Suspicions began to enter Joe Cardona’s mind. He was on the verge of another hunch. He stared from the window at the gathering dusk, and felt that he would like to meet Mr. Terry Blake once again.
HAD Cardona’s gaze been able to pierce both blackness and solid walls, he might have viewed a distant scene which would have surprised him. It would also have explained, in part, the visit of the man who called himself Terry Blake.
A light was shining in the midst of a windowless room. Its rays, focused downward by an opaque lamp shade, cast a luminous circle in the center of a square-topped table.
Within that sphere of light, two hands were moving. Those hands were long, slender, and tapering; yet strong muscles were apparent beneath their smooth-textured skin. Upon a finger of the left hand, a strange gem glowed beneath the lamplight, its bluish depths changing in hue from purple to deep red.
The stone was a girasol — a rare fire opal unmatched in all the world. It was the lone jewel of The Shadow.
Objects appeared as if from nowhere. A pencil and a piece of paper. A small goblet filled with water. A tiny box. A phial of dark-blue liquid, whose changing shades rivaled the matchless girasol. These appeared from the outer darkness, arriving within the circle of light as though conjured from space.
Finally a curious book with flexible covers made its appearance. The hands opened the book and revealed a page of Chinese characters.
A pointed finger made its way up the page. It stopped and moved slowly from character to character.
Eyes in the dark were reading from the book. The hand plucked the pencil from the table and made short notations upon the sheet of paper. The book remained open, but was pushed to one side, where it lay as reference.
The hands opened the tiny box and shook a quantity of yellow powder into the little goblet of water. The liquid took on a yellowish tinge, the powder dissolving immediately.