THE muffled slam of the rear door was the last sound, except for the loud ticking of an alarm clock that stood upon a windowsill, in front of a drawn blind. Minutes passed slowly, solemnly, in this room of death. Seven had gone before a new motion occurred.

Something stirred the frayed green windowshade behind the clock. An edge moved slightly, to a distance no greater than the width of a human eye. Motion stilled; then gloved fingers appeared uncannily beneath the windowshade. They were black, those fingers; they acted like detached creatures.

The windowshade lifted. Solid blackness loomed inward. Eerily, it became a living shape. When the shade had dropped to its former level, it formed the background for a weird figure. A being cloaked in black had entered this room of doom.

Above shrouded shoulders, the uncanny visitor wore a slouch hat, with downturned brim that hid his features. Eyes alone were visible; they showed like points of fire as they directed themselves upon the dead form of Durlew, half across the desk.

The Shadow, superfoe to crime, had arrived upon the newest scene of murder. He had gained the trail that Durlew had feared; the one that Spark Ganza had thought too slim for any sleuth to follow. While the law had decided to quiz the employees of the Northern Drug Company, The Shadow had visited the printer who supplied the labels.

The Shadow had come to make Durlew speak. Arriving, he had found the druggist dead. Nevertheless, a whispered, mirthless laugh came significantly from hidden lips.

The Shadow had hope that he might learn a dead man’s tale.

CHAPTER III – THE SUBSTITUTE VICTIM

IN his survey of the tiny office, The Shadow recognized at once that Durlew’s death had been recent. Though blood had clotted on the apothecary’s forehead, it still dripped from the dead man’s spectacles. Moreover, the room held a distinct trace of the pungent odor that only revolver smoke could produce.

Spark had flung the late newspaper into a wastebasket beside the desk. The Shadow could see the screaming headlines, with their guesswork announcement: “Police Link Deaths.” It was obvious that this was Durlew’s newspaper; a murderer, had he brought it, would have carried it away.

That edition had been on the street for only half an hour. It was likely that Durlew had read the newspaper account. Likely, also, that his reading could have had some bearing on his death.

A large ash tray lay in a corner of Durlew’s desk. It contained cigar stumps. Unsmoked cigars were bulging from the dead man’s breast pocket. In contrast to this proof that Durlew preferred cigars was a small ash tray on the top of the rolltop desk. It contained a cigarette butt.

The Shadow pictured events almost as they had happened.

He visualized a visitor, accosting Durlew in the store. He pictured the apothecary closing his shop, coming voluntarily into the rear office. The Shadow could retrace a brief conversation; after that, a departure from the office.

Durlew’s position told that he had been freely engaged when some one had entered to take his life.

Though the druggist was slumped upon the desk, his feet were shifted to the left. His own weight had carried him back to his former position; but his feet had dragged. Moreover, the telephone interested The Shadow. It was not quite to the center of the desk. Its cord was too short to reach that far.

Obviously, the telephone belonged either on top of the desk or on the revolving bookcase. The Shadow knew why Durlew had been slain. The man was making a hurried telephone call when the murderer entered.

The telephone book immediately concerned The Shadow. The fat directory was lying on the desk, closed. The Shadow thumbed its pages, on the possibility that the book would open readily at the page last used. That chance failed; nevertheless, The Shadow could divine the purpose of Durlew’s call. The apothecary had certainly intended to spill some news of crime.

THE SHADOW had already placed Durlew’s part in the death of William Hessup. The druggist had supplied the poison and the little bottle. Whether he had done so with knowledge of their purpose, did not matter. A man of Durlew’s status would probably have preferred to say nothing.

This East Side apothecary’s shop was of a doubtful sort. It was the type of place that thugs would frequent; a place where required medicine could be had for wounded hoodlums. It also had the qualifications of a “blind” establishment that would be useful to dope peddlers.

Durlew, despite the pitiful aspect of his dead face, was a man for whom The Shadow held little regret. The odds were that he had dipped his hand into criminal activities whenever the risk was not too great.

Durlew had become a man who knew too much. Murder had frightened him; particularly after he had read the rumor of a link between the deaths of Blessingdale and Hessup.

The Shadow had seen the possibilities of such a link; until now, he had gained no evidence of it. Thugs had been employed to kill both men; but that was not sufficient to prove that the same hand of crime was behind both murders. The Shadow had chosen to investigate Hessup’s death, in preference to Blessingdale’s. He had known that if the two were linked, he would find clues along the trail. He had gained good evidence here at Durlew’s.

The ways of gangland called for quick death to any traitor. Durlew had been killed because he had decided to squeal. Many sleuths would have formed that conclusion and let the case rest with it. Not so The Shadow. He saw reasons why Durlew would have preferred not to talk. Definitely mixed in Hessup’s death, the apothecary needed something to square him with the law.

The mere naming of the murderer would not be sufficient. Durlew would have done that previously, if he had thought the course a good one. Linking Hessup’s death with Blessingdale’s was not enough. The police had already taken that for granted. Durlew must have known more; possibly he had facts concerning future plans for crime.

The fact that Durlew’s telephone book lay closed was oddly to The Shadow’s advantage. It made the cloaked investigator speculate upon the telephone call itself, since he had no proof that Durlew was intending to tip off the police. The possibility that Durlew might have been calling some one else – perhaps a man whose life was threatened – was sufficient for The Shadow to search for further clues.

A CORNER of white paper was visible under Durlew’s left elbow. The Shadow raised the dead man’s arm. He found the prescription pad from which Spark Ganza had torn the written sheet.

The long-pointed pencil rolled into view as soon as The Shadow removed the pad. There were other pencils like it in the pigeonhole. Durlew kept his pencils sharpened to a point. The one on the desk, however, showed a slight variation. Its tip was broken to the tiniest portion of an inch.

Durlew had written something before he died. The pressure of his hand had broken a minute fragment from the highly sharpened point.

With gloved fingers, The Shadow broke the tips completely from three pencils. He let the chunks of graphite fall upon the pad. There was a sharpener attached to the top of Durlew’s desk. The Shadow resharpened the pencils and put them all away in the pigeonhole.

Finding an odd ash tray, The Shadow dropped the pieces of graphite into it; using a small paper weight, he ground the black chunks into powder. He poured the black grains upon the prescription pad.

Polishing paper weight and ash tray with his fingers, The Shadow removed traces of his action. He took off his left glove; a brilliant fire opal glimmered from a ring upon his third finger. Using his finger tips, The Shadow massaged the powdered graphite into the surface of the pad.