“Go there, then. Stay in V’s room.”
Burbank hung up the phone. He dialed another number. There was no response. He went back to the counter and returned a few minutes later. He dialed again. This time there was an answer.
“Burbank,” he said.
“Report,” came the voice.
Burbank made sure that no one was near by. Then he gave the information that he had received from Clyde Burke. He condensed it into terse, essential details.
“Good!” came the voice. “Be ready!” The receiver clicked at the other end.
TWELVE minutes later, a cab pulled up at the corner of Sixty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue. The passenger paid the driver before he left.
He hurried from the cab and strode rapidly westward. He crossed the street and stopped in the shadow of the warehouse. He became strangely obscure as he approached the entrance. He seemed to be avoiding any watchful eyes.
The window across the street was open; and the man on duty was alert. He raised his gun as he saw a shadow appear on the pavement beneath the light at the warehouse entrance. He lowered the weapon when he saw that he had been deceived by a mere shadow which disappeared as suddenly as it had come.
A man was in the passageway, moving silently along toward the turn. It was The Shadow, feeling his way through the darkness, a creature of the night garbed in his cloak of sinister black.