(You can read the previous chapter HERE.)
It was dawn over the great city as Lamont Cranston stood and stretched the weariness from his bones. He went to the window of his high office and looked out over the awakening city. New York was always a magnificent sight at dawn as its great tall buildings emerged from the night, its shining rivers and harbor stretched in the morning light as far as the eye could see, and its millions began to stir with a growing hum of sound and movement that was like the slow awakening of a sleeping giant.
At the window, Cranston enjoyed the sight as he always did, but his mind was on Project Full Moon and the events of the day before. Behind him, Margo and Stanley sprawled in chairs, the drawn weariness of the night showing on their faces. Cranston’s face, with the power and endurance of The Shadow behind it, showed no trace of weariness or worry. The hooded eyes and impassive face of the wealthy socialite and international businessman were exactly the same as normal without a sign of the long hours of analyzing the strange events that now occupied the organization of The Shadow.
“We are missing a key,” Cranston said without turning around.
In her chair Margo nodded. “Shall we go over it again, Lamont?”
Stanley groaned. “I can hear it without talking already.”
Cranston turned from the window. He smiled at Stanley. “Once more, Stanley. From the beginning. Margo, you start.”
Margo sat up and stretched. She was herself again in the office, her disguise discarded. Her lithe figure seemed taller than it was as she stretched. Her slim legs were curled beneath her now where she sat in the big armchair, and the morning sun through the window glinted on her dark hair. She was dressed in a severe suit, as befitted her position as executive private secretary to Lamont Cranston, but the suit could not hide the smooth, strong curves of her figure. Under the suit was the trained body of the actress and secret agent for The Shadow, a body that was almost as much at Margo’s command as the body of The Shadow himself. Her training and skill had often stood her in good stead in her work for The Shadow. Now she relaxed again in her chair and her eyes became serious and intense as her keen mind went to work.
“We know that about six months ago NASA started Project Full Moon. It is a top secret project, known to very few even within NASA itself or the Government. The reason for the secrecy, and the importance, is that a new fuel control system has made it possible to reach the Moon right away instead of the minimum time of two years for the regular. Moon Project.”
Cranston frowned. “The object was to prevent any news of the new control from becoming known until we reached the Moon. A certain development time was necessary, but Full Moon was scheduled to blast-off on its final flight to the Moon a few days ago. But … . .”
Stanley broke in. “Don’t forget that the final shot had already been delayed, Boss. The other failures they had on the test shots, right? I mean, the testing had been held up.”
Cranston nodded. “Correct. The project was plagued with ‘accidents’ from the start. The final accident cost the lives of three of our best astronauts!”
“And all the ‘accidents’ could easily have been sabotage,” Margo said.
Cranston paced the floor of the office as the sun rose higher outside above the great city.
“Very clever sabotage if it was, and almost certainly by someone who has close access to the Project. Someone, or some group, with great efficiency and organization has to be behind it.”
“We’ve got the Russians,” Stanley said. “They’re efficient and organized.”
“Yes,” Margo said. “That Colonel Derian is an important man, which means that something very serious has brought him here.”
“And Vaslov admitted to The Shadow that his work was involved with sabotage of the project!” Cranston said. “Vaslov was disguised as Doctor Reigen at Federal Cybernetics,” Margo said. “For some reason the Russians are very interested in Federal.”
“That’s easy,” Stanley said. “Federal makes that new fuel control!”
“True, Stanley,” Cranston said. “Federal is the most important part of Project Full Moon, and yet something is going on at Federal as shown by the strange shipments and supply of material.”
“The mislabeled shipment also came from Federal,” Margo said, “And they have a plant in Idaho.”
Cranston paced. His impassive face showed nothing of the deep thought going on behind his hooded eyes. He turned again to Margo.
“Let me hear Burbank’s report on Bryan again.”
Margo looked at her notes. “Federal Cybernetics was founded six years ago by Bryan. It has specialized in rocket fuels and space-age controls. Bryan himself is an electronic genius, a scientific genius of many abilities. After his accident, the one that crippled him, he designed his own wheel chair and continued to work on the rocketry projects. It was later that he founded Federal Cybernetics. He developed the new control system, and presented it to NASA about six months ago.”
In the large and lavish office of Cranston there was a long silence. Cranston paced. Margo studied her notes and frowned as if she hoped that the answer was still to be found somewhere in the history of Bryan and Federal Cybernetics. Stanley sighed softly where he sat, and looked at his watch. Stanley was hungry. Neither Cranston nor Margo seemed to have any thought of, or need for, food. Cranston stopped pacing.
