The Russian sought to resist. With both hands crippled, he could not manage to control the man who had attacked him.
Like a mongoose battling a poison cobra, Austin Bellamy, with all the pent-up rage of unhappy months, hurled the huge Russian back and forth, choking him, beating his head against the floor and walls. None of the others moved to stop him. They, too, had suffered. Primitive though Bellamy's vengeance was, they did not choose to reason.
When the fierce old man fell exhausted on the floor, Orlinov's head was tilted, as though unhinged from his huge frame. The bearded fiend had met his doom.
More shots were heard from below. The rescued men moved in a file. Hartley picked up Orlinov's revolver. Murdock found the dead gangster's gun on the stairs and chose it as his weapon. In the corridor, on the ground floor, the men found still another mobster, wounded and dying. The sliding barrier was open. They passed through, Hartley first, Murdock next.
Pierre Rachaud was third; behind him, Austin Bellamy dragged wearily along. More bodies in the hall. The front door was open. A man stepped in and held up his hand. It was Cliff Marsland. The others recognized that he was a friend. Silently, Cliff led them to the living room.
There, on the floor, he showed them the bodies of three men.
Gerald Savette and Glade Tremont had perished. Bullets from The Shadow's gun and the shots fired by Harold Sharrock had combined to rid the world of these monstrous plotters. The third man was Sharrock, himself. He was dying, from a wound received when Tremont had wrested the revolver away. Sharrock, the man who had sought to make amends, stared glassily at Austin Bellamy.
The old man's face, hardened from hatred for Orlinov, softened now. He knew that Sharrock had betrayed him, and had spent his fortune; but he felt a sense of pity.
Bellamy stooped to the floor and raised his stepbrother's head. Thus, with friendly eyes upon him, with friendly hands grasping him, Harold Sharrock died.
Cliff Marsland beckoned the others to the hall. Solemnly, they went to the porch. There they stood in darkness, looking across the moon-bathed lawn, no longer dominated by gangster hordes.