"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 159 - The Dead Who Lived" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

someone in the office must have given him Brellick's name through error.

When Cranston located the repair man who worked for the telephone company, he learned that the
fellow had not brought a helper. The repair man remembered that a chap in overalls had been hanging
around the hallway, but he had supposed he was the building janitor.

LEAVING Brellick's office, Cranston went to the street. He entered the passage of the adjacent building,
noted that it had a big door, to close it from the street. He had hardly reached the obscure telephone
booth before a man appeared at the outer entrance and began to close the door.

That fellow looked like an actual janitor. Before he locked the door, he came through the passage to
make sure that no one was in it. He did not see Cranston, who had stepped to a corner past the booth.

The janitor extinguished the dim lights. He went out through the street door and locked it behind him. In
the thick darkness, Cranston entered the telephone booth and pulled its door almost shut.

The booth's automatic light did not glow. Using a flashlight, Cranston inspected the top of the booth. He
observed that there was no bulb in the socket; and his keen eyes made other discoveries.

There was a thin, green-taped wire that ran from the door to the top of the booth. Another strand,
difficult to see against the booth's green paint, extended to the side where the door closed. Fastened
there, behind a molding, was a small latch. When Cranston's fingers worked it, the latch slithered
noiselessly toward the door.

If fully closed, that door would have been locked by the mechanism.

Looking upward again, Cranston probed the light socket with the glow of his tiny torch. He saw a disk of
black-painted metal studded with tiny holes. Gripping the socket, he drew it downward. The ceiling of
the booth came with it!

The whole mechanism was as simple as it was effective. This false ceiling had been fitted into the booth,
just above the level of the door, with a foot of space above it. When set, the device worked
automatically.

Cranston drew the door tight shut. The false ceiling moved upward, like a bellows; the hiss of air came
through the holes in the dummy light socket. Testing the door, Cranston found it tight shut, until the fake
ceiling had finished its bellows motion, to rest flush with the actual top of the booth. At that instant, the
trick latch released the door.

Pulling the door open in his test, Cranston became suddenly motionless. A distant sound reached his ears:
the scrape of wood against metal. Some one was jimmying a way into this building, through a rear door!

In darkness, Cranston's hand opened the brief case that rested on the floor beside him. There was a
swish of cloth, a dull clink as heavy automatics were plucked from the brief case. The flashlight shone
guardedly upon the dial of the telephone.

That glow showed cloaked shoulders; above them, a slouch hat that hid the features of Lamont Cranston.
A low whisper pervaded the booth; it was a tone of sinister mockery, confined to the limits of that
cramped space.