The Daily Alaska Empire

SYNOPSIS: Jack Winslow, adopted son of Arnold Winslow, disappears when evidence points to him as the murderer of Dr. Paul Kane, by carbon monoxide gas poisoning. The elder Winslow suspects that Elsa Chase, beautiful crippled girl, loved by Jack, is really an adventuress. He had asked Kane to examine her condition and also had hired G. Thorne, detective, to probe her past. Thorne now is investigating Kane's murder, however. The mysterious shadow of a human being, madly dancing, is seen twice at night. Mrs. Lawrence, a mysterious woman, dies of heart failure without revealing the secret hold she has over Elsa Chase. Thorne finds in her room half of a billhead listing charges for care at a Chicago sanitarium, and a newspaper clipping with the words, "The Dancing Silhouette." Returning to the Winslow mansion late that night, Thorne informs Lambert, the Winslow butler, to whom Elsa Chase has been paying "hush money," that a bucket shop he has been helping support, has been closed by federal authorities.

Chapter 25
UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS

Lambert licked his lips and his hand fell nerveless by his side. The opening of the front door, as Arnold Winslow and his wife stalked inside, aroused the butler from his stupefaction.

"And to think we've been waiting at your office for an hour or two," exclaimed Winslow.

Mrs. Winslow retired at once, and Thorne then informed Winslow of Mrs. Lawrence's death. At his employer's suggestion, the detective telephoned a notice to the Washington morning papers offering $10,000 reward for information leading to Jack's whereabouts. They talked long after midnight, and Winslow offered Thorne the use of his guest room for the remainder of the night.

"That's very good of you. Tell me, Mr. Winslow, what about Jack's workroom in your attic?"

"I'm damned if I understand it!" he exclaimed. "There isn't a thing left in the room."

"May I see the room?"

"What, now?" somewhat startled at the idea.

"Sure, come along."

The attic was dark and Winslow spent some seconds fumbling for the electric switch near the elevator. It controlled a number of lights along the attic and the two men proceeded at once to the door at the further end. Thorne, reaching there first, turned the door knob. To his surprise it resisted his efforts and he looked at Winslow.

"The door's locked," he said.

Winslow stared first at him and then at the door, then, raising a trembling finger, he announced in a queer voice:

"The key was left in the lock when the locksmith and I went away; damn me, it was!"

Thorne shook the door, then used his strength to turn the knob; both efforts were useless.

Back in the den, they were met by Lambert.

"You were there, Lambert," exclaimed Winslow. "Wasn't the key left in the lock of the door to Mr. Jack's workshop tonight?"

The butler shook his head. "No sir," he said respectfully. "Inspector Mitchell took it."

In his bedroom, Thorne closed and locked the door, pocketing the key. Taking from his pocket a small block of wood, he whittled it down, shaping it deftly, so that it fitted tightly in the keyhole, leaving no crack through which prying eyes might see. From his coat pocket he took a pair of creepers and, removing his shoes, slipped them on; then standing up he took off his white shirt. Underneath it he wore a close-fitting black silk jersey, while strapped under that was a narrow flexible belt of woven silk, somewhat resembling a cartridge belt. Each little pocket carried a burglar's tool of finest steel. Opening the window with infinite care, Thorne perched himself on the sill, a black shadow merging into the outer darkness. Above where he crouched, but more to the right, was one of the dormer windows of the third floor, and he judged from its position and his knowledge of the attic, that it belonged to Jack's workshop. Somewhere in the distance a clock chimed the hour—one, two. Then Thorne rose from his crouching position and launched himself into space.

Fifteen feet from the house grew a giant elm, its great branches visible against the skyline, and it was one of them that Thorne caught on his leap from the windowsill. Pulling himself astride the branch, he climbed toward the trunk of the tree, then, hand over hand, swarmed up it and out along a branch above the ledge of the dormer window.

The branch he bestrode, while five feet or more higher, was not directly over the dormer window and to jump from it to the narrow ledge was a feat at which many would shy even in broad daylight. Even as he hesitated a light flashed on in the room with the dormer window. Who in the household could enter the workshop when Inspector Mitchell, according to Lambert, had the only key which fitted the lock? According to Lambert, ah, but Lambert had lied, or else the original key to the door was the one used by the intruder. What more likely even, than that the intruder was Jack Winslow? Knowing that the door of the workshop could not be opened without using force or spending valuable time picking the lock while running the risk of discovery, Thorne had chosen the more venturesome way of gaining admittance via the dormer window. Intuitively he had realized that something of more importance than four bare walls lay within the locked door. And now another had gotten there first! Suddenly the light in the room was obscured as a huge shadow on the lowered shade blotted it out.

Gradually the shadow grew less, took form, and before Thorne's staring eyes, a whirling, dancing figure was outlined against the cream-colored window shade. Swaying this way and that, in perfect rhythm, the figure danced with a grace and abandon that took no note of time or place. It seemed to the breathless Thorne that he had never seen more joyous dancing—the whirling figure appeared the personification of a great and overwhelming happiness. As to its sex, he was in doubt whether man or maid danced and swayed back and forth and around the room. The shadowy face, shielded by the waving arms, was blurred, indistinct—the features impossible of recognition.

(Copyright, D. Appleton and Co.)

Pursuing the dancing shadow, Thorne encounters a flesh-and-blood prowler in the darkness in tomorrow's chapter.