Free Oddments by Bill Pronzini Page A

made telephone calls, spent every penny of his salary that did not go for bare essentials. And at long last he succeeded where no other nostalgist had even come close to succeeding. He accomplished a remarkable, an almost superhuman feat.
    He collected the complete Shadow.
    There was absolutely nothing produced about his hero —not a written word, not a spoken sentence, not a drawing or gadget—that Mr. Conway did not own.
    The final item, the one that had eluded him for so many years, came into his possession on a Saturday evening in late June. He had gone into a tenement area of Manhattan, near the East River, to purchase from a private individual a rare cartoon strip of Terry and the Pirates. With the strip carefully tucked into his coat pocket, he was on his way back to the subway when he chanced upon a small neighborhood bookshop in the basement of a crumbling brownstone. It was still open, and unfamiliar to him, and so he entered and began to browse. And on one of the cluttered tables at the rear—there it was.
    The October 1931 issue of The Shadow Magazine.
    Mr. Conway emitted a small, ecstatic cry. Caught up the magazine in trembling hands, stared at it with disbelieving eyes, opened it tenderly, read the contents page and the date, ran sweat-slick fingers over the rough, grainy pulp paper. Near-mint condition. Spine undamaged. Colors unfaded. And the price—
    Fifty cents.
    Fifty cents!
    Tears of joy rolled unabashedly down Mr. Conway's cheeks as he carried this treasure to the elderly proprietor. The bookseller gave him a strange look, shrugged, and accepted two quarters from Mr. Conway without a word. Two quarters, fifty cents. And Mr. Conway had been prepared to pay hundreds...
    As he went out into the gathering darkness—it was almost nine by this time—he could scarcely believe that he had finally done it, that he now possessed the total word, picture, and voice exploits of the most awesome master crime fighter of them all. His brain reeled. The Shadow was his now; Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane (beautiful Margo!)—his, all his, his alone.
    Instead of proceeding to the subway, Mr. Conway impulsively entered a small diner not far from the bookshop and or dered a cup of coffee. Then, once again, he opened the magazine. He had previously read a reprint of the novel by Maxwell Grant— The Shadow Laughs —but that was not the same as reading the original, no indeed. He plunged into the story again, savoring each line, each page, the mounting suspense, the seemingly inescapable traps laid to eliminate The Shadow by archvillains Isaac Coffran and Birdie Crull, the smashing of their insidious counterfeiting plot: justice triumphant. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, crime does not pay.
    So engrossed was Mr. Conway that he lost all track of time. When at last he closed the magazine he was startled to note that except for the counterman, the diner was deserted. It had been nearly full when he entered. He looked at his wristwatch, and his mouth dropped open in amazement. Good heavens! It was past midnight!
    Mr. Conway scrambled out of the booth and hurriedly left the diner. Outside, apprehension seized him. The streets were dark and deserted—ominous, forbidding.
    He looked up and down without seeing any sign of life. It was four blocks to the nearest subway entrance—a short walk in daylight but now it was almost the dead of night. Mr. Conway shivered in the cool night breeze. He had never liked the night, its sounds and smells, its hidden dangers. There were stories in the papers every morning of muggers and thieves on the prowl. .
    He took a deep breath, summoning courage. Four blocks. Well, that really wasn't very far, only a matter of minutes if he walked swiftly. And swift was his pace as he started along the darkened sidewalk.
    No cars passed; no one appeared on foot. The hollow echoes of his footfalls were the only sounds. And yet Mr. Conway's heart was pounding wildly