“Maybe you have understood the first message?” The scarred man sneered. “If so, what should matter? You have not yet found out the important thing.” Yuble paused, as though hoping Phil would revive enough to comprehend. “You have not learned it, fool! You have not guessed that I, Dom Yuble, can receive a special message at any time.”
Turning to the window, Yuble let his eyes betray an expectant glitter.
“Look!” Yuble gloated. “I shall let you live long enough to see how a confidential message arrives!”
Maybe it was Phil’s swimming head, but he was sure he saw blackness loom suddenly up into the window. No longer sheer fancy, that blackness became a growing creature with great, outspread arms that looked like webbed extensions of its body.
Yuble’s manner was a greeting, as he waved a hand as if to gesture the creature upward, so it would dwindle from the light; then, so suddenly that Phil was jolted out of his mental whirl, Yuble gave a piercing scream of horror.
Instead of melting, that creature from the great outside flung its arms around Dom Yuble as though enveloping him in the folds of a death-delivering cloak.
To Phil Harley, the action of Yuble’s unknown foe symbolized The Shadow!
CHAPTER XVII
FOR the next few minutes, the fantastic ruled. To Phil Harley, what he saw was unbelievable, or at least half so. Yuble’s antagonist made it that way.
As Yuble reeled in front of the window trying to shake off his dread attacker, the changing position of the light produced remarkable tricks. At times, Yuble seemed overwhelmed by a huge, shadowy antagonist; there were moments when the attacker disappeared, leaving only Yuble, gasping, jabbing his knife wildly into thin air.