Burke gave the simple details that he had received from Detective Crowell. He added that Acting Inspector Zull was on the job. Then he stressed an important point, speaking in a low voice.
“Zull has found something important,” he said. “A pad of paper — lying on a bookcase. He was going to pick it up, but didn’t. He told us to leave. We went.
“But I came up the steps again — just far enough to see the bookcase. The pad was gone. I think Zull took it.”
“Purpose?” came the quiet voice.
“I don’t know — unless he wants to take credit on this case, which is likely. Crowell evidently didn’t notice the pad. Devlin is coming up — he’s there now.
“Maybe Zull wants to study the pad alone, without the detectives knowing it. He’s an efficiency man — special investigator — and it may mean something to him to get dope the others don’t have. It’s got me puzzled.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Burke was still puzzling over the matter when he started for police headquarters. He had given his report to a man whom he had never met; but whose voice he knew well. The man was known to him as Burbank and through him, Burke’s messages were relayed to another man whose name Clyde did not even know.
For Burbank, like Burke, was an agent of that mysterious person known as The Shadow — a superman who defeated the master minds of gangdom with their own methods.