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

CHAPTER II

CARDONA'S CLUE

ONE hour later, Joe Cardona was standing in the center of Tabor's studio
with an audience about him. In the group was a police surgeon and two
grim-faced detectives; also the proprietor of the downstairs lunch room. Most
important, however, were Ralph Weston and a man whom the police commissioner
had brought with him.
Weston's companion was Professor Kinsley Murkden, the blood expert who
had
expressed the belief that tests could solve the riddle of the purple death.
Tall, stoop-shouldered and frail of build, Murkden was craning forward with
one
hand cupped to his ear. The professor was hard of hearing, but his keen eyes
showed him to be alert.
That fact had offset Cardona's disappointment at first meeting the
professor. Joe's original impression was that Murkden was a deaf old dotard.
He
had changed that view after watching Murkden make a sharp visual survey of the
entire studio.
"I've made a thorough inspection, commissioner," announced Cardona, to
Weston. "I'm ready to reconstruct the crime."
"To begin with," continued Cardona, in a loud tone that brought a pleased
nod from Murkden, "Tabor came up to this studio at eight o'clock. I arrived
here soon after ten. So we know for a fact that he died between eight and ten.
"The doctor here" - Joe waved toward the police surgeon - "has been
unable
to fix the time of death. That was to be expected. It's the way the purple
death
has worked before. However we both are agreed on how death was dealt. The
murderer put poison in Tabor's coffee cup."
Striding over to the door that led to the anteroom, Cardona pointed to
the
thermos bottle and the cup, which still stood on the outer table. He also
indicated the hallway door. In loud tone, he continued:
"Tabor came in here at eight o'clock. He set down the thermos bottle and
the coffee cup. He left the door unlocked, came in here and went to work.
Soon,
he went out and had a cup of coffee. He left a little coffee in the cup. He
came
back to work again.
"That's when the murderer moved in. Tabor didn't hear him, because Tabor
was here in the studio. The murderer dropped a pill, or some other poison in
the coffee cup. After a while, Tabor came out for another cup of coffee. The
murderer was gone before that.
 "Tabor filled his coffee cup, took a long drink of it and came back to
work. That's when the poison hit him. He collapsed. The murderer came in here
and rifled the place. Figuring the whole job, I would say that be could have