From the way the figures were hunched, Phil was certain that they carried a burden, which in turn made him think of Winslow Ames!
As soon as the procession passed, Phil followed in its wake. The huddled men took what seemed to be a winding path, veering in among trees and bushes. They passed a circular building not far from the old stable, then continued deeper into the wilds of Central Park, until their course took a sharp turn.
All this while, Phil was thinking in terms of the invisible fighter that he had met before. Somehow he classed that mysterious being as part and parcel of this strange procession.
In brief, Phil was sizing The Shadow wrongly; hence he was making a bad beginning something worse. For the Shadow, too, was on that very trail.
Behind Phil, visible only at moments when a clearing allowed a strong glow of moonlight, stalked a cloaked shape that had come from the left side of the old stable, attracted by the muffled music that had drawn Phil’s attention.
Two things occurred at once. Phil lost the trail of that hunched crew ahead and at the same time stumbled upon a dirt road that happened to be a bridle path. Figuring the direction that the men must have taken, Phil tried to find them in the dark.
Phil succeeded, but in a delayed fashion.
Off above a hedge that flanked the bridle path, Phil saw some quick flickers of light that could only have come from a high building. Those blinks struck him as a signal, but when they finished Phil was unable to interpret them. Looking toward the hedge, which was thick, like a line of shrubbery, Phil saw a signal blink below and heard a rumble that accompanied it.
This was a truck, coming beneath an underpass over which the bridle path ran on a hedge-flanked bridge, but Phil didn’t recognize it. What impressed him was a stir amid the hedge, an indication that the men he was following were still on the move. That was quite enough to end Phil’s urge for caution.
With a fierce lunge, Phil started to fling himself into the unknown band, when he saw another figure flanking in from the moonlight. It was black, that shape, but with a flowing effect that gave the impression of a cloak. His instinct at a fever pitch, Phil took it that this must be his opponent of a while before.