destination. Whether wittingly or otherwise, Professor Frescott had personally
tricked The Shadow with a neat but simple ruse.
The Shadow, in the person of Lamont Cranston, had left for Washington on a
blind quest. He and Jared Shebley would be watching each other with mutual
suspicion concerning an antique Chinese chest which Professor Frescott wanted
neither of them to buy!
CHAPTER III
MARGO LANE hurried from the cab as it stopped in front of the Talcott
Antique Galleries. With the delay of rush hour traffic, Margo had hardly hoped
to arrive before the place closed, but it was still open.
This trip was the result of a call from Lamont Cranston. He'd phoned from
the airport, saying he was leaving for Washington and wanted Margo to visit the
Galleries for him. Still, the trip didn't seem very important.
All Margo needed to do was learn the name of the Washington dealer who had
bought the chest of Chu Chan from Talcott. That learned, she was to call a
Washington hotel by long distance and leave word for Cranston. The reason it
wasn't very important was because Cranston had blandly said that he would
probably have that information by the time he reached the capital. Nevertheless,
he wanted Margo to check the New York end.
There was no reason for Margo to keep the cab, so she dismissed it.
Entering the lighted doorway of the Antique Galleries, Margo went up a broad
flight of stairs to the second floor which constituted the Galleries proper.
The place was really something to take one's breath away, without
assistance from the stairs. Though Margo had been to Talcott's before, the
Galleries never failed to intrigue her.
You came into a row of rooms that could have been called an indoor
esplanade. The whole second floor, from front to back, a distance of nearly half
a block, was a succession of wonders. Only in Talcott's could a person gain a
proper appreciation of the ingenuity displayed by the human race during
centuries past.
Paintings, pottery, statues, musical instruments, tapestries, furniture -
the list ran like the spiel of a department store elevator operator. Only
Talcott's items differed from any that you would see in a modern department
store. The things he sold were products of forgotten imagination and handicraft.
Literally wading through a mass of antiques, Margo reached a niche that
Talcott called his office only to find it empty. Continuing further back, she
passed a side stairway and came to the sliding door of the final room, which was
the longest of the lot. There Margo saw Dariel Talcott, a tall, stoop-shouldered
man with a drab, tired face. Beside the antique dealer was a burly, bearded man
whom Margo remembered as Simon Benisette.
Indeed, once seen, Simon Benisette was nearly impossible to forget.
Benisette's face was so long that it had a horsey look. People must have
marked on that resemblance, otherwise Benisette had no excuse for growing the
red beard that adorned his equine countenance. His style of beard was badly
chosen, however, for he had nurtured the old fashioned kind that spread around
from ear to ear, mostly under the chin. If anything, the beard gave him further
claim to his nickname of "Horse Face."
