A forearm came behind Bolero’s neck. The two-hundred-pound form of the fighting gangster turned a complete somersault, and was hurtled, back upward, a few feet away.
The back of Lance’s head crashed against the paving. Flung as though he had been a man of straw, Lance Bolero was stunned and helpless.
Some one was climbing in the car from the other side. It was Marty Jennings. Kneeling upon Harry Vincent’s body, the gangster knew that Bolero had been attacked by a stranger from the dark.
A flashlight glimmered in Marty’s hand. It disclosed the scene before him. Lance Bolero was on the ground, dazed. Beside him, closer to the car, was a man in black, half rising from the ground.
The sable cloak of the man gave him a weird appearance. He seemed a shapeless mass, topped by a slouch hat. In a twinkling, Marty saw a black-gloved hand reaching to the ground. The hand was after a revolver that lay there.
Marty fired for the head that topped the cloak. “Shoot ‘em in the face!” was his motto.
He knew that a bullet through the head would spell certain doom for the man who had overcome Lance Bolero. But the man in black had divined Marty’s act to the split second. He seemed to collapse as Marty fired.
The gangster’s bullet clipped the top of the slouch hat. The automatic swung from the ground and spat flame as it rose.
Had The Shadow’s shot been wild, he would never have fired again. For Marty Jennings was aiming a second shot that could not have missed its mark.
But The Shadow’s marksmanship was unerring. There was but one spot at which he could fire, and be sure of hitting his target. His bullet found that spot — the flashlight in Marty Jennings’s left hand.