the room. His companion sprang forward to look at the dead man.
"Where did that shot come from?" growled Cardona. "Somebody clipped him
right when we needed it most. Wasn't any of us -"
He paused as his gaze took in the opened window. Cardona motioned his
companion back toward the doorway, while he himself slipped along the wall and
approached the blackened casement.
True, the single shot had saved Cardona's life; but had the man who fired
it intended to aid the detective or hinder him? Cardona had seen shots like
that go astray through strange twists of luck.
While his brother officer, now wary, covered the window, Cardona stepped
boldly to the balcony. All appeared dark outside. Deep fog blanketed the street.
Peering down into the gloom, Cardona made out a balcony on the floor
below. Then there was a drop to the street. A swift, agile man could have
escaped that way.
Through the fog, a street lamp showed the sidewalk below the balcony. A
uniformed policeman dashed into the lamplight, staring upward. Evidently he had
been attracted by the sound of the gunfire.
Cardona shouted down to him. The patrolman recognized the brusque voice of
the detective, the most widely known of all headquarters men.
"Any one down there?" demanded Cardona.
"No," came the officer's reply.
"Look under the balcony."
"No one there."
"Send for the wagon, then. We've got a dead one up here."
The policeman hurried away toward the patrol box, at the corner. Cardona
peered downward; then shrugged his shoulders and went back to look at the body
of Hawk Forster.
IN the patch of light upon the sidewalk, a splotch of blackness appeared.
It wavered there while a man emerged from a spot beside the dark wall of the
old hotel.
The darkness disappeared as a tall form flitted across the street and
merged with the misty light. Through the thickness of the fog resounded the
tones of a weird, chilling laugh.
Joe Cardona, viewing the body from the window, heard that laugh. It
awakened a responsive chord in the detective's mind. His forehead furrowed as
he caught the hint echoes of sinister mirth.
The laugh of The Shadow!
Cardona knew that laugh. It had come to his ears at other times, when he
had been miraculously saved from death at the hands of evildoers. To Cardona,
the weird merriment brought enlightenment.
He knew now that he had been brought here by The Shadow. He knew the
source of the telephone call that had told him where Hawk Forster, wanted
murderer, could be found.
A quiet voice had spoken to Cardona over the phone - not the voice of The
Shadow. But Cardona had cause to believe that the avenger of crime employed
trusted subordinates.
The Shadow! He had spotted, captured and thwarted Hawk Forster, the
killer. It was one more token of The Shadow's relentless war against crime;
