CHAPTER IV

The Face of the Enemy

Margo Lane pounded on the front door of the elegant brownstone until a tall, pale, almost cadaverous gimlet-eyed man in formal dress answered.

"May I help you, Fraulein?"

"My name is Margo Lane and I must see Mr. Dietrich at once."

"One moment, Fraulein."

After withdrawing inside the house to announce her, the servant returned and ushered her into the study where Dietrich was waiting. He rose to his feet and came out from behind his desk when Margo entered. After a quick nod from Dietrich, the servant withdrew.

"Margo! What a pleasant surprise! Please sit down," Dietrich said, offering her a chair.

Margo remained standing. "I'm afraid this isn't a social call, Karl. It's about Lamont. He's disappeared, and I don't know where he's gone."

"Oh, Margo! This is terrible! Have you notified the police?"

"Well, of course I've spoken to Commissioner Weston, but I feel there must be something more I can do."

"Margo, please. I beg you--as an old friend--stay out of this affair and let the police attend to it. They are trained in these matters. It will be the fastest possible way of discovering what has become of Herr Cranston."

"But--"

"No buts, my dear. Stay out of it," Dietrich said firmly.

Margo dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "Yes I suppose you're right," she said sniffling. "But there is something else I must ask you, Karl."

"Anything,liebechen."

"You were one of the last people he saw before he disappeared, and you and he quarreled. I must know on your word of honor that you had nothing to do with this."

Dietrich made a great show of being surprised. "You suspect that I had something to do with Herr Cranston's disappearance? Why, Margo dear, you wound me! Liebchen, I swear to you by all that is holy I was not involved."

"Thank you Karl. I needed to to hear it from you."

"Of course, my dear." He drew a protective arm around her shoulder. "May I give you some advice--as an old friend?"

Margo nodded, looking up at him adoringly.

"Go home and get some rest, my dear. You look a fright, as if you had hardly slept in days," he said in a fatherly tone.

"Yes, I suppose you're right again. Dear old Karl, always thinking of me," Margo said, her voice choking and her eyes glistening.

Dietrich gave her an affectionate kiss on the forehead. "Very good. I shall have Schmidt see you home."

"That won't be necessary. I have my own transportation," Margo answered quickly.

"Yes, of course. As you wish. At least allow me to see you to the door."

Dietrich ushered Margo into the hallway and led her to the front door where a yellow cab was waiting. The driver seemed to be watching them intently. They shook hands and parted.

Dietrich walked back to the desk in the study, picked up a small silver bell, and shook it gently. The bell tinkled with a musical sound. The cadaverous servant reappeared.

"You rang, Mein Herr?"

"A bottle of Riesling, please, Schmidt."

"Very good, Mein Herr."

Dietrich watched his servant go. When Dietrich was alone, a grim expression replaced the mask of affectionate concern he had been wearing for Margo. He returned to his desk and resumed working until Schmidt came in and silently and efficiently placed the bottle of wine on the sideboard. The butler fixed his employer with a gimlet gaze before speaking.

"Do you believe she suspects?"

"I know she does," Dietrich said casually, pouring himself a glass of Riesling from the bottle on the sideboard. He regarded his butler with a glance that was equally cold. "Have her followed."

"I have already made arrangements for that eventuality, Mein Herr."

Schmidt strode to the window and pulled back the curtain in an ostentatious and deliberate manner that attracted the attention of a burly, swarthy man standing in front of a dark sedan parked across the street. A second thin, rat-like man waited in the car. Once Schmidt and the swarthy man made eye contact, Schmidt slowly and deliberately nodded his head. The dark swarthy man nodded in reply, got into the sedan, and set out in pursuit of Margo Lane's taxicab.

Inside the cab, Moe "Shrevvy" Shrevnitz turned his meter off and adjusted the rear view mirror before speaking casually to the passenger in the back seat. "So how'd it go?" he asked.

"Just as I suspected it would. I deserve an Academy Award for that performance. Grand Central Station and step on it," Margo Lane said.

