(You can read the previous chapter HERE!) 18
In the dark office of the CYPHER Commandant nothing moved. Far off, faint and barely heard, were the screams of dying men out in the holocaust of the flaming valley. From time to time heavy explosions rocked the mountain. Once there was a violent shock that rattled all the cabinets in the dark and silent office. The storage warehouse nearby had exploded. Screams of the trapped and maimed echoed louder. But nothing happened in the office deep inside the rock of the mountain.
Then there was a light sighing sound. The secret panel had opened and closed. Someone stood in the dark room. A tall shape that did not hesitate an instant, but strode quickly and directly to the large metal desk. The figure did not turn on any light but opened a drawer unhesitatingly and took out a key. The figure then strode to the wall, touched a button, and a panel slid back revealing a safe. The man opened the safe with the key and a combination. He reached in and withdrew an envelope and a small attaché case. He then closed the safe and went to the desk where he turned on the desk lamp. In the small circle of light that cast shadowy glooms in all the corners of the office the man spread out the papers he had taken from the safe. He took another envelope from his pocket and spread out the papers from it. For a few minutes he studied all the papers, nodded, and replaced them all in one envelope. He opened the attaché case and took out packets of money. He counted the number of packets of bills, again nodded, and returned them to the attaché case. Then he closed the case and stood listening for a moment to the distant sounds of death and destruction. A faintly mocking smile played across his face. He again opened the attaché case and strode to the hat rack in the corner. He took down the mask and the uniform of the CYPHER Commandant and carried them to the attaché case. He began to fold them and place them inside the case.
The low laugh echoed through the dark room. An eerie, macabre laugh.
“Who is there!” the man snapped. A pistol suddenly leaped into his hand.
The laugh came again—a cold, mocking laugh.
“I have destroyed your entire operation, do you think you can stop me now with a pistol, General Rogers! !”
The tall Air Force Brigadier and Special Aide to the President looked hard all around the room. He saw nothing. Then there was an expression of sudden understanding on his face.
“The man in black!” Rogers said quietly.
There was a movement of the gloom in a corner of the office, and the burning eyes of The Shadow appeared. The red glow of his fire-opal girasol illuminated his face and hawk-nose beneath the black slouch hat and above the high collar of his black cloak that faded away into the gloom.
“Yes, General Rogers, the man in black—The Shadow! I know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men! And I know that you are the Commandant of CYPHER!”
Rogers held his pistol steady and aimed at the shadowy shape and blazing eyes. The tall General shrugged.
“I don’t see how I can deny it now. Yes, I am proud to say that I command CYPHER! I alone command an organization of true men who will someday be honored by history as men who faced reality, who knew where true values lie!”
The Shadow nodded. “I should have seen it. You, and you alone, really could have had Major Oates killed!”
Rogers smiled. “Ah, yes, Oates. The fool was getting a little too close to the truth. I had to kill him and at the same time throw a little suspicion on our Soviet friends, eh? But I didn’t really fool you, did I—Cranston!”
There was a silence in the office as the two men faced each other. Rogers laughed again.
Rogers had guessed the secret of The Shadow.
“You see, two can play at this game. It is now clear to me that you and Cranston are one and the same! A good cover, that mild Lamont Cranston, the amateur crime-fighter. But only Cranston really could have known I probably killed Oates. I knew that you were getting too close when you told that fool Broyard of your suspicions about Federal and the Idaho plant. That… .”
“That was why you let Farina find the sabotage of the fuel control, and why you pretended suspicion of Federal. You knew that I might find something here, and you wanted to lead me to capture! You set a trap for me and my agents.”
“Of course,” Rogers said. The eyes of the General glinted. “It was a magnificent project! To own the Moon! CYPHER! Our Moon! Bryan was useful, of course, but it would have been our Moon!” Rogers seemed to be seeing a vision. Then his eyes clouded. “And you have destroyed it! This time you will not oppose us again!”
The Shadow mocked. “I have destroyed the project, and I have destroyed Bryan and Ernest, and now I will destroy CYPHER! The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, Calvin Rogers!”
Rogers laughed. “You fool! I have you now! You are only another weakling who cannot understand the necessity of power and strength! Weak like our mollycoddle Government, as weak as all the stupid Governments everywhere! A dreamer of peace when the law of life is battle and war and death! No, you will not stand in our way again! You are clever, but you are not that clever. Even you cannot escape a bullet at this range!”
The eyes of The Shadow were points of fire as the dark Avenger stared at Calvin Rogers.
“You have betrayed your country and your President, Calvin Rogers. You have betrayed your home and your world. You have betrayed your duty to all men! You are incarnate evil, Calvin Rogers, far worse than the poor men you lead to hate and destruction! Bryan was insane, and your men are only blind, but you are sane and you are not blind! Now you will tell me all I must know about CYPHER to destroy it once and for all! You are the Commandant, you will tell me everything!”
Rogers’ eyes narrowed and the pistol pointed up an inch. Then the renegade General smiled a wolfish smile. “You have nerve, Shadow. That I grant you. You have a lot of courage and a lot of strength. Perhaps I will not kill you. You are clever and you have powers that we can use. Join us! You are not one of these stupid weaklings who will not face life as it is!”
