 
                                CITY OF GHOSTS
                               by Maxwell Grant

     As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," November 15, 1939.

     The Shadow becomes a living ghost. Can he uncover the terrible menace in
this city that died?


     CHAPTER I

     THE CITY THAT DIED

     THE passengers aboard the Silver Bullet stared from the windows in
surprise, when the sleek streamliner glided to a stop at Pomelo Junction.
Except for a dilapidated station, there was no sign of human habitation.
     As for the branch line that connected there, its track was nothing but a
double streak of rust curving off to nowhere through the Florida pine woods.
     Its pause no more than momentary, the Silver Bullet was moving south
again. Persons at the observation window glimpsed the tall passenger who had
alighted, standing with his bags beside him. Then he, like the station, was
gone from sight, as the streamliner whirled past a main-line bend.
     Back on the weather-beaten platform, Lamont Cranston smiled as a rattly
touring car jounced up to the station. Its driver, beefy-faced and
shirt-sleeved, clambered out to meet the arrival. He took a look at the bags
and the hawk-faced gentleman who owned them, then queried:
     "You're Mr. Cranston?"
     Cranston's reply was a quiet acknowledgment.
     The beefy-faced man introduced himself as Seth Woodley, and gestured
toward his rattletrap car. Cranston saw the word "Taxi" on a printed label that
was stuck to the windshield.
     "I'm from Leesville, the county seat," vouchsafed Woodley. "That's where
they sent your telegram. They said you were fixing to get off at Pomelo
Junction and would need a taxi."
     "Quite right," returned Cranston. Then, as Woodley was putting the bags in
the car: "How long will it take you to drive me to Pomelo City?"
     A satchel dropped from Woodley's hand as the fellow turned about. His eyes
squinted in the late afternoon sun. The same glow brought a glisten from the
gold fillings in his back teeth, so wide was his gape.
     "You're fixing to go to Pomelo City?"
     "I am, if you can take me there," replied Cranston, calmly. "Since the
branch line has been abandoned" - he was looking toward the rusted track - "I
presume that the highway is the only route to Pomelo City."
     Woodley's jaw clicked shut. Grimly, he gestured Cranston into the car;
then took the wheel. They rattled off along a well-paved highway, with Woodley
driving in silence.


     CRANSTON'S eyes were taking in the scenery. The ground differed somewhat
from other areas of Florida, for this was a "hammock" region, the term derived
from small ridges, or hammocks. The slopes were well wooded with pine, while
gullies showed clusters of cypress, indicating swampland.
     In fact, as the scene progressed, it improved. The car rolled past
fenced-off orange groves, with sprinklings of other citrus trees. Fertile
slopes showed rows of young tuna trees, promising future profits to their
owners.
     It was not until Woodley slowed his car to take a side road, that the
reason for the fellow's grimness became apparent.
     Then Cranston saw a battered sign pointing to Pomelo City, the name
scarcely legible. He observed the road ahead - a single lane highway of red
brick. The road, itself, was proof that something was wrong with Pomelo City.
     Brick highways dated years back. Built in single lanes, they forced
passing cars to turn out along the sand shoulders. When traffic warranted, they
were widened, by concrete strips on either side.
     This road had not rated such improvement. On the contrary, it had been
allowed to deteriorate. Grass was sprouting up among the bricks; in some cases,
there were gaps in the wabbly, irregular surface.
     Woodley took those bumps as a matter of course, even though they shook the
chassis of his ancient car. There were times, though, when he yanked the wheel
frantically, to avoid an actual catastrophe. Those were the times when he spied
bricks that were upended in the paving.
     Along the fringes of that grass-sprouting road, Cranston soon spied scenes
of true desolation. One slope showed a pitiful array of withered stalks that had
once been promising tuna trees. A level field displayed sawed-off stumps that
represented a former citrus grove.
     "The Medfly got those trees," spoke Woodley, gloomily. "They had to chop
'em down. A funny thing, the Medfly. No more trouble from it anywhere in
Florida, except around Pomelo City."
     They were approaching a bend where the tilted, broken roof of a farmhouse
poked up from the ground level. Woodley nudged his thumb in the direction of
the new exhibit.
     "A sinkhole," he said. "Lots of 'em start around here, but the ground
don't usually cave right underneath a house, like it did there. That only
happens near Pomelo City."
     Cranston's gaze was fixed toward the ruin, as if he wanted to observe the
sinkhole itself. Woodley gave a chuckle, slowed the car as they completed the
curve.
     "Here's a real sinkhole for you, Mr. Cranston!" he said. "Plumb in the
middle of the road. That's one reason why nobody drives over here any more."
     He was taking a sandy detour that skirted the sinkhole. Cranston saw the
hollow from the brink. The sinkhole looked like the shallow crater of an
extinct volcano. Measuring a hundred feet across, it showed ground that had
sunk twenty feet.
     The cavity was lined with sand, except where gaunt stretches of broken
limestone showed a miniature cliff formation. Mixed with the sand at the bottom
of the sinkhole were trunks of small trees and chunks of paving.
     "When the rainy season comes," announced Woodley, as he swung from the
detour, back to the brick road, "that sinkhole will fill up. Right now, we're
having a drought, and it's been harder on Pomelo City than anywhere else. See
that grapefruit grove?"
     Cranston saw the grove, but needed Woodley's statement to recognize that
the trees had ever borne grapefruit. The grove was barren; like the fruit, all
leaves were gone. The trees, themselves, seemed wilted.
     "They tried to save it," said Woodley, glumly, "by pumping water from the
lake. Only, the lake went dry. Yes, sir, the bottom dropped plumb out of it,
like it has with Pomelo City!"


     THE lake came into sight. It was nothing but a pitiful expanse of caked
clay, that gave off the odor of rotted fish. Cracks in the clay denoted
limestone cavities, that had opened when the water level sank. Those gaps had
sucked the lake dry.
     Beyond a thinned woods appeared Florida's symbol of a town: a large water
tank set on three tall legs. That tower, with its conical roof, was Cranston's
first view of Pomelo City.
     At a distant view, it was quite the same as many other man-made reservoirs
that Cranston had seen while a passenger upon the streamliner. It was different
though, when the car came closer.
     Then, the rust of the supporting tripod was visible. The scarred tank
showed its lack of paint. Gaps could be seen in the cone that topped it. Odd
blackish splotches showed near the uppermost point. Woodley pressed in the
clutch pedal, raced the old motor to a roar.
     Immediately, the blotches took to wing. They were buzzards. Frightened by
the noise of the approaching car, the huge birds circled away from the water
tank. Their actions showed that they intended to return to their roost when the
car had passed.
     "You can't fool a buzzard," declared Woodley. "They know when anything has
died. They know that Pomelo City is dead, even though people are staying there
because they won't believe it! You'll see for yourself, Mr. Cranston."
     The car struck the short main street. It jolted over broken layers of
concrete, which were matched by the remnants of shattered cement sidewalk that
lined the ruined thoroughfare. On either side were crumpling buildings that had
once been stores.
     Some had boarded-up fronts, as weather-beaten as the station platform at
the junction. Others simply displayed gaps, instead of show windows. Between
the sidewalks and the crumbled curbs were frowsy brown-leaved palm trees that
looked on the verge of collapse.
     Passing a ruin that had once been a theater, Woodley drew up in front of a
stucco-walled building that looked like a three-story blockhouse. Above the
entrance was a sign proclaiming the place to be the Pomelo Hotel.
     Alighting, Woodley carried the bags into a lobby that was furnished with
tumble-down wicker chairs. While the taxi driver was shouting for the
proprietor, Cranston eyed the hotel register.
     It bore the proprietor's name, Martin Welf, at the top; otherwise, the
page was blank, indicating that the hotel had no guests.
     Welf arrived at Woodley's shouts. The proprietor was a portly, baldish
man, who stuttered in bewildered fashion when he learned that Lamont Cranston
intended to become a guest.
     When Cranston had registered, Welf picked up the bags and started toward
the stairway. He was obviously a one-man staff: clerk and bellboy, as well as
hotel owner.
     Woodley grunted thanks, when Cranston handed him a ten-dollar bill as taxi
fare and said that change would not be necessary. Plucking his passenger's
sleeve, Woodley confided:
     "Maybe you won't like it here, Mr. Cranston. I'll tell you what I'm fixing
to do. Sheriff Harley has allowed that he ought to come over here some night on
account of talk he's heard, about some folks starting trouble. I'll offer to
make the trip this evening."
     Welf was calling wheezily from the second floor: "Right this way, Mr.
Cranston!"
     "So if it ain't to your liking," added Woodley, quickly, "you can go back
to Leesville with me, later tonight, Mr. Cranston."
     Nodding his thanks, Cranston turned toward the stairway, wearing a smile
that Woodley did not see. At the top of the stairs, Welf was waiting at the
open door of a front room. He announced, apologetically, that the hotel chef
had left, but that he could supply sandwiches and coffee if Cranston wanted
dinner.
     "I dined on the train," Cranston told him. "I hope, however, that the cook
will soon return. I intend to stay in Pomelo City a long while, Mr. Welf."


     HIS eyes wide with amazement, Welf backed from the room. Cranston locked
the door and strolled to the front window. He saw Woodley's old car go bouncing
away, watched it take the winding road from town.
     Buzzards flapped up from the water tower as the car went past. Circling
against the darkening sky, they returned to their roost. By then, Woodley's car
had dwindled into the dusk. Cranston's last contact with the outer world was
gone.
     As Cranston watched the street below, feeble street lights flickered into
being. They were pitifully dim, those lights, as they glowed through the dried
clumps of leaves that hung from the drooping branches of the dead palm trees.
They looked weak enough for a puff of wind to extinguish them.
     Turning from the window, Cranston stepped to a chair, where Welf had
placed a satchel. Opening the bag, he drew out a black cloak and slid it over
his shoulders.
     With that action, Lamont Cranston seemed to disappear, except for his
hawkish face, which remained, like a floating mask, above the chair.
     Next came a slouch hat. When he had clamped it on his head, Cranston's
face was also gone. His hands merged with the gloom, like the rest of him, for
he was encasing them in thin black gloves. Blended with the semidarkness,
Lamont Cranston had become The Shadow.
     A strange being that belonged to blackness, The Shadow had begun the
mission that had brought him to Pomelo City. He had become a living ghost in a
city that had died!


     CHAPTER II

     GHOSTS IN THE NIGHT

     A TINY flashlight glimmered in the darkness. Its rays fell upon a batch of
newspaper clippings spread upon a bureau so shaky that it wabbled at the
slightest touch. In the increasing darkness of his hotel room, The Shadow was
reviewing the facts that accounted for his visit to Pomelo City.
     News of the town's plight had filtered to the outside world, but in such
small and occasional dribbles that no one, other than The Shadow, had sensed
the full import of what had happened to the place.
     Singly, the clippings meant very little. They mentioned things that The
Shadow had seen first-hand, today: the scourge of the Mediterranean fruit fly;
the appearance of some sinkholes; the drying up of a lake.
     Besides these were accounts of cattle epidemic, which had fortunately
faded out; a reappearance of the supposedly extinct black wolf, which had once
roamed wild in Florida; finally, reports of accidents that constituted a common
sort - hunters shot by mistake, and automobiles wrecked through chance
collisions.
     Added up, these facts produced a definite total. Hundreds of people had
found absolute reason to move from the vicinity of Pomelo City. Citrus growers,
farmers, even the native "crackers" of the backwoods, had met with circumstances
that deprived them of livelihood and security.
     Their exodus had caused townspeople to depart. Dependent upon the trade of
the surrounding territory, Pomelo City had no longer been a prosperous place.
The abandonment of the branch railroad, the collapse of the highway that linked
the town to the world, were added occurrences dooming Pomelo City to oblivion.
     Threaded through that change of circumstances lay a more insidious factor:
that of tragedy. Over a year or more, the toll of life had been heavy.
Curiously, the toll had been on the increase, as the total population dwindled.
Hunting accidents, automobile crashes, had occurred in recent months.
     Beneath all this, The Shadow saw the operation of an evil hand, one not
content to let Pomelo City linger toward its finish. Harder, and repeated
strokes had been delivered. Because of them, Pomelo City could aptly be termed
dead.
     The tiny flashlight went black. Stepping to the window, The Shadow gazed
upon the street below, where night had fully encroached upon scrawny palms,
until the feeble lights were merely flickery twinkles in the midst of thick
darkness.
     With death, the town had become a city of ghosts. That term applied to The
Shadow, the only stranger present. It also fitted Pomelo City's few remaining
inhabitants.
     Martin Welf, the hotel proprietor, was one. In the face of adversity, he
was carrying on with a business that was little short of hopeless.
     Whether it had guests or not, the Pomelo Hotel actually required a
fair-sized personnel, merely to keep up appearances. Alone, Welf was handling a
dozen jobs, in the place of employees who had deserted him.


     ACROSS the street, The Shadow saw two building fronts that flanked an
abandoned arcade. Both places had lighted windows. One was a real estate
office, that bore the name of "Chester Tilyon, Realtor."
     At a desk visible through the window sat a haggard man with gray-streaked
hair, who kept looking toward the street, as if dreaming of long-past days when
people actually bought houses and rented property in Pomelo City.
     The other building was a department store. What stock it still had, mostly
cheap clothes and farming implements, was confined to the show windows on the
ground floor. Inside, a few lights showed barren counters.
     Standing in the doorway was the man whose name appeared above: "Louis
Bayne." His clothes were no advertisement for the wares he sold, for his attire
was shabby, and too large for him. From the drawn appearance of Bayne's face,
The Shadow decided that the man was half starved.
     In hope of selling the new clothes that he still had in stock, Bayne was
wearing his old ones. Worry, as well as poverty, had caused him to shrink from
a man of bulk to a creature that could pass as a living skeleton. Two cars were
on the street. Both were of expensive makes, but very old. Tilyon's car, parked
near the real-estate office, appeared to be in fair condition; but Bayne's
antiquated sedan was scarcely more than a wreck. One fender was gone; the
radiator shell was badly bashed. Moreover, the car bore added scars, such as a
dented door, that denoted a recent accident.
     The sheer shabbiness of the desolate scene made it seem that nothing could
stir up action. Remembering the buzzards on the water tower, The Shadow could
picture the huge birds watching Tilyon and Bayne, hoping that one or the other
would soon die on his feet. Both men seemed to be waiting for something that
could never happen, either in their favor, or against it.
     Then a motor's rumble announced the unexpected. An old touring car rambled
into sight along the main street, scraped against a leaning palm tree, and
disgorged four rough-dressed men. Visitors had come to Pomelo City.
     They were men from the backwoods, the sort who came to town on Saturday
night. Two of them approached Bayne's store and began to look at the show
windows, while the proprietor eyed them anxiously. These men weren't customers;
that became apparent when they turned their attention to Bayne's car.
     The Shadow saw Tilyon get up from the desk in the real-estate office, to
see what was going on. A moment later, Welf appeared at the front of the hotel.
     There was a challenge in the air: something that indicated ill feeling
between the local business men and the crackers who had come to town. Each
group seemed completely concerned with the other; perhaps with special design.
     For The Shadow, watching from the window higher up, saw something that the
men below did not notice; a thing, perhaps, which one faction might have chosen
that the others should not observe.
     A car had pulled into the rear street beyond the abandoned arcade. The
Shadow caught the glimmer of its lights, just before they were extinguished.
The very fact that the unheralded arrivals had chosen to come by a deserted
back street, aroused The Shadow's immediate interest.


     LEAVING his room, The Shadow moved rapidly toward the red light that
denoted exit onto a fire escape. Descending, he arrived in a little courtyard
at the side of the hotel, next to the old theater. Gliding through a narrow
archway, he reached the front sidewalk.
     Crossing the street was no problem to The Shadow. The dry-leaved palm
trees threw shrouding darkness that offset the flickering street lights. It was
simply a case of choosing the swiftest route to the desired destination.
     Taking a wide route to circle the buildings opposite, The Shadow was a
living ghost, blanketed in darkness. He rapidly reached the street in back of
the arcade.
     Darkness was thick, but by zigzagging along the narrow rear street, The
Shadow expected to find the car that had pulled up behind the arcade. Instead,
he reached a corner beyond Bayne's store without encountering anything. The
fact meant that the car must have crept ahead without lights.
     Feeling for the building wall, The Shadow retraced his steps, using his
flashlight guardedly.
     He came upon evidence at the back of Bayne's store: a door with a broken
padlock. Though cheap, the padlock was a new one; it had probably been smashed
within the past few minutes. Whoever had done the deed had entered the store,
and should certainly still be inside.
     Easing the door inward, The Shadow entered. He did not have to worry about
the opening door betraying him. His flashlight was extinguished, and he had a
background of perfect darkness. But the men who had already entered were less
fortunately placed.
     By the dim light from the front of the store, The Shadow could see them;
three in number. They were crouched figures, creeping about among the unused
counters, sprinkling something on the floor. The odor of kerosene was only too
evident. Incendiaries were at work here, while Bayne, the storekeeper, was
occupied out front.
     Using creeping tactics of his own, The Shadow reached beneath his cloak
and plucked an automatic from a holster that he had worn even before reaching
Pomelo City. Whatever dirty work this tribe was up to, they were due for a
surprise before they finished it.
     As they were skirting back toward the rear door, The Shadow came into
their very midst. The unknown men had him surrounded without knowing it, which
was exactly what The Shadow wanted.
     With counters forming an excellent shelter, The Shadow set finger upon the
button of his flashlight. He was ready to press it, to throw a sweeping ray of
thin, sharp light about the group. His lips prepared to voice a sinister laugh,
The Shadow intended to take these antagonists unawares.
     If they wanted battle, he was in the right position to return it; to their
sorrow, not his own. The Shadow was entrenched among the counters, and he had a
clear path of fire toward the rear door, should the marauders seek it when they
fled.
     A sound made The Shadow pause. It was a creak of that very door; the one
that he, too, had entered. None of the prowling men could have reached it;
evidently, a fourth man had arrived.
     Whispers sounded in the darkness, but they were wordless. The newcomer had
simply passed a signal for the others to join him.
     At that moment, it seemed policy to wait, since the actions of the
prowlers were deliberate. The whispered signal had sounded like a mere
preliminary to something more to come. So it was; but the coming action was the
climax.
     An object swished through the darkness, straight for The Shadow's head.
Chucked blindly from the doorway, it almost found a target that the thrower did
not know existed. With an action as rapid as it was instinctive, The Shadow
flattened among the counters to escape the unseen missile.
     The thing struck the floor beside a counter which, fortunately, sheltered
The Shadow. As it landed, the object exploded with a forceful puff that shook
the floor of Bayne's dilapidated store and made the counters quiver.
     Though the blast was not heavy, the consequences were. The bursting bomb
spurted liquid fire in every direction. The flames encountered pools of
kerosene, licked up the inflammable liquid in one mighty gulp.
     In a single instant, the whole rear of the store was lighted like a
furious inferno, a mass that was rising ceiling high, with The Shadow trapped
in its very midst!


     CHAPTER III

     BROKEN BATTLE

     THE same instinct which had saved The Shadow from the bomb, was the factor
that preserved him from the flames. Had he risen at the moment when the furious
hell broke loose, he would have been ignited like a human torch.
     Instead, he sprawled on the floor, his cloak sleeve drawn across his eyes.
The lash of the roaring flame whipped above him, finding other tinder instead.
The intervening counters took the blaze, leaving an air pocket in between them.
     Though the seconds were few, they seemed interminable. During those
moments, The Shadow could actually see the flame through his closed eyelids. He
held his breath, for he could feel the scorch of the blistering fire that swept
above him. Then, as his ears detected a louder crackle, he knew that his brief
opportunity had come.
     Liquid flame had spent itself. The counters and other woodwork were taking
fire. Coming to his feet, The Shadow saw licking tongues of red; but the circle
was incomplete. There were gaps between the counter ends, that offered
temporary paths clear to the rear doorway.
     Lurching, The Shadow started an amazing, twisty course. The flames had
found new fuel, but they were too late to stop him. Their glare revealed the
cloaked figure that was escaping them; but otherwise, they did not harm The
Shadow as he zigzagged toward the rear door. Yet, in disclosing The Shadow's
presence, the flames did damage enough.
     Bayne, faced toward the rear of the store, saw The Shadow. So did the
astonished crackers who stood out front. They yelled to their companions, who
came running with shotguns, just as Bayne whipped out a revolver, to aim in The
Shadow's direction.
     Beyond the flames, The Shadow was lost from Bayne's sight before the
shrunken storekeeper could fire. But the men at the rear door were quick enough
to recognize The Shadow as a foe. Themselves fleeing from the renewed blaze,
they considered it a good place for The Shadow to stay. Fortunately, the shots
that they fired were too hasty to score a hit.
     Then The Shadow's drawn gun was busy, and the men at the rear were in new
flight. Responding to their leader's yell, they dashed along the back street,
diving for their car. Guns across their shoulders, they blasted at The Shadow
as he lurched out through the exit.
     As guns barked, The Shadow took a long sprawl. Landing shoulder first, he
rolled across the street, beyond the area of light that came from the opened
door. His foeman thought they had dropped him. Their guess was wrong.
     The Shadow's dive was calculated. He wanted a spot where blackness would
protect him from the shots that he knew would come. The next token that
disclosed The Shadow's presence was a spurt from his own automatic. On hands
and knees, he was answering the gunfire in swift, effective style.
     A howl told that one foeman had fallen. Quick-witted pals yanked the
fellow around the building corner. Another must have been clipped during the
process, for there was every indication of delay while The Shadow was coming to
his feet. Making for the corner, the cloaked fighter flattened against the wall,
poked his gun past the building edge.
     The wall was hot. Flames were roaring through the roof of Bayne's doomed
store. The rising light was sufficient for The Shadow to pick out human
targets, had there been any. But despite their delay with wounded comrades, his
foemen had reached their car.
     All that The Shadow had to shoot at was a taillight, as it whisked between
two buildings on the other side of the narrow cross street. Speeding to the
space in question, The Shadow caught another fleeting flash of the fleeing car
as it whipped around a turn.
     Pursuit of the firebrands was useless, but battle still offered. Shots
were sounding from the front street. Speeding beside the outer wall of Bayne's
burning store, The Shadow arrived at the front corner just in time to witness a
sad tragedy.
     Bayne, an emptied revolver in his hand, was wavering on the sidewalk in
front of his blazing building. The men with the shotguns were spread among the
palm trees; their shots had found the shrunken storekeeper.


     IT was the hope of saving Bayne that caused The Shadow to swing into
sight. One of the armed men spotted him and shouted. Instantly, all were
driving for The Shadow, firing the few shells that they still had left.
     Wheeling for cover, The Shadow escaped the hasty shots, but he knew that
his heroic effort had not succeeded.
     As he swung back around the corner, The Shadow caught a last glimpse of
Bayne, diving forward to the sidewalk. The shotguns had finished him.
     Circumstances still called for the unexpected, and The Shadow provided it.
As his new assailants rounded the corner, they were startled by the sudden
attack that the black-cloaked fighter provided. Hurling himself into the midst
of them, The Shadow began cross slashes with his automatic, using his free arm
to ward off the clubbing blows of shotguns.
     Fully supposing that The Shadow would be in flight, the crackers were
taken totally off guard. Their shotguns were bashed from their hands; stooping,
The Shadow snatched up one of the lost weapons, used it to swing wide, sweeping
blows that covered a wide range.
     Welf and Tilyon, stooped above Bayne's body, were amazed when they saw
four men come staggering around the corner, warding off imaginary blows.
Neither Welf nor Tilyon spied The Shadow. His opponents in flight, the cloaked
fighter was taking off to darkness, carrying a bundle of shotguns with him.
     Two cars were rolling in along the main street. The driver of one saw the
men who staggered from the corner; he drove ahead, intending to find what lay
beyond. The men in the second car piled out to see what could be done about the
blazing building.
     By that time, The Shadow was gone. Picking a roundabout route, he crossed
the street a half block from the burning store. The men who were looking for
him had gone in the opposite direction; a quick path back to the hotel seemed a
simple matter, and would have been, if another carload of backwoods residents
had not bowled in from a side street.
     Caught between the background of the conflagration and a pair of
flickering headlights, The Shadow was again human game for another batch of
misguided natives who carried shotguns; but this time, the weapons were fully
loaded. As before, his only course was close range action, and he took it.
     Wheeling aside before the car could run him down, The Shadow flattened and
rolled beneath the car step. He came up, seemingly from nowhere, as men were
piling out to look for him.
     This time, shotguns talked, but they did nothing but split the air. The
Shadow was slashing at his adversaries with a heavy automatic and plucking away
the shotguns that he warded off.
     Even more astonishing was the way in which he disarmed these newcomers.
There were only three of them, and they weren't as ready as the previous crowd.
They were relying, too, on gunshots instead of clubbing tactics. Tilting up
those unwieldy barrels was mere routine for The Shadow.
     Three dazed men were fumbling about, wondering where their guns had gone.
The Shadow was around in back of the car, strewing the shotguns as he went.
Vanished from the midst of his blundering opponents, he left them with the
final impression that they had battled with other than a human foe.
     They found their guns, when they looked for them; but discovered no trace
of The Shadow. He had vanished, so they thought, through the blank side wall of
an old garage. Their curious belief was inspired by the fact that the shotguns
lay near that wall.
     They didn't realize that The Shadow had reversed his course during their
bewilderment. Across the street, he was fading into blackness behind the Pomelo
Hotel.


