The Shadow by James Luceno Read Free Book Online

“You’re not going to appoint a task force,” he said, in the deep voice of his truer self.
    Barth’s head twitched. “No, the hell with it,” he said after a moment. “I’m not going to appoint a task force.” He seemed conflicted, embarrassed to have uttered his earlier statements.
    Cranston remained in shadow. “You’re not going to pay any attention to these reports.”
    “Ignore them entirely,” Barth said, ridiculing the idea.
    “There is no Shadow.”
    Barth raised his eyes and rolled his tongue in his cheek. “There is no Shadow. He’s some kind of myth. If there were,” he laughed shortly, “I’d be Eleanor Roosevelt.” He screwed his eyes shut and leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked questioningly at Cranston, who was back in the light. “Where was I?”
    “You were about to tell me who she is,” Cranston said, indicating the ingénue he had noted earlier.
    Barth squinted and nodded knowingly. “That’s Margo Lane. Her father’s a scientist, doing work for the War Department. Research and development, I think. Why, what’s your sudden interest in her?”
    “Uncle Wainwright, have you had your eyes checked recently? She’s lovely.”
    “Maybe. But you better keep away from that one, Lamont. She’s the source of as many rumors as The Shadow. Some say she’s from Chicago and from family money, on her mother’s side. But I’ve heard just the opposite, that she grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Or at least until her father made a name for himself. He apparently couldn’t care less about money, one way or the other.”
    “Married?” Cranston asked.
    “Twice—if you believe the stories, once to a stock broker named Stevenson, then to a black from New Orleans. What’s more, the word is she’s strange.” He tapped his temple. “Up here.”
    “Really?” Cranston said, intrigued. “Exactly my type.”

5

The Shadow Revealed
    H ow many more times was it going to take before this guy got the message? Margo asked herself. All his high-handed talk about tennis and yachting, when what she wanted was a taste of something new and different, something with an element of adventure, even danger, in it. But she couldn’t be angry at Chad for trying. He was all about tennis and yachts; they all were, his whole clique of well-heeled bachelor friends. So she smiled, laughed at his jokes, and thanked her lucky stars when he finally returned to his table.
    She tapped her foot to the band, to the clarinet player’s melodic solo. She was accustomed to the flirtations and advances, and well aware of how good she looked that night. The gown had been dying to be worn, and she had refused to allow her father’s last-minute cancellation to ruin the evening. Wild horses couldn’t have stopped her. But to have showed up alone at the Cobalt Club! Lucky for her the maître d’ had even agreed to seat her.
    With Chad gone, she reached for the menu. There, too, nothing but the same old dishes when she wanted something with flavor, with spice. She should have gone to Little Italy, she told herself, or better still, to Chinatown. Well, a glass of something would help. She snagged a white-gloved waiter, bearing an open bottle of wine.
    “Would you bring me a glass of Mouton—”
    “Rothschild, Nineteen Twenty-eight,” he said, showing her the label of the bottle.
    “Why, yes,” she said, at once surprised and delighted.
    “From the gentleman,” the waiter continued, pouring for her to sample.
    “Gentleman?”
    “Lamont Cranston,” a voice announced.
    He was standing at the table, one hand to the cummerbund of his tux, the handsome man she’d been flirting with earlier. He gestured to the chair opposite hers.
    “May I?”
    Encouraged by his choice of wines, she smiled, allowing a hint of suspicion. He was tall and impeccably dressed, but he spoke in a mannered way that didn’t quite match the hard aspect of his face, which—while calm and well molded—was