundering. Ken's own footsteps creaked as he worked toward the door, hoping better to define the sounds from the shop proper. It struck him then that the sounds might represent two people, one baiting the other. Perhaps the place was haunted by the spirits of the grotesque masks that Moubillard had rented out - a thing which Ken was almost ready to believe!

At moments Ken thought he could trace fleeting forms against the dim window or the black shape of the door. Then suddenly he realized that footsteps were very close, almost creaking the floor boards on which he himself stood.

And from outdoors came sounds that so far Ken had only taken as a background; the whines of halting police sirens, the brief shrills of whistles.

They were very close, too. Across his turning shoulder, Ken thought he could see the outer doorway obliterate itself with blackness as though something had completely filled it!

Then Ken was at the desk, reaching for the Mephisto Mask, hoping to add it to the cape which he had half removed from his shoulders. If people were playing a game called "Scare Me" as a variant of hide-and-seek, Ken felt he still had a chance to prove that he was "It."

The chance vanished with a click.

Flooded instantly with light, the room revealed a crouched man with a quick eye and wizened face, old Henri Moubillard. He'd come back earlier than expected and he hadn't celebrated too heavily, otherwise he wouldn't have handled the situation so smartly.

With his first glance, Moubillard proved that he didn't rate Ken as an ordinary thief, nor even as some prankster who was literally interpreting the policy of the open door. Suspicion, understanding, and finally denunciation registered themselves in almost instantaneous procession across Moubillard's crafty crab-apple features.

And the reasons were plain. Moubillard saw the Mask of Mephisto and recognized it, along with the cape of crimson sheen. He also saw Ken and didn't recognize him, which to Moubillard meant something more. Moubillard himself was costumed in an old Spanish garb with ruffled collar and to Ken, the wizened man seemed to represent some inquisition, so thoroughly accusing was his stare.

If he'd trapped an actual King Satan, Moubillard couldn't have been happier, and now he was conniving some way to hold his prisoner. While Ken stood rooted, Moubillard moved backward, intending to hop through the door, slam it, and clamp it from the other side.

Before that could happen, Ken saw a red gauntlet snake through the doorway from the darkness beyond. With it came a ma.s.s of flowing crimson that might have been the reflection of Ken's own costume. Red fingers reached the light switch and clicked it off.

In the darkness, Ken heard Moubillard's excited snarl as the old costumer wheeled. Ken too was on the lunge, realizing that here was a new menace that might convert Moubillard into an ally instead of an enemy. Ken's guess was right but his action came too late.

m.u.f.fled shots greeted Ken's arrival in the doorway. Until he reached there, Ken didn't know that the stabs had been aimed straight his way. The thing that had m.u.f.fled them also stopped them.

That thing was Moubillard.

Tripping over the costumer's sagging body, Ken locked grips with someone who for all he knew, might really be the Devil, here to wreak vengeance on those who had collaborated in his impersonation. Then, as they grappled, Ken found that his opponent wasn't so formidable, for in s.n.a.t.c.hing at the gun, Ken gained it.

Only that was a mistake.

Jogging Ken's gun arm upward, his foe took him by the throat and began to choke him. Writhing, Ken heard a laugh, fierce, challenging, but low, which he thought came from the man who harried him.

The challenge was voiced by an invisible arrival who wasn't even hazily outlined in the blackness of the costume shop. The Shadow was here to settle this case impartially and his laugh was set to an obbligato of police whistles that were converging upon Moubillard's, attracted there by the shots.

Ken's present antagonist was speedy and lucky in meeting The Shadow's challenge.

The fists that choked Ken flung him with a twist and with the departure of those gripping gauntlets, Ken was whirled squarely against The Shadow, stopping the cloaked combatant's drive. Thinking that both adversaries were one and the same, Ken slugged valiantly with the captured gun and after landing a glancing blow, tried to punch a bullet home, as fair due to a murderer.

That error was antic.i.p.ated by The Shadow. His sweeping arm sent Ken's gun-hand upward; the bullets merely nicked some of Moubillard's empty shelves.

A jab from The Shadow's other elbow clipped Ken's chin and flipped him back over Moubillard's body into the office.

It was too late though for The Shadow to go after the missing Mephisto.

Outside Moubillard's, police saw a man in red mask and cape dash out, then double back through a narrow alley that led to the rear of the costume shop, clanging an iron gate as he went by. Others spied him from the rear street and saw the crimson figure dart back through the alley. Coming through from both directions, those from the front pried open the alley gate while the others were discovering an open window into Moubillard's.

All this aided The Shadow. He had stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. Turning on the light, he bolted the door and studiedMoubillard's body, with Ken Langdon sitting dazed beyond it.

The Mask of Mephisto was resting on the desk. The s.h.i.+mmering cape had dropped from Ken's shoulders. The red gauntlets included in his costume was drooping from his hands and beside the right lay the empty gun with which a murderer had finished Moubillard and with which Ken had failed to shoot The Shadow.

