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Under the Stands
As she ascended, Margo Lane held her skirt clear of the gum-flecked concrete stairs leading to the left-field terrace. Something crackled underfoot, and she stopped to inspect the soles of her shoes.
“Higher,” came the voice of Lamont Cranston. “Higher still.” He brought up the rear, toiling under the burden of a strawberry malted, a lemon soda, and two baskets of hot nuts.
“You poor pack animal,” said Margo. “Do you get enough oxygen at these lofty heights?”
“How’s that?” said Cranston, trying to cup a hand against his ear, for the crowd had raised a roar of acclaim. Hot nuts spilled down his collar. He turned and saw the Giants’ catcher, Skinny Stewart, rounding first base. Skinny’s pendulous stomach, visible even at this height, swayed in time with his triumphal trot.
“Whatta slugger!” yelled a fan, thrusting forth his own ample gut in a show of brotherly pride.
Margo shuddered, pinched and lifted her skirt at both sides, and resumed the ascent. Once they were seated near the top of the stadium, she began to enjoy herself. The sun shone brightly and the wind blew strong, dispersing the murmur and yelp of the crowd in sharp gusts. Cranston explained to her the advantages of surveying left field.
“It’s better than sitting over center field, where the path of the pitch is foreshortened, so you never see the true distance the ball travels. On the right, sure, you see a right-handed batter from the front, but he’ll swing too fast to see much. From the left, we get a clear view of a right-handed pitcher’s wind-up, and that’s a sight to see.”
In the eighth inning, Skinny Stewart took a left-handed stance and lined up his bat.
“Looks like another home run coming on,” said Cranston, and Margo gripped his sleeve.
The pitcher unwound. Skinny swung and made contact with a sound like a rifle crack. From Margo’s perspective, the ball seemed to gently rise and shrink until it was level with her altitude. It drifted toward the Saks billboard in right field and disappeared from one moment to the next.
“My!” she exclaimed. “What if it hits someone on the street?”
Cranston shrugged. “Then someone gets a prize lump,” he said. “It’s almost like getting the batter’s autograph.”
After the game, Margo and Cranston strolled around the stadium. Behind the Saks billboard was not a street, as they had imagined, but a little-league ballpark. The twin gates were chained and locked. Between them showed a wide and alluring gap.
Cranston thrust the gates apart so that Margo could step through without ruffling her skirt, and squeezed in behind her. The ballpark was a miniature likeness of the stadium they had just left, with a bullpen, a hot-dog stand, and an announcer’s box atop the bleachers. Beside the bleachers stood four small boys. Their clothes were ragged and their faces were smeared with grime, but the smallest, who was crying, had the grimiest face of all.
“What’s the matter?” asked Cranston. Margo rummaged in her purse for a handkerchief.
“Toby’s dog,” said a tall boy with sandy hair. “We was looking for home-run balls and it gone under the bleachers.”
Cranston shrugged. “It’ll come out, won’t it?”
Margo had found a handkerchief, a delicate pink number in silk. She briefly considered it and put it back. She took out a roll of toffees and offered it to Toby, who sniffled and turned away. The sandy-haired boy took the toffees.
“Gee, thanks,” he said. “And the dog ain’t coming out. I seen him go out the other side, and the Perfessor grabbed him.”
“The Professor!” Margo cried. Commissioner Weston had been confounded by this menace all summer long. The Professor, as the press had taken to calling him, was a bearded, bespectacled man who dressed in tweed suits and roamed the shabbier neighborhoods, abducting cats and small dogs. He would swoop and snatch and vanish soundlessly into an alley. The public feared that he was rehearsing to kidnap a child.
“We made to run after him,” said a dark boy, “but he flashed a gun at us.”
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Cranston, “or, rather, to the top!” He sprang over a railing and dashed up the bleachers. Each plank bent and squealed under his thrusting feet. He leapt to the last row, and shielded his eyes from the sun to survey the street beyond the little-league diamond.
“Not there,” he said. He turned toward the stadium.
Galloping across right field was a tall, tweedy figure with a gunny sack over his shoulder. “There!” Cranston pointed toward the stadium.
“After him!” hollered the boys.
“Wait!” Cranston clattered back down. He vaulted over the railing and onto the field.
