GREEN EYES
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," October 1, 1932.
Why had the master detective, who menaced evildoers of the East, followed
a trail of death to San Francisco? Had he unraveled the mystery of Stephen
Laird's gruesome murder? Only The Shadow knew!
CHAPTER I
THE MARK OF DEATH
THE MOUNTAIN LIMITED was clicking slowly over the rails that trail through
the highest and wildest land in America - the western slope of the Rockies.
Speed was cut down as the big special labored toward the highest point on its
line - nearly seven thousand feet above sea level.
Midnight had struck.
Outside, the gloomy mountains hung over the track; seemed about to close
in on it, and wipe out the train and all its passengers.
Within the club car of the train, only a handful of men remained in the
comfortable chairs.
All of these were dozing away, with the exception of one who sat at the
end of the car, puffing furiously at a pipe that was no longer alight. His lips
twitched, his eyes blinked furiously, and every time one of his dozing
companions stirred, he whirled around quickly, as though the sound had some
hideous portent.
Pulling a watch from his pocket, he gave it a hurried glance, then allowed
his eyes to wander around the car. Satisfied that no one was observing him, he
crossed quickly to the writing desk.
His hand shook, partly from nervousness and partly from the swaying of the
train. Making no effort to control the blotching of the pen, he pushed it
rapidly across the paper. There was something furtive in his haste.
Finally he signed his name - Stephen Laird - and blotted the letter. Just
then one of the other men in the car mumbled something drowsily, and Laird
thrust the letter into his pocket. He leaned back and assumed an air of
nonchalance that was obviously false.
For a minute he sat there, tensely posed in an attitude of ease. Then, he
took the sheet of letter paper from his pocket, and laid it on the desk.
Rapidly Laird addressed an envelope, blotted it, put the letter in, and
stamped it. The glue from the stamp smeared over his lower lip as he licked it
with sharp, uncertain movements.
Stephen Laird jumped up from the desk, and started to walk forward in the
car. Suddenly he stopped, went back to the writing desk, and, picking up the
blotter that he had used, thrust it into his pocket.
It was a new sheet of white blotting paper, and had retained an almost
perfect reproduction of what Laird had written. Drops of sweat appeared upon
his forehead, as though in horror at a near escape.
