"Too fast again, Burke," interrupted Cranston. "I still think the killer came and went by the window route.

Someone else could have made those elevator trips with Jenkins and pulled the window from its moorings."

"But why?" "Because the man with the eyes and the voice could not be sure that he had hypnotized Jenkins sufficiently. Those vague recollections that Jenkins retained could have been stronger. Besides, to have another man come in and out, would be all the better throw-off. I think we'll find a trail, Burke, but when we do, it will be the wrong man's."

With that, Cranston eased himself through the window in lithe style, to gain the fire escape. From its edge, he called back to Clyde.

"I'll try this route and see what it brings," said Cranston. "You can find the others and tell the commissioner I went back to the club. I'll see you later, Burke."

By the time Cranston had glided down the fire escape and merged with the darkness and silence of the alley below, a singular transformation was under way. It was a case of blackness blending into blackness.

Somewhere in the alley, Cranston must have previously placed the accessories needed for his change, otherwise it would have exceeded the range of possibility.

For the tiny flashlight that began to probe the alley for traces of clues was held by a thin-gloved hand belonging to a figure cloaked in black. Lamont Cranston, so invisible in the darkness that he seemed a very part of it, had become The Shadow.

Long and thorough was The Shadow's probe. It was interrupted suddenly when the alley door swung wide, throwing a betraying shaft of light along the cement paving. Yet no eyes could have glimpsed the living Shadow. His form receded as swiftly as the darkness itself, leaving only a momentary trace in the shape of a dark silhouette that glided after him along the ground and was absorbed by the darkness at the side of the alley.

From the doorway stepped Commissioner Weston, beckoning to Jenkins, the watchman. When Jenkins stepped out into the alley, Inspector Cardona came with him. A moment later, Clyde Burke followed.

"Show us the place, Jenkins," ordered Weston. "The exact spot where you claim you saw those eyes."

"I'll try to remember, sir," said Jenkins. "But don't hold me responsible if I'm a trifle out of the way."

"We've only your word for it, one way or the other," declared Weston. "So jog your memory as well as you can."

Shuffling around through the dark, Jenkins picked a high stack of barrels and crates at least twenty feet from where The Shadow had performed his gliding vanish. Then: "It was here, commissioner."

"You mean," asked Weston, "that you could see those eyes in this darkness?"

"It wasn't quite so dark then," explained Jenkins. "But it was pretty dark at that."

"And you heard the voice here, too?"

"Right here."

Weston gave a snort.

"Perhaps, Jenkins, as well as seeing things, you are hearing things."

At the commissioner's remark, Jenkins jerked suddenly about, throwing up his hands as though frightened. His voice came in a frantic gasp. "I... I thought I heard something just then, commissioner. Like... like a laugh, coming in a whisper."

"So you heard something," retorted Weston. He turned abruptly to Cardona, who was standing in the light. "Make a note of that, inspector. Jenkins heard something. Did you?"

To Weston's surprise, Cardona began to nod. Then, catching himself, the inspector said: "Why, yes, I heard you say something, commissioner. Are you asking if I heard anything else?"

"That's right."

"I could have," conceded Cardona. "It might be my imagination, though. Jenkins is nervous, so I'd make allowance for him."

From Cardona's expression, Clyde was sure that Joe had heard the same whispered sound as Jenkins, yet not a trace of it had reached Clyde's ears. Apparently, Weston was willing to accept Cardona's compromise, for the commissioner stalked indoors and Cardona followed, bringing Jenkins. Clyde remained, for a simple reason. Again, a hand had gripped his arm.

This time it was The Shadow's voice that spoke: "Come."

As they moved out through the darkness of the alley, Clyde spoke to his unseen companion.

"They actually heard you, chief. I mean Cardona and Jenkins. If they did, why didn't the commissioner and I?"