"You still wanna go through with this?"

"Oh, Shrevvy, I have to! Lamont's missing, and we need help to find him."

"Help! Miss Lane, there's a whole city full o' people who'd do anything to help find The Shadow--to help him just like he helped them once--includin' me. You know that!"

"Yes, I do, and don't think I don't appreciate it. All the agents are terribly brave. But I have to do this myself. Oh, Shrevvy, Lamont was right! Karl is mixed up in this, Lamont's in trouble, and it's all my fault! Why didn't I listen to him?"

"Aw, now Miss Lane, don't go talkin' like that! Love makes a person do crazy things, sometimes. Why I remember once, my cousin Frankie--"

Moe Shrevnitz stopped abruptly and glanced in the rear view mirror with a worried expression.

"Shrevvy, what's wrong?"

"We got company."

"Can you lose them?"

"Can I lose 'em, she says!" the cabbie scoffed, his professional pride deeply wounded. "Of course I can lose 'em. It's just gonna take a little work to do it, that's all. Hang on!"

Shrevvy sped up and began dodging and weaving through several lanes of city traffic, guiding the cab expertly, miraculously through a series of hairpin turns it was obviously not designed to perform and weaving unerringly through a maze of back alleys, side streets, tunnels, and underpasses that were apparently known only to him. Margo kept her eyes shut in terror but in her ears the next few minutes were a montage of roaring engines, shrieking brakes, squealing tires, honking horns, distant collisions, and shouts of alarm from pedestrians and other drivers. Above all this cacophony, one sound rang out even louder--the wail of police sirens.

"Swell," Shrevvy exclaimed sarcastically, "Now we got the cops on our tail, too."

"Oh no," Margo moaned.

"Nothin' to worry about Miss Lane, I got it all taken care of, see? We just pull over in this alley, let the cops go right on by and pick up our pals in the dark sedan, and we go on to Grand Central like we was a couple o' regular Joes. Respectable like."

After watching three police cruisers roar past their hiding place, they arrived at Grand Central Station having sedately followed all posted speed limits. The moment the cab rolled meekly to a stop, Margo Lane bolted from the car, carrying only a single overnight bag. She raced around to the driver's side, where Shrevvy was busily rolling down the window.

"You sure you wanna do this Miss Lane?" he asked doubtfully. "I can still come with."

"No, Shrevvy," Margo said firmly. "Burbank and the others may need you. I told you before, I have to do this myself." She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for everything, Shrevvy. You're a dear. Now go on home and report to Burbank--but not until after I'm gone. I don't want him trying to talk me out of this."

"But Miss Lane--"

"Go on home, Shrevvy," Margo insisted. "It's just as you said. Love makes you do crazy things sometimes." She turned away from him and toward the station platforms without a backward glance. Shrevvy, however, watched her go with an anxious expression.

"It sure does, Miss Lane," he murmured. "It sure does."

Gunther Black's meaty fist holding the brass knuckles ripped across Lamont Cranston's face once again, snapping his head violently to one side. Cranston groaned in pain and slowly turned his head back to its original position. His eyes were glassy and a small rivulet of blood flowed from one corner of his mouth. His face was dirty and unshaven. His dress shirt, the same one he had worn at the Cobalt Club days before, was now hopelessly wrinkled and soiled with large sweat stains visible under his arms. He had been unable to change his clothes because he had been handcuffed to the chair for hours at a time. Dietrich, however, was unimpressed with the pitiful appearance Cranston now presented.

"I shall ask you again, Herr Cranston. How do you become The Shadow? What is the secret of your power?"

Despite his obvious pain, Cranston did his best to affect an air of studied nonchalance. "The Shadow? I don't know anything about The Shadow."

"I grow weary of this, Herr Cranston. You crept into this warehouse in the dead of night to spy on me and you were found wearing The Shadow's clothing. Do you deny that?"

"Oh,that! Well, you see, I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a midnight stroll. As for the clothes, I really must speak to my tailor."

