THE purser led the way with the two suspects. Cardona and Charles Malone followed. The cabin where Backus had met his death opened on the starboarddeck. The door was locked and the purser unlocked it. It had been unoccupied since the murder of Backus.

Colette and the frightened Pierre sat down on the edge of the bed.

Cardona stood beside the purser, eying the cabin's interior. Charles Malone stood just inside the door with the hesitance of a man confronted by a situation for which he had no training or experience.

He was staring at the suspected stewardess when, without warning, a pistol roared from the deck outside the open door. A bullet whistled an inch or so to the left of Malone's head and buried itself in the cabin bulkhead.

Malone staggered, his jaw gaping stupidly. Cardona's hand caught him and flung him headlong to the floor, out of range of the murderous attacker outside. A police gun jerked from concealment into Cardona's hand. Then, like a flash, he had hurdled the p.r.o.ne body of Malone and was leaping through the doorway to the open deck.

He saw no one. He started to rush aft, then hesitated. The brief delay saved his life. From the rigging overhead a heavy weight dropped, crashing, to the deck. It struck with a terrific impact barely twelve inches in front of the startled detective.

As he flung up a dazed arm and swayed backward, the purser and Charles Malone emerged breathless and pale from the cabin. Cardona ignored their frightened cries. He was staring aloft at the rigging whence the iron bar had dropped.

There was no human being visible. But Cardona noted a thin line that stretched downward from the rigging in a sagging loop toward one of the starboard lifeboats. The line disappeared behind the stern of the craft.

Cardona was across the deck in a twinkling, searching the narrow s.p.a.ce between the lifeboat and the rail. If he had expected to find the man who had fired from ambush at Charles Malone, he was disappointed. All he saw was the end of the cord that had been used to release the iron bar from the rigging with a quick, murderous jerk.

A planned double attack. The killer had wanted to get, not only Malone, but Cardona as well. He had expected Cardona to leap from the cabin the moment he had killed Malone. Only luck had saved both men from death.

Cardona stared at the river far below the level of B Deck. No ripples marred its surface. Had the killer leaped, or was he still on board? Cardona growled a swift order to the pale-faced purser. The latter ran to execute it.

A calm voice behind Joe said very quietly: "What in the world is happening here? Did I hear a shot or did I imagine it?"

CARDONA turned, and the tension left his eyes. "h.e.l.lo, Mr. Cranston. Did you see anything of a man with a gun, racing for dear life down this deck anywhere?"

Lamont Cranston shook his head. "Sorry. I was down below, seeing a friend of mine off. I heard a shot and hurried up here. I saw no one but you people."

He bowed to the trembling Malone. "How do you do, Mr. Malone? I hope nothing serious has happened."

"Plenty serious," Cardona said in a husky voice. "Someone just tried to kill both Malone and myself!"

Malone shuddered. "It looks as if someone is bent on killing every one who is making an effort to solve this - this nightmare of murder."

Cranston's gaze swung toward the stewardess and her companion. "Who are these people?" Cardona explained hurriedly about the mysterious "Colette" clue.

"Surely you don't suspect them of murder?" Cranston asked.

"Why should a dying man whisper 'Colette' - if he never met this stewardess in his life, as she claims?" Cardona growled. "I'm holding both of them as material witnesses. Does the word 'Colette' mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing," Cranston said.

He stepped back as the ship's purser came, hurrying back with the news that all pier exits to the ship had been closed and guards stationed to prevent the escape of the unknown killer.

"Good!" Cardona barked. "Let's go! I want every inch of this ship searched."

He strode off, with Charles Malone at his heels. The purser took charge of the frightened steward and stewardess.

LAMONT CRANSTON remained where he was. He gave merely a brief glance at the rigging and the lifeboat. He knew the killer was too cunning to leave any real clue to his presence. Besides, Cardona had unwittingly given him a real clue.

Colette! Not the name of a fat stewardess, but the name of a little-known painter of the Middle Ages! Remy Colette, whose works were valuable because of their scarcity. There were not more than twenty authentic Colettes, in the world.

A man well versed in art, Lamont Cranston had a sudden, revealing memory.

He recalled something he had read idly in the New York Cla.s.sic, two weeks earlier. The recollection was enough to send him hurrying from the ship to the swift car he had left parked at the foot of the pier.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MAN WITH THE SCAR.

LAMONT CRANSTON drove swiftly uptown to the public library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. He hurried to the periodical room and voiced his request at the desk in a low, cultured murmur.

The attendant shook his head. "Sorry, sir. That particular copy of the Cla.s.sic is now in use. That young lady over in the alcove is reading it. Do you care to take a seat and wait?"

Cranston nodded, said he'd wait. He walked toward a near-by chair and sat down. His eyes drifted imperceptibly toward the alcove that the attendant had pointed to with a negligent forefinger.

Instantly, Cranston stiffened with interest. The girl who had taken the paper for perusal was someone he had last seen in the dimness of Leland Payne's mansion. A girl who had dropped a d.a.m.ning sheet torn from a murdered man's diary. Madge Payne!

