This procedure finished, he closed the door again, and studied the movable wall of the apartment. After finding the secret catch that opened the wall on the apartment side, the mysterious man went up the spiral stairway, and a few seconds later again stood in Savoli’s library, with the bookcase open behind him.
OF all the gangsters who made frequent visits to Nick Savoli’s lair, not one had ever suspected the existence of this secret passageway. None had realized that Mike Borrango instinctively stood in front of the hidden exit. Yet the man who concealed his identity beneath the black cloak and hat had ferreted out the secret as though by telepathy.
Now he stood alone in the center of Savoli’s library, and for the first time since his arrival, a sound escaped his lips. He laughed softly, yet even that murmuring tone was sinister in its mockery.
It was the same laugh that Steve Cronin had heard the night before: the laugh of The Shadow!
The motionless figure became suddenly active, as though keen ears had detected the sound of approaching footsteps. In a fraction of a second, the man in black passed through the secret opening, and closed the bookcase behind him. Mike Borrango entered the library just too late to observe what had happened.
CHAPTER XIII
MONK LOOKS FOR TROUBLE
MIRE LARRIGAN’S saloon on the South Side was not a good place for innocent bystanders. It was one of the most notorious booze joints in Chicago, run in open defiance of the law.
There was nothing subtle about Mike Larrigan. He was a hoodlum of the old school, a mob master who believed that it was cheaper and better to kill policemen than to pay them hush money.
At the same time, Larrigan, in his hostility toward Nick Savoli, had imitated some of the subtle methods of the big shot. He relied on political pull to protect the saloon which was his headquarters, and he appeared there frequently without fear that the law would annoy him.