     REACHING his room, The Shadow discarded his black garb, while he watched
the finish of the structures opposite. The flames had gutted Bayne's store;
gobbling the wooden arcade, the fire was taking hold of the adjacent building
where Tilyon's real-estate office was located.
     Men were busy getting papers and furniture out of Tilyon's place. Among
them, The Shadow saw Woodley, the Leesville taxi driver. Woodley's car and
another had come from Leesville, and the second automobile evidently belonged
to Sheriff Harley, for the man who stood beside it could have been no one else.
     Tall, lanky, and long-jawed, the sheriff was shouting for men to forget
the fire; good advice, since there was no way to stop the blaze. Not a breeze
was stirring, and there was no chance that the flames could spread beyond the
two buildings that they were consuming. The sooner it burned itself out, the
better.
     Carrying Tilyon's office equipment, men were crossing the street toward
the hotel. Rapidly, The Shadow stepped out into the hallway, locking the door
behind him. Descending to the lobby, he was waiting there when the carriers
entered. With the group came Welf, followed by the sheriff.
     Stopping short, Welf blinked. The hotel proprietor had forgotten that he
housed a guest. Then, assuming that Cranston had witnessed the whole scene from
the lobby, Welf introduced him to the sheriff. Taking the same thing for
granted, Sheriff Harley proffered a hearty handshake.
     By the time the rest had entered, The Shadow was in conference with Harley
and Welf. Among the latecomers were the out-of-towners from the backwoods. Those
who had riddled Bayne with shotguns looked very regretful. Solemnly, they laid
their weapons in a corner.
     They observed Cranston suspiciously at first; then, as his eyes calmly met
their gaze, their doubts faded. They were convinced of one thing: that this
leisurely-mannered, well-dressed stranger could not have been the foe that they
and their belated friends had battled around the streets of Pomelo City.
     His guise of Cranston serving him in perfect stead, The Shadow was soon to
hear strange testimony regarding his own amazing prowess. Testimony to which he,
as Cranston, could add details as a chance and impartial witness!


     CHAPTER IV

     THE SHADOW STAYS

     SHERIFF HARLEY proved himself very versatile. He had taken over duty as
police chief and fire marshal of Pomelo City; with those tasks settled, he
showed new ability. The sheriff became coroner, judge, and jury, in
investigating the causes of Bayne's death and the fire that swept the dead
man's store.
     Harley questioned the crackers first. He knew them all, and called them by
their first names when he demanded to know why they had come to town this
evening. A rangy, solemn-faced fellow named Jim Fenn decided to act as
spokesman for the rest.
     "We warn't fixing to start no trouble, sheriff," drawled Fenn. "We just
allowed we ought to take another look at Bayne's car. Some folks don't appear
satisfied about how it was smashed up."
     "Bayne ran that car into a sinkhole," returned the sheriff, coldly.
     "We ain't disputing you, sheriff," argued Fenn. "Only, we allow that Bayne
might have bunged up his car first. He hit that sinkhole the same night that Joe
Betterly was run off the road and killed, along with a couple of his kinfolk."
     Fenn's companions murmured assent. It explained the feud between Bayne and
the backwoods populace. The Shadow remembered one of the clippings in his
collection, a small item culled from a Jacksonville newspaper.
     A week ago, Joe Betterly, a local farmer, had been found dead with two
companions, in a badly wrecked car, near Pomelo City. The crash had been
attributed to a hit-and-run driver, though Bayne had not been mentioned. Such
suspicion was obviously a local matter, confined to the backwoods dwellers.
     Looking at Welf and Tilyon, The Shadow could tell by their expressions
that neither held Bayne to blame. They seemed angered by Fenn's charges.
     Sheriff Harley handled the tense situation admirably. Silencing mutters
from both factions, he asserted:
     "There's no harm in wanting to look at a man's car. Go ahead, Fenn. What
happened next?"
     "The fire started," declared Fenn. "All of a sudden, like somebody throwed
a match into a tank of gasoline. First thing we knowed, Bayne had a revolver out
and was shooting.
     "Into the store?"
     "Yeah. Leastwise, until we was coming over to see what was up. We was
fixing to give Bayne a help, only he forgot the trouble inside the place and
turned on us."
     "Still shooting?"
     "Plenty, sheriff! Yelling he was going to kill the pack of us. We didn't
like to use our guns, sheriff, but we was out in the open, and we hadn't no
choice. I don't allow that we could do different than we did."
     The sheriff turned to Welf and Tilyon. Despite their loyalty to Bayne,
they had to agree that Fenn's testimony was correct.
     "Bayne lost his head," conceded Welf. "I'll say this for these men" - he
gestured toward Fenn and the other crackers - "that they used their shotguns in
self-defense. I'd like to know, though, if friends of theirs set off that blaze
in Bayne's store."
     "We'll get to that, Welf."
     For the next five minutes, Sheriff Harley grilled the crackers in
first-class style. They had one story and they stuck to it: Neither they, nor
any of their friends, could have had a part in starting the fire.
     "All right," spoke the sheriff, suddenly. "If none of you fellows had a
hand in it, who did?"
     Men shifted uneasily. They looked to their spokesman, Fenn. He muttered
something; his companions gave him nods.
     "There was somebody in that store, sheriff," said Fenn, slowly. "It was
him that Bayne fired at. I seen him, sheriff" - Fenn drew a long breath - "and
he looked mighty like a ghost!"


     SHERIFF HARLEY did not laugh. Instead, he drew a toothpick from his pocket
and began to chew on it. After weighing the statement long and seriously, he
questioned:
     "Did he act like a ghost, too?"
     Fenn nodded. He stabbed his finger toward the floor, made a wide circle
with his arms.
     "He was like that, sheriff," said Fenn. "In the middle of the fire. No
human could have got out of there alive. He was all in black, except when the
flames lit him up redlike. I don't allow he was the devil" - Fenn shook his
head begrudgingly - "but he might have been Satan's twin brother."
     Fenn's pals supplied emphatic nods.
     "We run into him later," continued Fenn. He was pointing from the lobby
toward Bayne's store, where flames had dwindled, "when he was right yonder, by
the corner. I'm saying this, sheriff: nobody but a ghost, and an ornery one,
could have tooken the shotguns out of our hands the way he did!"
     Doubt flickered on the sheriff's face, until he caught looks from Welf and
Tilyon. They remembered a surprising battle that they had witnessed.
     "Fenn and his friends were fighting somebody," stated Welf. "But we didn't
see who it was. The way they bounced back after they went around the corner,
they might have run into a brick wall!"
     "That's what the ghost did!"
     The man who hoarsed the statement was one of the three who had come in the
last car. He and his two companions began to chatter the details of their fray
with The Shadow. They described their adversary as a mammoth batlike ghost.
     "Plumb into a brick wall, sheriff! That's where the ghost went. And he cut
through it without leaving a mark! Unless" - the speaker hesitated, inspired by
a fresh theory - "unless he flew clear over it, like a buzzard!"
     The sheriff's own men remembered the excitement at the corner. They were
sure that an unknown fighter had been on the ground when they arrived. The
speed of his disappearance inclined them to the ghost theory. Veering to that
view-point himself, the sheriff finally turned to The Shadow and questioned:
     "Did you see any of this, Mr. Cranston?"
     "I was in my room," came Cranston's calm-toned reply, "shortly before the
trouble started. I am positive that I saw the lights of an automobile on the
street in back of the arcade. That is the only new evidence that I can offer."
     The sheriff looked relieved. The report of a mystery car indicated human
hands, not ghostly ones.
     "In the case of Betterly and his kinfolk," decided the sheriff, "we came
to a verdict of death caused by persons unknown. Bayne was exonerated, and that
finding stands.
     "This fire tonight was set by persons unknown. The same parties, maybe,
that ran Betterly's car off the road. As for Bayne's death" - the sheriff
pocketed his toothpick - "he just got excited. Your plea stands, Fenn:
self-defense."
     Strolling over to the corner of the lobby, where Chester Tilyon had placed
the desks and filing cabinets from his real-estate office, Sheriff Harley
remarked approvingly:
     "A good idea, Tilyon, setting up your business here. Pomelo City never was
much of a town, but you and Welf are all that's left of it. It's safer for the
two of you to stick together."


     FENN and the other crackers were moving from the lobby, deciding that they
had been dismissed. The sheriff had dropped the ghost theory, but they still
clung to it.
     Catching their mutters, The Shadow heard one man argue that it might have
been Betterly's ghost. The others didn't agree. Feeling badly about Bayne, they
decided that their feud was a mistaken one. It was Fenn who suggested another
possibility.
     "I seen ghost lights t'other night," he voiced, in a low, confident drawl.
"In that empty filling station on the abandoned road. Nobody but a ghost would
be hanging around a place like that, the way it's like to fall into the
sinkhole under it."
     Fenn's idea carried weight, judging from the nods that his companions gave
as they left the hotel. Looking toward Tilyon and the sheriff, The Shadow
observed them still engaged in conversation. Neither had heard what Fenn said.
     But Welf, standing behind the desk, was close enough to hear. Welf's
elbows were propped up; his chin was resting in his hands, while his eyes were
half closed in a sleepy fashion. His pose, as The Shadow analyzed it, could be
a pretense.
     Sounds of departing cars came from outdoors. Fenn and his backwoods
friends were leaving town. Judging from the direction that the cars took, none
was going toward the abandoned road that Fenn had mentioned. Joining Tilyon and
the sheriff, The Shadow gave a sidelong look toward Welf.
     A sly smile showed itself on Welf's lips. Then, shaking himself from his
pretended drowse, he came over and joined the others. His expression became
poker-faced, as he listened to Sheriff Harley.
     "There's been strangers roaming this territory," the sheriff was telling
Tilyon. "I heard that from Graham Clenwick, when I was over to his ranch. He
thinks they're cattle thieves, but maybe they're worse than that. Beginning
tomorrow, I'm going to search every shack in this county.
     "I'm suspicious of strangers. That don't apply to you, Mr. Cranston" -
Harley smiled toward The Shadow - "because any man who comes out into the open
is to be trusted. I mean strangers that stay in abandoned farmhouses. We've
found traces of them."
     Starting toward the door, the sheriff was met by Woodley, the taxi driver,
who whispered something to him. The sheriff nodded; turning about, he said:
     "Maybe you're fixing to go to Leesville, Mr. Cranston. If you are, we'll
wait until you get packed."
     "No, thank you, sheriff," replied The Shadow, calmly. "I prefer the quiet
of Pomelo City. I take it that tonight's commotion was something out of the
ordinary."
     Grunting a good night, the sheriff left, accompanied by the astonished
Woodley. Turning to Welf and Tilyon, The Shadow added, in his same even tone:
     "I like your hotel, Mr. Welf. You can count upon me as a steady guest. I
am also glad to see that you are in business, Mr. Tilyon. Tomorrow, I would
like to talk about buying some real estate."


     WHILE both men stood speechless, The Shadow strolled toward the stairs.
Welf and Tilyon, the last of the diehards doing business in Pomelo City, had
met a person more remarkable than a ghost. They had found a customer.
     As for The Shadow, his disguised lips voiced a whispered laugh as he
reached his darkened room. Reaching for cloak and hat, he resumed the black
garments that he had so recently discarded. They, like his guns, would be
needed for another venture, to begin very soon.
     The Shadow intended to visit the forgotten filling station where Fenn had
seen the "ghost lights." Perhaps it was the present habitation of the "persons
unknown" responsible for the death of Louis Bayne. He was in no hurry, however,
to begin his expedition. There was something else that he expected first.
     Listening at his partly opened door, The Shadow could hear sounds from the
lobby below. He was checking on Welf and Tilyon. He heard a good night, spoken
in Welf's voice; then footsteps on the stairs. Oddly, the sounds dwindled as
they reached the second floor; but The Shadow knew why.
     Welf, having lulled Tilyon, was advancing on tiptoe, to listen at the door
of his lone guest, Cranston.
     Silently closing the door, The Shadow heard Welf's sneaky approach. Soon
satisfied that his guest had retired, Welf stole away. The Shadow moved toward
the window; outside, feeble street lamps had been extinguished, but the scene
glowed dimly from the embers of burned buildings across the way.
     Swinging out through the window, The Shadow lowered himself beside the
wall. A clinging thing of darkness against the grimy old building, he remained
unnoticeable until he dropped. Even then, his cloaked shape showed but
fleetingly.
     Peering through the corner of a window, The Shadow saw Tilyon in the
lobby. The real-estate man was seated at a desk, busy with papers that he was
taking from an open filing cabinet. Tilyon was too occupied to notice what was
going on behind him.
     Martin Welf was stealing down the stairway from the second floor in a
fashion remarkably catlike, considering his portly build. Past Tilyon, Welf
eased toward a doorway to the kitchen, threw back a pleased grin when he
reached his goal without detection. From the kitchen, Welf could easily get
outdoors and go his own way without Tilyon's knowledge.
     There was only one plausible answer as to Welf's destination. He was going
to the abandoned filling station that he had heard Fenn mention. Welf knew that
the dwellers there were human - not ghosts, as Fenn supposed. Whether Welf
regarded them as friends or foemen, was a question yet unanswered.
     But Martin Welf would not be the only visitor to that forgotten spot, nor
the first. Already, another figure was on the move, starting swiftly for the
same goal, to be there ahead of Welf.
     He was one who, more than any other, could claim the title as the ghost of
Pomelo City, for he had been mistaken for a weird specter this very night.
     The Shadow!


     CHAPTER V

     THE BURIED GHOST

     Two slanted sentinels reared themselves in darkness. They were the
battered, paintless gasoline standards that fronted the abandoned filling
station on the forgotten road just outside of Pomelo City.
     Like the tilted standards, the building itself was askew. It was another
evidence of the ill luck that had dogged all enterprise in the neighborhood of
Pomelo City. The owner of the filling station had been unfortunate enough to
build the structure over a future sinkhole.
     Gradually, honeycombed rock had given way, until the owner had considered
the place unsafe. With business gone, he had left these parts, abandoning the
building to a fate that was gradually overtaking it.
     The oddity was that the filling station had not already collapsed. Even in
darkness, its walls gave the appearance of a strain too great for further
support.
     Shrouding a tiny flashlight in the folds of his cloak, The Shadow found
the reason for the building's survival, as he approached the side wall.
Attached to the filling station was a sort of shed that served as a garage and
workshop. Planted on solid ground, the shed served as a prop against the canted
building.
     Evidently the filling-station proprietor had been up to date, for the shed
had a grease pit, a thing uncommon in rural Florida.
     Perhaps the digging of the pit and the installation of large gasoline
tanks had aided the progress of a hidden sinkhole. The pit, however, was still
intact, except that its concrete lining was badly cracked.
     The shed had no door, but its rear wall was complete, serving as a
lopsided wedge against the weight of the leaning service station. How long it
would last was a question; but any severe test, such as a heavy rain or a
strong wind, would undoubtedly dispose of the last prop and complete the
building's doom.
     There was a door leading from the shed into the filling station proper.
Trying it guardedly, The Shadow found that it was bolted from the other side.
Leaving the shed, he circled the structure. Reaching the far side, he saw the
"ghost lights" that Fenn had mentioned.
     They were eerie, those lights, strange streaks of glow that would appear
spooky from a distance, but which were very simply explained by closer
observation. They came from cracks in the wall, and a dim space above showed
that the roof widened into a large fissure.
     Reaching the roof was an easy task for The Shadow. He returned to the back
of the shed, used the outside of the rear wall to reach the lower roof. Then,
getting a clutch between spread boards beneath the torn tar paper, he worked
his way to the gap that he had observed.


     THE interior of the service station, viewed from above, was nothing but a
large, bare one-room shack. It had two doors - one at the front, the other at
the side leading into the shed.
     Its windows were boarded over and the present occupants had stuffed the
crevices with newspaper, something which they had failed to do with cracks high
up the wall and along the roof.
     At present, there were two occupants. They made a thuggish-looking pair,
with their ratlike faces. Guns bulged from their hips; their conversation came
in snarls.
     Their talk began when one reached for a bottle of liquor that stood on a
big empty carton which served them as a table. The other stopped him, with the
comment:
     "Lay off, Skate! Tony wouldn't like it."
     "O.K., Dingbat," returned Skate. "What Tony says goes. Only, it's been a
long time since we've talked to Tony Belgo."
     The name was familiar to The Shadow. Tony Belgo was a big-shot New York
crook whose disrepute equaled his misdeeds. It was unusual, however, to
encounter Belgo's outposts in a remote section such as this.
     "We've hung around here long enough," asserted Skate, as if to excuse his
desire for the bottle. "The way we've been sneaking from one farmhouse to
another, the yaps will be thinking we put the jinx on this burg."
     "Let 'em think it," snapped Dingbat. "Tony told us to stick with Enwald,
didn't he?"
     "Yeah, but what's it getting us?"
     "We'll know when Enwald gets back. He's about due."
     The statement was correct. From his vantage point on the roof, The Shadow
could observe something unknown to Skate and Dingbat. A car with dim lights was
creeping along the abandoned road, obviously heading for this filling station.
     It couldn't be Welf. If the hotel man had used a car, he would have been
here long ago. Obviously, it must be the man called Enwald.
     While The Shadow watched, the car purred up to the station and nosed into
the shed that housed the grease pit. Dingbat caught the throbs of the motor
when it arrived. He unbolted the door in answer to a rapped signal.
     The man who entered was sallow and peak-faced. His expression was a glum
one, and the first thing he did was shoulder Dingbat aside in order to reach
the bottle. After a long drink, Enwald squatted in a rickety chair and stared
at his two pals.
     "Well?" demanded Dingbat. "What about it? Going into town?"
     "Not tonight," returned Enwald in a smooth but dejected tone. "Hell busted
loose there! It wouldn't be smart, showing up right after the sheriff was on
deck investigating a fire that burned half the town."
     Dingbat and Skate showed interest. They wanted to know who started the
blaze.
     "The crackers, I guess," declared Enwald. "Nobody would be starting fires
to collect insurance money. The companies wouldn't pay on anything in a burg
like Pomelo City."
     He reached for the bottle again. Dingbat offered no objection, as he had
with Skate. He simply inserted a reminder, which he voiced with a significant
growl.
     "Tony's waiting to hear from you, Enwald," said Dingbat. "You sold him on
the proposition of going after this guy Clenwick, who owns the big ranch.
Better not forget it."
     "I'm not forgetting it." Enwald's tone carried its easy purr. "There's
something you fellows want to remember, too. Tony is leaving the whole thing up
to me. If I say the job looks good, Tony will go ahead with it. If I say to lay
off, he'll listen."
     "That's all right by me. Only, Tony will be sore if he don't hear one way
or the other."
     "He can wait a day or two more. Right now, I'm going to have another
drink. Then we'll clear out of this dump and pick a better place to stay,
tonight."


     THE only break to the ensuing silence was the gurgle of liquid pouring
into a glass. Passing moments, however, brought recollections to The Shadow. He
was piecing past facts to the present, summing up the existing factors in and
around Pomelo City.
     First, there were the residents of the jinx town itself: Welf, Tilyon, and
formerly Bayne. Next, the backwoods faction, as represented by Fenn and the
other natives. Both of those groups had suffered, apparently, from the hoodoo
that dominated this territory.
     Third in the list was a rancher named Clenwick, mentioned earlier by the
sheriff, later by Enwald. That brought The Shadow's thoughts to the fourth
faction, at present on actual display: Enwald and the two thugs supplied him by
a crook named Tony Belgo.
     Enwald had come here to make trouble for Clenwick. Behind such trouble lay
crime. All that could have a bearing on events in Pomelo City earlier this
evening. It could date back farther, to the time when a hoodoo had first struck
this region.
     The fact that Dingbat and Skate knew nothing about the fire until Enwald
told them, merely indicated greater depth to the plot. There might be other
groups of thugs posted elsewhere, all under Enwald's control.
     He was a smooth-looking person, this Enwald; his very manner marked him as
something of an enigma. He was the sort who could be working on his own, while
pulling a deal with Tony Belgo.
     Was Enwald linked with Martin Welf?
     As The Shadow pondered on that question, slow, crunching footsteps sounded
from the gravel in front of the filling station. A flashlight blinked, then
darkened. Enwald must have caught the sound, or spotted a gleam through some
crack in the wall, for he spoke hastily to his companions.
     "Douse the glim," undertoned Enwald. "Somebody is out front. Get to the
shed. I'll join you."
     Dingbat blew out the oil lantern that illuminated the bare room. Footsteps
moved about; The Shadow could hear the drawing of a bolt. Then came silence,
long and painfully slow. Stretching toward the spot where the roof crevice
widened, The Shadow worked his legs through and downward.
     He was dangling in darkness, above a space where all was silent. The only
sounds were from the shed. Whether Enwald had joined the thugs at the car did
not matter. If the sallow man still remained, The Shadow would be able to
handle him alone. Hanging by his hands from the gap in the roof, The Shadow
prepared for the drop, then let go.
     With a surprisingly slight thump, a black shape landed in blackness. A
gloved hand was drawing an automatic, the instant that The Shadow reached the
floor. With a soundless whirl, The Shadow was away from the landing spot,
toward the door that led to the shed. Had Enwald been on hand to spring at the
arrived intruder, he would have found nothingness.
     But Enwald was gone. The Shadow heard his voice from the car. A moment
more, The Shadow would have been on his way to the shed, to trail the crooks,
leaving the empty nest to Welf; but an interruption ruined the move.
     The door of the shack flung inward, a flashlight bored the darkness. There
was a sharp, elated cry from the front of the place - a tone that The Shadow
recognized as Welf's. Though incoherent, it told all.
     Welf had found the ghost!
     The Shadow was directly in the path of the burning flashlight. He looked
like a ghost, but he was human and Welf knew it. Ghosts didn't carry guns,
whereas The Shadow did.


     IT was Welf who stood in danger; not The Shadow. The thing to do was drive
Welf back before Enwald and the thugs came after him. To accomplish that, The
Shadow wheeled to the depth of the room, shoving his gun threateningly toward
Welf. Instead of quailing, Welf opened fire.
     His first shots were hasty; therefore, wide. Knowing that Welf would try
to trap him in the nearer corner, The Shadow did the unexpected. He reversed
his course, toward the door to the shed that served as garage. There, he could
meet incoming thugs, slug them back with a surprise attack, and save Welf from
death. A perfect plan, had Enwald decided to return.
     But Enwald had a different idea. As The Shadow reached the door to the
shed and yanked it open, a motor roared beyond. With a lurch, the car left it's
parking spot above the grease pit. Carrying Enwald and his pals as passengers,
it smashed through the rear wall of the shed!
     Enwald had done more than make a getaway. He had broken the prop that
saved the filling station from ruin. The rumble that followed the motor's roar
was a sound far more formidable. Welf's wild shots sounded puny in comparison
with the splintering crashes that thundered from every wall.
     The flashlight found The Shadow at the doorway to the shed. Welf aimed,
accurately for once, and pressed the trigger, but his shot was too late to
drill the figure that he mistook for a ghost. The Shadow was no longer there
when Welf fired.
     The Shadow was gone with the dropping floor, into engulfing blackness. The
frantic dive he took was long, but downward, smothered beneath the caving mass
of walls and roof. With one huge shudder, the doomed building had collapsed,
carrying The Shadow into the lurking sinkhole beneath.
     From a living fighter, The Shadow had become a buried ghost!