Dietrich glanced sharply at Gunther who silently and methodically applied the brass knuckles to Cranston's midsection. Cranston let out a groan and bowed his head. Dietrich, however, immediately jerked it back up again and held his own face, fixed with a maniacal glare, just inches from Cranston's.

"Listen to me, Herr Cranston. I know you are The Shadow, and I want to know how you become The Shadow. You will tell me this or you will die. Do you understand?"

Lamont Cranston summoned his last reserves of physical strength and spoke to Dietrich without any sign of exhaustion or fear. "No, you listen to me, Dietrich. I'll never tell you the secret of The Shadow. If you want to kill me, go right ahead, because I'd rather die than tell you what you want to know." There was steel in his voice.

Rather than react violently, however, Dietrich sighed and turned away, almost as if he were disappointed or resigned. "Yes, I suppose you are right," he said almost sadly. "I have tried drugs, hypnosis, and Mr. Black's more . . . direct . . . methods of persuasion, and still you have not told me what I wish to know. Your resolve is most admirable, Mr. Cranston. I should have foreseen this result. I cannot persuade you by force or violence to give me the knowledge I seek. Suppose, however, that I were to apply Mr. Black's methods to someone dear to you . . . Miss Lane perhaps?"

At these last words, Dietrich turned back to Cranston with a vicious grin. He caught the momentary flash of terror on the face of Lamont Cranston, who struggled to recover himself.

"So help me, Dietrich, if you lay a finger on Margo, I'll--"

"You will do what, Mr. Cranston?" Dietrich replied acidly, plainly enjoying the moment. "My dear sir, you are in no position to do anything to anyone. Why, you are as powerless and as helpless as . . . a shadow." Dietrich obviously found this amusing because he burst into a long peal of mocking laughter.

Cranston pleaded with his captor. "Dietrich, you can't do that to Margo. She loved you once. And she thought you loved her."

"Love!" Dietrich spat. "What good is love? I serve a power greater than love now. I serve the FŸrhrer. I serve the Fatherland. I serve Destiny." As if moved by his own heroic oratory, Dietrich called out like a general commanding an army. "Schmidt!"

The cadaverous servant reappeared.

"You called, Mein Herr?"

"Yes, Schmidt. Telephone those two cretins you engaged to follow Miss Lane. Instruct them to apprehend her and bring her here immediately."

"At once, Mein Herr."

Schmidt turned on his heel and marched out of the room with military precision, but returned a few moments later, looking even paler than usual and distinctly ill at ease.

"Well? What is it?" Dietrich snapped, noting the butler's discomfort.

"Mein Herr . . . the woman she . . . she . . . Miss Lane is gone," he finally blurted.

"Gone?" Dietrich roared, "What do you mean gone?"

"She . . . she seems to have escaped our surveillance, Mein Herr."

Lamont Cranston breathed a silent prayer of gratitude. Good girl, Margo, he thought.

Dietrich was not so pleased. He gave Schmidt a vicious backhanded blow that nearly toppled the taller but thinner man. "And just how did she escape?" Dietrich growled.

"They say she was driven by a cabbie who . . . who drove like a madman."

Lamont amended his prayer of thanks. Good old Shrevvy, he added.

"Do they have any idea where she is now?" Dietrich demanded.

"It is believed she went to Grand Central Station. A woman answering Miss Lane's description purchased a ticket for the Metropolis Flyer yesterday evening."

Dietrich whirled to face Gunther Black.

"Do you have any associates in Metropolis?" Dietrich asked.

"I know people," Black said.

"Then let us hope your 'people' will be of greater usefulness than Herr Schmidt's," Dietrich said bitingly. "We must find her, we must find out what she knows, and then . . ." Dietrich paused and glared directly at Cranston . . . "we must eliminate her."

In his battered, exhausted state, Lamont Cranston couldn't imagine why Margo was going to Metropolis, but he knew that as long as she was alive and out of Dietrich's clutches, there was hope.

End of Chapter IV