idle gesture, Cranston indicated a speedy roadster, parked near the remains of
the fence.
"I drove out from town," Cranston explained. "The chase started, just as I
was coming up your road. So I followed along and arrived here after the crash.
Suppose we help search for this man Conroy."
The search was a long one. It continued until after the wrecking car
arrived along a rough road through the gully and towed away the no-door coupe
that had once been Thorneau's pride. By then, Feds were on the scene, and their
information silenced Thorneau's protests concerning Chet's innocence.
Even Cranston's testimony regarding other cars, was valued at zero minus.
The Feds claimed that Chet must have called upon a cover-up crew, consisting of
unidentified accomplices. In snatching Thorneau's car, he'd run into his own
trap, only to shake it and encounter the State police instead. So the thing to
do was find Chet Conroy, since he couldn't be far away.
With the slope scoured, the hunt moved to the gully, but still Chet wasn't
found, much to the mystification of the State police, who swore that the
fugitive couldn't possibly have slipped through the cordon they established. The
only answer to that mystery was provided by Lamont Cranston, when he returned to
his roadster, to drive it to Thorneau's castle.
Alone, Cranston expressed his opinion of the riddle that concerned a
vanished victim named Chet Conroy. From the lips of Lamont Cranston came the
whispered laugh of The Shadow!
CHAPTER VIII
CHET FINDS A JOB
WHEN he opened his eyes, Chet Conroy wondered what was happening at the
Pyrolac plant. It was broad daylight and a fearful clatter was going on outside
his window. Only it wasn't his window as Chet learned when he sat up, and felt
his thickly bandaged head.
Chet was on a cot, and the window revealed a scene that certainly wasn't
the Pyrolac yard. Such a mess of junk was something that Chet could hardly have
pictured. He was looking at a mountain of it: tin cans, old farming implements,
battered garbage cans, fenders and bodies of automobiles. As if the pile needed
more of such useless stuff, a big truck was unloading an additional supply,
which accounted for the clatter.
Chet stared until the glitter of the sunlight made him blink. He was
rubbing his hand across his eyes, to offset the glare of the reflected metal,
when a girl's voice spoke from his shoulder:
"Feeling better?"
The voice couldn't possibly be wrong. It was so friendly, so genuine, and
withal so assured, that Chet could actually picture the girl while he was
turning to look at her. She belonged to the voice; that was apparent at a
glance, the same glance that told Chet he was right.
A rounded face, that smiled with its eyebrows instead of its lips. Not that
anything was wrong with those lips. They could probably smile too, if they
wanted, but they were occupied in speaking a casual question. As for the nose
between the smiling eyebrows and the straight lips, it was shapely and a trifle
