The car swung southward. It reached Twenty-third Street. Stanley, at the wheel, heard Cranston’s quiet voice telling him to stop. The chauffeur obeyed. Cranston alighted.
“Take the car to the Cobalt Club,” was Cranston’s order. “Wait for me there.”
Stanley nodded and drove away. Cranston remained standing on the curb, watching the departing limousine. Then, with a sweeping gesture, he raised the lapels of his coat and drew the garment closely about his body. With a short, soft laugh, Cranston turned and stepped away from the street.
His black-clad form was swallowed instantly by the gloomy shroud of a blank-walled building. In that spot, away from the glare of the nearest street lamp, Cranston’s action was both amazing and mysterious.
A wayfarer who had noted the tall figure standing by the curb stood gaping in astonishment at the disappearance.
Where Cranston had been, no living person remained. The blackness of night had opened like a curtain to admit a mysterious entrant. The only trace of Cranston’s presence was a gliding blotch that slid along the dim-white pavement.
Lamont Cranston had become The Shadow!
In a twinkling, the calm-faced millionaire had transformed himself into Manhattan’s man of mystery!
THE SHADOW!
None in New York knew the identity of that strange personage. A master mind who battled crime, he worked from the blanketed seclusion of darkness to thwart the fiends who dominated the underworld.