the future.
The first rule of a good neighbor being to ignore all family squabbles in
the house next door, gave Castenago all the leeway he wanted in his own home
without having even to pull down the shades, though he was usually courteous
enough to do so.
At any rate, live arrivals from Centralba were a novelty in Miami, and
everyone had come to welcome the heroes who had been paid off in gold instead
of bullets. Particularly, the crowd wanted to see the money, itself, which
accounted for the presence of about fifty Miami police, with motorcycles, squad
cars, patrol boats, tear gas, and all the appurtenances.
From the moment they alighted, Durez and his companions were surrounded by
a flood of khaki uniforms. The spectators caught glimpses of some fair-sized
coffers that other police took from the Clipper; but those, too, were promptly
lost from sight.
Then the procession was proceeding toward the Terminal Building, which had
been blocked off to the public. The only persons who remained were government
inspectors, who piled into the Clipper with fumigation apparatus, to make sure
that Durez and his friends hadn't smuggled in some yellow fever carriers along
with their chests of funds.
NEAR the entrance to the balcony restaurant within the Terminal, Margo
Lane watched the procession arrive. She'd been smart enough to get into the
building by buying a ticket for San Juan, which she intended to redeem later.
For Margo wasn't contemplating a trip to Puerto Rico. She was here on a much
more important mission.
Only a few hours ago, when the radio had begun to blast that Durez was
coming, and newsboys had started shouting special extras in the Miami streets,
Margo had received a wire from Lamont Cranston, telling her to get to the
airways base and learn everything she could.
The wire had added that Cranston was leaving New York immediately, by
plane, for Miami, in hope of arriving before Durez did.
Unfortunately, the wind was strong from the south and it had sped the
Clipper into Miami ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, Cranston's southbound ship was
meeting head winds, that retarded it. This worried Margo, when she considered
what Cranston's interest in Durez's affairs might be.
In private life - or perhaps the other way about - Lamont Cranston was The
Shadow. He made it his business to battle men of crime, and the bigger they
came, the better. If certain crooks had aspirations to acquire ten million
dollars belonging to Durez & Co., they would have to be very big, indeed.
In Margo's estimation, that made it all the more important that Cranston
should have arrived first; which, quite apparently, he hadn't.
They were crossing the broad floor of the Terminal, now, Durez and his
band. Margo got a good view of them as they passed the ten-foot revolving globe
in the center of the concourse. A mosquito would probably have crowded the
Republic of Centralba on that huge spherical map; nevertheless, Durez and the
others paused to look for the little patch that they had hoped to wrest from
Castenago.
By the time they had found Centralba, they were being pressed by the
police who were carrying the ten million dollar consolation prize, so Durez and
