The men left the library. The door slammed behind them. Then the bookcase moved. A tall, thin figure, clad in black, stepped into the vacant room.
Silent, sinister, and motionless, The Shadow seemed to be pondering over the words that he had heard.
After Larrigan’s departure, the other men had talked in Italian; but it was apparent that the man who had been hidden behind the bookcase had understood their words. For now he spoke in a low, uncanny whisper that seemed to fill the room with sibilant echoes.
“Larrigan is lined up,” were his words. “The others will follow. Monk Thurman will die. Nick Savoli will be supreme.”
Scarcely had the man in black finished these sentences before a soft, whispered laugh escaped his lips. Like the words, the laugh reached every corner of the room.
It was creepy, and unreal, that laugh. Its taunting tones seemed to ridicule everything that Nick Savoli and Mike Borrango had accepted as certainty.
For The Shadow had heard. The Shadow knew.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PEACE DINNER
THE time had arrived for truce in gangdom. News of the dinner in the Goliath Hotel had reached the newspapers as well as the police. Jerry Kirklyn, the Chronicle reporter, discussed it with Barney Higgins the afternoon before it occurred.