bullets stinging the road behind him, Chet took a wild veer from the turnpike.
He hit the dirt of an old road and bounced. He thought he was going to bounce
right over the rail fence by the roadside, but he didn't. Instead, the coupe
split the fence to tinder, landed upside down, and began a long, leaping roll
down a hillside that resembled a ravine. Dully, Chet heard the final crash.
FUNNY, that the smash should seem so far away. Odd, too, that the
flashlights were going past Chet, instead of stopping around him. Maybe this was
what it was like to be dead. You just stayed wherever you were killed, and your
body kept on going.
Up above, another car was stopping on the dirt road. Its lights snuffed out
and left blackness. Maybe that meant that Chet's eyes had ceased to function.
Horrified, he stared below, and saw the flashlights, deep in the gully.
Then voices. The cops were talking it over. The wrecked car was empty,
which meant that its driver had dropped out of it. Those turret tops were tough,
but doors weren't. They ought to make them stronger. But that wasn't the
business of the State police. Their job was to find the guy who had been doing
the shooting.
The guy in question was starting a crawl. Numbly, Chet realized he was
still alive, somewhere on the rocky slope. All the while, he could hear the
chatter of the State police, divided between himself and Thorneau's car. They'd
find the guy and have the wreck towed to a junkyard. Only if Chet could keep on
going, they would not find the guy.
A weird laugh hissed close to Chet's ear. Ghostly mirth that literally
numbed him. A whispered tone spoke his name; mechanically, Chet answered. Funny,
the way his friends kept moving in a circle. First The Shadow, next Thorneau,
then Chet himself. And now The Shadow, beginning the cycle all over again.
That car he'd met just before the crooks spotted him. The Shadow must have
been its driver. He'd trailed along, ready to pick up what was left of Chet,
after the crooks and cops were through with him. There was plenty left of Chet,
though he was very, very dazed. He let The Shadow lift him to his feet and steer
him into blackness, by the easiest route, which was downward, away from those
flashlights coming up the slope.
More cars were arriving on the scene, among them a limousine bringing
Humphrey Thorneau. Clambering up the hill after a futile hunt, the State
patrolmen recognized Thorneau and learned that the wrecked car belonged to him.
When Thorneau added that its driver was Chet Conroy, the police decided to renew
the search along the hillside, this time in earnest.
"I want Conroy found," asserted Thorneau. Then, to make his reason plain,
he added: "He may be innocent of that sabotage charge. Give him a chance to
surrender if you find him alive. I can't understand why he stole my car and
fled, unless he has a persecution complex."
"Speaking of your car, Mr. Thorneau," put in a patrolman, "I'd say it
belonged to a junkyard, one hundred percent."
"Then summon a wrecker," said Thorneau. "He can send me a salvage statement
later. If you will excuse me, I must return to the station, to meet a friend."
A quiet voice spoke from Thorneau's elbow. He turned to see the friend he
expected: Lamont Cranston. Thorneau was more than puzzled; he was baffled. Nor
did the cryptic smile on Cranston's hawkish face enlighten him. Then, with an
