The rajah spoke with a renewed assurance. He arose from his throne, and strode through the darkened room. He pushed aside the heavy curtain of the anteroom, and beckoned to his companion. The two plotters were quartered in the outer room when Imam Singh joined them.
"Tony," said Rajah Brahman quietly, "it's up to you to keep a close watch on everything. The big work is beginning, and we have a hunch there may be trouble — from The Shadow." The turban-capped servant opened his eyes and nodded.
"Remember it," admonished the shirt-sleeved rajah.
He thrust out his dark-stained hand and received the clasp of his chief. Tony, otherwise known as Imam Singh, ushered the visitor to the door. Rajah Brahman swung about and looked toward the curtain that shrouded the entrance to his sanctum.
He was staring at a mass of solid blackness beside the door. It did not move. Rajah Brahman gave it no further notice. He laughed as he went through the curtain.
A long shadow fell upon the floor of the anteroom. It moved toward the outer door, and a tall, black clad form followed it. The silent stranger merged with the wall as Imam Singh returned. When the servant had left to join his master, somewhere beyond the sanctuary, the stranger in black laughed.
His whispered tones were different from the sordid mirth that Rajah Brahman had uttered. The laugh of The Shadow, as it sounded in that little room, was filled with sinister mockery. While the low echoes still resounded, the man in black was gone.
It was an hour afterward that two hands appeared above a lighted spot on a plain table. Upon one glowed the mystic fire of the girasol.
The white hands fingered a sheaf of newspaper clippings. They removed one that told of the death of Stella Dykeman, a Cincinnati debutante, in an automobile accident, a month ago. The hands produced a tiny metal disk. They busied themselves with it for a short while. Then the light went out, and a sardonic laugh rippled through the tomblike room.
When Detective Joe Cardona reached his office in the morning, he found grins awaiting him. The answer was a package on his desk. Unconscious of ridiculing eyes, Cardona opened the cardboard box, and disclosed another bunch of fresh violets.