"It was a case of hyperesthesia," came The Shadow's reply. "The term means an acute sensitivity, in this case an ability to hear lesser sounds than normally. It is a sure check on a hypnotic condition. It proves that Jenkins, like Cardona, has recently been under hypnotic influence."

They turned a corner into the next street and The Shadow edged Clyde into the darkness while a couple of police cars rolled away. As the sounds of departing sirens died, Clyde heard The Shadow's whispered instructions.

"Stay in this neighborhood," ordered The Shadow, "and play your proper part, openly. Be the inquiring reporter and learn if anyone went into Kelthorn's building or came out between six thirty and seven."

Nodding, Clyde stepped out of the darkness and The Shadow seemed to fade, restraining hand and all.

It was often that way, Clyde remembered, when he accompanied his chief on special missions in the darkness. An uncanny feeling, to which the reporter had never become accustomed, even after years in The Shadow's service. It at least made Clyde understand and appreciate the startling power that The Shadow held over men of crime when he encountered them. When Clyde reported cases of berserk crooks emptying their guns into empty darkness, he always knew his chief had been around.

Clyde was glad The Shadow was around tonight.

This whole case was uncanny in itself, and that applied to the preliminaries leading up to the discovery of Kelthorn's death. The strange behavior of Inspector Cardona carried more of the sinister than the humorous, now that The Shadow had identified Jenkins as another hypnotic subject. Now Clyde was on the trail of a man who rated as a human question mark. That was the unknown, perhaps imaginary, person who had taken two elevator rides with Jenkins. The man existed, how did he figure?

Not as the murderer, in The Shadow's estimate. That unsavory distinction belonged to someone who could so far be described only in terms of eyes and a voice. Therefore, Clyde was seeking leads to a man who had been an accomplice, willing or unwilling, in a murder. Checking on the ownership of the eyes and the voice would come in The Shadow's own province.

Reaching the front street, Clyde entered a drugstore, showed his reporter's card to a clerk, who nodded and then shook his head. What he meant was that the police had already inquired about strangers in the neighborhood and that he had not seen anyone. Along the block and up the next avenue, Clyde received similar responses. Turning another corner, Clyde saw a dimly lighted shoe repair shop, stopped there, just on a chance.

The man who owned the shop pondered when Clyde questioned him. Then: "Yep, I saw somebody," he said. "I left here around seven but I came back, on account of forgetting to mark the prices on some repair jobs. When I was going out, I saw him."

"Saw who?" asked Clyde.

"The funny guy. He wasn't laughing or nothing. He was just acting funny. Walking like this"- the shoemaker did a few long strides behind his bench- "and looking straight ahead, except he was crossing the street like what you'd call an angle."

"Why was he doing that?"

"Well, he'd come out of an alley and was going to another on this side. You'll find it a few doors down.

Only you won't find him, he'd be gone by now. He was a tall guy, with a dark coat and a gray hat. That's all I noticed."

Leaving the shoe shop, Clyde found the alley, entered it. In twenty feet, he came to an open gate, a grilled arch above it. Clyde had close to a foot of clearance beneath the gate, so he didn't have to stoop, but that might not apply to others, as he promptly discovered. His foot kicking something in the dark, Clyde picked up the object. It was easily identified in the dim light; it was a soft gray hat.

This, indeed, was a find, and Clyde, as the inquiring reporter, stepped back to the gate to check the theory he had in mind. It fitted. The hat had probably been brushed from the head of the stalking man described by the shoemaker. So intent was Clyde that he failed to hear a slight sound from the far side of the gate. Nor did a slight touch on his shoulder startle him. Thinking that he'd brushed the side of the gate, Clyde merely turned around.

From the gloom, eyes met Clyde's.

Strangely mild, yet strongly fixed, those eyes. Cat's eyes, as Jenkins might have called them, but with a human gaze that seemed to harden. Eyes only, lacking any human form that Clyde could notice, but that was not surprising, considering how intently Clyde's own gaze was riveted. This couldn't be a cat, for there were no barrels or boxes here as in the alley behind Kelthorn's building. But Clyde was no longer in the inquiring mood to bother with such details.