“What would Bryan have to gain by sabotaging Full Moon? The fuel control is his! He has every reason for wanting the shot to the Moon to be successful,” the wealthy socialite and alter-ego of The Shadow said. “And yet something odd is happening at that laboratory. Some secret work is being done, and I have a strong feeling that the Idaho plant is involved.”
“What about Dr. Max Ernest?” Margo said. “You knew that it was him you overheard talking about being ready. We know that that ledger is in his office. Is it possible that Ernest is working with the Russians?”
Cranston, nodded grimly. “Yes, Margo, it is entirely possible. And that brings us back to the Russians. It looks more and more like they are behind this. They must have learned about the fuel control through Vaslov, or Reigen as he called himself. Until they get the control they are sabotaging Full Moon to give themselves time to make their own Moon Shot.”
“It fits like a glove, Boss,” Stanley said.
“Yes,” Cranston said, “and yet I don’t like it. It feels wrong, Stanley. They have not acted like men who want to steal the fuel control. They are acting as if they want to learn what is happening at Federal Cybernetics exactly as we do! When Derian questioned Margo I had the strong impression that he was trying to really learn what she knew and who she was.”
“But, Lamont, that would still fit with Stanley’s idea. If they want to steal the fuel control and sabotage our Project, they would still question me the same way—to know what I knew.”
“True, Margo, but the way Derian questioned would also fit a man trying to learn what he did not know! If they are stealing the fuel control, they would not have to know any more. If they were only out to steal it, why are they so interested in that ledger with its extra supplies?”
“But Vaslov practically admitted that they are behind the sabotage of the project,” Margo pointed out.
Cranston was silent. Then he turned to speak. He stopped. The signal light beneath his desk was silently flashing. The socialite stepped to his desk and touched a secret switch. Instantly a voice filled the room. The voice of Burbank.
“Agent Harry Vincent has reported in from Salt Lake City,” the smooth voice of the Communications agent said from deep within the hidden complex of blue-lighted rooms behind the office of Cranston. “I have Agent Vincent on the radio if you wish to have him make his report personally. Otherwise I will tape it in the normal manner.”
“Channel the report,” Cranston said. “We need any information we can get at once!” Cranston sat at his desk, flipped a switch.
“Closed channel, simultaneous taping,” Burbank’s efficient voice said.
In the lavish office of Lamont Cranston the three leaned forward in the chairs to listen. The sun was high outside now.
The delivery truck was parked in an alley on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. The magnificent Tabernacle was not far away, and the jagged and massive peaks of the Wasatch Mountains towered high over the city. Rising almost directly from the plain of the Great Salt Lake with its wide salt flats, the Wasatch loomed so high it seemed that they could topple at any instant and engulf the city. In the distance the thin light of the first crack of dawn reflected from the mirror-surface of the vast lake.
In the alley it was still dark and nothing moved near the delivery truck. Inside the truck there was no one in the cab. To anyone who could have been there to see, the truck would have seemed abandoned, parked for the night. It showed no light and no sign of life. Had there been anyone to investigate, they could have opened the rear doors and still seen nothing but a truck filled with boxes for delivery. An innocent truck.
But this truck was far from innocent.
In a secret compartment between the cab in the front, and the boxes in the rear, a man crouched. He was bent over a small but powerful radio sender-receiver of special design that broadcast on a special channel that was scrambled for anyone else and had a range of three thousand miles when received on the proper receiver. The man smoked, and there was an ugly
.45 caliber automatic at his feet. He spoke urgently into the radio.
“Harry Vincent reporting. Come in Chief. Do you read me?”
The calm voice of Lamont Cranston seemed to fill the small compartment of the truck as it spoke softly from the far-off office above Park Avenue in New York.
“I read you, Harry. Report.”
Harry Vincent bent closer to the small microphone. “I located the trailer truck here in Salt Lake City and confirmed the fact that the staff car drove into it and escaped me. It was a simple trick, I should have guessed at once. Tire tracks in the truck proved the matter. I feel stupid, Chief.”
“We all make errors, Harry. Forget it, and continue,” the voice of Cranston said quietly.
Harry nodded as if Cranston were there. “Of course, Chief. I also found paint scratches from the staff car, and various license plates for quick changes. I …”
Cranston voice was quick. “What plates, Harry?”
