As long as return shots were hasty, they couldn't find The Shadow, the way
he weaved to all portions of the thoroughly illuminated yard. From wall to wall,
he seemed to ricochet like the leaden slugs that were missing him. Watching Feds
and watchmen go wide with their fire, Marquette saw and appreciated the chief
item of The Shadow's uncanny skill.
It was this: Whenever a gun talked toward The Shadow, he spotted it
instantly, or sooner. Whether by sight, hearing, or sheer instinct, the cloaked
fighter was a human direction finder. It was weird enough, the way The Shadow
wheeled and picked out marksmen the moment they fired, purposely missing them by
scant inches in return for shots a few feet wide.
But when Marquette saw The Shadow's jabs literally point the way to aiming
sharpshooters before they fired, Vic was ready to believe the most fanciful
things that he had ever heard regarding this cloaked superfighter. Those shots
were most effective, since they put The Shadow's foemen entirely off stride.
Watching the scattered gunners scoot, Marquette kept thinking what it would be
like if they were crooks. Had The Shadow been seeking hits, the yard would be a
shambles by this time.
How it would end was Marquette's worry. It really was Vic's worry when it
did end. Spinning suddenly from a corner of the yard, The Shadow left a batch of
converging searchlight beams behind him. Sweeping after The Shadow, those big
lights picked the exit from the shipping room where Marquette was standing with
a cluster of spectators including Biggs and Thorneau.
They saw blackness when they blinked, for it was right among them. A swirl
of living blackness that scattered the men who grabbed for it. If any of that
group held the false impression that Chet Conroy had somehow became the cloaked
figure, they were immediately disillusioned. The Shadow went through them like a
human tornado, without a hand being laid upon him.
Smart technique, The Shadow's. Men were grappling, shouting so loudly above
the dwindling sirens, that Marquette piled into their midst, thinking they'd
clutched The Shadow, and were suppressing him too forcefully. But there wasn't a
trace of slippery blackness in the entire throng. The Shadow had simply spun
these antagonists against each other, leaving them at mutual grips while he
himself had gone.
Naturally, the shooting was over. Some of the Feds and watchmen had emptied
their guns; the rest couldn't aim into the human tangle at the shipping room
door. Arriving there on the run, astonished marksmen not only found The Shadow
gone, but were nonplused by Marquette's order to give up the chase.
It took Vic a few minutes to explain that they still wanted Chet Conroy;
not The Shadow. Sending them on the proper hunt, Marquette emphasized that The
Shadow represented justice, not crime. Rather a paradox that statement,
considering that Chet, wanted for crime, had escaped because of The Shadow's
interference.
For when the searchers scoured the yard, the searchlights going with them,
they couldn't find a trace of the young chemist whose flight had practically
branded him as the man responsible for ruining at least a hundred thousand
dollars' worth of special lacquer desperately needed by essential industries.
That paradox should have explained itself to Vic Marquette when he heard a
trailing laugh from some window of the Pyrolac factory. To Vic, that departing
mirth was a token only of The Shadow's escape, not to be connected with the
singular disappearance of Chet Conroy.