     CHAPTER VI

     TWO MEN HOPE

     WHATEVER his own fate, The Shadow had certainly saved the life of Martin
Welf. So suddenly had things happened, that Welf was unable to realize the
result until it was all over. His gun emptied, he was still tugging the
trigger, and holding his flashlight out, when he saw that he no longer had a
target.
     That wasn't all. Everything else was gone - the car, the shed, as well as
the filling station. Welf stared, unbelieving, then lowered his flashlight.
Beyond a spot that had once marked the doorway to a dilapidated building, lay a
sea of debris.
     A sinkhole, shaped like an inverted cone, had swallowed the remnants of
the collapsed building. Rubbish lay like waves, half a dozen feet below;
probably the pile of shattered planking extended to a depth of twenty feet.
     Welf's foot slipped on the edge; he dropped the flashlight as he caught
his footing. The torch clattered down into the loose junk and disappeared.
Staggering back, Welf gripped one of the tilted gasoline standards, clutched it
to make sure that he was on solid ground.
     Off in the distance, the astonished man saw the dwindle of dim lights. He
realized that a car had shaken itself clear from the falling wreckage and
carried away some occupants.
     Who they were, or how many, Welf could not guess. But he knew that one
being - a ghost, perhaps - had remained, to be buried beneath the collapsing
building.
     Welf shuddered. He remembered The Shadow's gun, the thing that had made
him think the black-clad figure to be human. But he recalled that the gun had
not answered his revolver shots. Nor had Welf's shots seemed to take any effect
whatever upon that specter in black.
     It must have been a ghost - the ghost of a man with a gun. Perhaps it was
the embodiment of the jinx that had ruined Pomelo City, for the collapse of the
old filling station simply represented another disaster to the town.
     With that thought, Welf turned about, began a groping, stumbling course
back toward the town itself. He had the urge to travel fast, but couldn't. Not
only did he lack a flashlight to pick his way along the miserable road, but his
knees shook so badly that they could scarcely support his portly frame.
     Not once did Welf look back toward the ruin. He wanted to forget it,
fearing that the ghost would manage somehow to emerge from its tomb. Such a
thing seemed possible to Welf's strained imagination.
     It was possible. It happened!


     EVEN while Welf's stumbly footfalls still sounded from the poor paving,
there was a stir amid the wreckage in the sinkhole. A gloved hand slid upward,
tested a shattered crossbeam, pressed it to one side. Boards slipped downward,
missed a slouch-hatted head that promptly shifted aside.
     The Shadow was playing a grim game of jackstraws. In the midst of
crisscrossed beams and planks. He had made one amazing escape from destruction;
a swift one. Now, he was engaged in a slow-motion effort to get back to solid
ground, with every move threatening doom.
     At times, boards slipped endways; their slide made the whole mass settle
deeper. Yet The Shadow, fairly close to the surface when he began his trip,
managed always to gain a new grip and a solid foothold. Head and shoulders up
from the debris, he caught a long strip of metal, gave an upward pull.
     There was a clatter as he came free. Boards rattled downward as he
wrenched past them, but their fall was not a long one. They filled the actual
space that The Shadow had left, and the sudden way in which they choked the gap
was an explanation of The Shadow's self-preservation.
     When the ground had given under the smash of the collapsing building, the
near wall of the grease pit had crumpled with it. But The Shadow, diving in
that very direction, had found a clear path to what remained of the pit.
     There, flattened beneath a half wall of concrete, he had lain in a
protecting pocket, while timbers had slid into the sinkhole itself.
     Chunks of wood, mostly the ruins of the shed, had imprisoned him, but when
settled, they had not formed a serious barrier. Fortunately, the building was of
somewhat flimsy construction, whereas the concrete was strong.
     The metal strip that The Shadow had gripped was the ledge along the
remaining side of the pit. Firmly fixed in the concrete, it gave the very sort
of hold he needed to come back to the surface. It was well, though, that he
emerged when he did.
     Rumblings sounded from below, as the sinkhole made new inroads. As he came
to his feet, some distance from the pit, The Shadow heard a crackle that marked
the yielding of concrete. Those crackles were followed by the dull thump of
disintegrated stone, finding its way downward in chunks.


     WHEN Martin Welf reached the hotel, he was too shaky to attempt a stealthy
entry. He stumbled in through the front door, and his arrival brought a startled
outcry from Chester Tilyon, who was still busy at his desk.
     Sagged in a chair, Welf related the details of his journey. He told Tilyon
how he had overheard Fenn talking about ghost lights out at the old filling
station.
     "I was afraid the sheriff would make another blunder," explained Welf. "It
seemed better to go out there on my own and take a look around. But it seems" -
Welf shook his head ruefully - "that I did some blundering myself."
     "You certainly let some trouble makers get away," declared Tilyon. "But
what about this ghost you saw?"
     "I don't know," returned Welf, slowly. "Maybe there wasn't one, Chester.
Whoever went away in the car certainly would not have left anyone behind."
     "Probably not," agreed Tilyon. "But suppose that someone else was looking
around there, just as you were?"
     The question made Welf stare at Tilyon. Both were so concentrated on the
subject at hand that neither saw the moving blackness entering the lobby from
the kitchen doorway. It had crossed to the stairway and blended shadowlike into
the upper darkness, when Welf suddenly gulped:
     "You mean - Cranston?"
     Tilyon nodded solemnly. Welf came to his feet and started shakily
upstairs. Tilyon followed; stood by when Welf knocked at Cranston's door. At
last, a sleepy voice responded.
     Welf gave a grateful sigh. He didn't know what to say, so Tilyon did the
talking for him.
     "Sorry, Mr. Cranston," said Tilyon. "We thought you were still awake.
We're having coffee downstairs, in case you would like to join us."
     Hearing Cranston accept the invitation, Tilyon motioned to Welf. They went
downstairs and hurriedly began to get the coffee ready before Cranston arrived.
When they heard his footsteps descending, Tilyon undertoned to Welf:
     "Don't mention your trip tonight. Let's boost the town, the way we
intended. It's our only chance for a comeback, Martin. Cranston may be
interested."
     Tilyon did the boosting, while the three drank their coffee in the lobby.
Pomelo City wasn't a bad place at all, the way the real-estate man described
it. He laid a map upon his desk and indicated a large red circle, with Pomelo
City in the center.
     "This is a pomelo area," stated Tilyon. "As you probably know, the term
'pomelo' is the correct name for grapefruit. When growers first came here, they
specialized in grapefruit, so the town was later called Pomelo City.
     "We had our boom days. The town grew, like the groves. Finally, we settled
back to normal, an overbuilt town; but we had a population of several hundred,
and the place offered a real future. Growers were raising oranges, as well as
grapefruit; slopes were planted with tuna trees, to meet the rising demand for
lacquer.
     "Farmers occupied the sparser lands, what was left was bought by Graham
Clenwick, a very wealthy rancher, who began to improve the local cattle. Then"
- Tilyon gave a depreciating shrug - "well, we just ran into a jinx, that was
all."
     Cranston's eyes were steady, questioning. Tilyon finally decided to admit
all facts. He mentioned the Medfly, sinkholes, drying lakes, the appearance of
the black wolf, unreported elsewhere in Florida. People had become fearful;
chance accidents had caused others to migrate.
     "Those things could hardly have been designed," argued Tilyon. "At least,
not all of them. It's been slow panic, encouraged by superstition. Business
went dead as a result. But Welf and I have stayed, and so has Clenwick.
     "He's had his troubles. He had to slaughter his first herd of cattle,
because of some disease that ruined it. But Clenwick is banking on the future.
He knows that Florida is the future land for cattle raising. There are large
ranches throughout the State, and Clenwick intends to make his as good as the
best."


     TALK of Clenwick interested The Shadow, since he knew that the wealthy
rancher was the cause of Enwald's presence in this vicinity. Casually, he
encouraged Tilyon to mention Clenwick further. Welf put in an impatient
interruption.
     "Let's talk about Kewanee Springs," he said to Tilyon. "That will interest
Mr. Cranston more than anything else he could hear about."
     "In just a moment," smiled Tilyon. "I'll finish the Clenwick story first."
     Tilyon ran his finger along the map, indicated a road that ended in a tiny
black square.
     "This is Clenwick's present residence," he said. "It's the old Severn
mansion. The place is owned by Laura Severn and her brother Roger, who's an
invalid. The house was built a hundred years ago, and it's belonged to the
Severns ever since. They are right nice people.
     "The trouble is, they had to sell most of their property, this generation
did. All they have left is the house and the grounds around it. That would have
gone, too, if Graham Clenwick hadn't helped them out. He bought up the mortgage
so they wouldn't be evicted, and he's living there at the house, paying them
enough rent to carry the interest charges."
     Tilyon might have kept on talking about Laura Severn and her brother, if
Welf had not reminded him that the discussion concerned Kewanee Springs, as its
principal theme. Tilyon promptly moved his finger to the right of the road that
showed on the map.
     "The Springs are over here," he said. "They form the main source of the
Kewanee River. Like a lot of other large springs in Florida, they give so large
a flow, that the river is navigable right up to the source.
     "There's millions of gallons of water flowing from those Springs, every
day. Those millions of gallons may mean millions of dollars, Mr. Cranston! Not
just from Kewanee Springs, but from what the place could do to bring back
Pomelo City. Kewanee, when developed, ought to bring a hundred thousand
tourists here every year.
     "We've got the town, all waiting for them. They'd fill it, Mr. Cranston.
We wouldn't have to worry about citrus groves, tuna trees, and ranches. As the
only gateway to Kewanee Springs, Pomelo City would make the boom days look like
child's play!"
     Tilyon's enthusiasm was real. He began a description of Kewanee Springs,
terming the place as "Nature's Wonderland." He was talking in terms of golden
grottoes, crystal waters, and unspoiled jungle, when Cranston intervened with
the practical question:
     "Who owns Kewanee Springs?"
     "We do," inserted Welf. "Tilyon and I. If you'll back the development, Mr.
Cranston, we'll give you a one-third interest, with certain costs deductible. We
can talk such terms later - but first, you ought to see the Springs."
     "I believe that I have heard of Kewanee Springs before," recalled The
Shadow. "There is an Indian legend in reference to the place, is there not?"
     Tilyon gave an uneasy laugh.
     "Yes," he admitted. "Some story about a devil that used to drive the
Seminole Indians away from these parts. There are people who still believe it.
The legend has had its part in causing superstitious people to leave here.
     "But this jinx stuff can't go on. Intelligent people laugh at talk of
ghosts. In fact, it's the type of thing that ought to bring them here. My idea
is to meet the situation head-on: play up the Seminole devil, and make him work
for us!"


     THOUGH Tilyon was no longer trying to make a sales talk, he was actually
succeeding with one. His theory of how to beat the Seminole devil was better
than his description of Kewanee Springs. Welf was observant; he saw that
Cranston was interested. When Tilyon paused to take a breath, Welf inserted the
suggestion that they start for Kewanee Springs in the morning.
     That ended the discussion for the night. Back in his room, The Shadow
gazed out into darkness and whispered a soft-toned laugh. Clenwick, the ranch
owner, and his friends, the Severns, could wait until tomorrow night.
     Then, The Shadow would find a way to look in on them, as he had with
Enwald and the thugs furnished by Tony Belgo. The Shadow was confident that
future adventures after nightfall could be handled with less dire consequences
than those which had attended his recent foray.
     Meanwhile, in Kewanee Springs, with its legend of the Seminole devil, The
Shadow might find some new clue to the strange hoodoo that had turned Pomelo
City into a forgotten city of ghosts!


     CHAPTER VII

     DEATH BY THE BRINK

     MORNING looked peaceful in Pomelo City. Charred ruins opposite the old
hotel had improved the scene, if anything. Bayne's store and Tilyon's
real-estate office had been as scarred and ramshackly as most of the structures
that still remained, while the obliterated arcade could have been termed the
town's outstanding eyesore.
     Discounting the ugly buildings, the dead palm trees and the battered
paving, The Shadow found the outlook pleasant. The horizon showed pine woods
and distant cypress clumps, while the ground had green patches of luxuriant
palmetto.
     Except for the buzzards that roosted on the battered water tower, the
distant view was typical of Florida. To all appearances, this territory had a
future. Two men, at least, believed in it: Welf and Tilyon.
     Those two were waiting breakfast, when their new friend, Cranston, joined
them. Welf had appointed himself cook and had handled the job well, as the
bacon and eggs proved. During the meal, the three chatted about outside
matters, avoiding all discussion of Pomelo City.
     The first indication that local subjects were still troublesome came when
a car pulled up in front of the hotel. A voice shouted through the doorway;
Welf hurried to the sidewalk, Cranston and Tilyon following.
     Beside the car stood a man who was mopping his forehead with a grimy
handkerchief. He pointed to the rear seat. There lay another man, his sightless
eyes staring from a swollen purplish face.
     "Bit by a coral snake," said the man by the car. "Too late to take him to
the Leesville Hospital. My nerve was getting me, so I stopped here."
     Welf looked at the body in the car. He gave a solemn nod, as he pronounced
the one word:
     "Dead!"
     The man on the curb pocketed his handkerchief and climbed back into the
car. He seemed somewhat relieved at learning the exact status of the victim.
     "Guess I'll drive to the Leesville morgue," he said. "Good-by. I won't be
seeing you fellows again."
     The car pulled away. Welf watched it pass the water tower. He looked
relieved, too, because the buzzards did not swoop down. Evidently the big birds
were overfed.
     "There go the last two orange growers," remarked Welf, glumly. "The live
one says he won't be back. I don't blame him for -"
     Welf stopped at a warning glance from Tilyon. Both looked at Cranston, who
appeared quite unperturbed. Tilyon suggested that they get started for Kewanee
Springs.
     Ten minutes later, the three were riding from Pomelo City in Tilyon's car.
From the sand road that they traveled, the scene was lifeless, except for the
thin smoke of distant brush fires, a common sight in Florida, where natives
frequently burn out the underbrush from wooded patches.
     Ahead lay a thick stretch of vivid green, which took on a truly tropical
appearance as they reached it. Parking the car at the entrance to the Springs,
the visitors followed a footpath beneath huge live oaks, where great beards of
Spanish moss hung from massive boughs.
     The woodland had a cavernous effect; a profound silence gripped the
setting. Sunlight was dwindled by the mossy branches, producing a cool,
comfortable effect. A limpid pool came into sight, completing the picture of a
natural paradise.


     KEWANEE SPRINGS occupied a great limestone chalice, its brim fringed with
palmetto. Above were pines and oaks; off in the distance were the tufted tops
of tall cabbage palms.
     The pool itself was of perfect blue, an absolute reflection of the sky. At
spots where trees bent above the brim, the blue hue faded. There, every detail
of the bank was mirrored by crystalline water.
     A few hundred feet across, the pool showed a gap in the farther bank. That
was the beginning of the Kewanee River, perpetually supplied by its unfailing
source. Clusters of floating hyacinths added a touch of colorful splendor to
the pool's outlet.
     The squatly hulk of a flat-bottomed boat was drawn up beside the shore.
Posts set in the gunwales supported a weather-beaten canopy. A pair of battered
oars lay in the stern. When they reached the boat, Tilyon pointed to its
interior.
     An oblong well ran from bow to stern. It was built on the principle of a
centerboard well; high walled, so that no water would come up through it. The
bottom of the well consisted of framed sheets of glass.
     Tilyon explained, unnecessarily, that the canopy cut off the sunlight,
thus rendering objects visible through the glass bottom. He took the oars,
while Cranston and Welf sat on either side of the oblong well, laying their
coats on the seat beside them.
     Shoving the boat out from the shore, Tilyon propelled it across a shallow
stretch of eel grass. He reached a deeper space, where the grass parted to
display a limestone hollow. He announced the depth as thirty feet, though it
seemed that the bottom was within a hand's reach.
     Fat, big-horned catfish were lolling in the cavity; among them, a smaller
species: striped fish called breame. Large turtles flapped idly beneath the
plate glass, poked their noses upward and seemed to wonder at the substance
that they struck.
     Drifting from that spot, the boat reached another fissure in the rock,
where the limestone had a yellowish glisten.
     Tilyon called the spot the golden grotto, and pointed out long, slinky
fish, curiously spotted. They were the leopard gar, creatures of prey, like
their namesakes.
     Crossing another patch of eel grass, the boat reached an immense cavity.
Looking up at the bank, The Shadow saw a high rock, its exterior broken in
steplike fashion. Its angles continued down beneath the water, to form a ledge
twenty feet below the surface.
     Those twenty feet, however, did not constitute the entire depth of this
cavity. Below the ledge was a sheer drop, which Tilyon estimated as sixty feet
in total depth.
     "The Devil's Rock," he said, pointing to the shore. "They call the shelf
below the surface the 'Devil's Ledge.' Under the shelf is the dwelling place of
a great warrior's spirit.
     "Ages ago, according to the legend, this pool was shallow and dry. A
drought settled on the land, and when pleas to the rain god brought no result,
a Seminole chief mounted the forbidden Devil's Rock and offered himself as
sacrifice to the evil spirit dwelling in the earth.
     "Immediately, the solid limestone split below him and a vast river of
water gushed into life. In keeping with his promise, the chief hurled himself
into the new-formed pool, and was swallowed beneath the broken ledge. There, he
dwells with the earth devils, but at times his ghost appears upon the Devil's
Rock.
     "Seminoles claim to have seen him standing there; but at any sign of a
human presence, he plunges into the pool, vanishes beneath the ledge, and does
not return until his next appointed hour."


     THE SHADOW was listening carefully to Tilyon's version of the legend. In
all such stories, there was usually a basic truth. Looking into the depths of
the huge spring, The Shadow analyzed the possible facts that might have
produced the Indian tale.
     Having recounted the legend, Tilyon was producing statistics. The great
spring, he declared, was actually a subterranean river, fed by other
underground streams. Its volume of water varied from twenty to thirty million
gallons daily, according to the season.
     Enough water to supply the city of Miami, if anyone wanted to pipe it
there. At present, the water went to Jacksonville, but not by pipeline. The
Kewanee flowed into the Oklawaha, which in turn flowed into the St. John's
River, on which Jacksonville was the principal port.
     "I'm not thinking of this place as a reservoir, though," declared Tilyon,
seriously, as he slowly rowed the boat from the great spring. "A trip like this
is worth a dollar of anybody's money. We'll have a lot of new boats built, and
equipped with electric motors.
     "During the winter season, Kewanee should attract a thousand customers a
day. We can add the feature of a jungle cruise down the river. They've done it
other places, so Kewanee won't be unique. But the other springs look civilized.
We'll keep Kewanee primitive."
     He was pushing the boat toward the outlet, pointing out more limestone
fissures as the boat passed across them. The Shadow noted that they differed in
hue; some were blue, others chalkish in their whiteness. New varieties of
underwater plants appeared as the boat progressed.
     "If this scow doesn't hit a rock or an alligator, I'll show you the lower
spring," promised Tilyon. "It's right around the bend, and you never saw a
prettier woodland glade! Every time I look at it, I expect to see a flock of
dryads or nymphs come dancing out from the palmettos. That one spot, alone, is
worth more than -"
     Tilyon went voiceless. The boat had swung the bend. Staring straight
ahead, he held the oars motionless above the water. The Shadow looked in the
direction of Tilyon's gaze, and Welf did the same.
     Near a small rock at the fringe of the promised sylvan pool was a girl who
rivaled the forest nymphs that Tilyon talked about. Her slender, graceful figure
was accentuated by the thin silken garment that adorned it.
     Startled by the splash of a dropping oar, the girl raised her head and
looked toward the boat. Her blue eyes opened wide; her lips parted in a
soundless gasp. Alarm brought perfection to a face that was beautiful against a
background of fluffy golden hair.
     Behind the girl lay a bathing suit, with clothes that she had already
discarded. Not expecting intruders in this isolated spot, the girl had
approached the pool while she was undressing for a swim. At sight of the
approaching boat, she drew folds of flimsy silk up toward her shoulders, gave a
quick glance toward her other garments.
     Then, realizing the scantiness of her costume, she acted upon a sudden
impulse. Seeking quick escape from her plight, the girl twisted toward the
pool, flung her arms ahead of her as she made a quick dive into the water.
     At that moment, a log stirred from the bank. Only The Shadow saw it come
to life. His casual eyes, alone, were taking in the entire scene, while his
companions had their attention centered on the girl. The Shadow recognized the
thing from the bank, just as it began to move.
     It wasn't a log; it was an alligator. From ugly nose to tapered tail tip,
it measured a full sixteen feet. Large enough to be a man-eater, the reptile
was heading after human prey. The splash of the girl's dive, told that she was
in the water, straight across the alligator's path.


     NEITHER Tilyon nor Welf saw the sudden speed that their new friend,
Cranston, displayed.
     With his left hand, The Shadow gripped one of the half-rotted posts that
supported the boat's frayed canopy. His right, whipping into the folds of his
discarded coat, snatched something that he had buried out of sight.
     Just as the girl's golden-haired head bobbed up from the water, The Shadow
went overboard in a sideward dive. He was still gripping the canopy post, and
his sheer weight ripped it loose. Clutching the broken chunk of wood, The
Shadow landed flat, his left side striking the water first.
     Neither Tilyon nor Welf heard the ripping of the wood, nor did they notice
the shiver of the boat. They were chilled by the scream that the girl uttered,
as she saw the alligator's snout loom through the water, mere yards away.
Frantically, she twisted about and tried to swim for shore, too late.
     Big jaws had opened. The whip of the reptile's tail spurted the creature
forward. Another second, and the cavernous mouth would have gulped for its
helpless prey.
     But the alligator never reached that golden-haired head, and the sleek
shoulder just beneath it.
     Into that wide-open mouth was thrust another head, along with a pair of
ready hands. Daring the coming click of the creature's fangish teeth, The
Shadow thrust in his left hand, with the stout cudgel that it bore. His right
fist, too, was swinging into action, bearing an object that he had carried high
and dry: a .45-caliber automatic.
     The Shadow had brought rescue to the girl, only to dare the same fate that
she had escaped. Death was due upon the brink of the tropical pool. Whether the
human fighter would survive, or his reptilian foe gain victory, was a question
that the next dozen seconds would decide!


     CHAPTER VIII

     THE BROKEN JINX

     STARING from the drifting boat, Tilyon and Welf thought that they were
witnessing the finish of their new friend, Cranston. They knew the dangers of
battling a bull alligator in its native habitat. Not only had Cranston taken on
the, largest 'gator that either of the witnesses had ever seen, but he was
giving the creature all the odds.
     Wrestling an alligator was one thing; an expert human might survive such
combat. But to thrust head and arms into a 'gator's open jaws was a quick route
to suicide. Unfortunately, Cranston had been unable to take another choice. His
measure was the only method that could have saved the girl.
     Raps from the stick that Cranston held would trouble the 'gator less than
fleabites. As for the .45 in his other fist, its slugs could dent the
reptilian's scales and nothing more.
     Tilyon was grabbing an oar, lifting it, to take a blow at the 'gator's
back. As he made that move, the oarsman realized its futility. Like Cranston,
he was trying to combat a mammoth menace that was nothing short of a floating
ironclad.
     Neither Tilyon nor Welf had seen The Shadow in action the night before.
Hence they did not guess that the fighter they knew as Cranston was capable of
special measures in every struggle he undertook. Therefore, what they saw
amazed them.
     The 'gator's big jaws started shut as The Shadow thrust himself between
them, but the teeth did not close upon a victim. Instead, the jaws stopped,
retaining a yawn that was scarcely less than complete. The Shadow had used his
first weapon more rapidly than the 'gator could bite.
     The weapon was the stanchion from the boat. With a twist of his left
wrist, The Shadow had turned the stout stick upward in the 'gator's mouth. A
veritable wedge, the piece of wood was holding the big jaws wide.
     Had the stick been barbed, the measure would have proven more than
temporary. But the ends were blunt; the alligator did not mind them. The
creature waggled its broad jaw from side to side, threatening to dispose of the
restraining stick. Only the power of The Shadow's clutch prevented it.
     The Shadow's head was withdrawn from the 'gator's mouth, but his left arm
was necessarily within it. Welf was shouting for Cranston to release the stick
and swim away, but that wouldn't help.
     The fierce "yonk-yonk" that issued from the 'gator's throat proved that
the aquatic beast was fully enraged. The reptile had already proven itself a
faster swimmer than the lithe girl who had escaped it. Only by fighting the
creature to the death could The Shadow hope to assure his own survival.
     Instead of loosing his hold upon the stick, he brought his other hand into
action. From the sweep of his arm, the witnesses thought that he was going to
club the 'gator's snout with his heavy automatic; but he stopped short of that
mark.
     The Shadow was simply keeping the gun above water. From the level of the
reptile's nostrils, he dipped his fist and shoved the gun into the reptilian's
wide-wedged mouth.