Harry consulted his notebook. “New York, Utah which they used, Nevada, and Oregon. They were in a rack, and one rack was empty. This empty rack had a taped label with ID on it.”
“Go on,” Cranston said.
“I checked the truck and the garage in which I found it very carefully, Chief. I found the uniforms they wore. They have a cache of arms, mostly Czech-made sub-machine-guns. I found nothing else in the garage. In the truck itself I found only one thing in the cab—a package of cigarettes, all gone but two. It looked like it had fallen from the pocket of someone who had sat in the cab of the trailer truck. They were Russian cigarettes, Chief!”
There was a silence from the other end of the radio. Then Cranston’s soft voice said simply,
“Continue, Harry.”
“After the cab I checked out the trailer. In addition to the paint, license plates, and tire marks, I located a certain amount of dirt. I realized that it was not like the dirt around the NASA Utah Base, nor anywhere in-between the Base and Salt Lake City. This is all desert, while this dirt was definitely red clay with streaks of granite. I took a sample and had it analyzed by a lab here. I took the record to the office of a geologist here. The result was that the dirt is typical of the Rocky Mountain area, probably from the western side of the divide in Idaho!”
This time Cranston’s voice was more agitated. “Good work, Harry. Is that all?”
“No, but it was all that is positive. I found nothing else in the garage or truck. I then checked around as much as was possible to try to locate what happened to the three men in the staff car. I had no luck at the railroad, bus terminals or airlines. No trucking companies seemed to recognize my descriptions of them. Unless they disguised themselves heavily, which is possible, they did not leave Salt Lake City on any commercial transportation. I think that this means that they left in the staff car. I think that will be traceable, Chief. There are not too many roads out of here, and a staff car should have been noticed.”
“Perhaps, Harry, but I wouldn’t count on it,” Cranston’s voice said from far-off New York.
“They seem to know what they are doing. I imagine the car would have been disguised. Is that all?”
“Yes, Chief,” Harry said.
“Very well, Harry. Now I want you to make one more check. See if you can locate any private plane, probably a small jet, that flew one or more of them out of Salt Lake. Probably two of them since one had to drive the car. According to Shrevvie, one of them at least was seen here in New York. And check as quietly as you can for the unexplained presence of any Soviet agents. You know our man in Salt Lake, see what he has noticed, if anything.”
“Roger, Chief,” Harry said.
“Continue regular reports,” Cranston said.
Harry nodded and flicked a switch on his small but powerful radio. Instantly the hidden compartment of the delivery truck became silent. Harry Vincent closed up his radio into its innocent case that looked like a regular home radio and put it back into its cardboard box. It was now only one of many such radios boxed in the truck. Harry picked up his automatic, put it into its holster, and slipped out of the hidden space and into to the cab of the truck.
Moments later the truck left the alley unseen and merged with the growing morning traffic of Salt Lake City.
In the lavish office of Lamont Cranston above New York, Cranston, Margo and Stanley sat thinking about the report of Harry Vincent. It was Cranston who spoke first.
“The missing license plate is almost certainly an Idaho plate,” the socialite said. “The ID label would indicate that, and the other states—they are all around Idaho except the New York plate. It would seem that the fake staff car operates mainly in an area around the Rocky Mountains.”
“And the dirt was probably from Idaho,” Stanley said.
“And Federal Cybernetics has a plant in Idaho,” Margo said.
Cranston nodded. “It all begins to point to Idaho, Margo, and that ‘clerical’ error that may not have been quite so simple an error after all.”
Stanley leaned forward. “Those Czech guns, and that pack of cigarettes from Russia, looks like its our Russian friends after all, Chief.”
“Perhaps, Stanley,” Cranston said. “Unless there is some other explanation for Russian cigarettes being in that truck.”
“What other explanation could there be, Lamont?” Margo asked.
Cranston’s hooded eyes were thoughtful. “I don’t know, Margo, but I am still not convinced that the Soviets are behind all this.”
“What do you plan to do next?” Margo asked.
“I think it is time to go to Idaho,” Cranston said. “But first I want to check in with General Broyard and Doctor Cassill to report our suspicions about Idaho, and to find out if they have done any more in locating the actual point of failure in the last shot. I think you and Stanley had better try to get some sleep. I will need you both in Idaho.”
“All right, Lamont,” Margo said.