Clyde Burke was listening to a voice. Slow, precise, but commanding, it evoked spontaneous replies.

"Tell me your name."

"Clyde Burke." "State what you do."

"I am a reporter."

"Name your paper."

"The Cla.s.sic."

A pause; then the voice declared: "I shall take the hat."

Clyde handed over the hat. The voice was speaking again, its sentences ending in slight queries, to each of which Clyde gave an automatic nod.

"You will forget you found this hat, understand?... You will forget how you happened to come here, understand?... You will remember only my eyes, do you understand?"

Waiting for the end of Clyde's third nod, the man with the strange eyes added these words in the same emphatic tone.

"When you see my eyes again, you will obey whatever my voice commands. Now go your way."

Clyde stood rigid on the brink of what seemed endless hesitation; then, steered in the right direction by a hand he did not feel, the reporter walked blindly, mechanically, to the mouth of the alley. There a slight breeze stirred him from his daze and Clyde started to cross the street, only to halt fixedly.

The eyes again. Vaguely, Clyde recalled them. Blinding eyes, growing larger, glaring furiously. They were no longer eyes when brakes shrieked and a police car veered to avoid running down the transfixed reporter. Then came a familiar tone that jarred Clyde from his reverie.

"What are you doing, Burke, staring into the headlights? Climb in here and I'll drop you at the Cla.s.sic."

It was Joe Cardona, ending a futile inquiry of his own, as he explained while they rode along.

"n.o.body saw any suspicious characters around Kelthorn's building," the inspector stated. "Seems like you were roving farther afield. See anybody or find anything?"

"I saw n.o.body," Clyde replied. "I found nothing."

Any companion other than Cardona, or perhaps Jenkins, would have wondered at Clyde's steady stare and mechanical reply. Cardona, because of his own hypnotic treatment, was not in a mood which enabled him to judge such conditions. Lapsing into a stolid manner of his own, Cardona sat silent until the driver stopped in front of the Cla.s.sic building, where habit induced Clyde to alight.

Once he reached the city room, Clyde felt practically himself again. His mind snapped back to earlier matters, prior to his chat with the shoemaker. There was a report Clyde had to make before he batted out his story of Kelthorn's murder. To make that report, Clyde entered a pay booth instead of using one of the newspaper office phones.

A voice responded to Clyde's dial: "Burbank speaking."

"Report from Burke," stated Clyde. "No clues to any strangers in vicinity of murder building." "Report received."

That call to Burbank, The Shadow's contact man, concluded Clyde's duty to his chief. The hat clue which The Shadow might have considered vital had been blanked from the record as completely as the true testimony which only Jenkins could have given!

CHAPTER IV. THE EYES HAVE IT.

THE next evening found Commissioner Weston again in his favorite habitat, the grill room of the Cobalt Club. Instead of a surrounding throng of reporters and photographers, Weston was speaking to an audience of one, a man with high forehead whose features had a sharp look, despite the camouflage of a Van d.y.k.e beard.

"I'm telling you," Weston was saying, "it's fabulous. Perhaps I should say priceless. And this"- between thumb and fingers, Weston turned a gleaming object in the light-"is the clue that proves it!"

At that, a new voice interrupted, a touch of whimsy in its calm tone: "What's priceless, commissioner? Don't tell me you've found a pearl in that plate of oysters you haven't even touched."

Smothering his indignation, Weston turned to greet his friend Lamont Cranston. With a wave, the commissioner introduced the bearded man beside him, who gave Cranston a keen stare with narrowed, beady eyes.