The Shadow’s voice cut like a knife. “Do not insult me by trying to make me as evil as you, Calvin Rogers! The world will never be free as long as men like you exist! You must die, but first you will tell me what I must know to destroy all of CYPHER!”
Rogers went pale. Then the CYPHER Commandant’s lips curled in a savage snarl. For an instant his face was the face of a wild beast, the face that man must have had once so many millions of years ago when he roamed the jungles living by his teeth and his claws and death of others for his food. The snarling savage face of man eons ago before he had even grown into a human savage in the jungle, when he was still only another animal who knew nothing else. That man of millions of years ago knew no more, but Calvin Rogers did! Knew and denied! And now he snarled as his unknown ancestors had and raised his pistol in the joy of hate and destruction.
“Stop!” The Shadow commanded.
Rogers laughed. Rogers blinked.
“You cannot fire, Calvin Rogers!”
Rogers shook his head.
“You will now tell me all I want to know!”
Rogers stood motionless. The power of The Shadow flowed into the brain of the renegade General. Rogers made no motion. The Shadow felt the brain of the CYPHER Commandant go limp. For one instant the brain receded from his probing power. Only an instant of total non-resistance. But it was enough. In that instant Rogers gained a second of his own will. Not time to shoot at the vague and half-seen shape of The Shadow. Not time to escape. But the time to turn the pistol upward.
The single shot rang out in the silent room of the office.
Calvin Rogers was flung backwards by the force of his own shot.
The General fell against the wall and slipped to the floor. His head was blown off at the rear.
He was dead. Killed instantly by his own shot, the dead man sat against the wall and there was a smile on his thin lips.
The Shadow stood and looked down. Rogers had escaped him. In one instant of will Rogers had displayed again the evil power of CYPHER. An evil power that would not easily be stamped out of the world. Because Rogers, and CYPHER, were right in one deadly way—there were always men of evil to hire them, and always men of evil to serve them! The Shadow’s eyes flamed bitterly as he looked down at the dead General and knew that his task was not ever going to be an easy task.
But once again The Shadow had stopped CYPHER, and perhaps the day would come when CYPHER would die because there was no one left to pay them for their services of violence and crime. Some day. And until that day The Shadow would be there to defeat each single project of destruction.
Now he raised his head again and listened. He heard distant firing and the faint sound of helicopters. The soldiers of General Broyard had arrived. It was time for The Shadow to vanish once again until he was needed for another work of peace and justice.
The black-cloaked figure faded away into the gloom of the office and was gone.
In the Administration Building of NASA Utah Base, Major-General Broyard sat behind his desk with the envelope of papers in front of him. Dr. Cassill sat near him. The General and the Senior Scientist both smiled at the three people before them. Broyard tapped the envelope.
“Cassill tells me that these documents are the plans for the improved fuel control, and the formula for Bryan’s super fuel. They are invaluable, Cranston, we must thank you!”
“Don’t thank me,” Cranston said. “It was Harry Vincent there who stopped Rogers and found them. It seems that Rogers knew their value too.”
“Then our thanks to Mr. Vincent,” Broyard said.
Harry, bandaged and still pale from his ordeal, only smiled. Margo Lane touched the arm of the wounded agent and nodded to General Broyard.
“We are just glad that we were able to help,” Margo said.
Broyard frowned. “Of course, you understand that none of this can ever leave this room.
Rogers was too close to the President. Officially it will be reported that he died in an accident, a plane crash. We have managed to explain that big explosion as the Federal Plant exploding in an industrial accident. It also explains the deaths of Bryan and Ernest. I understand that the Russians are saying that Vaslov and Derian died in one of those plane crashes, too. None of it must ever get out. We have decided to share all the new plans and formulas with the Soviet.”
“Very wise,” Cranston said quietly. “The only way to defeat men like Bryan and their dreams of power is to cooperate openly and give them no chance.”
“True,” Dr. Cassill said. “You were very lucky to escape that holocaust, Cranston.”
“Fortunately,” Cranston said, “I was in an underground cell in the mountain where Broyard’s men found me.”
“Yes,” Broyard said. “We rounded up most of the survivors. CYPHER, you called them? We can’t get a thing out of them. Except for a few wounded and stunned, they had all vanished. I don’t understand what their role was in this? It was Bryan’s grab for the Moon.”
“They simply worked with him,” Cranston said quietly. He did not want to reveal how much he knew about CYPHER.
General Broyard nodded slowly. “Well, we’ll have to watch for them again. At least, this time we won. Rogers! I simply cannot understand it. Rogers and Bryan, a genius like that.” The General shook his head sadly. Then he looked up at Cranston, Margo and Harry Vincent. “One other thing I don’t understand. The few survivors we found all talked of a shadow, a giant moving shadow that attacked them. None of you saw it, or him, or whatever it was?”
“No,” Cranston said.
Margo smiled. “The Moon creates many shadows, General. They must have seen Moon shadows.”
“Yes,” Broyard said, and slowly shook his head.
In the quiet office of the NASA Base Margo and Harry Vincent showed nothing on their faces.
For one instant, the hooded eyes of Lamont Cranston flashed, and then he only smiled at Broyard and Cassill.
THE END
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