Footsteps were pounding from the shop. Looking upward, The Shadow saw a heavily clamped trap door in the ceiling of the office. Seizing the desk, he turned it on end, dumping the Mephisto Mask. The heavy jounce of the desk was echoed by a hammering at the office door, along with a shouted command that had something to do with the law.

The gauntlets dropped from Ken's hands as The Shadow brought him to his feet and started him climbing a chair to the elevated desk end. Realizing that a friend had found him, Ken cooperated groggily. The Shadow clicked off the light and followed Ken to the desk perch; there, restraining Ken's sway with one hand, The Shadow used an automatic with the other, to blast the clamps from the trap door.

The ripping creak of the lifting trap was drowned by the battering-ram smashes that drove through the panel of the office door. A dozen seconds later, the door itself was smashed, but at that moment the ceiling trap was settling in place.

No longer costumed, Ken Langdon was feeling somewhat himself again, as the sweep of night air revived him. The Shadow was steering him across a roof top to reach an adjacent balcony. From there, they worked through an empty house, down to an alley, and finally to a corner where Ken read the name Dauphine Street.

There, Ken heard a parting laugh from a cloaked friend who seemed to fade with the remnants of the breeze and with the tone, he could have sworn that it called him by name, gave his address, and told him to go back there.

That was the last seen of The Shadow on this Night of Mardi Gras. Having nowhere else to go as his cloaked self, he skirted Moubillard's neighborhood with its deluge of police, and headed for a place where costumes were optional and masks taboo.

This was the reception at the Borneau Mansion, conducted by people who advocated a tamer Mardi Gras as a better Mardi Gras. Arriving there as Cranston, The Shadow found the setting so delightfully conservative, that he decided to call Margo Lane and have her come there in an evening gown instead of her Columbine costume.

During his phone call, Cranston missed an incident that had some bearing on the case in hand.

A serious-faced young man in Colonial costume was meeting a Dutch blonde who was coming into the mansion from the garden door. The anxiety on the face of Rolfe Trenhue brought a similar reflection from the violet eyes of Joan Marcy.

"I couldn't find Fred anywhere," reported Trenhue, "so he must have gone out while I was looking around. Anyway, he didn't unmask."

"You're sure, Rolfe?"

"Positive. I asked people who the Devil was and n.o.body knew." Trenhue relaxed with a smile. "Most of them said he could go to himself for all they cared."

"He may be doing just that," said Joan, uneasily. "I haven't been able to understand Fred lately, Rolfe."

Trenhue gave a sympathetic nod. Then: "I went out to my car intending to drive around and look for him, but thepolice seemed to be stopping everybody, so it wasn't any use."

New anxiety flashed from Joan's eyes.

"They couldn't have been looking for Fred?"

Rolfe Trenhue gave a heartfelt laugh that banished the girl's qualms.

After all, Joan had to agree that whatever the faults of Frederick Ferrand, he wasn't the sort to run afoul of the law.

Maybe The Shadow would have held a different opinion, had he heard of a young man named Frederick Ferrand.

CHAPTER IX.

IT was the day after Mardi Gras and New Orleans had taken on a mill-stream quiet. In fact, somebody once said that the reason the Crescent City lay deep below the level of the diked Mississippi was because it settled a foot after every Carnival.

Certainly the crowds had done enough tramping to wear down the city somewhat and the existing calm was like a sober regret for too much merriment.

And this was one time when merriment wasn't all to be regretted.

For one thing, the police were getting right to the bottom of the Louisiana Lottery.

Too many things had happened on too many beats patrolled by too many individual cops. Such wasn't right in New Orleans, where, to some degree, police officers were like little lords in their own domain instead of being mere underlings who might be s.h.i.+fted w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

The individual police had been tolerant of Lottery gossip until now; therefore they were able to gather a lot of facts. Brought to the higher-up officials, this had led to the summoning of a bulky gentleman of political ambitions named Elfreth Queed, along with a suave, sallow character of the water-front known as Kip Tarlan.

Captain Jim Selbert was present at the hearing, as were members of the Greater Carnival a.s.sociation. Along with the latter came a man named Lamont Cranston, who was in a position to supply some information.

Big Queed, as he was known to his small-time faction, sat sullen while the munic.i.p.al authorities reviewed his case; then suddenly, he burst into a tirade that contorted his fat face.

"Sure I was behind the Lottery," a.s.serted Queed, "and why not? Everybody in New Orleans wants it and always did. Why in the old days some of the biggest men in the city took the Annual Policy and the state took its share of the receipts. I brought it back and I intended to run it on the square, the way it always was."

n.o.body offering an objection, Big Queed resumed.

"That's why I talked to Louis Chardelle," Queed declared. "I knew he was tied up with the Krewe of Hades and that they had the right sort of people in their group. Chardelle told me he'd take it up with them, and later he said he had. They liked it, Chardelle said."

Waiting for comments, Big Queed received a question from Jim Selbert.

"How much did you pay Chardelle?"

"Five grand," replied Queed. "That was for his whole crowd. I thought it was enough for one night's work."

"And you gave Chardelle the hundred thousand?"

"That's right. How else could it be handed to the winner?"

"Maybe it wasn't handed to the winner."

