The Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

where Tam was cowering; then over the railing itself, only to hang suspended in the air.
    “Don’t force me to act as your judge and jury, Duke,” the voice warned. “I don’t believe in the death penalty. I am the death penalty.”
    Duke was hanging upside-down over the water, as if being dangled by his left foot, the trenchcoat cascading down over his jerking arms and head.
    “I’ll finish you right here,” the voice promised. “I’ll plant you where you intended to plant him.”
    Blood dripping from his mouth and nose, Duke could hear and smell the salt chop of the water. The fight had gone out of him, and fear had reared up in its place. “Okay, okay, you got me dead to rights. I’ll do what you say. I’ll confess. Just don’t let me fall, don’t let me fall.” He was whimpering like a baby.
    The phantom’s retort was a snort of derisive laughter. “You will go to the Eighth Precinct House on Second Avenue, and there you will surrender yourself to Desk Sergeant Noonan. And you will do it tonight.”
    The same unseen hands that had thrown Duke over the rail suddenly hoisted him back onto the walkway, only to toss him headfirst across the hood of the Ford, and directly through the split windscreen.
    Maxie and Johnny still had their weapons out and their mouths open. They wanted no part of Duke’s problem and were backing away when a shadow appeared on the pavement, elongating in their direction until it finally encompassed and rose over them, high on the tower. Two pairs of terrified eyes followed the shadow to its source, where a parcel of the befogged darkness resolved into the profile of a human figure. The figure topped six feet and was cloaked in black from shoes to wide-brimmed hat, which was pulled low on its forehead. What little could be seen of its face behind a red scarf was fierce-eyed and hawklike, and around him the cloak fluttered and snapped like some animate creature of the night.
    His laugh sibilant and bone-chilling, The Shadow swirled forward like a dark-stained portion of the fog itself.
    “I hate this guy,” Johnny stammered, before he and Maxie turned tail and ran toward the lights of Manhattan.
    The Shadow watched them go, then glided around the car to confront Tam, who was shaking like a leaf and rocking back and forth on his own concrete pier.
    “Please,” he said, “I-I didn’t see anything—”
    The Shadow whipped back his cloak, revealing the butts of shoulder-holstered automatics. He crossed black-gloved hands over his chest and drew the twin weapons, aiming them down at Tam. On the third finger of the left hand glowed a large red stone in a silver ring.
    Tam knew a little about guns, and he saw now that what he had first taken for .45 Colts were heftier, nickel-plated handguns with mother-of-pearl handles. It took strong wrists and powerful forearms to control such weapons, but The Shadow’s were more than equal to the challenge.
    Tam squeezed his eyes shut. Instantly, the air around him rang with eight explosive shots, and his feet seemed to leap from their shell of imprisoning concrete. In the subsequent silence, he glanced down at his legs fully expecting to find that his feet had been blown off, but realizing instead that the black-clad avenger’s bullets had chunked the block, freeing him.
    Tam stared at the narrow-eyed man in the cloak, scarf, and hat. “Who are you?”
    But before the question could be answered a taxicab tore out of the fog and screeched to a halt alongside the mobsters’ Ford, out of which protruded The Shadow’s still unconscious foeman, Duke Rollins. Like the guns, the taxi was like no other Tam had encountered around town, but rather a late-model, yellow and black, front-wheel-drive Cord touring sedan, somewhat longer than the standard model, with wide whitewalls, headlamps that rotated outward from compartments in the bulbous front fenders, and exhaust pipes jutting from both sides of the hood. On the roof was a trio of yellow Moderne