     THE dart of a shirt-sleeved arm in front of its eyes caused the alligator
to take measures of its own. The creature gave a wide lash with its tail;
shoving its head down into the water, it carried its human foeman with it.
     Tilyon was busy thwacking with his oar, hoping to divert attack toward the
boat; but Welf saw the 'gator's head, watched the creature's eyes take a long,
outward bulge.
     They were extending like miniature periscopes, those eyes, proving that
the 'gator intended an underwater swim. It was starting the usual procedure
that all alligators used when land prey proved too tough: that of keeping below
the water's surface until its victim drowned.
     With those extended eyes, the 'gator could pick its own path through the
pool. It "yonked" again as it dipped its open jaws. Cranston's head dipped
completely from sight. Only his right arm was visible through the side of the
'gator's open face.
     The next "yonk" was suppressed by a muffled roar. The observers saw a
flash within the alligator's mouth. The flash was repeated thrice, in rapid
succession, each time with an accompanying roar. Those bursts came from The
Shadow's gun.
     He wasn't wasting shots from the .45 upon the reptile's scaly, bulletproof
hide. With his right fist thrust far into the jagged mouth The Shadow was
pumping bullets down the alligator's gullet!
     Smoke was curling from the side of those big-toothed jaws, as the 'gator's
head went beneath the water, except for its periscopic eyes. Glinting sunlight
made it difficult for the men in the boat to see what happened to Cranston. The
alligator's tail was lashing the water furiously.
     Out of that lashing, the creature took a sideward roll. Its head swung
above the surface. Big jaws waggled, then clamped shut. The upright stick was
no longer between them. It had disappeared.
     So had The Shadow.
     For a moment, Welf was crazy enough to think that the alligator had
swallowed Cranston entire. Then he heard a shout from Tilyon, who was pointing
to the stern of the boat. Cranston's head had come into sight, twenty feet away
from the stricken alligator. He still had his gun, but he had released the
helpful stick. It was floating downstream.
     The girl had reached the shore. Kneeling on the bank, she stared toward
the pool, saw the alligator's lashing roll and watched its whitish belly come
into sight. She knew that the creature was in its death throes, but she could
not spy The Shadow. He was beyond the intervening boat.
     Blood was marring the crystal water; it made an ugly, oily blotch that
drifted with the writhing alligator. The girl mistook the crimson stain for the
lifeblood of her rescuer. Coming to her feet, she stood on tiptoe, forgetful of
her meager garb.
     Water-soaked silk was clinging askew, as the girl poised her lithe body,
ready for another dive into the pool; her purpose, this time, to aid her
rescuer, if such were possible.
     A rattle from the boat ended the girl's tableau. She saw Cranston's face
come over the stern of the boat. Tilyon and Welf were helping him on board. He
let the gun drop from his right fist, extended his hand to receive the
congratulating clasps that his companions offered him.
     The girl relaxed. Conscious of herself again, she turned about, gathered
up a bundle of clothes and scampered into the palmettos. Gazing from the boat,
The Shadow saw the green foliage close behind the girl's pink-clad form.
     Tilyon pushed the boat to shore. The girl reappeared, wearing a dress that
she had slipped over her shoulders; her feet were incased in sandals that she
hadn't taken time to buckle. Brushing back the damp hair that strewed her
forehead, she proffered her hand to Cranston, while her lips spoke heartfelt
thanks.
     Both Welf and Tilyon had met the girl before. She was Laura Severn, who
lived in the old mansion where Graham Clenwick was a resident guest. They
introduced Laura to Cranston.


     "I WAS just a startled fool!" exclaimed Laura, in self-reproach. "I always
look for 'gators when I'm ready for a swim. But today I wasn't quite ready when
you all came along.
     "I've never stayed when I've seen that big 'gator here. He's been watching
for me, and he'd have gotten me this time" - she emphasized the statement with a
lovely shudder - "if you hadn't come along, Mr. Cranston."
     Calmly, The Shadow claimed the blame as his own, stating that it was the
boat's sudden arrival that had caused Laura to so hurriedly seek the pool where
danger lurked. His rescue, as he expressed it, was merely an effort to amend an
error.
     "It's mighty sweet of you," said Laura, "to look at it that way. But I
still owe you thanks, Mr. Cranston, and my brother will feel the same. We'd be
delighted, sir, if you would accept our hospitality while you are hereabouts."
     Welf remarked that Cranston was a guest at the Pomelo Hotel. Laura smiled
sympathetically; she knew that Welf needed guests, and would prefer that
Cranston should not move to the mansion.
     With true Southern courtesy, the girl made her invitation definite, at the
same time allowing for Welf's interests.
     "If you could have dinner with us this evening," Laura told The Shadow,
"I'm sure that Mr. Welf could arrange to bring you to our house and call for
you later."
     When Welf agreed that he could, The Shadow accepted the invitation. Laura
shook hands again, gave a parting smile and left for the palmettos, to gather
up the rest of her clothes and take the path home.
     As the three men rowed back to the upper Springs, Tilyon kept vaunting the
merits of Kewanee. He was still talking about the place when they reached his
car and began the drive back to Pomelo City.
     "We'll get that big 'gator and have him stuffed," decided Tilyon. "What an
exhibit he will make! There'll be a story to go with it, too. Your story,
Cranston: how you rescued the beauty from the beast.
     "The Indian legend will do for the upper Springs. Maybe people won't
believe it, but they'll like to look at Devil's Rock. They'll believe the story
of the alligator fight, though, when they get to the lower Springs.
     Glancing sidewise as he drove the car, Tilyon saw Cranston nod, and was
pleased. He felt sure that this wealthy stranger from New York would aid in the
development of Kewanee Springs and give Pomelo City its real chance for a
come-back.
     The Shadow's thoughts went farther than Tilyon supposed. The Shadow
foresaw that Pomelo City would automatically regain life, when the menace that
enshrouded it was gone. Whatever that mysterious menace, it accounted for the
ceaseless jinx that had brought death and mystery to these parts.
     The jinx was broken. By his rescue of Laura, The Shadow had ended the long
line of certain tragedies that had thinned the inhabitants of this region. More
than that, The Shadow had gained an opportunity he wanted.
     This evening, as Lamont Cranston, he would be a guest at the Severn
mansion. There, he would meet Graham Clenwick - another man who, like Tilyon
and Welf, was staying on the ground despite the existing hoodoo.
     From Tilyon and Welf, The Shadow had learned much; but it was all that
they could offer. He was confident that Clenwick could supply more facts of
value. The Shadow was making progress in his campaign to restore Pomelo City.
     Sooner or later, he would have the answer to the riddle that had made the
place a city of ghosts!


     CHAPTER IX

     AT THE MANSION

     IT was Tilyon who drove Cranston to the Severn mansion, at five that
afternoon. They took a long way around, so that Tilyon could point out some
features of the extensive area that constituted Clenwick's cattle domain.
     In Florida, straggly towns like Pomelo City were often termed cities,
though they had never boasted more than a few hundred inhabitants. It seemed,
therefore, that talk of ranches would also be exaggerated. Such was not the
case.
     Florida cattle ranges were huge, rivaling many in the West. In recent
years, they had risen to vast proportions, bringing many cowboys to the State.
Dude ranches, too, had been established in sections of Florida, as The Shadow
had learned from wealthy friends.
     Clenwick's ranch was a big-time enterprise. After passing a desolate
stretch where wavering brush fires burned, Tilyon pointed out grazing cattle in
a thinned area of timber land.
     "Good looking beasts," he observed. "Not scrawny, like the kind the
crackers raise. There's no buzzards hovering around here, waiting for cows to
drop dead. But those are stock that Clenwick sold to some native. The crackers
let their cattle roam the open range. Clenwick's property is all fenced in."
     They reached the fenced area. The Shadow saw more cattle, among them
Brahman steers, imported from Texas.
     A mounted cowboy, evidently one of Clenwick's cattle hands, was riding
through the woods. He tilted back his ten-gallon hat, to observe the car more
closely. Recognizing it as Tilyon's car, he waved a cheery salute.
     "Clenwick is keeping the place policed," said Tilyon, approvingly. "What
Sheriff Harley said is true. There have been suspicious persons in this
neighborhood."
     Taking a short cut along a sand road, Tilyon drove in the direction of
Kewanee Springs, until he struck the road that led to the mansion. Following
that road, they rode through a massive old gate and came upon a sight that only
old Florida could have offered.
     Time must have stopped when the mansion house was built. The old colonial
structure stood beyond a perfect carpet of green lawn, shaded by the finest
specimens of live oak anywhere in Florida.
     As at Kewanee Springs, the trees gave a cavernous effect, the streamers of
Spanish moss resembling stalactites dipping from the ceiling of a grotto. But
the space was vaster, and through the open spaces The Shadow could see the
white of magnolia trees in full blossom.
     The air was sweetly scented with the odors of many flowers. The whistling
chirp of the mocking bird brought melody to the surroundings.
     Alighting from the car, The Shadow turned to view the scene, while Tilyon
drove away. When the sputter of the motor had faded in the distance, the
visitor was impressed by the almost mystic silence that pervaded this
century-old setting.
     Even the mocking birds had quieted. Dreamy laziness held sway. The
Shadow's own thoughts were drifting into the past, when a welcoming voice spoke
from the mansion doorway:
     "Good evening, Mr. Cranston!"


     LAURA SEVERN was standing on the veranda. Smiling in greeting, the girl
added new charm to the scene. She was attired in a simple frock, which
harmonized with the surroundings. Her hair was fluffed again, and daylight,
filtering through the lofty trees, gave it the hue of old gold.
     In gracious fashion, she ushered the visitor into the mansion. From the
quiet central hallway, she pointed out the spacious library and the ancient
dining room. Then, conducting Cranston through a rear door that led out beside
the long wing of the house, the girl suggested:
     "Suppose we visit my brother Roger. Mr. Clenwick has not yet returned from
the ranch, so you can meet him later. But it isn't far to where Roger is. He's
down near the Seminole Punch Bowl."
     The Shadow was quite willing to meet Roger. He was also intrigued to learn
more about the Seminole Punch Bowl, whatever it was. Laura led the way along a
rustic path that followed a quick-rippling brook. A quarter mile brought them
to a tiny lawn in the center of thick circling pines.
     A man was stretched out in a wheel chair. Hands clasped behind his head,
he was staring upward between his shirt-sleeved elbows. He wore a scowl on his
pasty face; the contortions of his lips indicated ugly mutters.
     Laura gave an anxious glance toward Cranston, then called softly:
     "Roger!"
     Instantly, the man's manner changed. Coming around in his wheel chair,
Roger's face was all smile. With a friendly greeting, he extended a warm hand
to the visitor.
     "Accept my thanks, Mr. Cranston," said Roger, "for rescuing my sister.
Laura told me everything that happened, and I agree that the fault was hers,
not yours."
     During the next half-hour, Roger Severn kept up a lively conversation. He
talked about places where he had been, but always his statements were dated.
They referred to things of five years ago, or more, before Roger had become the
victim of a spinal ailment.
     Roger's chat was gay, but it masked bitterness with the world. He was
wearing out his strength in conversation. Noting it, Laura told her brother to
rest while she showed Cranston the Seminole Punch Bowl, on the other side of
the tiny glen.
     The bowl was a shallow pit of packed stones that received the little
brook. Swirling water formed a whirlpool that slackened as it filled. Then,
under pressure, the water was sucked down through the stones.
     Filling again, the bowl repeated its action at half-minute intervals. In
its small way, the vanishing brook that ran into the Seminole Punch Bowl was as
interesting a phenomenon as the great subterranean river that issued from
beneath the Devil's Ledge at Kewanee Springs.
     It was time to return to the mansion. With a weary smile, Roger decided
that he would rather remain at the glen and have his meal brought there. The
Shadow walked back to the house with Laura; as they entered the rear door, they
heard the clatter of hoofs from the front.
     A man dismounted from a horse, handed it to another horseman, and entered
the house. A servant had turned on the hallway lights; in the glow, The Shadow
saw a tall, heavily built man advancing with long, sure strides.
     Seeing Laura, the newcomer swept his rancher's hat from his head. His face
was broad, square-jawed, beneath his high-bridged nose. Fixing keen eyes upon
Cranston, he finally turned back to Laura, expecting her to introduce the
visitor, which she did.


     THE man was Graham Clenwick. He hadn't heard the story of Laura's escape
from the alligator. The girl told it in vivid detail; Clenwick's face becoming
solemn as he listened. He didn't treat the adventure humorously, as Roger had.
     When Laura had finished, Clenwick laid his left arm around the girl's
shoulders in a protective, fatherly gesture. He extended his right hand to The
Shadow in a forceful grip. His thanks were voluble; he gave them in a booming
voice.
     "There have been too many tragedies around here," announced Clenwick,
soberly. "Fortunately, none have fallen upon this household, but I am fearful
that they might. You must promise me, Laura, that you will stay away from that
dangerous Springs."
     Giving a halfway promise, Laura departed for the kitchen, to see about
dinner. Clenwick turned to Cranston.
     "This is a remarkable country," declared the rancher, "but a very fearful
one. Nature has made strange freaks in this terrain, particularly the
sinkholes. I heard today that a new one caved through, carrying an abandoned
filling station with it."
     Casually, The Shadow asked about the sinkholes, inquiring about such
matters as their width and depth.
     "Most of them are small and shallow," declared Clenwick, "but apparently
they enlarge with years. Take the Giant Sinkhole, for example. Picture a
rounded cavity a hundred feet across, withered trees leaning over its brink,
dead brush clinging to its precipitous walls. At the bottom, a stagnant pool,
so deep that no one has ever measured it.
     "When I came here, the Giant Sinkhole was the worst of all local hazards.
Cattle wandered into the pit, because the clay brink gave under their weight.
For all we know, human beings may have blundered into that fearful trap."
     Pacing the floor with a heavy stride, Clenwick gradually lost his solemn
expression. He brightened, as he stated:
     "I ended the menace of the Giant Sinkhole by fencing it with barbed wire.
I have done the same with other sinkholes on my property. I have won the
friendship of the natives hereabouts, by supplying them with wire for the same
purpose. Every time a new menace appears, I try to counteract it."
     Laura entered, to announce that dinner was ready. During the course of the
meal, Clenwick began to talk about the jinx that hung over Pomelo City. Like
Welf and Tilyon, he argued that it was purely local superstition; but he
proposed a different remedy.
     "We've got to forget Pomelo City," he boomed. "A difficult step for Welf
and Tilyon, but it's better than their plan of rotting with the town. Look at
what happened to poor Bayne! I tell you, that town is a city of ghosts!
     "Having seen Pomelo City, Mr. Cranston, I know that you will agree that it
is little better than a cemetery. Soon, Welf and Tilyon will be legends, like
the Indian ghost of Kewanee Springs. I understand they want to develop the
Springs. Have they approached you on the subject?"
     The Shadow nodded.
     "A good investment," decided Clenwick. "One that I would take up, except
for my sole interest in ranching. But first, they should forget Pomelo City.
The right step is to abandon that forsaken town and make Kewanee Springs an
attraction in its own right."
     Clenwick's proposition had soundness. As they retired to the library, he
was stating how a lodge and cabins could be built at Kewanee Springs, bringing
tourists directly to the place.
     "A fresh start is the only way," said Clenwick. "My experience proves it.
My ranch, which adjoins this mansion, is building steadily. When ticks and
other plagues injured the weaker cattle; I brought in Brahmans.
     "I've helped the local cattle raisers, poor fellows, by taking over
mortgages that the banks wouldn't handle. I supplied them with stock when their
own cattle died. I'll turn this whole area into the best grazing land in Florida
-"


     CLENWICK paused, head tilted, a cigar raised halfway to his mouth. A car
had rolled in through the driveway; its smooth hum marked it as a strange one,
since most of the local automobiles were rattletraps.
     Though Clenwick couldn't place the car by the sound of the motor, The
Shadow recognized it. He had heard that same smooth hum the night before, when
a car had rolled into the shed beside the abandoned filling station.
     The coming of that car promised an early answer to a pressing riddle.
Clenwick's visitor was to be the sallow man named Enwald, the smooth crook who
was leagued with the Manhattan racketeer, Tony Belgo!
     As Lamont Cranston, The Shadow was perfectly placed to learn facts that
might pertain to future crime, as well as gaining clues to a mystery of the
past - the jinx that hovered above Pomelo City!


     CHAPTER X

     CRIME'S MISSION

     USHERED into the library by a servant, the sallow-faced visitor introduced
himself by his full name: Roy Enwald. Smooth-mannered and presentable, Enwald
looked like anything but a crook. Perhaps it was his lack of company like
Dingbat and Skate that gave Enwald gloss on this occasion.
     Nevertheless, the shrewdness of his peaked features showed that Enwald
might be a schemer in his own right. An odd contrast, his voice had a tone of
real sincerity, as he purred:
     "I'm a friend of Terry Knight."
     Clenwick clapped Enwald on the shoulder.
     "You're welcome, then!" boomed the rancher. "Any of Terry's friends are
friends of mine!"
     Smiling, Enwald lighted a cigar that Clenwick tendered him. Introduced to
Cranston, Enwald shook hands very cordially, then looked around the room.
     "I expected to find Terry here," said the sallow man, smoothly. "This is
the last place where I heard from him."
     "Terry has the wanderlust," returned Clenwick, with a broad smile. "He
never stays anywhere more than a few months."
     "He stayed in Texas a long while."
     "Because he was looking for oil. When he found the fields too crowded, he
became a rancher. That's how I happened to meet him. My business is raising
cattle."
     Enwald nodded at Clenwick's statement.
     "So I learned in Pomelo City," he said. Then, turning to The Shadow: "Like
yourself, Mr Cranston, I am a guest at the Pomelo Hotel. Which reminds me that I
have a message for you. Mr. Tilyon says that he will call for you at half past
ten."
     The message delivered, Enwald returned to the former subject. He wanted to
know if Clenwick had heard from Knight after his friend had left Florida.
Clenwick shook his head.
     "Soon after I came here," he explained, "I had a letter from Terry,
stating that he was out of a job. So I wrote him to come to Florida. He was
enthused, for a while, over the ranch that I had started; then he lost interest.
     "He was on his feet again, and had enough money to head for Mexico. So he
left, claiming that he could make a place for himself in the oil fields that
the Mexican government were taking over. I wasn't surprised that he wanted to
go. Terry never did care much for cattle raising."
     Enwald nodded. Then: "Do you think that everything is all right with
Terry?"
     "It must be," replied Clenwick, warmly. "Otherwise, I would have heard
from him. Terry never writes" - Clenwick gave a deep chuckle - "except when
he's down and out!"


     A VOICE was calling from the rear hall: Laura's. Since the others were
busy, The Shadow strolled out to learn what the girl wanted. Laura greeted him
with a winsome smile.
     "Here's your chance to help both members of the Severn family," she said.
"I just wheeled Roger in from the glen, but I can't manage to bring the chair
up the back steps. Could you handle it for me, Mr. Cranston?"
     The Shadow agreed that he could. Out back, he found Roger slumped in the
wheel chair. Laura's brother was too tired to disguise his impatient mood. He
pointed to the car lights that he saw in front of the house, and demanded:
     "Who's the new visitor?"
     "A chap named Enwald," was Cranston's reply. "He says that he is a friend
of Terry knight."
     "That lout!" snapped Roger. "What a time he gave us! Clumping into the
house at all hours of the night, messing everything with his grimy boots. He
was always behind on his pay for board and lodging, too."
     "How long was he here?"
     "Two months or more. It was ghastly! But he did us two good turns. He
brought Clenwick here, by informing him that this was good cattle land; and
after that, Knight went away, to Mexico. Clenwick hasn't heard from him since,
and I term it good riddance."
     The Shadow had swung the chair into the house. From the rear of the hall,
Roger caught his first glimpse of Roy Enwald. Clenwick had introduced the
visitor to Laura. Enwald was talking to the girl. Clenwick had gone into the
library.
     As The Shadow pushed the wheel chair closer, Clenwick came into sight.
Enwald gave a sallow-lipped smile, muttered a good night and turned suddenly on
his heel. He left the house rapidly; they heard his car drive away.
     "What was that fellow saying?" demanded Roger, as the chair reached Laura.
"Why did he leave so suddenly?"
     "He was just talking about Terry Knight," replied Laura. "I told him that
when Terry was our only boarder, he used to tramp everywhere, night and day. I
said that Terry liked the country round here, until he tired of it."
     "And then?"
     "Mr. Enwald said that he had heard of some very lovely places hereabouts -"
     Roger raised his scrawny fists in interruption, shook them toward the
door. His temper broke.
     "But Enwald meant Kewanee Springs!" stormed Roger. "I could tell by his
smirk that he was jesting at your expense, Laura, because of what happened
there this morning. If I had strength, I'd go after that cad and choke him!"
     Roger's hands were writhing furiously. It was Clenwick who finally managed
to soothe the invalid. When Roger sank back into the chair, Clenwick undertoned:
     "I'll get him upstairs. After that, I'll turn in myself. It's been a hard
day at the ranch. Good night, Cranston. Laura will chat with you until Tilyon
comes."
     When Clenwick had worked the wheel chair up the stairs, Laura turned, to
see Cranston glancing at his watch. Noting that it was only half past nine, The
Shadow questioned:
     "You have a car of your own, Miss Severn?"
     Laura nodded.
     "Could I borrow it until tomorrow? I don't like to bring Tilyon all the
way out here."
     Conducting The Shadow to a barn that served as a garage for several cars,
Laura gave him the keys to her coupe, and waited to close the door when he had
left. The car rolled from the barn; Laura spoke earnestly through the window.
     "Really, Mr. Cranston," said the girl, "Roger was hopelessly bewildered
tonight. He didn't mean the threats that he made against Enwald, Roger always
finds fault with something, or someone, after a tiring day."
     "I understand."


