Mayhew knew that his presence was urgent below. There were not enough men to watch all the floors.
It was nearing ten o’clock, the hour when the mail would be collected.
The ground floor needed no watching by police. A man was stationed outside. The clerk and hotel attendants were eyeing the mail box itself.
The balconied mezzanine was deserted. The mail chute there was blank, without a slit through which a letter could be dropped.
While Mayhew was coming downward, a man was moving upward. He had entered the hotel by the door from the empty dining room.
Unseen, he had gained the stairway. He stopped when he reached the mezzanine.
It was The Shadow — again garbed in dark cloak and hat. The only difference in his usual stealth was the slight hesitancy in his gliding step.
Only the right arm was active as The Shadow felt his way along the darkened stair. He had been wounded in the arm and in the thigh — flesh wounds that had slowed, but not incapacitated, his actions.
The elevator shaft was twenty feet from the stairway. There, The Shadow crouched. The lights of the descending car went by as the elevator dropped to the ground floor.
Quickly, The Shadow was at work, his right hand bearing the brunt of the effort as he wedged a piece of steel between the sliding doors and pried them apart.