“There must be a way,” he said, gasping for breath, “through the wall of the stadium.”
“There’s a door,” said Toby, grinding his fists into his eyes. “The groundskeepers’ door.”
Cranston nodded. “That’s the ticket!” He turned to Margo. “Let me have a notepad, dear, and go find us a cab. You two, help her through the gates.”
The dark boy and the sandy-haired one pulled the gates apart for Margo. In the meantime, Cranston crouched with the notepad and composed a note.
“We are pursuing the notorious villain known as the Professor,” it read. “You shall assist my deputies, who bear the present note, by immediately barring all means of exit from the outfield. Yours in justice, the Shadow.” He signed the note in the unmistakable hand of his alter ego. He tore it off the pad, folded it twice over, and held it out.
“Give this to the groundskeepers,” he said. “Don’t tell them who wrote it. On your honor.” He looked searchingly into their eyes. Each had honor in his soul, yes, but each also had a loose tongue. He exerted his hypnotic powers and cast a pall over the four boyish minds that would obliterate, within ninety seconds, his and Margo’s images from their recollection.
The boys slipped through the gates and ran to the major-league ballfield. Then Cranston burst through and sprinted to the street. Margo was there, standing with one foot on the running board of a taxi cab.
“To the front of the stadium,” he said, “and step on it! Margo, give the man a dollar extra.”
The cab roared down three straights, cornering hard twice, and disgorged its passengers at the stadium box office. Cranston took a running start at the turnstiles, vaulted over, and darted into the bowels of the stadium. A cashier started from his stool and scoldingly rapped the glass even after Cranston had vanished. He stopped when Margo arrived at the window and pressed her hands to the glass.
“Stop that man!” she cried. “It’s the criminal Professor! Lock every door and call the police!”
The cashier pressed a button, and a siren began to wail. Margo observed with great satisfaction the commotion she had inspired. Winches above the mouth of the stadium creaked as they turned, unrolling a set of chains that caused an iron trellis to descend and settle with a clang. Men in blue coats scurried about the stadium walls, locking doors. One black-and-white, then another, and then three more, pulled up at the curb, and policemen spilled onto the sidewalk with their nightsticks and revolvers. Among them, Margo happily noted, was Commissioner Weston.
She hailed him. “Commissioner!”
“Miss Lane! Did you see the Professor run inside?”
“He did run into the stadium, but not past the box office. That’s just what I told them to keep the explanation simple.”
Commissioner Weston raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to speak, but Margo hurried on. “The Professor entered from the back, you see. We circled the stadium, and Mr. Cranston ran through the front.”
“Quick thinking,” said Weston. “Let’s hope Mr. Cranston makes out alright.”
Cranston was crouching in the dark, summoning his powers of perception. He had reached the turf and run onto the infield near first base, only to see that the Professor had already cut across the field and was running past third. Cranston put on a burst of speed, but his quarry was fleet. The Professor reached the wall behind the third-base dugout, flung open a blue door, and dashed through it. Cranston pulled up to catch his breath. “Utility Entrance,” read a sign on the door. “Workers Only.”
He grasped the handle, then hesitated. He stepped to the side so that only his arm reached past the doorframe, and jerked violently at the handle.
His arm flew back just as a shot rang out, then another. Two spurts of red dust bloomed in the infield, roughly at shortstop. Cranston fell to a crouch, gripped the doorsill, and heaved himself through, tumbling into and beyond the opening. The door had rebounded from the stadium wall and now slammed shut behind him. All was dark. He returned to a crouch and leaned forward on the balls of his feet, supporting himself on the tips of his fingers, calves tensed, ready to spring. It was at this moment that Commissioner Weston, fifty yards away and beyond a heavy brick wall, was speaking of Cranston.
Yet at that moment, Lamont Cranston ceased to be. His face underwent a rapid contortion. His brow wrinkled, his jowels sagged, warts grew on his cheek. He became the Shadow.
The Shadow flared his nostrils and sniffed. He caught a musty canine smell, but he also heard the mutt in the dark, its whimpers muffled by coarse hemp. The Shadow moved his head to listen from another angle, and got a fix on the exact location of the sack. It was lying on the floor. The Professor had dropped it and was now, undoubtedly, trembling in the pitch black, probing with the muzzle of his gun. The Shadow reflected. There was no sense using his hypnotic powers to cloud the mind of the Professor, who could not see him anyway.
