ROAD OF CRIME
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," October 1, 1933.
The Road of Crime. It leads through various ways - but in the end it comes
to The Shadow, creature of justice and vengeance!
CHAPTER I
A GENTLEMAN OF CRIME
"UXTRY! Uxtry! Read about the big bank holdups!"
Graham Wellerton stopped as he heard the newsboy's cry. He proffered a few
pennies and received the final edition of a New York evening newspaper. He
glanced at the headlines as he walked along in the bright illumination of
Forty-second Street, then thrust the sheet under his arm as he entered a subway
kiosk.
While he waited on the platform for an uptown local, Graham Wellerton
again surveyed the headlines. His eyes ran rapidly down the columns.
After a few short minutes of swift perusal, the man quickly learned that
no new clews had been gained by the police relative to the crimes that had
struck at noon that day.
Subway riders were reading their newspapers with avid interest when Graham
Wellerton boarded his local and took a seat in a corner. His own newspaper
tucked under his arm, Graham surveyed the composite crowd in the car and
wondered what their varied reactions might be concerning the chief news of the
day.
For New York sensation seekers had been treated to a contrast. The columns
in the evening journals were, in themselves, food for a grim debate on crime.
Was crime profitable? One news account said no; the other said yes.
Two hordes of bank bandits had struck at noon, in different parts of
Manhattan. Those who had invaded the Parkerside Trust Company had been routed
in a spontaneous fray which had left half a dozen mobsters dead and wounded.
But those who had entered the Terminal National Bank had gained swift success.
With the aid of tear gas, they had eliminated tellers and bank patrons. The
robbers had escaped unscathed with thousands of dollars in currency.
STUDYING his fellow passengers, Graham Wellerton placed them in two
definite classes. One group, he felt, consisted of those who gloried in the
victory over crime - who gained high satisfaction in the outcome of the fray at
the Parkerside Trust.
The others, Graham decided, were those who held a secret envy for robbers
who had looted the Terminal National and had made so perfect a get-away.
Idly, Graham played a game of human analysis. He noted the people who were
reading about the thwarted robbery. Most of them possessed an air of stability.
Those who were eagerly perusing the accounts of the successful raid, however,