Cranston's gaze dropped as the girl glanced up. She rose, a moment later, and came toward the desk, carrying the newspaper she had borrowed. As she pa.s.sed Cranston her gaze met his and she flushed. He wondered why.

The black-robed figure whom she had encountered in the darkness of her uncle's home had nothing in common with Lamont Cranston. There was no way she could guess that such was The Shadow's masquerade. Yet she had flushed nervously when she had caught his rather keen eye observing her.

She laid the newspaper on the desk and left the library with what seemedlike fl.u.s.tered haste.

Cranston knew why when he had obtained the paper from the desk and taken it to a table across the silent room. There was no trace of a certain news item he had wanted to read. Instead, on page seven, there was a square, gaping hole where someone had cut out part of a column of print.

Lamont Cranston rose at once, returned the paper with a polite smile. In two minutes he was again in his expensive car, driving westward across 42nd Street. He went directly to the Cla.s.sic office and secured a copy of the two-weeks'-old newspaper.

This time, his search was successful. On page seven, where the furtive pen-knife of Madge Payne had left a gaping hole in the library paper, was a small headline that brought an interested sparkle to Lamont Cranston's eyes: COLETTE PAINTING, CONSIGNED.

TO MUSEUM, ARRIVES VIA.

AIR ON DIRIGIBLE.

HINDENBURG.

He read the news item with attentive interest. It contained nothing that could conceivably be connected with the murder of Herbert Backus aboard the liner Loire, yet to Cranston's keen brain the link was clear, definite, unmistakable.

THE story itself was an account of the arrival, via air, at Lakehurst, N.

J., of a Colette landscape purchased abroad for the Museum of Art by its European representative, Monsieur Cracow. The Colette was to be transshipped immediately to the museum, where it would be added, later, to the modest collection of the painter's works already owned by the museum. The name of the painting was "Landscape with Flowers."

That was the extent of the story that Madge Payne had stolen from the paper in the public library. But to The Shadow, it meant more.

Mentally, he put himself inside the body of a dead man. He visioned himself as Herbert Backus, an escaped convict, searching through Europe to find some trace of Thomas Springer, the man who had framed him and vanished with twenty million dollars. Burning for revenge, Backus would not rest until he had found what he had broken jail to seek: the proof of Springer's hidden ident.i.ty, the evidence that would betray him to the police he had eluded for four years.

Having found such evidence, what would an intelligent man like Backus do with it? Bring it back with him on the Loire, trusting to his forged pa.s.sport and his disguise? Hardly! He knew that the moment he had escaped from jail his life was forfeit, if Springer and his gang caught him. Perhaps he had some warning that Springer was aware of what he was up to. He'd seek some better and less risky way to smuggle it into the country.

Lamont Cranston's guess was that Backus had victimized for this purpose Monsieur Cracow, the European representative of the Museum of Art. If he deliberately made friends with Cracow, found the opportunity to secrete his evidence somewhere on the painting, he could rest easy in the knowledge that it could never be discovered and stolen from him by the murderous Springer. It would remain in the museum until he chose to bargain with the police for a full pardon.

The proof of Cranston's shrewd deductions lay in the word that had been gasped out by the dying Backus. "Colette!" With his last breath, Backus hadtried to warn a bewildered steward of the real reason for his murder. The clue had been completely misinterpreted by the purser of the Loire and by Joe Cardona.

While they were browbeating an innocent French stewardess, whose only connection with the case was the accidental coincidence of her name - a common enough name in France, Cardona should have realized - the real clue to the whole mystery lay bare to the more exact logic of The Shadow's reasoning.

All he had to do was to proceed to the museum, see his very good friend, the curator of paintings, and get permission to examine the Colette landscape that had come across on the dirigible Hindenburg. To find hidden evidence would be child's play for The Shadow. The only possible method of hiding contraband papers and doc.u.ments would be behind a false canvas back or in a hollow frame.

ALL this reasoning of The Shadow rested on one necessary premise: that the desperate Backus had managed to get access to the painting in Paris. He accepted that hypothesis because, without it, the whole chain of events was meaningless.

For an instant, The Shadow was tempted to link Springer with the sly figure of Doctor Bruce Hanson. Madge Payne had known the secret of the Colette clue. She and Hanson had been present in her uncle's house either before, or immediately after he was killed. Madge had tried to steal the sheet from Leland Payne's diary that threw suspicion on her lover.

Yet The Shadow had allowed them to escape. He had no intention of turning either of them over to Cardona until he had absolute proof that Doctor Bruce Hanson was the false front that covered the ident.i.ty of the missing Thomas Springer. When he was certain of that, the rest of the complicated pattern would fall into place. Dawson and the very suave Alonzo Kelsea would find themselves indicted for conspiracy and for first-degree murder.

Lamont Cranston was thinking of Kelsea as he walked slowly to his car parked outside the Cla.s.sic building. Not a muscle of his face changed as he saw Kelsea himself, standing at the curb, waiting for the traffic light to change.

The light changed and still Kelsea didn't move. His inaction was explained, when another man approached him from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.

Cranston was now to the left of the two. Listening intently, he heard a queer greeting and a queerer reply.

