"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 124 - The Masked Headsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

THE MASKED HEADSMAN
by Maxwell Grant

As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," April 15, 1937.

Millions in jewels and golden plate were the stake - the treasure of Old
Spain! And The Shadow's blazing guns had to decide the issue!


CHAPTER I

THE PROTEST PARADE

"HERE they come!"
The word moved through the crowds that lined the main street of
Whitefield. Along that avenue came a bobbing array of banners and placards,
raised on high poles that dwarfed the men below them.
Though slow, irregular, almost ragged, that march came onward with the
crushing power of a juggernaut. There was something ominous in its approach.
Flares burst suddenly from the raised fists of marchers. Those flames
were
red. They transformed the parade into a torchlight procession; faces were dyed
with crimson, beneath the wavering glare.
A murmur went through the watching crowd. People on the sidewalks shifted
back into doorways. Fearfully, they eyed the gloating faces of the marchers;
heard the hoarse shouts from beneath the ruddy flares. Incredulously, the
onlookers read the signs that the paraders carried.
Violence and threat were the mottoes of those marchers. They were a mob
from the days of the French Revolution, brought to new life on the main street
of an American city. Here, in this modern setting, they were shouting for the
blood of aristocrats.
In a press car, parked by the curb, a young man watched the parade's
approach. He was Clyde Burke, reporter for the New York Classic. Clyde had
come
to Whitefield to cover the parade. He had expected some commotion; a mild
riot,
perhaps. But Clyde had not foreseen so fierce a march as this.
The parade was approaching the county courthouse, directly across the
street from Clyde's car. Already, the reflection of the first torches threw a
ruddy tinge upon the long white wall of the courthouse. That glare was
creeping
forward, giving its challenge to the law.
In the interval of the parade's approach, Clyde reviewed the events that
had produced this mad demonstration.


WHITEFIELD was a city of close to thirty thousand people, scarcely more
than twenty miles outside of New York City. Many residents were commuters, who
went to business in Manhattan. That, coupled to the fact that Whitefield was
the county seat, made the city an important one.