Bullets from Cliff’s automatics found their marks. Both men fell wounded. The guns were useless. Lance Bolero made a vain effort to recover. He clutched the machine gun with his left hand. Cliff’s next bullet broke his wrist.
Then came quick action on the part of the extra man, Gringo Butz. Not knowing that the menace came from above, Gringo leaped to Tony’s machine gun.
Its staccato bark never began. Cliff emptied his automatics at the gunner and the gun. Bullets crashed against the machine gun. Gringo Butz collapsed.
On came the policemen and detectives. Over the barricades they went, with revolvers spitting fire. They had heard shots, but had not seen from where they came. They piled into the ambush, shooting — and stopped in amazement at the sight of the three prone gangsters before them.
Lance and Gringo were dead. Police bullets had finished what Cliff Marsland had begun. Tony Caprona was wounded. While the police were dragging forth their victims, more shots came from the ends of the alley.
Eight officers responded. Cliff heard heavy firing. Reserves, stationed outside, had opened an onslaught on Flash Donegan and Dip Riker, quartered separately within the ends of the warehouse. Reinforced by the attackers who had been in the alley — men whom Flash and Dip had thought dead — the minions of the law were fighting the beleaguered gangsters to the death!
Cliff crouched below the window. He could hear detectives shouting in the alley. He was safe here; his hiding place was a disused air shaft, with a hidden opening below. From this place of security, he listened to the firing, and also heard men storming at the opening in the warehouse opposite.
The victory belonged to the law — but Cliff Marsland, hidden and alert, was the man who had won the fight. The real victory had been gained by the power of The Shadow!