"Fox," the stranger whispered.

"Hound," Kelsea breathed.

The two crossed the street together, proceeded east. Cranston followed.

He knew that the words he had heard unbidden formed a criminal pa.s.sword. It was the same word that Clyde Burke had heard Dawson address to Kelsea when the latter had accused the little gunman in his apartment of defrauding him of fifty thousand dollars.

The trail led to a very sw.a.n.ky restaurant. Kelsea and the stranger took a table close to the wall. Lamont Cranston moved lazily to one adjoining. He pretended to be very deaf; he gave the waiter who served him a hard time.

Finally, he produced an earphone, inserted it in his ear and smilingly apologized for his deafness.

Cranston, of course, was the least deaf man in Manhattan. The object he had produced was a tiny microphone capable of making the smallest whisper clear and distinct within a radius of twenty feet.

He observed Kelsea's companion. The man was tall, lean, muscular. He hadhigh cheek bones and black, glittering eyes. On his clean-shaven chin was a tiny white crescent that showed clearly through the dark beard-shadow on his tanned skin. It was a scar that stamped him with clear individuality. The Shadow filed the face and the scar away in his memory.

He listened while he bent methodically over his food.

THE pair at the next table were discussing the strange murder of Herbert Backus with the bored air of men with nothing else to do. Kelsea smilingly insisted that Dawson was entirely innocent. The scar-faced man grinned also, but it was a sneer rather than a grin.

Neither of them seemed to be able to understand the subsequent death of Leland Payne. All this was in ordinary conversational tones.

Suddenly, the scar-faced man dropped his voice to a whisper. But the words came with crystal clarity over Cranston's hidden microphone.

"Have you been in touch with Doctor Bruce Hanson?"

"Yes."

"Satisfactory?"

"Yes. Very." Kelsea's eyes swerved toward Cranston. He shook his head meaningly. There was no further talk except trivial matters. Kelsea called for the bill and the two men left the restaurant together.

The Shadow lingered. He did not care to follow and risk the chance of indicating his real interest in their movements.

Besides, he had not forgotten the Colette painting at the museum. He paid his check, added a generous tip, and started back toward the car he had left parked at the curb outside the Cla.s.sic building.

By the time he had reached it, the hands of his watch showed ten after five. It was too late to catch the curator of paintings. Without the curator's friendly cooperation it would be impossible to view the masterpiece at close range. However, the same difficulty held true for Madge Payne, if, as The Shadow suspected, she was planning to examine the picture herself.

It could wait until the morning. Meanwhile, The Shadow intended to sift the strange, facts that had come to him in two crowded days that had followed the acquittal of Jimmy Dawson.

Since that dramatic moment, Leland Payne had been killed - apparently to save Dawson's alibi from exposure. Doctor Hanson and Madge were definitely linked with Payne's death. So were two mysterious figures in evening clothes - one of them a woman disguised. Kelsea was very friendly with a scar-faced man who knew the gang's pa.s.sword. And Dawson, frightened and desperate, after Kelsea's visit to his hide-out, had come within an ace of murdering Clyde Burke and Harry Vincent.

Lamont Cranston smiled grimly. The whole solution to the case now lay within his grasp.

He was right. But there were two factors he failed to take into consideration: Time, and the boldness of the criminal forces he was now opposing. Foxhound was more than a pa.s.sword; it was a grim symbol of the ruthless power of Thomas Springer.

Foxhound had no intention of being unmasked so easily.

CHAPTER VIII.

MASKED MADMEN.

THE next morning, New York City was startled to read the details of a brutal, new crime.

Vandals had descended on the Museum of Art sometime between midnight and dawn, and had left behind them a crimson trail of murder and destruction. Twowatchmen had been slain, a score of paintings slashed wantonly to ribbons.

Ripped from the walls, the pictures had been completely destroyed by a half dozen masked madmen with knives.

The fact that they had stolen nothing, the senseless savagery of their raid, the vicious murder of two helpless watchmen, seemed to place the outrage in the realms of criminal insanity.

A third watchman had escaped death by hiding in terror behind the folds of a priceless tapestry. It was he who had given the police the few meager facts they possessed. He was able to tell nothing concerning the actual criminals, save that they were all masked and behaved like a squad of disciplined soldiers. Not one of them uttered a word, except the leader.

His had been few. He had directed the actual work of destruction, slashing and smashing the pictures his henchmen ripped from the wall at his snarled orders. His voice, the watchman a.s.serted, was harsh, metallic, hardly human - more like a poorly recorded phonograph record than the voice of a living man.

Some twenty-two paintings had been utterly destroyed, all of them valuable examples of the work of dead masters. The motive for the horrible vandalism was utterly unknown. The mysterious marauders left the museum as empty-handed as they had been when they burst in. They had stolen nothing whatever.

SUCH was the sensational news which Lamont Cranston read with frowning eyes, as he ate a leisurely breakfast in his suite at the Cobalt Club.

Although Cranston possessed a magnificent home in New Jersey, it was not unusual for The Shadow, as Cranston, to remain at the Cobalt Club for several days at a time.