"This is Dr. Gerald Fontaine," declared Weston. "You have probably recognized him, Cranston, from the photograph that a newspaper man showed us here last night. Sit down and join us." Then, as Cranston complied, the commissioner showed the object that he held between his thumb and fingers. "And this,"

Weston added, "is something that you also saw last night, Cranston. It is not a pearl, but something far more valuable, the ruby I picked up in Kelthorn's office last night."

Eyeing the ruby more closely than he had before, Cranston asked: "Did you say it was priceless, commissioner?"

"Not this ruby alone," replied Weston, "but the collection of which it is a part. There is no doubt as to its origin. Jewel experts have identified it as one of the Royal Burmese rubies that disappeared mysteriously in Singapore just prior to the j.a.panese occupation of that city."

"And how did Kelthorn come to have it?"

"That question can be only partly answered, Cranston. I have made a thorough check on Kelthorn. His importing business was pretty much of a blind for undercover dealings, though before today, no one cared to say so. He picked up war loot and sold it. How many shady transactions took place in that little office of his"-Weston shook his head-"we shall never know. But he is a far bigger fish than anyone thought. Imagine, Kelthorn peddling the Royal Burmese rubies!"

Cranston gave the statement brief consideration, then asked quietly: "What makes you suppose he had all of them, commissioner?"

"Because that safe was thoroughly searched, Cranston. It gave every evidence of being tooth-combed. I should know, because I went through every item carefully. If this ruby"-Weston was thumbing the gem as though recalling boyhood marble games-"had been a single item, I am sure the murderer would havefound and kept it. But if it had been only one of forty-eight more, the total of the Royal Burmese collection, he could have dropped it in his eagerness to gain the rest."

"An excellent point," approved Cranston, "particularly if Kelthorn had been bringing the entire collection from the safe at the time the killer stabbed him."

Weston nodded, as though that idea had been his own. Immediately, Cranston deflated the theory.

"If Kelthorn owned such a collection," Cranston observed, "it is rather odd that he should have kept it in an old-fashioned safe in an unprotected office."

"He didn't keep the rubies there," explained Weston. "He never brought anything valuable to that office, except when he had a special customer. He sounded people out, found if they wanted to buy something in the black market, always at a bargain price. Naturally, the people who gave me this information were honest. They all felt that Kelthorn was simply feeling them out; that he would have larger loot to offer if they agreed to buy any. But they had no idea who his steady customers were, the ones who would consider such offers, and, therefore, they did not guess the magnitude of Kelthorn's operations."

Setting the ruby some distance from his plate, where he wouldn't confuse it with any pearls he might find, Weston ate his oysters in a series of swallows. Then: "Kelthorn must have trusted his visitor implicitly," said Weston. "Otherwise, he would not have invited him to the office in the evening. As a matter-of-fact, his undercover customers wouldn't want to enter the building at night, because they would have to register their names. That explains why the murderer chose his own way into the place."

Cranston could have argued that point, but he ignored it. As with Cardona, Cranston preferred to have Weston follow his own leads. Therefore, he had to appear to accept the theories upon which they were founded.

"I've talked to Rankin," stated Weston. "He's the man who was on duty before Jenkins relieved him.

Rankin doesn't remember any suspicious characters around the building, but he does say that Jenkins acted rather queerly or dumbly."

At that word, Dr. Fontaine leaned forward on the table. His voice was sharp as he asked: "Just how would you define dumbly?"

"From Rankin's description," stated Weston, "I would say he meant blankly, just about the way Inspector Cardona has been acting. Blankly and dumbly. Why, every time Cardona talks to Jenkins, he nods at everything the fellow says, as though they had some understanding between them."

A glitter came promptly to Fontaine's eyes.

"That's what I wanted to hear you say, commissioner," the sharp-faced man a.s.serted. "The two appear to have gained a common bond. You told me that Cardona was under hypnotic influence last night. I would say that the same applied to Jenkins."

"In that case," exclaimed Weston, "Jenkins might be the man who murdered Kelthorn!"

Dr. Fontaine gave a slow head-shake.