"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 114 - The Strange Disappearance Of Joe Cardona" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

CHAPTER III

BATTLE BY NIGHT

THE search that The Shadow made through Tabor's studio was swift, yet
detailed. The result, however, was negligible. Whoever had rifled this room
had
done the job swiftly, but with definite care to avoid any traces. Articles had
been swept from Tabor's table. Files had been ripped from the cabinet.
The Shadow granted that the murderer had worn gloves. Cardona had looked
for finger prints, but had found none. Many of the papers from Tabor's files
were gone. That was proven by The Shadow's discovery of architect's estimates
that had missing pages. From this, The Shadow drew the definite conclusion
that
the murderer had actually wanted certain documents.
A man faking a robbery would not have had to search for the items that he
wanted; hence he could have bundled batches at random and strewn the rest
about. The murderer, scattering papers, had been on the lookout for certain
ones. Finding them, he had taken them; then snatched up groups of strewn
papers. That was why some sheets of lengthy estimates had been left behind.
This conclusion, however, was of little value. Tabor's papers were in
chaos; obviously a large percentage of them were gone. There was no way to
gain
a lead to the particular type of documents that the murderer had purposely
stolen.


STEPPING to the outer anteroom, The Shadow studied the table where the
thermos bottle and the cup had been. He saw a circled mark that indicated
where
the thermos had once stood on spilled liquid; to leave a stained ring in the
woodwork.
From the size of the circle, The Shadow decided that the thermos bottle
had been a quart container. He recalled the statement that half the coffee was
gone from it. Cardona had estimated that Tabor had finished two cups of
coffee;
one at eight fifteen, the next at eight thirty. Two cups, however, would not
account for a missing pint.
Even granting that Tabor drank coffee at fifteen minute intervals, The
Shadow estimated that he would not have consumed a quart within an hour.
Calculating on his own, The Shadow figured that the coffee clue would show
that
Tabor had died at about quarter past nine.
Nevertheless, The Shadow made allowance for the possibility that Tabor
might have drunk two or three cups at one sitting. Like Weston, The Shadow was
willing to let the time element wait until after Professor Murkden had made
his
blood tests. Science - not speculation - offered the best solution to the