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

Brellick, who had been in Manhattan constantly for the past month.

It happened that photographs of both victims were available. Those pictures were rushed to press, and
for a caption, a quick-witted editor coined a phrase that aptly described the state of the men concerned.
The caption read: "Dead Men Who Live."

Both cases, however, were classed as the result of a growing epidemic. The possibility of crime was too
remote to be considered. The cases were outside the ordinary realm of police investigation, precisely as a
master criminal had intended that they should be.

Perhaps that master mind had overlooked the fact that in New York, there dwelt a being who could
scent crime where others believed that it did not exist.

That personage was one whose power was feared throughout the underworld, though crooks had never
learned his identity. Crimeland knew that being only as The Shadow.

And The Shadow, alone, could solve the riddle of the Dead Who Lived!
 CHAPTER III. LINKS TO CRIME
THAT afternoon, a visitor stood in the hotel room where George Thurnig had collapsed the night before.
The stranger was tall; leisurely of manner. His calm face was masklike, and the contours of his features
gave him a hawkish air.

As he smoked a thin cigar, the visitor strolled idly about the room. He paused at the window, to stare
indifferently toward the sky line of Manhattan. He stopped at a table to flick cigar ashes into a tray.

Choosing an easy-chair, he sat there smoking in the patient manner of a person who is bored; but too
polite to show it.

All the while, however, that visitor had been busy. His eyes, seemingly idle, had taken in every feature of
the room. He had noted the writing desk where Thurnig had last been seated. He had checked on the
position of the telephone. He had even examined the window sill, near which the victim had been found.

A serious-faced young man stepped into the room. He had a brisk, professional manner. Methodically,
he remarked:

"I shall be ready very soon, Mr. Cranston. If you can wait a few minutes longer -"

"Quite all right, Doctor Sayre," Cranston spoke from his chair. "I am in no hurry to leave."

Sayre left. Cranston arose; he stopped to relight his cigar close beside the door of a clothes closet. That
door was partly open. Cranston reached through, tugged a light cord. His eyes showed a keen glint as
they studied the interior of the closet.

Thurnig's tuxedo was hanging there. Cranston's hand probed the pockets, then extinguished the light.

His survey of the room was complete. Nowhere had this visitor uncovered a clue that indicated crime.
Cranston's eyes, though, were fixed upon a final spot that could scarcely be called a portion of the room.
That spot was the Servidor in the door to the corridor.

The door was ajar. Stepping to it, Cranston was half visible from the hall, as his inside hand opened the