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

workers; the ones who might be logically picked as henchmen of the supercrook. They had not brought
in a single suspect.

The Shadow, too, had been seeking traces of The Red Blot. His agents had been at work. Their reports
were barren. These crimes which had emanated from the underworld, and had struck in higher places,
left no trail.
But The Shadow's way was not to follow crime when it bore the mark of well-linked continuity. He had
been seeking the forebodings of crime that he might anticipate the next stroke of The Red Blot.

The clock upon the table was more important than all these clippings and reports of frustrated efforts to
line up the cause of past outrages. The Shadow, through his own investigations in the underworld, had
been watching for an impending stroke.

Even whispered inklings had been lacking. Until tonight, each crime had given no preliminary sign. Often
had The Shadow thwarted crooks by prying into their games before the lid had been raised.

Now, amid the quiet of the underworld, he had caught the words he wanted. Here, he was biding his
time until the proper second for his calculated plan.

The ticking of the clock went on. A long second seemed to hover; then the indicators on all three dials
moved at once, That final second marked the completion of a minute which, in turn, showed the end of
an hour.

Before the second indicator moved again, The Shadow's hand had swept up the scattered bits of paper.
A click sounded from the lamp. The room was plunged in darkness. Something swished through the
gloom.

Then came a peal of laughter. The Shadow's mirth rang ghoulishly through the blackness. As his invisible
form moved toward the secret door of the sanctum, the master of the night sent forth his mocking
challenge in chilling tones that foretold disaster to evil brains of crime.

Blackened walls caught up the merriment. Weird reverberations sounded as cries from goblin throats.
Corridors of space seemed to open with whispered answers to The Shadow's taunt.

Those strange, terrifying sounds persisted long. When the last echo had faded into nothingness, only the
smooth, quick ticking of the clock was audible.

The Shadow had departed upon his quest.

CHAPTER II. WITHIN THE SAFE
IT was exactly ten o'clock when The Shadow departed from his sanctum. A half hour later, a strange
phenomenon occurred at the intersection of two obscure streets on the lower East Side.

A moving patch of blackness passed along the sidewalk beneath the glare of a street lamp. It was one of
the many shadows that had crossed that spot during the evening. But in one respect, this moving splotch
differed from all others. There was no sign of the person who cast it.

A long streak of darkness, which terminated in a perfect silhouette. This was the only mark that betrayed
the presence of The Shadow. Somewhere in the darkness of the brick wall beside the sidewalk, the
being whom the underworld so greatly feared, had passed unseen.