     WITH that quiet statement, The Shadow drove away. His words, however, had
more significance than Laura knew. The Shadow understood why Enwald had talked
to the girl; why the sallow man had left so suddenly.
     Roy Enwald formed a curious link between the missing adventurer, Terry
Knight, and the New York racketeer, Tony Belgo. Enwald had come here to find
out something, and had learned it. Because of that, Enwald had resolved upon a
future course, a drastic one.
     The Shadow intended to reach the hotel, to confront Enwald and learn more
facts from the sallow man's own lips. That accomplished, The Shadow would have
more links to the riddle of Pomelo City, town of ghosts!
     Parking the car some distance from the hotel, The Shadow approached a fire
escape that would take him to the second floor. Enwald was already in his room,
as a light showed. But, as The Shadow reached the fire escape, sounds from
above told that other visitors had arrived ahead of him.
     Reaching the second floor, The Shadow stopped at his own room, to don
garments of black. After that, he approached a door where a crack of light
showed beneath. Using a special pick, he probed the lock. Easing the door
inward as silently as he had unlocked it, he saw Enwald in conference with
Skate and Dingbat.
     Lowering a glass from his lips, Enwald thumped it on the bureau, reached
for a bottle to pour himself another drink. His expression showed an ugliness
that he had managed to restrain while at the mansion. His tone was raspy, when
he stated:
     "We're going through with it. The thing's a setup! Clenwick lives at the
old house. The only other people there are a girl and her crippled brother,
except for servants, who don't count. The flunkies are quartered in old
buildings out back."
     Skate put a question: "What about the hired hands?"
     "You mean the rancheros?" Enwald's purr had returned. "They live over with
the cattle, where they belong. We'll wait until the rest of our crew shows up.
I'll tell them to go ahead; because if the mob moves in there quiet, it will be
a cinch to snatch Clenwick without anybody knowing it."
     Skate and Dingbat conferred, while Enwald went back to his bottle. The
sallow man wasn't interested in the conference; he had told his story. He
caught mutters, though, and understood them.
     The thugs were agreed that they should kidnap Clenwick tonight, as soon as
the mob arrived, and take him as a trophy to the big shot, Tony Belgo. From
their comments, it was plain that Belgo was a high-powered crook who was taking
up kidnapping as a new specialty.
     "If the jab goes sour tonight," remarked Skate, "we can make it look like
we were after cattle. If we lam, Tony can dope out the next move."
     "That makes sense," agreed Dingbat. "All that worries me is whether
Clenwick is worth a couple of million bucks, like Enwald says."
     Enwald finished his drink and gave a nod. His purred tone became a raucous
pitch.
     "He's worth plenty," declared Enwald, "and he'll pay up, Tony Belgo will
know how to put the heat on him. I told Tony how to handle it, and I was right.
But Tony won't begin until I'm miles away -"


     MILES suddenly lacked interest to Enwald. He was thinking in terms of a
few feet - the distance between himself and the door. Bleary-eyed, he fancied
that he had seen the door ease shut, though it was supposed to be locked.
     From somewhere outside came the rumble of a car motor; its sound ended
abruptly. Dingbat forgot Enwald, sprang to the window and beckoned to Skate.
     "It's the mob, all right," informed Dingbat, in a whisper. "They knew that
Enwald would be here at the hotel. This is where Tony told them to come."
     At that moment, Enwald was thinking in terms other than the mob and Tony
Belgo. He had even forgotten Dingbat and Skate. Springing from beside the
bureau, Enwald pounced to the door, grabbed the knob and gave it a quick turn.
     He yanked. The door flew inward, sprawling the sallow man back upon the
floor. Skate and Dingbat heard the noise and wheeled about, tugging guns from
their hips. Their throats voice hoarse shouts.
     A tall figure occupied the doorway. He was a being cloaked in black.
Burning eyes peered above the gloved hand that had discarded its tiny
lock-picking instrument for a more formidable object. The muzzle of a .45
automatic waggled back and forth between Skate and Dingbat, holding the two
crooks motionless.
     The thugs knew that this black-cloaked challenger was no ghost. Well
versed in crime, they recognized a superfoe long noted for his skill at
tracking down men of evil.
     The Shadow!
     How crime's most deadly enemy had traced them to this forgotten town in
Florida they couldn't guess. Vaguely, they connected his arrival with a prowler
who had come to the abandoned filling station the night before; but they thought
that they had settled that foolhardy wayfarer.
     The thugs were loosening their grip, ready to drop their guns, when
intervention came in their behalf. Enwald supplied it, for the sallow man,
influenced by drink and local legend, actually believed that he was viewing a
ghost.
     With a crazed shriek, Enwald grabbed a chair; from hands and knees, he
threw it madly, defiantly, and with surprising accuracy.
     Twisting, The Shadow threw up a warding arm. The chair glanced from his
shoulder, but his shift, the duck of his head, gave the illusion that he was
staggered.
     Momentarily, he had lost his aim toward Dingbat and Skate. Inspired by
Enwald's mistaken bravado, the two surged through the doorway, to grapple with
the fighter in black in the hallway. Revolvers spoke, but The Shadow jerked
Skate's gun hand upward, clashed Dingbat's weapon with his heavy automatic.
     Crooks were joined by another fighter, more furious than they. It was
Enwald, reeling into the fray, armed with an empty bottle. One against three,
The Shadow was engaged in battle that offered a serious problem even if he won
it.
     Victory would not suffice unless The Shadow kept his presence in Pomelo
City undiscovered. Otherwise, The Shadow's coming campaign would come to naught
before he started it.
     The Shadow knew - too well!


     CHAPTER XI

     DEATH BELOW

     LOCKED with two thugs like Skate and Dingbat, The Shadow held advantages
that his antagonists did not suspect. He had long ago trained himself to
battles of this sort; and in actual experience, he had frequently utilized the
many tricks he knew.
     Thuggish fighters were all alike. Given odds in their favor, they used
them recklessly. In certain ways, The Shadow preferred to handle two such
foemen, rather than one. A pair would always behave true to form.
     Skate and Dingbat were doing just that. Each was trying to clutch The
Shadow with a free hand, and get a gun fist into play. The Shadow, both hands
in sweeping action, was actually equalizing the struggle.
     He had hauled a second automatic from beneath his cloak, and the way he
sledged those big guns was a sight to be remembered. Back against the wall, he
was slashing past the hands that grabbed for him, striking the gun fists of his
foemen.
     Guns blasted. Their shots were wide, including the ones The Shadow loosed.
But the whine of bullets past their ears did not please the brawling mobbies.
Stirred to new frenzy, they tried to batter past The Shadow's guns. That was
when he grappled.
     Whirling, he spun the two men about with him. On the outside of the
circle, they were flung hard along the farther wall, as the reeling trio
ricocheted against it.
     Jolted, they lost their grip upon The Shadow. They came back for more, but
not as promptly as they had at first. This time, one or the other seemed due for
a blow from one of The Shadow's descending guns.
     It was Enwald who spoiled the picture.
     Wielding the bottle, Enwald had been trying to swing it over the heads of
his pals to reach The Shadow. That was one reason why the cloaked fighter had
wheeled away from the far wall. Enwald's swings had come too close.
     There was no calculating the fellow's strokes. Enwald wasn't of the thug
type; he was a fighter who had an individual style. His drinks had handicapped
his accuracy; but with that loss, he had gained an eccentric touch that was
highly dangerous.
     His blows might come in from anywhere, when least expected. The Shadow had
to keep away from Enwald, for the present.
     The sallow man was driving in again, before The Shadow could settle either
Skate or Dingbat. Grappling with one thug, The Shadow reeled him against the
other, who also came to grips. Again, the three were in a spin, The Shadow the
center of it, before Enwald could smash home a blow.
     Opportunity came The Shadow's way.
     Close to that spinning path was the broken chair that Enwald had flung
into the hallway. Stopping short, The Shadow hooked one foot against it. Past
the glaring faces of Skate and Dingbat, The Shadow saw Enwald lunging forward
with the bottle. A hard kick, a sideward shove - the thing was done.
     The Shadow and his two adversaries were gone from Enwald's path but the
chair was there. The sallow man tripped over it. The bottle went clattering
along the hallway like a bouncing tenpin. Enwald went headlong after it, in the
fashion of an overbalanced bowler.
     Again, The Shadow's feet were busy, tripping the legs about him. He went
to the floor with the two struggling thugs, snapping a shot as they fell. The
bullet found Dingbat's left shoulder, as a frenzied snarl told. Viciously,
Dingbat shoved his gun for The Shadow, pressed the muzzle home.
     This time, The Shadow failed to shove the revolver aside. Dingbat pressed
the trigger. An agonized shriek sounded through the hallway. The gun muzzle
wasn't poking The Shadow's ribs. Skate's body was the obstacle. Dingbat had
blasted his own pal with a mortal shot.


     PUTTING an elbow clamp on the arm above Dingbat's gun hand, The Shadow
hoisted the wounded crook to his feet. Shoving the fellow farther along the
hall, The Shadow gave a sideward twist to meet Enwald's return. The sallow man
was coming back again. He had reclaimed the big quart bottle and was gripping
it by the neck, swinging the thing like a bludgeon.
     In fact, Enwald's hand was already sledging downward when The Shadow saw
him. Nothing could have stopped the bottle's descent for The Shadow's head; not
even a warding lift of The Shadow's right arm, for it was held too low.
     Nor could Enwald be stopped. His drive, his swing, had become matters of
momentum that were beyond control. But the bottle was a different matter. The
Shadow's right hand tilted its gun straight upward, in a fraction of the time
required for a full lift of his arm. The Shadow fired.
     There wasn't any bottle when Enwald's descending hand slashed inches away
from The Shadow's face. Chunks of glass were flying, some bouncing from the
brim of The Shadow's slouch hat. Enwald was gripping the jagged-edged bottle
neck; nothing more.
     The Shadow's bull's-eye had been a whiskey label, and he scored a hit. The
bullet from the .45 burst the bottle like a soap bubble, a half yard from The
Shadow's head.
     Enwald's follow-through carried him at an angle past The Shadow. Half
sprawled to the floor, the sallow man was wondering what had become of the
bottle.
     That didn't bother Dingbat. He was concerned with matters of his own.
Twisting his one good arm, the thug managed to release it from The Shadow's
grip. Dingbat lost his revolver in the effort, for he couldn't tug it past The
Shadow's elbow. When the gun hit the floor, the crook didn't stop to snatch it
up.
     They were close by the stairway leading down into the lobby. Knowing that
The Shadow would be after him, Dingbat made a headlong flight down the stairs,
shouting incoherently as he went. He was hoping that arriving mobbies had
entered by the lobby. They had.
     As Dingbat took a long, hard tumble to the tiled floor of the lobby, The
Shadow saw Tilyon and Welf darting into the kitchen. They were away in time to
avoid an entering mobster crew, five strong.
     The crooks heard Dingbat's howls, saw him sprawl. From below, they
glimpsed the vague outline of The Shadow at the top of the stairs.
     Revolvers barked, too hastily for accuracy. Down from the stair top
stabbed answering tongues of flame. The Shadow's shots clipped the first two of
the incoming mob; after that, his bullets were digging chunks out of the lobby
floor, for the others had turned about.
     Guns spoke outdoors. Descending a half dozen steps, The Shadow saw Sheriff
Harley and a few other men alighting from a car. The law had arrived to take its
part in the fray. It wouldn't do to let crooks stay barricaded in the lobby.
     That was why The Shadow lashed bullets to the full. He wasn't out for
hits, for the mobbies were beyond the angle of his range. His purpose was to
drive the whole band out into the street, where the sheriff's squad could round
them up. The Shadow did not stop his barrage until his guns were empty.


     THE system worked. Unwounded crooks were gone, preferring battle in the
open spaces to The Shadow's flaying fire. Their crippled pals, ignored by The
Shadow, were staggering after them.
     Stumbling in the rear was Dingbat. The fellow caved in as he went through
the doorway.
     Dingbat was through. His wound, plus the skull-cracking fall upon the
lobby floor, indicated that he would not long survive his dead pal, Skate.
     The Shadow had not forgotten Enwald.
     Others were mere mobsters in the employ of a big shot, Tony Belgo. Roy
Enwald was different. He was a man with a plan - a schemer who had been living
in this territory, giving orders to a pair of aids that Belgo had furnished.
     More than a mere "finger man" working with Belgo's snatch racket, Enwald
knew a lot more than he had told the thugs who worked with him. He was a
schemer in his own right, Enwald, and his alliance with Belgo could well be a
mere side issue, to further purposes of Enwald's own.
     Most important was the fact that Enwald's presence in this area had been
coincident with recent tragedies which had the definite earmarks of crime.
Enwald, under proper questioning, could certainly tell a lot. Deprived of the
protecting thugs, he should be an easy man to capture.
     Turning toward the second floor, The Shadow made a quick drop to the
steps, poking a gun over the top one. The move was timely. Enwald had found
Dingbat's lost revolver, and was looking for The Shadow. Sight of a looming gun
muzzle across the step edge was enough for Enwald.
     He had nothing to shoot at, except the pair of blazing eyes beneath the
brim of the slouch hat. Afraid to trust his hurried aim against the point-blank
fire of The Shadow, Enwald fled along the hall toward the fire escape.
     The Shadow did not fire. He sprang up from the steps and took up the
pursuit. Reaching the fire escape, Enwald turned about, too late. The Shadow
was upon him.
     One gun cloaked, the intrepid fighter in black was using his free hand to
grab for Enwald's revolver. In his other fist, The Shadow swung a heavy
automatic that was a permanent bludgeon; not something that could be shattered,
like Enwald's vanished bottle.
     Struggling as The Shadow enveloped him, Enwald threw his weight against
the iron rail of the fire escape. Rusted metal gave; the thing flapped like a
hinged gate. Over the edge they went, Enwald screeching from the folds of the
black cloak that covered him like a pair of closing bat wings.
     How Enwald managed a midair twist remained a matter unanswered. Usually,
The Shadow performed such an action when diving along with a foe. By rights,
Enwald should have taken the full brunt of that fall, but he managed to fling
sideward and give half the shock to The Shadow.
     Fortunately, the courtyard was no longer cement. It had filled, some time
ago, with thick mud, now turned to powdery clay. The grapplers rolled apart
when they struck the two-inch layer of soil. Neither was out of combat.
     The jar, however, produced opposite effects. It drove some sense back into
Enwald's drink-befuddled brain, whereas The Shadow found himself in a temporary
daze.


     AS he crawled for shelter beside the pitch-black wall, The Shadow couldn't
quite remember where he was.
     He fancied that he was in dark, watery depths awaiting the jaws of a
powerful alligator. Memory of his battle at Kewanee Springs brought back
kaleidoscopic pictures of Laura Severn.
     The Shadow visioned her on the pool brink; then in the water. Next, he saw
her in the glen - chatting with her brother; finally, he placed her in the
mansion talking with Roy Enwald.
     That thought jerked The Shadow to the present. It wasn't an alligator that
he had to battle; it was Enwald. The fellow was somewhere in the darkness, with
a gun.
     Through his thin glove, The Shadow felt the cold metal of an automatic.
The .45 was close beside his knee. Lifting the gun, he crawled along the wall
toward the open but pitch-black rear space of the courtyard.
     Even the handicap of carrying a lifted gun did not prevent The Shadow from
making a soundless trip. The thing that betrayed him was a loose chunk of
stucco, that dislodged from the wall as his cloaked shoulder brushed it.
     Slight though the clatter was, it brought a response from the front of the
court.
     A figure rose against the grimy yellow stucco that formed part of the
archway to the street. The form was made obscurely visible by the glimmer of a
feeble street lamp flickering beyond. Raising himself against the rear wall,
The Shadow tried to steady his gun, in case his position should be exactly
guessed.
     The man by the archway shifted. Without realizing it, he shoved his head
and shoulders into the glow. He twisted his face back and forth and The Shadow
saw the sallow features of Roy Enwald, though they seemed oddly blurred.
     There was a flash of the man's teeth as Enwald gave an ugly leer. It was
matched by the glitter of his revolver, when he lifted the gun to chin level.
There were no more sounds of battle from the front street. Enwald's voice came
in grated tone, no longer an oily purr:
     "I'll get you!" rasped Enwald. "Whoever you are - wherever you are -"
     He was waggling the gun somewhat in The Shadow's direction. Hearing no
further sound, Enwald began to shoot. Spattering bullets chinked the stucco,
one shot close to The Shadow's shoulder. In the midst of a dizzy sway, The
Shadow pressed his own gun trigger.
     Enwald heard the shot that blasted from the darkness. Clapping his hand to
his chest, the sallow man staggered. Dropping the revolver, he clutched at the
archway, lost his hold and rolled to the clay.
     The Shadow did not see that fall. He had performed a soundless slump of
his own, but not from the effect of Enwald's bullets, for none had struck him.
Sheer effort to shake his daze had been too much for The Shadow's giddy senses.
     Echoes faded from the courtyard. All was silent in that blackened square.
Quiet had come anew to the city of ghosts. Of all spots in Pomelo City, the
tiny courtyard between the decrepit hotel and the abandoned theater seemed the
proper residence of departed spirits!


     CHAPTER XII

     AGAIN, THE GHOST

     MINUTES passed before a whisper stirred the courtyard. It was a sibilant
tone, one that carried a spectral touch. It came from the archway where
Enwald's body lay. In the darkness, it actually seemed that voice could have
come from the dead man's ghost.
     Then, like a wraith from darkness, the whispering being appeared. The
Shadow had come out of his daze; he had groped to the archway to look at
Enwald's body.
     The single shot had killed the sallow man. It had been a question of
Enwald's life or The Shadow's. Despite the frequency of Enwald's fire, The
Shadow had survived. The gaping bullet hole in Enwald's body told why.
     There was no hope of hearing more from Enwald. From the fragmentary
statements that the man had made, The Shadow would have to piece together the
rest of crime's story. He could hope to do so, now that he had covered the
matter of his presence on the scene.
     Cater-cornered across the street, some distance beyond the short row of
flickery lights, was the place where The Shadow had left Laura Severn's car.
Steady again; the black-cloaked fighter glided out from the archway. Keeping to
the shelter of the brownish palm trees, he picked a blackened stretch and
blended with it as he crossed the street.
     Once in the coupe The Shadow rolled his cloak and hat beneath the seat.
Loading his emptied automatics, he tucked them into the holsters that he wore
beneath his coat.
     Starting the motor with a quick press of the starter pedal, The Shadow
drove the car up to the hotel. He alighted in the guise of Cranston, a
quizzical expression on his face as he saw Welf and Tilyon peering from the
lobby. The two hurried out to meet their friend.
     Another car swung the corner; it was a large, high-powered roadster.
Before Welf or Tilyon could take to cover, a voice stopped them. Another friend
was clambering from the roadster: Graham Clenwick.
     The broad-faced man wanted to know all that had happened; so, for that
matter, did Cranston. It was Tilyon who gave the details.
     "It started soon after the new guest came back here," related Tilyon. "In
my opinion, that chap Enwald had a lot to do with it. The shooting began
upstairs, probably in his room. While Welf and I were wondering what to do
about it, a whole crew of hoodlums invaded the place.
     "We ran for the kitchen. We saw the crooks go dashing out. The sheriff
arrived at about that moment, but he and his men couldn't stop the mob from
getting to their car. The last we saw of them, they were speeding away with the
sheriff after them."
     The Shadow inserted a dry comment, in Cranston's tone. He remarked that
Laura had offered him her car, that he had taken time coming back to town. This
was one occasion when he had been too late to help take care of trouble.
     Clenwick expressed the same sentiments.
     "I was surprised that you left so early, Cranston," he said. "When I came
downstairs, I found that Laura had gone to bed. I called up to her; she said
that you had taken her car. Having no one to chat with, I strolled over to the
ranch.
     "I learned that the sheriff had stopped there. He'd seen suspicious
parties in the neighborhood, so some of my men had gone out in a car to help
him look for them. I came back to the house, took the roadster and drove in
here."


     CLENWICK didn't realize that his account showed a great flaw in
Cranston's. It left a half-hour gap, at least. Laura certainly couldn't have
returned to the house, turned out all the lights, then managed to undress and
go to bed in any time short of ten minutes.
     The walking distance from the mansion to the ranch was at least ten
minutes more, which meant twenty for the round trip that Clenwick mentioned.
All of which made it very curious that Cranston, even if he had driven very
slowly, should have arrived at the hotel only a few minutes ahead of Clenwick.
     There was a point, though, that pleased The Shadow. Clenwick had no way of
really knowing just when Cranston had reached town; not unless Welf or Tilyon
told him. They, in their turn, were too stirred over other matters to bother
about driving times or distances.
     Actually, The Shadow had made a very rapid trip in from the mansion,
making the journey in about the shortest possible time. A glance at his watch
told him that he had spent another fifteen minutes in Pomelo City, from the
time when he looked in on Enwald's conference until he saw the fellow dead
beneath the archway.
     It was important to let that quarter hour be forgotten. Changing the
subject, The Shadow put anxiety into Cranston's tone, when he asked if crooks
could have gotten into his own room.
     Neither Welf nor Tilyon had thought of that possibility. They decided it
would be wise to go upstairs, to see.
     On the second floor, the four men found Skate's body, along with plenty of
gunfire evidence, including Enwald's shattered bottle. They noted that
Cranston's room was untouched; but Welf, peering along the hall, saw the
dangling rail of the fire escape.
     Using flashlights, they descended the fire escape and probed the
courtyard. It was Tilyon who came across Enwald's body. Turning to Welf, Tilyon
said:
     "I guess Enwald was the one who fought off the mobsters. They must have
gotten him in the finish."
     Welf shook his head.
     "There was more to it than that," he declared. "You know it, as well as I
do. The ghost was back again! We saw him, didn't we?"
     Tilyon was loath to acknowledge the fact; but finally, he did. Once
committed, he was emphatic. Turning to Clenwick and Cranston, he asserted:
     "Ghost or no ghost, he was there, at the top of the stairs. The same man
the crackers talked about. He looked like a big black blot, except for the
shooting he did. His guns were spouting like a turret of a battleship!"
     Cranston's response was a smile, intimating that his friends had
over-employed their imaginations. But Clenwick accepted the story seriously.
     "It must have been the ghost," Clenwick argued, "because I'm sure that
Enwald wasn't on the level. His talk about Terry Knight was a subterfuge. Maybe
Enwald knew Terry once, but he was merely using the fact as an excuse to call on
me. Don't you think so, Cranston?"
     The Shadow nodded.
     "Terry couldn't have sent Enwald here," added Clenwick. "Not a chance of
it! A rough chap, Terry is, but always a square-shooter. I'll write to friends
of mine, to see if they have heard from Terry. If we can locate him, I know
that he will give us the real facts regarding Enwald.
     "From the looks of the fellow" - the rancher was gazing at Enwald's body -
"I'd say that he came from the Southwest. But I would also venture that he
belonged to some band of border outlaws, of the sort that used to trouble us in
Texas. He looks like a thieving bird who joined a different flock."


     CARS were rolling in along the main street. A great variety of men poured
from them. The first car contained the sheriff and his deputies. The next held
a quota of Clenwick's big-fisted ranch hands.
     The rattletraps that followed were filled with natives of the sort who had
invaded Pomelo City the night The Shadow arrived there. The crackers weren't
wearing guilty looks on this occasion. They had done their share, along with
the law.
     "We nearly nabbed those mobsters," announced the sheriff, ruefully. "They
finally slipped us, but they had to lighten their car by throwing some dead
pals overboard. Bring out the bodies, men."
     Deputies brought out the bodies, two of them. The Shadow recognized one as
Dingbat. The other was a crook that The Shadow had wounded in the lobby. The
thug's body showed other bullet holes, received during the running battle from
which the crook-manned car had escaped.
     "Your boys helped a lot," said the sheriff, to Clenwick. "It's lucky I
talked to them this afternoon and told them to be posted. They came along just
when the crooks almost had us ambushed."
     The sheriff wanted details of the shooting at the hotel, for his arrival
in Pomelo City had been a chance one at the time. Tilyon gave his previous
account; this time, he included the ghost, simply terming him as "somebody
upstairs."
     That reference did not escape the natives. Shifting their shotguns, the
men from the backwoods began a spreading murmur. The sheriff shouted for
silence.
     "What if the fellow is a ghost?" he demanded. "He's on our side, isn't he?
If I ever meet him, I'll shake hands with him!"
     The mumblings silenced, but it was evident that the muttering men weren't
anxious to be members of the sheriff's welcoming committee. From the way they
shifted their double-barreled shotguns and looked across the street, then up to
the hotel, they had their own idea of a greeting for a ghost.
     If they met him, they'd deliver a salute in the ghost's own direction.
Observing their expressions, The Shadow was forewarned.
     "You're going to Leesville, sheriff?" The Shadow quietly inquired.
     Sheriff Harley grinned.
     "I allow you'll be going along tonight, Mr. Cranston?"
     "Not at all," was the calm response. "I'd simply like you to send a
telegram for me, to my broker in New York. I'm finding Pomelo City a very
interesting place, sheriff. I have resolved to extend my stay here."
     Later, The Shadow gazed from the window of his hotel room upon the main
street of the ghost town. Again deserted, the scene showed faintly under the
glow of a rising half-moon. Softly, The Shadow's lips phrased an understanding
laugh.
     He had fitted the picture better than he hoped. He could see a curious,
yet simple, answer to the menace overhanging Pomelo City. Some facts that
looked large were small; other factors, mere trifles, were highly important.
     The thing to do was to wait, but not for long. Should certain
complications come - and they were likely - the issue would be forced. When
that happened, The Shadow's turn would come.


