“It’s the same guy,” lied Sneaks, realizing that The Shadow must have passed invisibly through the cordon of gangsters posted by Jake Dermott. “It’ll be easy to get him, but you’ll have to work fast.”
“O.K.,” came the reply.
Sneaks hung up the telephone and looked at Loy Rook. The wily old Chinaman grinned. He had a game to play — one that would amuse himself and Sneaks Rubin.
“We are safe, here,” he declared. “That door is of metal. Downstairs” — he waved his hand toward the front of the house — “my door is double-locked, so we can have no disturbance from there. While we wait for The Shadow to die, we can see what these men have to say.”
He turned toward Cliff Marsland and Harry Vincent. He laughed at the first; he scowled at the second.
“You tried to deceive me,” he said. “It did not work. Now I shall hear you speak. Tell me, who is this man you call The Shadow? The one who sent you here?”
Harry had regained his tongue, but he could scarcely speak coherently. He answered Loy Rook, announcing that he had nothing to say. Loy Rook looked at Cliff and gained a similar mumbled response.
“You will not talk?”
THE old Mongolian leered at the helpless men. He walked to the side of the room and pulled a cord that hung from a tapestry. An opening appeared in front of the dais upon which Harry and Cliff were resting.
The prisoners were on the brink of a bottomless pit.