The Professor had the advantage of artillery. The Shadow had the advantage of his animal senses. Wafting through the dark were the aromas of butane, of potassium, of sulphuric solutions. The Professor was a chemist, a desperate chemist. The Shadow could distinguish, among the chemical odors, the sour scent of fear.
“Who is it?” came a reedy voice, and the Shadow placed it.
“I am the Shadow,” he cackled, projecting his voice behind the Professor.
There was a yellow flash. A gunshot reverberated in the cavernous bowels of the stadium. The Professor had shot in the wrong direction, of course.
“Don’t come any closer, Shadow.” His voice was now five paces farther. “Not if you want to die under the stands!”
How was the Professor able to move so silently and rapidly? The Shadow heard nothing above the whimper of the dog. He pursed his lips and expelled half a breath of air, modulating it to make a short subsonic tune. “Be quiet,” he whistled. The dog grew still.
“Leave me alone!” said the Professor, his voice receding farther yet. “I am harmless.”
The Shadow stilled his breathing. He strained his ears. Nothing. He cupped his hands around his ears to amplify his hearing. By this motion, an errant peanut that had settled against his clavicle some hours ago was now dislodged. It rolled down his chest and tickled his ribs. He fumbled his shirt open and scrabbled with his fingers until the offending peanut, and three more besides, tumbled out. All the while, his quarry was on the move.
“I have never killed a creature,” said the Professor, his voice diminishing into the distance. “I care well for the animals I have borrowed. They are fed and bathed. I use a harmless procedure to extract their earwax.”
“Earwax! What on earth do you want with dogs’ and cats’ earwax?”
“I use it to form a soft insulating compound. It’s a durable and pliable wonder material.”
“You soled your shoes with it!” exclaimed the Shadow. “That’s how you can creep along without making a sound.”
“Indeed, and that’s how I’ll escape you, rotten Shadow!”
The gun boomed four times in succession, a metallic crash sounded fifty yards away, and a yellow rectangle appeared in the dark. The Professor had found a door, shot the locks off, and kicked it open. He stepped outside.
The Shadow leapt to the gunny sack and untied it, muttering choice words of frustration. Margo would have summoned the police by now, and the Professor would get himself shot up. What a fool! The Shadow paused by the door and thrust his animal nature deep into the depths of his being. His face dissolved and reassembled into the features of Lamont Cranston.
He stepped out and shielded his eyes against the setting sun. In the gutter stood a police cordon. At right were Margo and the Commissioner. At left, the Professor pointed a .45 semiautomatic at the quivering belly of Skinny Stewart.
“The law lifts a finger, and the slob gets it!” The Professor glanced down and saw Cranston’s long shadow on the pavement. “That goes for you, too, you rotten—”
A small brown shape flew at the professor and fastened onto his thigh. It was Toby’s dog, biting down hard. The Professor screamed, his arms flailed, and the .45 flew upward. All eyes followed the gun as it rose in the sky, all but Skinny’s. He spun on his heels, his gut twirling about his waist like the skirt of a ballerina, and glided to a policeman.
The gun was at the apex of its flight when Skinny caught the nightstick out of the cop’s grasp and glided backward, now twisting and bending at the waist. He let swing and cracked the Professor square across the forehead. The stick shattered. The Professor’s knees folded, and he crumpled to the ground. The .45 fell plump on his back.
A week later, Margo and Cranston called on the Professor. He lay in a hospital bed, his head swathed in a bandage the size of a watermelon.
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“I was a bystander at the scene of your final crime,” said Cranston. “And who are you?”
“I don’t remember, but they call me Professor.” He sighed. “Professor of what, I don’t know. I remember no science and no crime.”
“You did cultivate the weed of crime, and the police had to stamp it out before it flowered. I wish you had conducted your research in a more civil fashion.” Cranston patted the Professor’s knee. “What you’ve forgotten may be a great loss to science.”
Cranston left arm in arm with Margo, her heels clicking against the floor. His own shoes, a battered pair with thick soles, made no sound.