     CHAPTER XIII

     COMING CRIME

     DURING the next two days, a lazy lull lay over Pomelo City. Even the
buzzards atop the water tower sat morose and listless. Things weren't dying
around the ghost city, because there were so few creatures left to die.
     True, sudden death had taken toll, but that hadn't helped the buzzards.
The sheriff had promptly removed the bodies of dead crooks. No further threats
had come to Pomelo City to disturb the local residents, Tilyon and Welf, or
Cranston, the one out-of-towner.
     There was life at Clenwick's ranch and the backwoods near it, where
farmers and cattle ranchers were finding new opportunity under Clenwick's
protection. Life, too, at the mansion where Lamont Cranston was a regular
caller.
     On his visits, The Shadow chatted often with Laura Severn and her brother
Roger, but they talked very little concerning the strife that had occurred in
Pomelo City.
     The case of Roy Enwald was closed.
     It was fully conceded that Enwald and the thugs accompanying him were
responsible for certain troubles in this region. To them could be attributed
the accident that had forced Betterly's car off the road, resulting in three
deaths; also, the fire that had ruined Bayne's store, bringing another death in
its wake.
     The sheriff claimed that robbery had been Enwald's purpose, but that the
fellow had picked the wrong town. Finding that Pomelo City had nothing to
offer, Enwald had resolved to look over the Severn mansion. It didn't occur to
the sheriff that there might be a deeper plot, backed by a certain big shot
named Tony Belgo.
     Only The Shadow knew that fact. He was acting upon it. His telegram to New
York was actually a message to his secret agents, telling them to locate Tony
Belgo.
     However, Sheriff Harley was not idle. He was determined to make sure that
nothing else happened in the Pomelo City area, and he adopted effective
measures to prevent it. There were only a few roads leading into the terrain,
and the sheriff had posted deputies on all of them.
     Clenwick's crew of ranch men were taking moonlight rides on horseback.
They weren't just looking for stray cattle, those Florida cowboys that Clenwick
had imported from other regions. They were watching for stray crooks, chance
leftovers from Enwald's band.
     The natives, too, were on patrol, with shotguns, for ostensibly the same
purpose. They were more anxious, though, to meet the black-garbed ghost that
had worsted them in one fray at Pomelo City. In fact, the county was
considerably stirred, and rumors of the Pomelo City trouble became news in all
parts of Florida.


     LATE that second afternoon, a group of men were seated in an eighth-story
room of a Jacksonville hotel. Their faces were of a thuggish variety, but they
were well groomed enough to pass muster. Jacksonville wasn't entirely
unacquainted with hard characters from the Northland.
     In fact, the city was a favorite stopping-off point for such gentry, when
en route to Miami. Mobbies had a habit, sometimes, of staying in Jax until they
learned how things were doing, farther South.
     If their mugs didn't have too much of the rogues'-gallery look, and they
behaved themselves, it wasn't difficult for them to stop at good hotels.
     Tony Belgo never had any trouble putting up his crew. His face was thick,
flat-nosed, with pudgy lips; but people seldom noticed it. Tony had a way of
distracting their attention by flourishing a roll of bank notes big enough to
choke any hotel clerk.
     Tony never choked clerks, though. He simply let them faint when they saw
the size of the figures on the bills that made up the big roll.
     Tilted in a chair, his back toward the screened window that overlooked the
St. John's River, Tony was summing up certain facts for the benefit of his
supporting cast.
     "See what this bladder says?" Tony flourished an evening paper that bore
the Jacksonville imprint. "The hick sheriff is covering all the roads. What can
he do? There's no State coppers here in Florida."
     One of the mobbies began an objection. He had been in the crew of two
nights ago. Things could be pretty hot around Pomelo City, he testified.
     "We'll make them hotter," promised Tony. "Enwald found out the thing was a
setup. That's what Dingbat told you, didn't he, before he croaked?"
     "Yeah," came a reply, "and he was saying something about The Shadow, too."
     Tony Belgo gave a leer.
     "The Shadow's in New York," he said. "He popped in on some racketeers the
other night, and scared 'em nearly cuckoo! He can do a lot, The Shadow, but he
can't hop from Florida to New York inside a couple of hours."
     Swinging from his chair, Tony stepped to a bureau and yanked open the
drawer. He drew out a rolled map, spread it on the table.
     "You know the dodge we've been working," he told his mob. "Bringing in
aliens was a pretty sweet game, while it lasted. Only the G guys are wise to
it. They're patrolling pretty heavy along the Indian River, just inside those
islands along the coast.
     "They've been looking over that cruiser that we've been keeping at
Fernandina. If we start off on a fishing trip, we'll have cutters tailing us.
So I'm having the cruiser brought here to Jax. She'll show up tomorrow. When
night comes, we'll start on a hundred-mile trip."
     Crooks were anxious-eyed. They knew that cutters would be outside the port
of Jacksonville. Tony saw their worry and gave a guffaw.
     "We're not heading out to sea!" he chuckled. "We'll take a trip in the
wrong direction. We're going inland!"
     Tony traced the route along the map. He let his finger run southward,
almost to Lake George, then marked the westward bends toward the headwaters of
the Oklawaha. He came to the tiny line of the Kewanee River, traced it to its
source.
     "Nobody's watching the river," chortled Tony. "It lands us about a mile
away from that house where Clenwick is staying, with no roads in between."
     Rolling up the map, Tony tossed it back into the drawer. It wasn't
necessary for him to add further details. Whether the scheme was his own, or
purely a suggestion made by Enwald, it was a perfect one. A secret visit to the
heart of a guarded district would assure the easy kidnapping of Graham Clenwick,
for the rancher would be taken entirely unaware.
     "Climb into your tuxedoes," Tony told his mobbies. "We'll make the rounds
tonight and look over some of these night spots they've got here in Jax. You've
got an hour to get dressed, because I'm going down to see about a place to dock
the cruiser."
     Tony Belgo wasn't the only person who went to the dock. He was trailed
there, in another taxi, by a well-dressed young man who was also interested in
mooring a boat.
     The young man in question was Harry Vincent, a secret agent of The Shadow.
He found out all he wanted.


     WITH dusk, Lamont Cranston was ready to leave Pomelo City for another
dinner at the home of Laura Severn. While he lingered, chatting with Tilyon,
Woodley drove in from Leesville. The taxi driver brought a telegram from
Cranston's broker.
     Since the wire concerned business, Cranston took along a brief case when
he rode out to the mansion. He hired Woodley's taxi for the trip, and as they
bumped along, The Shadow read the wire. It was the second coded message that he
had received.
     The first had stated that Harry Vincent had gone to Jacksonville because
Tony Belgo was known to be there; it had also referred to a ruse staged by
Cliff Marsland, another of The Shadow's agents.
     Cliff had put on a black cloak and hat, to spring a surprise party on a
few of Tony's racketeering friends in New York.
     The Shadow had ordered that ruse, and it had worked. Not suspecting that
The Shadow was in Florida, Tony Belgo was prepared to show his hand, according
to the present telegram. He was bringing in a cabin cruiser from Fernandina to
Jacksonville, by Harry's report.
     Since the boat wouldn't be on hand until the next day, there was time for
Cliff and other agents to join Harry in Jacksonville. From then on, they would
be on their own. The Shadow could depend upon them to do whatever was required.
     When dinner was ended at the mansion, Laura wheeled Roger out to the glen,
where he liked to stay on moonlight evenings. Clenwick invited Cranston into the
library; eyeing the visitor's brief case, the rancher asked:
     "You've made a deal on Kewanee Springs?"
     "Not yet," replied The Shadow. "Tilyon has been pressing me" - he opened
the brief case, to take out a thin sheaf of papers - "but I preferred to talk
it over with you, first."
     Chewing a cigar, Clenwick read over the papers that Cranston had brought.
He sorted them as he went along, until they became two piles.
     "I agree with these." Clenwick slapped one heap. "The Kewanee proposition
is sound. But Tilyon is still too optimistic about reviving real estate in
Pomelo City."
     Opening a large map, Clenwick showed a penciled circle representing the
Pomelo City area. The mansion was just within the circle; Clenwick's ranch was
closer to the center. Clenwick began to tap large dots that were also within
the area.
     "These are the sinkholes," he said. "This is the Giant, the worst of the
lot; but all of them are bad. The blue ones are the old; the red, the new."
     The sinkholes made actual pockmarks on the map. Terming them a veritable
plague, Clenwick moved his pencil to Pomelo City, which centered the circle.
     "If a sinkhole shows up there," he predicted, "the town will drop through
with it. This ground is no longer good, except for pasture land, because we can
fence off the sinks, like I have done."
     "Over here, though" - he moved his pencil to Kewanee Springs, outside the
circle - "we get away from the high hammocks. I own land there that I'd
exchange for property inside the circle. Good land, for anything but pasture."
     The Shadow saw Clenwick's logic. The rancher pointed out another fact.
Down the Kewanee River, on land that Clenwick owned, was an old steamboat
wharf. Should the Springs be developed, rival persons might start cruises from
that point, coming up to the headwaters.
     "The Kewanee is a navigable river," reminded Clenwick. "I might be forced
to let boats dock there. But Tilyon and Welf, operating craft of their own,
could rule others off if they owned that lower wharf."
     Turning away, Clenwick crossed the room to obtain a fresh box of cigars.
Back turned about, he did not observe the new interest that Cranston had taken
in the map. Temporarily, The Shadow had dropped all consideration of sinkholes,
cattle lands, and other property.
     His finger was at the extreme corner of the map, which showed the city of
Jacksonville. From there, The Shadow was tracing the course upstream, from
larger rivers into smaller. His finger stopped near the head of the Kewanee, at
the little wharf on Clenwick's property.
     The Shadow voiced no laugh. Even his lips were smileless. His eyes, alone,
displayed a gleam; their flash was triumphant. The Shadow had traced the same
course as Tony Belgo. He knew the course that coming crime would take!


     CHAPTER XIV

     THE NIGHT PATROL

     TOMORROW night!
     The Shadow had divined the time set by Tony Belgo for the coming raid. The
finding was one of simple logic.
     Belgo wouldn't have his boat until tomorrow. Once the cruiser was on hand,
he would want to use it. Tony Belgo was not the sort who would delay when time
meant cash.
     Smoking a cigar that Clenwick handed him. The Shadow nodded further
agreement to the rancher's plans of property exchange. All of Clenwick's
suggestions were good ones, the sort that could be answered with a nod.
     Actually, Lamont Cranston was not listening to Graham Clenwick at all. In
a sense, he was no longer Cranston. He was The Shadow, except in guise. He was
making mental calculations, not in terms of land and dollars, but in water and
time.
     A swift boat like Belgo's cruiser could leave Jacksonville at dusk, and be
back at dawn, with a brief stop at the Kewanee River wharf. That was the way
Tony would manage it. Therefore, the time of the big shot's arrival whittled
down to a definite hour: the mid-point between dusk and dawn.
     Tomorrow midnight.
     What a perfect mesh the crook had spun for himself! This was one job that
could be left to Sheriff Harley. The Shadow and his agents would remain in the
background, while the local authorities laid their ambush.
     Harley and his deputies knew the Florida terrain; Tony Belgo & Co. didn't.
The peninsular jungle was quite different from the badlands of Manhattan. Crooks
would have no chance when the law came on the job. A few might, but The Shadow
and his agents could take care of them.
     Orders to the agents; a tip-off to the sheriff. Such were The Shadow's
prospective moves. He could send the orders early tomorrow, and give the
tip-off later. Unless some intervening calamity prevented The Shadow from
performing those simple duties, the case of Tony Belgo would be settled.
     From considering the future, The Shadow snapped back to the present. There
was much to be done before tomorrow. The trapping of a big-shot kidnaper would
not clear the mystery that had jinxed Pomelo City. Facts were out of place;
they needed to be readjusted. No longer was there time to wait. The Shadow's
moves must come tonight.
     A delicate task lay ahead - that of clearing up some local matters and
keeping the facts from Tony Belgo, so the crook wouldn't know what might await
him. It could all be maneuvered, though, before this night was ended.
     Clenwick had finished with the papers and was handing them over. As The
Shadow slid them into the brief case, Clenwick reverted to the map. He was
still talking about sinkholes, when he saw Cranston close the brief case and
rise with a smile.
     "I think I understand the situation," affirmed The Shadow. "Good night,
Clenwick. I'm going back to town, to talk with Tilyon."
     "He isn't coming here for you?"
     "No." The Shadow gave a leisurely gaze toward the window. "I told him that
I would walk. The moonlight is ample tonight."
     Clenwick wanted to go out to the barn and get his car, but Cranston
resisted the offer. He didn't even care to leave his brief case and call for it
tomorrow. It was very light, he insisted, and held it at arm's length to prove
the statement.


     THE brief case was much heavier than it looked. After walking a few
hundred yards down the road from the mansion, The Shadow turned it over and
opened a special compartment which formed an inverted V between the two
sections that showed when the brief case was open at the top.
     From that hollow center, he removed his cloak, his hat, and a brace of
automatics. Girded with that equipment, The Shadow added gloves, which he took
from a pocket of the cloak. The brief case found its way beneath a clump of
palmettos.
     Despite the moonlight, The Shadow was invisible. High foliage rendered a
background against which he could easily blend. Taking a side path, the weird
prowler became as much a creature of the night as any denizen of the Florida
jungle.
     Etched in The Shadow's memory were the salient features of Clenwick's map.
All that he needed was direction, which he found with the aid of a flashlight
and a tiny compass, which came from the end of the torch.
     By occasional blinks, The Shadow picked a sloping route from the hammock
region toward the Kewanee River.
     Near the stream, he extinguished the light entirely. This was dangerous
territory, as the night noises told. Strange cries of night birds, the calls of
frogs that croaked with a bleat, were mild reminders of more formidable
creatures that might be abroad.
     Below a shelving bank, The Shadow passed a fringe of palmettos. In the
moonlight, their curving stalks and bushy leaves gave the palmettos the
appearance of an advancing army of mammoth snails.
     A rattle came from that sector; The Shadow paused, then sidestepped. Past
that danger spot, he again kept close to the palmetto bank.
     Rattlesnakes gave warning; water moccasins didn't. Therefore, it was safer
to stay by the palmettos than to step into the river edge. As for alligators,
they were also present. Warning hisses sounded frequently as The Shadow
followed the stream.
     They weren't for his benefit, those sounds. The river jungle was so
chock-full of animal life that every night produced the sounds of threatening
conflict, when meddlesome jungle dwellers trespassed on each other's preserves.
     It was strange, The Shadow thought, for men to claim ownership over
property such as this, where they, the self-styled owners, wouldn't last a
minute if they stepped in the wrong place.


     MOONLIGHT revealed the river wharf, ahead. Working in through the brush,
The Shadow kept his cloak tightly about him and pressed slowly ahead.
Otherwise, the brambly twigs would have ripped the needed black garb from his
shoulders. He struck the path he wanted, followed it to the wharf.
     Warped, weather-beaten planking gleamed gray. Fish were splashing at the
end of the battered pier. When The Shadow tore a cigarette apart and threw the
pieces into the water, the hungry fish battled for the paper and tobacco.
     An excellent attraction, Tilyon would call it. He would take to the idea
of giving idle real estate in exchange for this usable landing place. It would
be a sensible future: the Kewanee River under full development, with cattle
grazing on grass that sprouted from the broken paving along the main street of
Pomelo City.
     But The Shadow was considering an earlier future. He was picturing this
wharf as the chosen goal of Tony Belgo. It was an easy place to land; the next
problem was the sheriff's ambush. Leaving the wharf, The Shadow started back
along the path.
     It led toward the mansion by a roundabout course. It was the only route
that Tony and his mob could take, and it was ambush all the way. It had
everything from rocks to palmettos, with little depressions that looked like
budding sinkholes.
     Having viewed tomorrow's probable battleground, The Shadow cut away from
the path. He passed the temporary buildings of Clenwick's ranch and gave the
squatly cabins a wide berth. Away from the jungle, any ground was good. The
Shadow set his course by the compass.
     Trees loomed ahead; between them, The Shadow found a barbed-wire fence. He
was at the Giant Sinkhole. His flashlight extinguished, he saw lanterns bobbing
along the ground. They might mean some of the ranch hands; possibly, the lights
were borne by natives on prowl.
     The Shadow did not care to be mistaken for either a cattle thief or a
ghost. But the choice he took to avoid either of those prospects was a far more
hazardous one.
     Flattening to the ground, he slid himself beneath the lowest strand of the
barbed wire. Wriggling farther, he thrust his body over the very edge of the
Giant Sinkhole!
     Ground caved in, as Clenwick claimed it would. Like a beetle caught in a
sand spider's trap, The Shadow was sliding into a one-sided vortex. His feet
heeled the sand, sending it ahead; but there was no clutching the sheer
limestone that scraped from beneath.
     Arms flung wide, The Shadow managed to grip dried brush. Dead roots tugged
loose under the strain; but by then The Shadow's hands were clutching for more.
Some sapplings grew out from the steep wall; they stayed The Shadow's slide,
until they bent too far.
     It meant sure death to animals, that sinkhole, for they had no chance to
seize the things that passed. For humans, too, it meant disaster, if the slide
became too rapid. But The Shadow kept his downward skid under reasonable
control.
     He was barely sliding at the bottom, when he dipped into the slime that
made a deep pool in the pit.
     The stagnant ooze seemed rancid. Its greasy surface gave off bubbly
sounds. Pulling himself from the muck, The Shadow clung to a chunk of
projecting limestone and played his flashlight along the surface. Having
studied the greenish pool, he turned off the light and rested.


     LANTERNS glimmered above. A flashlight made a brief play down from the
trees. Then, satisfied that no one would be foolhardy enough to venture a trip
down into the Giant Sinkhole, patrollers went their way.
     Inspecting the bank, The Shadow found projecting rocks that offered a
chance to climb. He began the long trip upward, toward an irregular, inward
curve that marred the rough circle of the brink. His flashlight aided his
choice of bushes whenever he paused to rest; but his main guide was the
moonlight.
     At times, there were downward slips of several feet; but always, The
Shadow knew where to reach for a solid hold. The hardest part was the sandy
edge itself; the loose stuff crumbled away from whatever clutched it. The
remedy was a long reach for the wire, which The Shadow caught between two barbs.
     Resting by the trees, he gave a whispered laugh that joined with the
breeze. It was welcome, that breeze, not because of its refreshing coolness but
because it offered a chance for action tonight. The Shadow, through his
meanderings, had come to one conclusion:
     Stagnation was the cause of grief in this vicinity. Human affairs were in
a scummy state, like the depths of the Giant Sinkhole. Only when stirred did
men show life and an ability to understand. The battle with Enwald and the
crooks had produced local alliances, but they hadn't proven enough.
     Something was needed to straighten out present misconceptions; to clear
the way for solid union among the right men. Deputies, natives, ranchers, all
working individually, was not the proper system. They needed to know more about
one another.
     There was a way to bring about that result.
     Leaving the sinkhole, The Shadow headed into the wind, which came from the
direction of the river. He paced off the distance that he wanted, a matter of a
few hundred yards. Stopping into the brush, he struck a match.
     The flame licked all around The Shadow's fingers, scorching them through
his dampened glove. He was applying the match to the brush; moving in a
crosswise direction, he struck another match, then a third.
     Flames were rising. Looking along the line, The Shadow saw quick lashes of
fire streak into the dried brush, eating it like tinder. He was striking a
fourth match as he listened to the crackle of the blaze.
     Then into the increasing roar came another rising sound: a peal of
insidious mirth. Weird mockery that momentarily drowned the fire's crackle,
then faded like the darkness that was vanishing from about the flames.
     The laugh of The Shadow!


     CHAPTER XV

     THE TRAPPED GHOST

     WHATEVER fun or purpose The Shadow found in starting a first-class brush
fire, he did not care to be connected with the deed. As he finished lighting a
suitable line of blaze, he made for the path that led to the Severn mansion.
     Following that sure but lengthy course, The Shadow neared the side lawn.
He skirted the barn that garaged Laura's coupe and Clenwick's roadster, and
finally reached the rear door that led into the main hall of the house.
     Only the library was lighted, which meant that Clenwick was still up,
though the others had probably retired. The Shadow wanted to talk to Clenwick;
unfortunately, this was not a suitable time.
     To return as Cranston would be difficult, for, in leaving, The Shadow had
said that he intended to walk to town. To appear in the black garb of The
Shadow was also inadvisable. Until the proper results had been produced, The
Shadow intended to keep his presence unknown.
     Therefore, he compromised by stealthily opening the back door and entering
the hallway, where the gloom below the stairs offered an excellent place to
wait. Great excitement was due, and news of it would be quick to reach the
mansion.
     It wasn't long before the clatter of hoofs came from the front drive.
Clenwick heard the sound and strode out of the library. An excited ranch hand
met him at the front door. In booming tone, Clenwick wanted to know the trouble.
     "It's those fool crackers!" panted the man. "They've started another brush
fire!"
     "Another brush fire?" queried Clenwick. "What of it?" Then, his voice
denoting sudden alarm: "Near enough to injure the ranch houses?"
     "It's blowing that way," returned the man. "It hasn't got to the Giant
Sinkhole yet, but it's pretty close."
     Clenwick gave an angry exclamation.
     "I've tried to educate those crackers," he asserted, "but they just can't
get it through their heads that brush fires can spread after they've cleared a
patch. Call out all hands and beat down that fire."
     "They're working at it, Mr. Clenwick."
     "What about getting some help from the crackers?"
     "They're all over toward town. But some of the sheriff's men showed up. I
think we've got the fire under control. Want me to ride over and get the
crackers?"
     Clenwick gave the suggestion a short consideration, then shook his head.
     "I'll take your horse and find them," he said. "You run back to the fire.
I'll tell those crackers what I think of them, and then send them over to help
out."


     THE two men left the house. From the rear door, The Shadow could see the
glare of the fire, a flickering beacon. In a sense, that fire represented The
Shadow's present hopes. He was expecting it to clear up more than mere
brushwood.
     Going through the hallway to the library, The Shadow began to look around.
Always, he had been too busy chatting with Clenwick to really examine the place.
Interested in maps and papers that he found, The Shadow gave little attention to
the time that passed.
     As he finished with a batch of loose papers, he glanced toward the rear
window. The glare from the distance had faded, which meant that the brush fire
might be out. Stepping from the library, The Shadow moved to the rear door and
opened it.
     For a moment, his cloaked figure was outlined against the hallway lights.
A sharp cry greeted him; it was answered by another. Turning, The Shadow made
for the front door. His arrival there was a signal for even louder whoops.
     Clearing the steps, The Shadow made a quick return to the shelter of the
veranda, just as shotguns ripped loose.
     The crackers, heading toward the brush fire by way of the mansion, had
found the missing ghost!
     From a front room, Laura Severn heard the tumult and sprang from bed. Clad
in a silk nightgown, she ventured to the window; there, she became the lone
witness to a singular fray. The smooth, moonlit lawn was ringed by men with
shotguns; others had come through the back of the house to reach the front door.
     All of the natives were blasting away at something that they couldn't see.
Gun stabs were answering them from thick flower beds along the veranda, but
always from a different spot.
     Confident of mowing down their prey, the crackers did not bother to
reload. That fact brought the next act of the drama. Out from the cover of the
veranda wheeled a black-clad figure, pumping bullets from a pair of big
automatics. Foemen dived for the bushes, as the strange fighter crossed the
lawn spurting bullets like a revolving turret.
     The ghost!
     Though the thought sprang to Laura's mind, she realized that this battler
couldn't be a ghost. He was human, like herself, and he had become the prey of
a motley crowd of half-crazed men whose superstition ruled them.
     More crackers were coming up through the woods. They blocked The Shadow's
route, caused him to make for the palmettos. The others, finding time to
reload, were bellowing as they took up the trail. They were fifty against one,
by Laura's estimate, until the girl halved those odds herself.
     Digging her feet into a pair of slippers, Laura grabbed a dressing gown
and flung it across her shoulders. Dashing downstairs, she sped out through the
front door, shouting after The Shadow's pursuers. Though she carried no gun,
Laura believed that she might call off some of the frenzied horde.


