“The Living Shadow” (part twelve)
Where we left off, Harry and the Shadow had just beat up Johnny English and his guys at a gas station and made a run for it. The Shadow did most of the beating up, and Harry did most of the driving away, naturally. Onward!
26. A Race For Life
That title might be overstating things, unless Team English has reinforcements on the way. Seems like they could have won that fight if it was worth it to them.
Here's the text itself on the subject of how the fight went (and also of how desperately Harry hungers for the Shadow's cock):
“As he pressed the accelerator, Harry marveled at the power of his companion. Virtually alone − for Harry’s help had been trivial − this man had handled eight opponents and had disposed of five of them.”
The author follows it up with this justification, but I'm not sure how convincing it is:
“While the brawl had lasted, not a man in the crowd had had an opportunity to draw his gun. But when the mob had been scattered about the floor, the danger of a revolver shot had made flight the only reasonable course.”
I'm not sure I see the logic, since the entire fight took place within the same enclosed space, but okay.
So, Harry picks a random direction and floors it. He's low on gas to begin with, so I'm not sure how long he'll be able to keep this up. Also, despite him having a pretty good car courtesy of Shadow Ltd., the car chasing them seems to be slowly gaining. The enemy vehicle isn't described, but I choose to believe that Johnny English has a secret Mad Max plane engine built into his fucking food van and is chasing them in that. Soon, they hear gunshots behind them as the pursuers start closing into DnD combat grid range. The Shadow has Harry pull aside and slam on the brakes just before a sharp turn. Then, when Johnny English's car (it's just a big Sedan, sadly, not a transforming Bondmobile food truck. God could this story possibly get any lamer?) speeds ahead toward the curve, the Shadow shoots out one of its front tires and sends it smashing through the fence and off the road. Well done, Señor Sombra.
Also, the Shadow takes off the white overcoat and hat he'd been wearing, which causes him to become completely invisible in the darkness of the front seat.
Um. I...am having trouble picturing it being light enough to drive but also dark enough that you literally can't see the person sitting next to you at all.
Anyway, Harry floors it to get away from the area before any of the Johnny Englishmen can get out of their ruined vehicle and start shooting again, and almost slams right into a train before the Shadow grabs the wheel and prevents it. Man, if that isn't just a perfect microcosm of all their in-person meetings in the story thus far.
Harry hits his head as the car twists around to avoid crashing. When he comes too, he's been left alone on a bench in the train station. The code he stole from Bingham has been taken from him, and he sees his car driving away in the distance. He's also been left with a note instructing him to take the next train to NYC (one should be coming by fairly often) and return to the Metrolite hotel until further notice.
And then, the final sentence of the chapter drops this stunning revelation on us:
“For the battler who had fought in the lunch wagon, who had sent the pursuing gangsters through the rail, who had snatched the coupe from what had seemed sure destruction, was none other − could have been none other − than The Shadow!”
Holy shit, really?
...was Harry actually supposed to have not realized that until now?
......I'm looking back through the chapter, and no, it never says that Harry realized that this was the Shadow. Even when he turned invisible in the inexplicable inky darkness of the passenger's seat right next to him.
I just kind of ASSUMED Harry knew, because it was so obvious, but the way the chapter ends makes it clear that not only did Harry not figure it out, but the reader wasn't expected to have either.
Amazing.
At some point, I started imagining this story as a cartoon in the same art and animation style as the old Fleischer Superman toons. But...a lot of those Superman shorts were actually pretty clever, and there's hardly anything clever about The Living Shadow, so I should probably stop associating them.
Next chapter.
27. The Code Is Solved
At around one AM that night, the Shadow breaks into the empty Laidlaw mansion. There's just one security guard patrolling the grounds, so slipping past him would be simple even for a non-superhero. He reaches the library, and we learn that regardless of whether or not he's actually supernatural, the Shadow does - despite the theme - require light to see.
“The tiny, penetrating ray of a pocket flashlight appeared in the library. The shades of the windows were down. The light could not have been seen from outside.
The light flashed along rows of books. There were many such rows in that library. They occupied the walls on two sides, from the ceiling down to the floor.
The light stopped. It came closer to the shelf and was focused on a single book. The volume was an abridged dictionary; one which must have been consulted often, for its leather back bore signs of considerable usage.
Tapering, well−shaped fingers appeared in the little disk of light. They were fingers with smooth−pointed nails. The fingers drew the dictionary from its position. The light disappeared.”
Also, I like the Shadow's pointed nails. I choose to think he has them painted bright, pastel pink too.
...speaking of animation styles, my mental image of the Shadow is now Diavolo, and I doubt that anything that happens in the remainder of this book will be able to change that.
Anyway, it turns out that the number blocks from the safe weren't a conventional cipher. Rather, they were pointing to a certain volume in Mr. Laidlaw's library, and then to a succession of page/line coordinates within it. Since the book is a dictionary, it's pretty simple to turn those pointers into a sentence using the words indicated. How the Shadow knew about the book thing to begin with, of course, is not yet clear.
Also, who the hell did Laidlaw intend this ridiculously well-coded message for, I wonder?
The numerical pointers create the sentence "SLIDE LEFT FRAME OF PORTRAIT TO LEFT AND UPWARD WORD BLUSH WILL UNLOCK." Is this some kind of treasure hunt Laidlaw was intending to leave for his great grandchildren or something? It's kind of giving me that vibe.
Also, to give this story credit, the numerical dictionary code actually was a pretty clever idea. How the Shadow knew to apply the numbers to books in the library of all things still needs an explanation, but otherwise this is one of the story's actual non-stupid bits of outside the box thinking.
After replacing the dictionary on the shelf, the Shadow searches the house for a portrait that is fixed in place rather than loosely hanging. Upon finding one, he slides it as instructed, revealing the hidden door that all mansions have built into them somewhere. Behind it, there's a safe with an alphabetical combination lock. The Shadow enters in "BLUSH," and opens the safe. It's empty.
He's silent and still for a moment. Then, he closes the safe again, wipes away his fingerprints, and closes the hidden door. He muses that Joyce must have already cracked the code, and Bingham had someone take the gems within the last couple of days.
Still. Johnny English hasn't had another meeting with Bingham or a representative thereof since then, and the Shadow is certain that the gems will change hands when he does. So, he just needs to keep monitoring Johnny, and he'll get to the rest of Laidlaw's gem collection before they can sell it to the triad.
Unstated is the fact that the Shadow could also just break into Wang Fu's safehouse again and steal them by force after they've already been sold. Seriously, he did it before, he can do it again. Lol.
The Shadow slips back out of the mansion passed the guard. Notably taking the exact same footpath that Bingham claimed to have seen the murderer use the night of Geoffrey Laidlaw's death. Hmm. DID he actually see someone that night? Was that someone the Shadow? If he had been there that night, then it's likely that Laidlaw was one of his agents, which would explain both why the Shadow is taking such an interest in this case and why he knew more about how to use that code than he should. That could make things a bit more interesting, possibly.
Anyway, that's it for tonight.