“First,” Stanley said, “I eat. Never could sleep on an empty stomach, Boss.”
Cranston smiled. “By all means have breakfast first, Stanley.”
When Margo and Stanley had gone, Cranston called General Broyard at the NASA Utah Base.
The General had nothing to report, work was continuing. Cranston made his report of his suspicions that something was happening at the Idaho plant of Federal Cybernetics, without mentioning how he had learned his details.
“My people all over the country inform me that there seems to be unusual interest in the Idaho plant of Federal, General,” Cranston explained. “They cannot pinpoint it, but rumors in scientific circles indicate that something odd is going to happen there. I think we would do well to investigate.”
“We’ll investigate anything, Cranston. However, I have seen Rogers’ report on the Soviet activity, and it looks conclusive. Rogers seems to think they will now lay off, but I mean to be certain. Our next shot is due in three days. This one cannot fail!”
“It won’t, General,” Cranston said quietly.
“It can’t, Cranston!” Broyard said, and then hesitated for a full ten seconds. “Off the record, Cranston, but our espionage people tell me that the Soviet is much closer than we think to its own Moon shot. There is a strong indication that they too have some kind of special project. We must be first!”
“First or second is not my affair, General,” Cranston said, “but sabotage is. You have nothing more to report on the actual failure of that last shot?”
“Not yet, Farina is still working on it. We have a meeting in fifteen minutes, perhaps I will know more then.”
“I’ll wait here until the meeting is over,” Cranston said.
The socialite hung up. In his lavish office, bright now with late morning sun as the noon hour approached, Cranston sat back and continued to think. Everything pointed to Idaho and the plant of Federal Cybernetics. The question was what was it that was being pointed to? He was, in 56
reality, no closer to the source of the sabotage, and not really closer to the reason for the sabotage—unless the saboteurs were the Russians. If the guilty were not the Soviets, what possible reason could there be behind the sabotage of Project Full Moon? Of all people, Federal Cybernetics should be the last to sabotage the project. It was their own fuel control!
But perhaps not everyone at Federal Cybernetics was devoted to the interest of the company.
The hidden laboratory was clearly J. Wesley Bryan’s own laboratory. Men had sabotaged their own efforts for private reasons before this, or for money. It would be well to check Bryan’s financial situation. Then there was Dr. Max Ernest. It looked like Ernest was involved in something. He had known about the murder of Oates. The hidden laboratory could have been available to Ernest, and perhaps the Research Chief of Federal had some private work in hand.
Cranston was still thinking when the telephone suddenly rang and jarred him out of his concentration. He picked up the telephone. It was General Calvin Rogers. The special assistant to the President was excited.
“Cranston? We’ve located the point of failure! Farina has just found it in the fuel control itself! Small, almost nothing! Just a tiny change that could have been done at the plant of Federal and gone undetected by us!”
“So there was no need for anyone to be on the Base?”
“Not within a thousand miles! The damage was done. Broyard told me what you reported.
And, Cranston, the part that failed was made at Federal’s Idaho plant!” Rogers said.
Another direct link to Idaho!
“How is it that Professor Farina didn’t notice the change in the fuel control earlier, Rogers?”
Cranston said. He was thinking about Farina being apparently close to Dr. Max Ernest of Federal Cybernetics.
“He admits he doesn’t know,” Rogers said. “He says he should have. He says it was a subtle change, not easy to notice in what was left of the control after the crash, but he blames himself for missing it earlier. Personally, Cranston, I think under the pressure we all were just too anxious and moved too fast.”
“That is probable,” Cranston agreed.
“Anyway,” the voice of Rogers said. “We’ve got something now, and I’m not going to waste another minute. I’ll stake my career on us finding those Russkis out in Idaho!”
“Perhaps,” Cranston said in the quiet of the lavish office high above the city. His eyes were thoughtful.
“Broyard says you should be with us,” Rogers went on. “So get on a jet and meet us at Lewiston, right? I’m taking Farina with me, he’ll be needed to get some idea of just what really happened. We’re going right now!”
“I’ll be there,” Cranston said quietly.
After he had hung up, the socialite sat back and turned in his swivel chair to face the window.
His eyes suddenly flashed with the fire of The Shadow. This looked like the break, and it was time for The Shadow to enter again and end the evil once and for all. Cranston leaned forward and began to dictate crisp instructions for Margo and Stanley into the master tape recorder. There was no time to lose now.
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