     MEANWHILE, The Shadow was keeping up the most futile battle that he had
ever experienced. Ducking through groves of tall pine, he deserted the
needle-carpeted ground for a cluster of palmettos.
     Twisting from that clump, he followed a path to a rough clearing that took
him to a small swamp. Skirting the bad ground, he found another path and
followed it.
     All the while, he was keeping busy with his guns. Pausing between long
dashes, he reloaded, trying to gauge his direction in the moonlight. Men with
shotguns were as thick as mosquitoes, but they had a pleasant habit of blasting
away at anything that looked black.
     Constantly beyond their range, The Shadow saw them duck whenever he fired.
They didn't know that it was unnecessary. The Shadow had no quarrel with these
misguided men. Thinning their ranks wouldn't help him. He hadn't enough
ammunition to down all the crackers in the county.
     His one plan was to elude them; to let them believe that the ghost had
staged another vanish. But there were too many on the job for The Shadow to
complete his apparition act. Inexorably, it seemed, he was being boxed in the
direction of Kewanee Springs, near the upper pool.
     As he continued his zigzag retreat, The Shadow recognized that the natives
had identified him with the ghost of the ancient Seminole chief. They were
driving him toward the place where they believed he belonged: the Devil's Rock!
     Such was apparent to Laura, also. Along every path she saw converging men,
heard the shouts they uttered. They were blocking The Shadow everywhere, and
they wouldn't listen when she shouted.
     Frantically, the girl decided that her only hope would be to reach the
Springs ahead of them. Perhaps a few would heed her when she arrived.
     Ignoring the paths, Laura took a straight course toward the Springs. She
didn't care if rattlers and other hazards lay along the way. It was her job to
stop murder, no matter what the cost. Her purpose was good, but her choice of
routes a poor one.
     As she stumbled through thick palmettos, she felt her dressing gown lashed
from her shoulders. Past that clump, she ran into a quagmire that everyone else
had avoided. Her slippers lost in the muck, Laura stumbled badly on rough
ground, until she reached a thick mass of brush beyond which lay the pool.
     She thought that her hair was streaming across her eyes, until she whipped
it aside and found it to be Spanish moss that she had accumulated from low tree
branches. Shouts were far away; so were the incessant blasts of shotguns.
     Still intent upon her goal, Laura entered the last hazard, to find that it
was the worst of all. She had to plunge through the low bushes with her arms
across her eyes. Her nightgown was shredded by the brambly brush.
     When the girl finally floundered through and fell breathless on soft
ground, the moonlight showed an array of pink, silk patches fluttering from the
brush behind her.
     Beneath the shelter of a tropical foliage, Laura could here the murmur of
Kewanee Springs. Crawling painfully forward, she spread aside the foliage and
thrust her head through. She had reached a low, flat-slabbed bank at the edge
of the upper pool.


     WHAT Laura saw held her tense, totally forgetful of the ordeal that she
had undergone. She had reached her goal too late; but, singularly, a lull had
come before the climax.
     Men were clustered in little groups about the large pool, but they no
longer shouted. They were holding their shotguns at irregular angles, staring
at something in the moonlight.
     They were looking toward the Devil's Rock. On that high-jutting level
stood the ghost that they had sought. Foemen flanked him, others were behind
him, all waiting for the signal that no one gave.
     He was a tall, thin shape - The Shadow. His cloak draped from his
shoulders in truly spectral fashion. Beneath his down-turned hat brim his eyes
alone caught the moonlight's gleam, to throw back a burning, challenging
sparkle.
     His gloved fists held weighty guns. Each .45 was a thing of threat. The
Shadow's fifty foemen had heard those automatics talk steadily. All believed
that many of their number must be lying dead along the paths.
     With all their fusillades, they had not downed the ghost. Half a hundred
strong, all wanted to make the final test, but none of the entire group cared
to be the first. In this moment, The Shadow stood triumphant, but his glory
could not last.
     One move that marked him human would be his last. A single gunner, going
berserk, would start the rest by delivering a shot. Well did The Shadow
recognize the precarious condition of that lull. It could not last; therefore,
he chose to be the one who ended it.
     Lifting his head, The Shadow gave forth a burst of sardonic laughter; a
taunt that seemed to voice his willingness to die - or live. It was victorious,
that laugh, even though doom might be its sequel.
     Such was The Shadow's challenge to the fates that had hitherto never
failed in his behalf!


     CHAPTER XVI

     INTO THE PAST

     As strange-voiced echoes quivered above murmuring waters, men shifted
uneasily all along the bank. Startled, they looked upward and about them. The
trees, it seemed, were answering The Shadow's mirth.
     Crouched in her hiding spot, Laura felt a shudder that tingled every inch
of her. Chilled from head to foot, she felt that she was really gazing at a
ghost. Yet reason told her that the being on the rock was human.
     Too human. That challenge might be his last. She wanted to shout out, as
she had intended, but she began to realize how very small and helpless she
really was. Her cry, if she gave it, might become the death signal that fifty
men awaited. If she came into sight, she might be mistaken for another ghost -
a white one.
     Under the light of the half moon, the whole scene was eerie, so unreal
that Laura could hardly credit it. Yet she knew the place, and recognized the
men who stood about. Their reality convinced her that The Shadow must be actual.
     A mutter stirred the bank. The Shadow had moved. His hands went close to
his cloak, then made a wide, outward sweep. Those hands were gunless; The
Shadow had slid his automatics beneath his cloak.
     Nevertheless, with open hands, he seemed even more formidable. His action
indicated that weapons were unnecessary in the combat he could give.
     The mutter, though, was restless. Men were tilting gun muzzles toward the
Devil's Rock, each looking askance at his fellows. Given a few seconds longer,
those guns would have been well aimed - and The Shadow knew it.
     With a quick sweep of his arms, he clasped his hands above his head. He
was falling forward as he made that sweep; his legs supplied a piston push.
Almost before anyone realized it, The Shadow was off on a long dive into the
depths of Kewanee Springs!
     Guns blasted as The Shadow sliced the water. The first reports brought
more. Flattening behind a tiny mound, Laura hoped that no shots would reach
her. Fifty shotguns, each fired twice, made a cannonade that appalled her.
     Echoes made those blasts sound like the saluting fire of an entire
regiment. When she realized that no more shots would be forthcoming, Laura
again spread the foliage and peered through. The men along the banks were
staring at the water, waiting for The Shadow to reappear.
     Nothing showed upon the water except a slouch hat, and it was floating,
brim upward, like a tiny boat.
     Remembering the contour of the pool, Laura wondered if The Shadow had
struck the sunken Devil's Ledge. Then, recalling the length of his dive, she
was sure that he had gone beyond it.
     Enough shot had been discharged to weight a human body to the bottom of
the Springs, had The Shadow received those slugs. But Laura could remember the
slight splash of a straight-diving figure before the fusillade broke loose.
     New mutters came from clustered men along the shore. They kept watching
the water, counting off the minutes. They gave The Shadow five. When that time
limit ended, they began to disperse, slowly at first, then quickly. From where
she watched, Laura could hear wild scrambles as the last of the crackers left.
     None had been desirous of beginning the gunfire at the black-garbed ghost
upon the Devil's Rock. Similarly, none wanted to be the last to leave the
roaming specter's haunt.
     Very suddenly, Laura realized that she was alone upon the scene. Reaching
the flat slab beside the bank, she crouched there, still fascinated by the pool
and actually quite frightened.
     Soft moonlight revealed a scene of strange solitude, wherein a sad and
shivering girl kept gazing at a slowly drifting slouch hat.


     LIFTING her eyes, Laura looked about. Her shudder ended, and she laughed.
She tried to pretend that the whole thing was a dream; that she had merely left
the house and stolen to the Springs on a moonlight escapade. The rest, she
decided, could all be imagination.
     Reality ended that mental journey. Laura's shoulder ached from a fall she
had taken; her feet were bruised from the run across the rough ground. Her arms
and thighs bore scratches from the brush, red streaks that she could count in
the moonlight.
     Looking toward the pool again, she saw the floating hat. It had drifted
very close. Gingerly, Laura stretched from the brink and gripped the object.
     At first, she was terrified to find it real. Then, sensing that it was the
only proof of a tragedy, she arose, taking the hat with her.
     Stumbling painfully, Laura found a path that led her home. All the way,
she carried the hat pressed tightly beneath her arm. She wondered if it would
vanish, like its owner; but it didn't.
     Laura still had the hat, when she reached the soft lawn. She enjoyed the
touch of the velvety grass as she stole across it toward the house. There were
lights on the ground floor, but the doors were wide open. Convinced that no one
was about, Laura entered and hurried upstairs, taking the hat with her.
     As she dropped the hat on a chair, a sudden question gripped her. If The
Shadow proved real, as the hat proclaimed - who could he be?
     Certainly not a ghost. Therefore, he was human. A very brave human, who
would risk anything -
     With a sob, Laura sank beside the bed and buried her face in her hands.
Only one man that she had ever met would have risked his life in a reckless
plunge that promised no retreat. That man was Lamont Cranston, the rescuer who
had saved her from the alligator.
     Her sympathy toward The Shadow was immediately explained. Despite his
black garb, she had recognized him. She had wanted to save him, but had failed.
     Like the Seminole chief of the Indian legend, he had plunged from Devil's
Rock, to be swallowed in depths from which he could not return. But the chief
was legendary; Cranston was not. He could never live in an imaginary abode
ruled by the spirits of earth.
     Hoofs clattered outside the house. Laura heard Clenwick's voice. He was
talking with other men; they were coming indoors. Checking her sobs, the girl
reached for clothes that lay beside the bed and began to dress. The process
completed, she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
     Even the moonlight showed that her eyes were tear-brimmed, but Laura did
not care. She didn't even notice the wisps of Spanish moss that still hung from
her hair. Picking up the slouch hat, she went downstairs.


     LAURA found Clenwick talking to the sheriff. The tone of Clenwick's voice
was an amazed one.
     "I still can't believe it!" he exclaimed. "Not on the testimony of five
hundred men, let alone fifty!"
     "They say they found the ghost here," insisted the sheriff, wiping the
smudge of brush-fire ashes from his sweaty forehead. "When they chased him to
the Springs, he went back to his home."
     "Nonsense! I was here only a short while before. I saw no ghost. They had
a ghost on their minds, those fools! When I came galloping up, they yelled out
to ask if the ghost was after me."
     "You must have come in a big hurry."
     "I did," acknowledged Clenwick. "I didn't know that you chaps had the fire
under control. I told the crackers to take the short cut past the house and give
a helping hand."
     The sheriff shook his head. He was a man who accepted the testimony of
witnesses only when their statements corresponded.
     "I'd like to talk to someone reliable," asserted Clenwick, "who could
swear on oath that some person, ghost or no ghost, dived into Kewanee Springs.
I'd believe it, if such a witness could produce evidence to prove it!"
     Laura stepped into the library. Solemnly, the girl spoke two words:
     "I can!"
     She extended the moist hat to Clenwick. His mouth half agape, the big man
listened to Laura's story, while the sheriff drank in the tale with a similar
expression. When Laura had finished, Clenwick offered the hat to Harley. The
sheriff shook his head.
     "Keep it here," he suggested. "I've got to go down to the Springs and look
the scene over. Tell me, Miss Severn, could you identify the man who plunged
into the pool?"
     "I think," said Laura, slowly, "that he was Lamont Cranston."
     Clenwick started to claim that such was impossible, then stopped himself.
     "Cranston was here!" he exclaimed. "What's more, he started to walk back
to town. But why would he have returned without telling me? And why should he
have masqueraded in black, pretending to be a ghost?"
     "Maybe he was fixing to surprise the crackers," returned the sheriff,
soberly. "If he was, he did. Too well!"
     The next hour was an anxious one for Laura. At the end of it the sheriff
returned, bringing the unhappy news she feared. He had found no traces of a
body at the Springs; in Pomelo City, he had learned from Welf and Tilyon that
Cranston had not returned there.
     Expressing the faint hope that Cranston had gone to Leesville in Woodley's
taxi, the sheriff said that he would inquire when he reached the county seat.
     When Harley had gone, Clenwick picked up The Shadow's hat, eyed it
solemnly, and placed it upon the mantel above the library fireplace. As he
turned to speak sympathetically to Laura, Clenwick heard the sound of a
long-choked sob, then the clatter of heels upon the staircase.
     Laura was seeking the solitude of her room.
     While she undressed, the girl was sobbing. In bed, she actually wept
herself to sleep. The sinking moon had almost faded when its beams showed Laura
slumbering, her sad face streaked with tears.
     The same gleam cast a dying silver upon the unrippling surface of Kewanee
Springs, revealing the full depths of that crystalline pool. The water showed
no traces of a black-garbed body.
     Like the Seminole chieftain, The Shadow was a figure that had vanished
into the past. A new legend that rivaled the old, he had taken the personality
of Lamont Cranston with him.


     CHAPTER XVII

     BEFORE MIDNIGHT

     THE next day was a gloomy, cloudy one, touched with a chilly atmosphere
not uncommon in the Florida clime. In fact, the day itself seemed to represent
the misery that Laura Severn felt when she thought of her vanished friend and
rescuer, Lamont Cranston.
     The missing man had not been seen in Leesville. Sheriff Harley brought
that news, along with a telegram from Cranston's New York broker. Clouds were
clearing when the sheriff called, for it was late in the afternoon. But Laura's
own gloom only thickened.
     Dinner was very late, and during the meal Roger Severn displayed an unruly
mood. Graham Clenwick had come in from the ranch, and was talking sadly and
sympathetically about Cranston.
     Tiring of the topic, Roger leaned forward in his wheel chair and punched
the table with a power that made the dishes rattle.
     "It's always Cranston!" he snarled. "What if something did happen to the
fellow? He liked risks, and took them. That was his privilege, and he paid for
it!"
     Laura arose from the table. Her dewy eyes and tight-set lips showed the
sorrow that burdened her. The droop at the corners of her mouth gave her
features a melancholy loveliness; but that wasn't what impressed Roger.
     Laura was primly dressed in black jersey suit, long-sleeved, with a
minimum of white trimmings at cuffs and collar. She had worn it because the day
was cool and the sleeves hid the bramble scratches on her arms.
     But Roger didn't take those facts into account. He grabbed his sister's
arm as she passed, swung her full about.
     "So you're in mourning, are you?" he sneered, eyeing the black attire and
overlooking the trimmings. "Well, you'd better get over it. There's enough
misery around here, without anyone making more!"
     When Laura tried to wrench away, Roger showed that his arms had power,
even though his legs were weak. He twisted the girl around in back of the wheel
chair.
     "Roll me down to the glen," he ordered. "It's warmer, and the moon is out.
I'm tired of looking at a couple of gloomy faces!"
     He threw an ugly glance at Clenwick, who smiled back patiently. Laura
wheeled the chair from the dining room, out through the back door, and down
toward the glen.
     All during that quarter mile, Laura underwent torture because of Roger's
tyranny. His head turned toward her, her brother kept up sneering comments over
the back of the wheel chair.
     They were almost at the glen, when Roger broke loose with a bitter
outburst that proved a real index to his mood.
     "Everybody lets me down," he grumbled. "Clenwick talked about sending me
to a New York specialist, but he's been too busy to attend to it. Cranston
handed me a lot of soft soap that I might have believed, if he hadn't shown
himself a fool, last night.
     "He said I'd forgotten how to walk; that if I made up my mind to it, I'd
be on my feet again. He said if I couldn't do it on my own, he'd shock me into
it. He argued that the strength of my arms proved that my legs were strong, too.
     "So why should you have the weeps? Cranston didn't promise you anything,
then let you down, Laura. But he did just that to me."


     RETURNING alone to the mansion, Laura told Clenwick all that Roger had
said. The rancher pondered; then:
     "You don't think that Roger -" Catching himself, Clenwick shook his head.
     "If Roger could walk," he said, "he might have walked without our knowing
it. With those tempers of his, he might have done lots of things, even to
starting a brush fire. But no. It's impossible!"
     Laura agreed, but not through present regard for Roger. She reasoned that
if Roger ever managed to walk, his enthusiasm would offset his ugly destructive
moods.
     Finding solace in a book, Laura temporarily put aside her woes, though the
effort was difficult. She totally forgot the passage of time, until Clenwick
reminded her of it.
     "It's after eleven," he told her, "and Roger is still in the glen. I'm
going over to the ranch, but I can wait to help you bring the wheel chair up
the back steps."
     "How long will you be gone?" asked Laura.
     "Not more than half an hour," replied Clenwick. "I merely want to pick up
the day's report."
     "Roger can wait," decided Laura, "until you get back."
     As soon as Clenwick left by the front door, Laura hurried out the back.
She was going to repay Roger for his spite. If there was anything he hated, it
was waiting at the bottom of those steps for someone stronger than Laura to
haul him to the top.
     Laura didn't intend to tell Roger that Clenwick had gone out. She would
pretend innocence, while her brother learned the fact for himself. If Roger
became nasty, Laura could go inside, coil in the big library chair and read her
book while her brother chafed outside.
     Eager to prolong that revenge, Laura actually ran to the glen. She saw the
wheel chair, pounced upon the rear bar to spin the chair about, another thing
that Roger did not like. The wheel chair whirled crazily, and Laura took a
somersaulting tumble.
     Laura found herself staring at the moon, her weight full on her shoulders,
which were draped by her skirt. Straight above, her stockinged legs showed
slender and black against a large gray tree trunk, while the tips of her trim
slippers were pointing at an angle toward the moon.
     Her breath gone, Laura was too astonished to move. Tilting her head clear
back, the girl gave an upside-down look at the wheel chair. The view made her
gasp. Rolling away from the tree, she clambered to her feet and stared again.
     The wheel chair was empty!


     FRANTICALLY, Laura looked for Roger. When she saw him, her gasp was happy.
All animosity left her at the sight.
     Roger was on the other side of the glen. Crouched, he was using his strong
hands to steady his wabbly knees. With slow, half-creeping gait, he was moving
forward on his feet!
     As Laura dashed toward him, Roger took a tumble, to land full length at
the edge of the Seminole Punch Bowl. Writhing forward, he dipped his head and
shoulders down into the tiny pool.
     Fearing that Roger had hurt himself, Laura was shrieking as she reached
him. But when she tried to draw him from the brink, he shook his head savagely.
Gripping his sister's arm, Roger dragged the girl down beside him.
     "Listen, Laura!" he gasped hoarsely. "It brought me here! The voice!"
     Laura heard only the sighing gurgle of the disappearing pool. She fancied
that Roger had fallen asleep and dreamed that the sound was a distant call. It
was wonderful, though, that it should have stirred him into finding that his
legs were good again. Laura tried to emphasize that point:
     "You walked, Roger! You walked!"
     Roger's hand tightened on Laura's arm. She listened, understanding that
her cry had drowned a sound that Roger heard. Twice, the gurgle of the pool
repeated; then, during the next interval, the voice came.
     Up through the filtering stones drifted a vague, melancholy laugh - a tone
that was eerie, yet real. To Roger, it had been a summoning call. To Laura, it
was more: an echo, not just from depths, but from the buried past!
     The laugh of The Shadow!
     Laura was telling Roger that she had heard that same weird tone last night
from the lips of the being in black atop the Devil's Rock. But Roger was too
busy to listen. His arms in the Punch Bowl almost to his shoulders, he was
hauling out the small stones in handfuls, shoving them to Laura.
     Catching the idea, Laura flung stones on the ground as fast as Roger
handed them to her. He was digging his way furiously down through the bottom of
the pool.
     The water level lowered while Roger worked; small stones began slipping
through a cavity. Roger came to a large stone, the width of his body. It was
wedged between two rocks.
     His muscles bulging through his shirt sleeves, Roger strained upward. The
large stone budged. Laura thrust her hands into the shallowed water and helped
her brother with the stone.
     Her strength, though frail compared to Roger's, added the needed poundage.
They worked the stone away, managed to swing it to one side.
     With the stone gone, the pool became a tiny waterfall. The trickle of the
little brook took to a deep niche in one of the earth-rooted rocks. The open
hole looked empty, but from it came a weary laugh, very close to the surface.
     Turning his head to admit the moonlight, Roger caught the glint of eyes
from darkness. A black-gloved hand arose, to paw at the slimy rock. Losing its
clutch, the hand was slipping, when Roger grabbed the arm below it.
     Again, Roger strained his shoulders. As he heaved upward, Laura clutched
for the cloak folds that appeared. Another gloved hand wrapped itself across
Roger's neck, to give him leverage. Two persons were tugging from above; the
man below was aiding.
     It was a hard drag through the rocky fissure. Roger and Laura might have
failed, except for the cooperation that their burden gave them. Though his
efforts were feeble, the cloaked being showed timely ability. Like a giant
earthworm, he worked his body upward.
     At last he was in the Bowl itself. His knees upon the stones near the side
of the emptied pool, he clamped his hands upon the rock-rimmed edge. His face
turned downward, the rescued being began a weary clamber. Hauling from either
side, Roger and Laura turned that effort into a lurch.
     Over the edge, the black-clad figure gave a forward stretch and settled on
the soft, pine-needled soil, where his form relaxed, motionless. The faint laugh
that trickled from his lips faded into a satisfied sigh.
     The Shadow had fulfilled the famous legend. Following his plunge from the
Devil's Rock, he had found the abode where fabled earth spirits were supposed
to dwell. From that domain, like the Seminole chief of yore, The Shadow had
returned!


     CHAPTER XVIII

     HOUR OF BATTLE

     BROTHER and sister raised The Shadow from the ground. While Roger
supported the black-cloaked shoulders, Laura gently tilted The Shadow's face
into the moonlight. They recognized the face of a friend.
     "You're right, Laura," said Roger, soberly. "It's Cranston! Bring the
wheel chair. I'll get him into it."
     In the chair, The Shadow lay motionless. Ready to wheel him to the
mansion, Laura turned to Roger, who was standing near, leaning his weight
against a tree.
     "I'll come back later, Roger."
     "You won't have to, Laura." Roger's smile was genuine. "I can walk!" He
lifted his head proudly; then, remorse upon his sobering face, he added: "I'm
truly sorry for anything I ever said."
     Tears were streaking Laura's smiles by the time she reached the house.
Brushing her eyes, she looked at the burden in the wheel chair. Cranston was
heavier than Roger, and she had never managed to get her brother up the steps.
     For a moment, she thought of waiting for Roger, who was plodding in easy
stages along the path. Then, determination ruling her, Laura performed the
formerly impossible. Step by step, with pauses, but no faltering, Laura worked
the wheel chair and its occupant up into the house.
     Rolling the chair into the library, she stopped it near the warmth of the
fireplace, where embers were glowing in the grate.
     As Laura tried to revive The Shadow, his eyes opened. A momentary glow
told that he recognized her. He began to mutter words that were partly
incoherent: something about a great grotto, long, endless passages, and waters
that sighed.
     Piecing that story, Laura understood. The Seminole legend was based on
fact known to the Indians. Under the Devil's Ledge was some cavern where a
brave once had swum, to bring back a true, but fantastic, story. Indians had
shunned the cavern; but they knew of its existence, and elaborated the tale.
     Confident of the truth behind the legend, The Shadow had risked that dive
last night. The weight of his garments and his guns had helped him stay below
the ledge. Finding the banks of the subterranean river that flowed out into
Kewanee Springs, he had remained there.
     The Shadow's cloak, though torn and mud-stained, was very nearly dry.
Remembering that this was the drought season, when the flow of the Springs was
at its minimum, Laura recognized that the underground channels could not be
filled.
     She pictured The Shadow's long, painful journey from the river channel
along those of underground streams that flowed into it. He had preferred that
venture, rather than a trip out through the Springs, where the crackers might
be waiting. The Shadow had been looking for another outlet.
     He hadn't found one, but he had recognized the sucking sigh of the
Seminole Punch Bowl when he came beneath it. The intervals, too, must have told
him where he was. Knowing that Laura brought Roger there, The Shadow had waited.
     A longer wait than he expected. Because of the cloudy weather, Laura had
not wheeled Roger to the glen until evening. Picturing The Shadow's long wait,
Laura suddenly realized why his strength had weakened. He needed food.
     Hurrying to the kitchen, Laura brought back a glass of fruit juice and
sandwiches which she hastily prepared. Noting that Cranston's eyes were closed,
she laid the food on a table at his elbow, then went out to the back door.
     She was wondering about Roger; perhaps the long walk from the glen had
overtaxed him. Lacking the wheel chair, the girl went along the path without
the accustomed vehicle.


