"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 210 - The Devil's Paymaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

That was the end of that!
Later on, many cops arrived with plenty of flashlights and plenty of
technical experts. But they might as well not have come. They found out no
more
concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Remorse than had Weston or his valet.
Back in his bedroom, Commissioner Weston changed his soaked clothing. He
pulled on a slicker before venturing outdoors again. Automatically, his gaze
traveled toward the clock.
The time was now thirty-two minutes after midnight.
At exactly 1 a.m., a duplication of Commissioner Weston's amazing
experience was occurring at a point north of New York City. Mr. Remorse had
used his hour's leeway to do some efficient traveling.
He was talking in his womanish, high-pitched falsetto to the warden of
Sing Sing Prison!
The warden found himself awakened from sleep by the sound of a ghostly
telephone bell. It didn't come from his own instrument, the private one in his
bedroom that connected him with the head keeper of the prison.
This phone was a planted one, an instrument which the dazed warden had
never seen before. It was a new-type handset model, with the bell apparatus
concealed in the base of the instrument itself.
Mr. Remorse repeated his cool announcement that he was a reformed
criminal. Mockingly, he asked the name of a prominent New York citizen who
could help him to restore stolen money.
The warden hesitated. Then he mentioned the first name that came to his
mind. It was the name of Lamont Cranston.
There was nothing remarkable about this. Cranston fitted exactly the
specifications mentioned by the mysterious Mr. Remorse. He was independently
wealthy. He had plenty of leisure. His interest in charity and reform projects
was well known. If anyone could reassure frightened victims that his motives
in
acting as a go-between for a criminal were honest, it was Lamont Cranston.
The warden at Sing Sing, however, couldn't understand how the sneering
crook at the other end of a planted telephone wire expected to avoid capture
if
he tried to go through with his nervy plan.
"That's my business, warden!" Mr. Remorse replied.
He hung up. The line went dead. An effort to trace the call met with the
same result that had baffled Police Commissioner Weston. A grim searching
party
in the drenched flowerbeds back of the warden's cottage, found themselves
staring at a freshly-cut wire, to which a small, white card was attached,
stating:

Sorry!
MR. REMORSE.

By this time, the news of the strange happenings was beginning to seep
into newspaper offices. Reporters came buzzing like bees around the home of
Commissioner Weston. Another batch of them raced up to Sing Sing.
The rain had stopped. But the mystery grew more baffling by the hour.