“They can understand,” explained the Chinaman to Sneaks. “But they cannot talk. It is the effect of the gas.”
The owl-faced Mongolian strode over to the wall. Sneaks saw Cliff and Harry turn their heads to watch him. The next door was plainly within their range of vision. Loy Rook placed his hand upon the third button. He spoke to the captured men.
“Now,” he said, “you will see the man you call The Shadow!”
He pressed the button. The door moved upward. Sneaks Rubin was staring at the barrier.
Then a cry of rage came from him. Loy Rook leaned forward to see. Like Sneaks, he realized how they had been tricked.
A seated form rested beyond the lifted barrier — but it was not the shape of a human being, either alive or dead. Leering with its shining eyes of metal, the figure of Loy Rook’s bronze joss seemed to mock the men who stared. The Shadow had eluded the trap of Loy Rook!
Suspecting its presence, he had placed the image near the barrier in front of him. Its weight had caused the dropping door to fall. The Shadow had remained behind the farther barrier. Loy Rook’s lethal gas had been wasted on a thing of metal!
CHAPTER XVIII. THE PIT OF DEATH
SILENCE reigned in Loy Rook’s sanctum. Sneaks Rubin was stupefied. Harry Vincent and Cliff Marsland were wondering. Loy Rook was contemplating the scene before him.
The trap which had lured two victims had failed with the third. The Shadow had scented the pitfall. The cunning of the wily old Mongolian was no match for the intuition of the mysterious man in black.