     STIRRING in the wheel chair, The Shadow looked about the library soon
after Laura had left. He saw the fruit juice and drank it; then began to eat a
sandwich. He saw his slouch hat on the mantel.
     Rising a bit shakily, The Shadow plucked the hat from its perch and
clamped it on his head.
     A whispered laugh came stronger. This was where The Shadow wanted to be -
in the mansion where he had returned, after setting the brush fire the night
before. Things seemed a bit disjointed, but The Shadow's laugh told that he
expected them to clear.
     His long journey through the underground caverns was a timeless expanse,
that brought no definite recollection, until he noted a calendar that rested on
Clenwick's desk. The rancher was particular about that calendar. The Shadow had
noted, when calling as Cranston, that the day card was always correct.
     The calendar said Wednesday, where The Shadow had expected Tuesday.
Perhaps this night was nearly over, and Clenwick had changed the day card.
     Glancing toward the mantel, The Shadow saw the clock. Its hands showed
quarter of twelve. Clenwick wouldn't have changed the date on the calendar
before midnight.
     This was Wednesday!
     It would be midnight in fifteen minutes - the time when Tony Belgo and his
mob were due! Lost from the world, The Shadow had sent no message to his agents,
nor had he given the planned tip-off to the sheriff.
     There wasn't time to rouse men to action before the crooks arrived. Last
night hadn't worked out as The Shadow wanted it. He had gained a peculiar
status in this locality; one that might apply to Cranston, as well as to The
Shadow. It would be difficult to reason matters with a mistrustful sheriff,
even if The Shadow did manage to find the fellow.
     Remembering the path that led up from the wharf, The Shadow resolved upon
a swifter course. Every inch of the way could serve as ambush. It wouldn't take
a squad to drive off Belgo and his hoodlums. A lone fighter could manage it. The
task could readily be The Shadow's own.
     His guns were dry; he still had ammunition. Pushing the wheel chair from
his path, The Shadow strode out to the hallway and through the rear door into
the moonlight.
     Wavering as he passed the barn, he paused; then resumed his way toward the
path to the wharf. He wasn't as steady as he hoped to be, but the night air
would settle that problem. Nevertheless, it wasn't wise to hurry. The Shadow
slowed his pace.
     At that moment, Laura saw him, while helping Roger along the last stages
of the trip from the glen. She pointed out The Shadow to her brother. As they
saw the figure fade, they heard sounds from the house.
     Clenwick had returned.
     Leaving Roger, Laura dashed into the mansion, found Clenwick staring at
the empty wheel chair. His look was puzzled, but it became an amazed one as the
girl poured the story of all that had happened.
     Hearing the details of The Shadow's return, Clenwick gazed toward the
mantel, saw that the slouch hat was gone.
     "He was delirious!" exclaimed Laura. "I could see him falter as he took
the path toward the old wharf. We must find him and bring him back!"
     Clenwick agreed. He told Laura to hunt for Cranston. Clenwick would hurry
back to the ranch and assemble men to look for the wandering victim, in case
Laura's search failed.
     "We've got to bring him back," declared Clenwick, grimly. "If he runs into
another crowd of crackers, it will be his finish! His senses certainly have left
him, or he wouldn't be parading in that ghost masquerade of his."


     ACTUALLY, The Shadow's senses were not at their best. He was stumbling
badly along a path that had been easy going the night before. When he paused to
listen for sounds of a motorboat, he fancied he heard the constant, sucking
gurgle of the Seminole Punch Bowl.
     Reaching for his flashlight to help find the path, The Shadow was puzzled
when the torch wouldn't glow. Dimly, he remembered that it had failed him
earlier, when he had tried to use it in the caverns, following his deep swim
through Kewanee Springs.
     It took a close sound to make him listen. He could hear muttered voices,
the scrape of footsteps. He saw a gleam, not from his own flashlight, but from
one that was handled by a person farther down the path. He heard a savage
command to "Douse the glim!"
     Belgo's mob had landed at the wharf. They were on their way to the
mansion, almost upon The Shadow, before he had even chosen the ambush spot he
needed!
     Galvanizing into action, The Shadow swished toward the palmettos. The
ground was moundy; he tripped across a root. Tony's rasped voice came again,
this time calling for lights. They appeared in plenty, large glares that swept
the palmettos.
     Whipping deep into those stalks, The Shadow had struck another mound. The
palmettos were nothing more than a fringe that lined a hammock. He wasn't
nearly set in ambush; he was in the open, with lights converging upon him!
     Forced to open battle, The Shadow preferred it. His blood surged with the
love for action. As often before in times of stress, The Shadow felt his whole
strength and cunning sweep back into his veins. Better than any lurking spot,
where his shots could be mistaken for another's, The Shadow had found the place
that suited him.
     He was on high ground, above the level of his foemen. To The Shadow, they
were a bunch of skulking rats of the sort that he had often scattered in the
past. They, on the contrary, were about to meet a foe that they never expected
to find in this terrain; one whose power terrified them.
     The Shadow!
     The name, itself, was gulped half-coherently from choky throats as the
joined beams of flashlights focused full upon the cloaked fighter in black.
Those croaks were drowned by the rise of a fierce, strident laugh from the
waiting master on the mound.
     Puny pops of revolvers were likewise thundered under by the blasts that
came from two huge automatics that appeared in The Shadow's black-fisted hands.
Driving bullets straight for the flashlights, The Shadow obliterated those
gleams before a single mobster could aim a telling shot in his direction.
     Transplanted crooks, new to the Florida terrain, were finding a merciless
treatment at the hands of the same foe who had so often driven them to cover
along the sidewalks of New York.
     The Shadow's hour of battle had arrived!


     CHAPTER XIX

     THE DOUBLE FIGHT

     THE tune of blazing guns was music to The Shadow's ear: a harmony that
wafted away all hazy impressions. From the moment that he began his rapid
fight, he took to measures that promised to turn advantage into mastery.
     His first step was a weaving retreat, necessitated by a simple reason. In
his blind choice of the original position, The Shadow had placed himself
between his foemen and the moon. The mound where The Shadow stood was still
illumined, though the flashlights were gone.
     To correct that situation, The Shadow swung across the mound. Crooks,
urged by Tony Belgo, charged through the palmettos, only to be met by a
devastating fire. Spreading, they took advantage of the darkness, to come in
from the sides.
     Their strategy failed. A shout from one gunner turned all eyes to another
knoll. The Shadow was going across another hump, to entrench himself in a new
position. Crooks followed warily, shooting a dozen times before The Shadow
replied.
     Even Tony Belgo did not guess The Shadow's purpose. Working from hammock
to hammock, The Shadow was drawing the mob to clearer ground, where they,
before they realized it, would be visible in the moonlight, too.
     The speed of his retreat did not symbolize an urge for flight. The Shadow
was simply preventing the crooks from flanking him - the one thing that might
destroy his scheme.
     Behind a hammock near the open ground, The Shadow viewed a darkened patch
to the right. If any of Tony's followers had circled that far, they would be
dangerous. The Shadow was keeping a set eye on the spot, as he made another
rearward trip.
     A flashlight shone. The Shadow burned a shot toward the patched darkness.
He made a whirl across a broad, low hammock, to bring the flanking men into the
open. He expected a few, who would give themselves away when they charged.
Instead, a dozen came.
     They weren't mobbies; they were ranch hands. Accepting the challenge of
The Shadow's single shot, they were taking him for a foe. The guns that they
eyed beneath the wide brims of their Stetsons were handled by capable trigger
fingers.
     Bullets were thwacking hard against the trees, as The Shadow reached the
open ground. The whoops of the gunning cowhands joined with pleased snarls of
the mobbies, who were swinging wide to cut off The Shadow at the other flank.
     Chance had produced strange allies. Whether purposeful or blind, their
efforts were united. Both factions were out to get The Shadow.
     It seemed certain that he would be a target, until the converging battlers
looked for him. The Shadow was gone, as suddenly as if the ground had swallowed
him.


     AS halted men stared through the moonlight, they saw the reason.
     The open ground was jet-black. It was the wide strip that the brush fire
had burned, the night before. More than a hundred yards in width, the sooty
ground offered The Shadow the same cover as night. Flattened somewhere, he was
crawling to a new position, his cloaked form rendering him invisible.
     Black against black - a combination that no eye could detect. Blindly,
Tony's mobbies and Clenwick's men were slashing the turf with their bullets,
hoping to score a hit.
     In the midst of that crazy fray, Laura reached the scene, to stare as
helplessly as she had the night before. She was away from the range of fire,
and she could venture a short way from cover, because her dress was dark and
kept her inconspicuous.
     She knew that gunners were looking for The Shadow, and that her shouts
could not stop them. Even the ranch hands wouldn't listen, though Clenwick
might be able to manage them when he arrived.
     Probably, his men had heard shooting in the woods and had started there
before Clenwick reached the ranch.
     As for the group responsible for the trouble - Tony's mob that came up
from the wharf - Laura had no idea who they might be.
     Then into the search came a new type of weapon: a flare that exploded when
it struck the ground. A flame bomb, that someone had thrown, it spattered a wide
range of light.
     Laura couldn't see the man who threw it; he was far across the blackened
ground, up near the Giant Sinkhole. When they lashed upward, the flames whipped
in the girl's direction, for tonight the breeze was toward the mansion, from the
hammock ground above.
     Lacking brush which they could kindle, the flames died rapidly; but Laura
feared that the next puffy bomb might reveal The Shadow's position. Instead,
The Shadow showed himself of his own accord.
     Yells caused a score of men to look to the left of the sinkhole. Against
the moonlight, they saw The Shadow, wrestling with a rangy foe. Cutting away
from his first objective, the sinkhole, he had driven in upon the man who was
tossing the flares.
     Ironically, the fellow had been throwing those bursting objects beyond The
Shadow. He had another fire bomb in his fist when the cloaked fighter pounced
upon him. The flare left the hand that held it, but did not strike the ground.
     Sledging his gun to his adversary's head, The Shadow plucked the bomb
before it fell. The thing that hit the turf was the stunned form of The
Shadow's surprised foe.


     GUNS were ripping madly; men were on the move as they fired. The range was
too great for them to score a hit, until a few came closer.
     By then, The Shadow had almost finished a short-cut race to the sinkhole.
Stabbing shots with one gun, he picked his nearest enemies while on the run.
     Both parties were closing in upon him as he reached the fringing trees.
Circling to the far side of the sinkhole, The Shadow could go no farther. He
was being hemmed in by outspread enemies, who gradually closed in around the
semicircle that marked the near side of the sinkhole.
     The Shadow had chosen the little promontory that jutted into the wall of
the great, steep funnel. His position was much like the one that he had held at
Devil's Rock - a central spot upon a girdling brink, where enemies were ready.
     Again, retreat was useless, for the ground beyond was barren and unburned.
Unlike Kewanee Springs, however, the sinkhole offered no chance at self-rescue
by a daring dive.
     The scummy murk that lay far below offered no suitable outlet.
     Prone behind a few low stones at the sinkhole's jut, The Shadow felt the
breeze fan over him across the murky hollow. It was blowing toward the men who
crouched beyond barbed wire. Hidden in the fringing brush, they were pumping
shots that The Shadow could not answer.
     One of his reloaded guns was emptied, the other held a few spare shots.
But to lift his head would be suicide. Bullets were spanking the stones, only
inches from him.
     The Shadow's cause seemed gone. Soon, foemen would be working around from
their present positions. Arriving, they would seal his doom through sheer power
of numbers.
     But The Shadow did not intend to have them reach him. Rolling half upon
his back, he let his finger release the spring pin of the flare bomb that he
had captured in his recent drive. With a toss that worked only from his wrist,
he flipped the projectile over the sinkhole's brink.
     The flare burst almost as it struck the scummy pool below. It was answered
by a huge belch - a vast explosive rise of flame. The whole bottom of the
sinkhole seemed to rise in fiery deluge, as if The Shadow had primed the crater
of a volcano!
     Roaring upward, like thunder from the earth, the mighty mass of flame
lifted the scrubby brushwood with it. That blazing fuel became the kindling
that ignited the half-dead trees around the brink. A titanic beacon, reaching
for the sky, the sinkhole emitted gorging flames that lashed to lengths of
fifty feet above the edge.
     The conflagration did not dwindle. Pressed by the breeze, it spurted its
fiery shoots around the half circle of the opposite bank, away from The
Shadow's shelter. He could feel its scorch, but not the fury.
     His foemen were getting the latter. Some never rose; the surprise had
taken them all too suddenly. The rest fled, yelling, most of them with clothing
afire, their guns dropped behind them.
     As they ran, they heard a sardonic burst of mockery as chilling as the
flames were hot.
     The laugh that told the triumph of The Shadow! Single-handed the master
fighter had scattered a horde of murderous foemen who had trapped him by
doubling their forces.
     Upon those enemies, The Shadow had launched a cataclysm. He had stirred up
nature's powers, to make the final thrust. With that deed, The Shadow had
shattered the riddle that involved a city of ghosts.


     CHAPTER XX

     CRIME'S LAST STAND

     LEAVING his own vantage point, where the ground was becoming overhot, The
Shadow reloaded his automatics as he went. Bodies were sliding down into the
roaring pit, which still resembled a volcano. By the vivid glare, The Shadow
could see scorched men rolling on the ground.
     A scattered few were fleeing in opposite directions - the mobbies toward
the wharf, the ranch men to their own preserves. None cared to return and
resume battle with The Shadow. All wanted escape, but neither band was due to
travel far.
     Serving as a massive beacon, the blazing sinkhole was attracting new
forces, who had heard the gunfire but had not managed to locate it.
     At the wharf, The Shadow's agents were coming from a boat, in which they
had followed Tony's mob. They were cutting off the kidnap crew.
     Sheriff Harley and some deputies had heard the shooting from far away, and
had driven for the ranch by car. Charged by an excited group of returning ranch
hands, the sheriff's squad responded. Both factions that had battled The Shadow
were finding new trouble that they couldn't handle.
     Far off across the barren stretch, Laura saw The Shadow emerge from beyond
the screening fire. She watched his actions, saw that he was checking on both
frays, ready to join the one in which he was most needed. Realizing that she
wasn't needed, the girl turned and ran back to the mansion.
     Roger had dragged himself indoors, and was slumped wearily in his wheel
chair. From the library window, he could see the flicker of the blazing
sinkhole. He asked what it was about.
     Wheeling him into the hall, where the rear door offered a better view,
Laura began to relate all that she had witnessed.
     Promptly, Roger stopped her. His eyes held a sharp look.
     "You say that the ranch hands turned on Cranston?"
     Laura nodded.
     "Mr. Clenwick couldn't have reached them," she replied. "I was hoping that
he would ride up -"
     "But he didn't?"
     Laura shook her head, very ruefully. She noted that an odd expression was
tracing itself on Roger's face.
     "What if Clenwick had told those ranch hands to go after Cranston?" said
Roger, slowly. "Would that explain things, Laura?"
     "Impossible!" exclaimed the girl. "Why -"
     "Clenwick brought those crackers here last night," persisted Roger. "An
accident that happens twice doesn't look so good to me."
     Too hopelessly amazed to speak, Laura turned to stare out toward the fire.
Roger, gazing in the same direction, suddenly smacked his hand against the wheel
chair.
     "I've got it!" he exclaimed. "The thing that Cranston knew last night. He
was the one who started the brush fire!"
     "But - why?"
     "He wanted it to reach the Giant Sinkhole. He knew it would give
Clenwick's game away. He had to postpone the job until tonight; that was all."
     Rising half from the chair, Roger pointed.
     "You know what the experts have claimed for years," declared Roger.
"They've said that there's oil in Florida. That's what Terry Knight was looking
for when he came here. Petroleum! He found it in that old sinkhole!
     "He interested Clenwick in it, Terry did. The reason Clenwick started a
ranch was to cover up the find. I can guess what happened to Terry. Clenwick
got rid of him!"
     An ugly voice spoke from the front hall. Roger caught a wheel of the chair
and spun it. Laura turned with him; both Severns found themselves facing Graham
Clenwick.


     "YOU'VE guessed a lot, haven't you?" sneered the bulky man. "Yes, you've
struck something, just like Terry struck oil! But that's not going to help you,
or incriminate me! There's no law against a man finding oil on a ranch. It's
happened often, in Texas."
     Drawing a .38 revolver, Clenwick toyed with the weapon. As he proceeded,
he emphasized his points by slapping the gun against his open palm.
     "I turned Pomelo City into a ghost town," boasted Clenwick. "My men were
the sappers who opened sinkholes. They spread the Medfly in the orange groves.
They ran Betterly's car off the road. When the crackers blamed it on Bayne's
accident, we started things in town."
     Remembering the fire bomb that The Shadow had grabbed and taken to the
sinkhole, Laura understood. The man The Shadow battled belonged to Clenwick's
tribe. He had brought a supply of flares that they kept in stock for other uses.
     "I even started a cattle plague," chortled Clenwick. "It made it look as
if I had troubles, too. But it was worth the stock I lost. The local cattlemen
went broke. I supplied them with new stock, and took over their mortgages as
security.
     "Just like the mortgage on this house. Any time I want, I can gobble the
whole circle where the oil is! I don't want Kewanee Springs; it's outside the
oil land. After tonight, though" - he glowered toward the glare of the fading
sinkhole fire - "I won't be able to buy the rest of Pomelo City.
     "A few weeks more, and Welf and Tilyon would have been all through. Only
one man knew the answers; that was Cranston. He gave himself away too soon, by
starting that brush fire last night."
     As Clenwick paused, an odd smile played across his face. He was thinking
in terms of The Shadow, and he evidently didn't think the cloaked fighter's
triumph would last. Laura trembled when she saw Clenwick's expression, but
Roger remained quite calm.
     "You say that only Cranston knew," spoke Roger. "What about Roy Enwald?"
     "Enwald guessed just one thing," returned Clenwick. "He suspected that I'd
disposed of his friend Terry Knight. But if he figured that I had done Terry out
of any oil, he probably supposed it was in Texas.
     "He wanted revenge for Terry. First, he wanted to make sure he was right.
Enwald pulled a smart one, that night when he was here. After I told him that I
had invited Terry to Florida, he questioned Laura. She said that it was the
other way around.
     "That's why Enwald told a bunch of crooks they could come and get me. They
showed up tonight, and Cranston - The Shadow, they call him - knew that they
were coming. I didn't know it, but The Shadow was nice enough to stop them for
me. He finished them like -"
     Clenwick paused, still juggling his gun. With a sudden side shift, he
planted his gun muzzle against Laura's side. The girl gasped, but remained
motionless at a signal from Roger.
     A figure had stepped in from the rear door - a black-cloaked visitor,
whose hands gripped a pair of automatics. One weapon was lifted; but Clenwick
had seen it in time to cover Laura, thereby insuring his own safety.
     Cannily, the master crook had chosen to threaten another life, rather than
risk battle with The Shadow.


     VERY calmly, in a style more Cranston's than his own, The Shadow accepted
the situation. In a sibilant tone, he picked up Clenwick's statement where the
unmasked crook had dropped it.
     "Yes, I finished Belgo's mob," spoke The Shadow, "somewhat as you disposed
of Enwald. But you missed another opportunity that night, Clenwick. I was lying,
half-stunned, in that hotel courtyard, with both these guns empty, when you
fired from the darkness."
     From Clenwick's lips spat savage oaths, denials of The Shadow's statement.
The crook was trying to cover his chagrin at having missed a chance that The
Shadow termed an opportunity.
     In reply, The Shadow delivered a whispered, taunting laugh. Clenwick's
sputters stopped.
     "I labeled you that night," The Shadow told him. "I heard what you told
Enwald, about Knight. I spoke to Roger afterward, and learned just the
opposite. Later, when you came to town, you told another story that had flaws.
     "You couldn't have gone to the ranch for your car. There wasn't time. Your
car was here, but you were trying the same system that I was. You wanted to
cover the fact that you had been busy around town."
     Approaching Clenwick as he spoke, The Shadow watched the man's expression.
He knew that Clenwick, though at bay, was dangerous. Three persons needed to die
in order for the master crook to cover up his crimes.
     Those three were Lamont Cranston, otherwise The Shadow, Laura Severn, and
her brother Roger.
     If Clenwick murdered Laura, as at present he was able, he would bring his
own death. But if he could offset The Shadow, the crook would feel certain of
success, for he would be dealing then with only a girl and an invalid.
     Only one scheme could be in Clenwick's brain. The Shadow resolved to test
it. He waited, knowing that Clenwick would soon speak. The crook's statement
came.
     "Suppose we make terms," suggested Clenwick. "Knight's death was really an
accident. He fell down the Giant Sinkhole. With Terry gone, I just lost my head.
Killing Enwald wasn't murder. You knew the fellow was crooked. So did I."
     Though Clenwick's statements were mostly lies, The Shadow appeared to
accept them. The features of Cranston were visible beneath his hat brim, when
he spoke:
     "State your terms."
     "There's the front door," declared Clenwick, gesturing his free hand.
"Walk on out, and go your way. I know that Laura and Roger will agree not to
talk, when I give them a share of the oil property. Naturally, I won't harm
them. I don't want to bring you back."
     Both Laura and Roger saw catches in those terms, but The Shadow started to
accept them. He walked toward the front door. Keeping Clenwick covered with one
gun, he put away the other and reached for the knob.
     Though Clenwick and Laura were both watching The Shadow, only Roger caught
the commanding glint of the cloaked avenger's directed eyes. He understood the
gaze. Graham Clenwick had forgotten one thing: that Roger Severn had learned
how to walk.


     INSPIRED by The Shadow's confidence, Roger did more than walk. He sprang,
covering the distance to Clenwick in a single leap. He bowled the big man to
the floor.
     Startled completely by the attack, Clenwick didn't press the gun trigger
until he struck. By then, his aim was far wide of Laura.
     Sweeping the front door wide, The Shadow stepped out into the moonlight.
On the lawn were the men that he expected - a score of crackers, all with
shotguns. Clenwick had summoned them here, but hadn't told them why he wanted
them.
     Lifting his head, The Shadow delivered a long, weird laugh that stretched
its defiant mockery above the topmost twigs of the huge oaks. With that
challenge, the whole scene changed.
     Men flung away their shotguns and fled. With the first break in the ranks,
the rest followed suit. Clenwick had misjudged what would happen at that
meeting; The Shadow had not.
     Last night, The Shadow had proven himself a ghost, so far as the natives
were concerned. Former suspicions became convictions, the moment they realized
that the ghost had returned. No human being, so they supposed, could have
survived last night's disappearing dive from Devil's Rock.
     One gunshot sounded, not from the cleared lawn but within the house.
Looking back through the door, The Shadow saw Roger rising, picking up a
smoking revolver. Clenwick lay motionless on the floor.
     The Shadow had held no doubts about that outcome. Graham Clenwick, on the
verge of murdering Laura, had been easy prey for Roger Severn and the latter's
powerful hands, the moment that The Shadow had given Roger opportunity to begin
the fray.
     Clenwick's crimes were bared. His death would bring credit to Roger, when
the sheriff arrived to learn full facts. As for Clenwick's holdings, those
properties and the oil they represented would revert to the actual owners.
     Mortgages were held by Clenwick, but they could all be lifted. Tomorrow,
Welf and Tilyon would hear from Cranston, offering loans to any persons who
needed to reclaim their properties.
     To Roger and Laura, such a loan would come from their old friend, The
Shadow. As for the natives duped by Clenwick, they could regard their good luck
as a "thank you" from their chance acquaintance, the ghost.
     Reaching the wharf, The Shadow found his agents in a speedboat drawn up
beside Belgo's deserted cruiser. Soon, the speedboat was gliding toward the
Oklawaha River, with The Shadow at the helm.
     As he steered a winding course by moonlight through the thick-walled river
jungle, The Shadow gazed into the distance when the craft turned a low-banked
bend.
     His gaze was toward Pomelo City. The laugh that issued from The Shadow's
lips was a token of departure to his two friends who lived there. A farewell to
the city of ghosts, where life and prosperity would soon begin anew!


     THE END