Selbert's comment was sound, as one witness could have testified. The calm-faced Mr. Cranston studied the police captain with well-concealed approval. That empty box which The Shadow had so kindly borrowed to relieve Howard Shorke from responsibilities, fitted perfectly with a theory that wasgrowing in Selbert's mind.

"You mean Chardelle was a double-crosser?" Big Queed came heavily to his big feet. "Say - if I thought he was -"

"Just what would you have done?" queried Selbert, as Queed paused, fuming.

"Gone in for murder?"

That question deflated Queed. He sank back so hard his chair creaked; then shook his head.

"Talk to Kip Tarlan," suggested Queed. "Murder is in his line, not mine.

"Yeah?" snarled Tarlan, without waiting to be prompted. "What gives you that idea, Fat Guy? You hired a lot of lugs to fake a carnival float and come around to take away the winner, only when you found you could get other boys cheaper, you took them instead."

"The first guys squawked to me and I figured they were right. The job was theirs, so I told them to take it. Maybe we would have asked this fellow Shorke for a nice hunk of his winnings, but why not? The way you'd squeezed profits from the Lottery, you could have afforded to pay him back."

From then on, Queed and Tarlan took the floor together and the committee let them have it. Queed had played the big shot and Tarlan was the muscler who had tried to nick the racket, so the more they argued, the more the facts. It developed that both were right, in that neither had wanted to go in for violence.

Tarlan's gang had managed Queed's hirelings quietly, but when the latter had been released, they were in a mood for revenge, not discretion. That accounted for the battle on the Humpty Dumpty float, though Queed tried to condone the behavior of his men by saying that they had been hired as private bodyguards and were therefore performing a public duty in going after Tarlan's high-jackers.

This cleared the local angles where the Lottery ring was concerned, but it meant that Queed and Tarlan would be turned over to the Federal authorities.

Along with them went an affidavit signed by Lamont Cranston, who had checked on the sale of lottery tickets in New York and who had come to New Orleans to learn if the sponsors of the illegal business really intended to go through with it.

Being so well acquainted with the lottery situation, Cranston automatically was invited to a discussion of the murder case which Captain Selbert was investigating. They went to Selbert's office, where along with several detectives, Jim reviewed Chardelle's death in detail.

On Selbert's desk were diagrams as exact as those which Cranston had drawn on a table-cloth that had later vanished along with a Columbine costume. As witnesses, Selbert had Shorke present, along with some of the guests who had gone to the Ball of Death.

"Big Queed is a rat," was Selbert's preamble, "but when a rat squeals, you can take his word. We know that Queed only talked to Chardelle. If Chardelle had wanted to grab the prize money, he wouldn't have stayed in New Orleans. So it wasn't Chardelle who pulled the double-cross."

"How do you know there was any double-cross?" put in Shorke, plaintively.

"They gave me the box with the prize money and somebody took it -"

"And that somebody was The Shadow," interrupted Selbert. "You've heard of him, haven't you?"

Shorke nodded. Then: "Maybe it was just somebody masquerading as The Shadow. Have you thought of that, Captain?" "I have," returned Selbert, "and I'm telling you right now that n.o.body but The Shadow could have staged what he did. And from all I've heard of The Shadow, if the cash was in that box, he'd have s.h.i.+pped it right here to my office, tied in ribbons with a thank-you note."

Selbert looked straight at Cranston, feeling he'd get a corroboration from this gentleman whose intelligence had already been acknowledged. Cranston didn't nod, but his calm reception of the statement seemed to certify it.

"Anyway, Chardelle was the link," continued Selbert, emphatically. "If that money turned up missing, he'd have to answer for it. Only Chardelle is dead, so he can't talk and we all know he was murdered by someone wearing a Mask of Mephisto.

"That brings us to another murder, done by the same killer. Henri Moubillard was slain probably because he knew who was wearing that costume. We saw the murderer double back toward the shop and we found the costume in the office. The killer cracked a trap door and went out by the roof."

It was so good a summary that Cranston didn't raise the objections that he could have. The fact that Ken Langdon, and not the murderer, had discarded the costume which the police found in Moubillard's office, was something for future consideration. Ken's costume was at present hanging in a corner of Selbert's own office, so the police captain gestured to it dramatically.

"And the man who wore that costume," announced Selbert, "was Frederick Ferrand, the King Satan of the Krewe of Hades! Frederick Ferrand is a double murderer!"

The door was flinging open as Selbert voiced that denunciation, and on the threshold stood a man in hunting costume whose glaring eyes were wilder than his unshaved face was woolly. With a bellow loud enough to be heard back among the bayous from which he had come, this arrival roared: "That's a lie, Selbert, and I'm here to prove it!"

CHAPTER X.

THEY were much alike, Fred Ferrand and Jim Selbert, although they differed on a question of murder. Specifically they differed on who had murdered whom, not who might want to murder whom.

For Ferrand was exhibiting the very inclinations that Selbert had attributed to him. Back from the bayou country, Ferrand had brought his shot-gun with him and in rough and ready style, he was shoving the double muzzles in Selbert's direction, with possible intent to let him have both barrels.