Then came a phone call that led police to Harvey Bronlon's strong room. They found the bodies of Judge and Deacon. Jake Critz was dying. Harvey Bronlon was suffering from wounds from which he died two days later.
Had the hand of The Shadow purposely allowed this man to live a while? That might have been the master fighter's design. For Harvey Bronlon, taken with the cases of well-packed bills and gold certificates, weakened under the quizzing of his captors.
It was he who gasped out the confession of the crime — virtually the story which The Shadow had recounted when he had held his last foes at bay. Bronlon, cowed by impending death, told of the secret passage in the block that he had built.
The investigators found the bodies of Major, Ferret, and Butcher. They were laid in the morgue, and with them were placed the forms of Judge and Deacon.
The Five Chameleons united, in the room which they had used as base of operations.
Together there in life, they were together now, in death.
The money at Bronlon's was brought back to the vault of the County National Bank. State officials arrived to take charge. Government men came to Middletown to investigate the spurious money that had flooded the entire district.
While the bodies of the Five Chameleons lay on their slabs, some unknown hand placed envelopes there — one on the form of each man. The officer who discovered the envelopes opened them one by one. Each contained the pretended name of the victim upon which it had lain. David Traver, Howard Best, Maurice Exton, Joel Hawkins, George Ellsworth: all were listed. But as the officer stared at the writing, an unexplainable change took place. The writing faded, and new words immediately appeared. The nicknames: Judge, Deacon, Major, Ferret, and Butcher were revealed by the invisible hand. These names gave the government agents a working clue. They quickly dug up the past records of all the notorious crooks.
That was not the only strange episode that followed the clean-up of the counterfeiters.
The other was observed by only one other person — Martha Delmar.