"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 031 - The Red Blot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

The Red Blot!
WHILE the ink still dried beneath the light, a low, sinister laugh came from the darkness. That tone - the
mocking voice of The Shadow - was the feature of the master's presence that had struck stark terror into
many an evil gangster's heart.

The laugh of The Shadow! It came as a challenge to all malefactors.

The pen was laid aside. The fingers lifted the report sheets and the clippings, one by one. Alike, these
items told a story of unsolved crime. Here, in New York, subtle evil was in progress.

A bank messenger shot down in open daylight. A chase of elusive assailants, who disappeared after a
cordon of police had closed in upon them. A huge blot of crimson upon the sidewalk at the spot where
the man had been slain.

The messenger's blood? That had been the theory, until the second crime!

Three masked marauders had entered a club where gambling was in progress. They had extinguished the
lights; with flashlights, they had covered the players and threatened them with guns. They had reaped a
harvest of cash.

While they were robbing their victims, police had arrived. The crooks had fled and, despite the closeness
of the chase, had made an escape so effective that they might have actually melted. Upon the green baize
of the central card table in the club was discovered a huge dab of dulled crimson - again the red blot!

A third crime - the theft of a painting valued at many thousands - had been perpetrated at the home of a
New York millionaire. Servants had arrived as the criminals were departing with the painting that they
had cut from its immense frame. Two servants had been shot; one mortally wounded.

Again, the evil raiders had escaped. Behind them, in the empty frame, they had left their mark - a red
blot!

THE RED BLOT!

In the underworld, it was believed that a master mind of crime had chosen that mark. The Red Blot was
a name - not a sign. Some supercrook had assembled a squad of daring gangsters, who would stop at
nothing.

The police had advanced the same theory. The newspapers had taken up the cry.

Then had come the fourth crime. A big-time fight promoter - supposed to carry a bankroll of more than a
hundred grand upon his person - had been found strangled in his apartment. Upon the starched front of
the victim's dress shirt was that same dread sign of spattered crimson - the mark of The Red Blot!

Men of wealth - from legitimate commercial barons to those who dealt in hazardous enterprises - were in
trepidation. The newspapers had called upon the police to apprehend this supercriminal. The police had
not gathered a single clew.

Underworld and social swim alike - neither revealed the presence of a master mind to whom these
crimes could be attributed. Police, with their stool pigeons at work, had covered all of gangdom's daring