When he paid the driver of the cab, the man stood in the shadow of the vehicle so that his face was invisible in the darkness. The taximan looked back, as he drove away, and was surprised to see that his passenger had completely vanished.
“Wonder where that bird went, so quick?” mused the cab driver. “Just dropped out of sight all of a sudden.”
The statement was not an exaggeration. The man on the street had disappeared as if the ground had swallowed him.
Had the taxi driver peered in the right direction, he would have observed a clew. For on the sidewalk appeared a long, thin shadow — a shadow that seemed to move of its own accord.
This fantastic shape flitted across the street, and melted into the blackness in front of the old apartment house.
It came into the light of the entry, and for an instant it seemed to assume human form. Then it had gone.
Two minutes later, the door of Stanley Berger’s apartment opened as though the knob had been turned by some psychic power.
The window shades moved noiselessly downward. Then the beam of a flashlight appeared against the wall.
The flashlight was suddenly extinguished as the telephone bell began to ring. A form moved softly across the room; the ringing ceased as the receiver was lifted.
The man in the darkness listened, awaiting some statement from the other end of the line. The word came. Then a whispered voice spoke amid the silence of the dark apartment — a low, weird voice — the voice of The Shadow: