"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 220 - The House on the Ledge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

THE HOUSE ON THE LEDGE
by Maxwell Grant

As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," April 15, 1941.

Money thrown to the winds - because it was counterfeit! And The Shadow,
last hope of the law against a shrewd criminal ring, finds this the hardest
battle of his career!


CHAPTER I

COUNTERFEIT CURRENCY

TED LINGLE stopped his rattletrap car in front of the brownstone house
and
glanced nervously along the darkened street. He was glad that the streetlamps
did not throw too much light upon his weather-beaten car which was occupying a
space usually reserved for limousines.
Sliding from the car, Ted ascended the brownstone steps and rang the bell
of the Kelwood mansion. He was trying to be nonchalant, but he could not shake
the impression that eyes were watching him from across the way.
In fact, eyes were.
Two pairs of eyes, representing lurking men with low, ugly voices.
"Sit tight, Bolo," one voice was saying. "It's only that guy Lingle. That
dope that comes to see the Parnal dame."
"Yeah?" queried the other. "Maybe you've got him wrong, Juke. He might be
going in to gab with old Kelwood."
"Not a chance, Bolo! He's daffy over the doll, that's all. Curt Hulber
says so."
There was a note of finality to the tone, as though anything Curt Hulber
said must be right. In this case, the opinion was correct. Ted Lingle was more
than daffy over Isabel Parnal. He was madly in love with her.
This wasn't Ted's first visit to the mansion where Isabel lived with her
guardian, Stephen Kelwood. But Ted, as he stood on the doorstep, found that he
was still nervous despite those previous visits. Being in New York, calling on
a wealthy girl who had promised to marry him, was something of an impossible
dream to Ted Lingle, despite the reality of the situation.
Ted himself was a small-towner. He'd met Isabel the summer before at the
farm where she was staying, and had supposed that she came from a small town,
too. Perhaps each should have recognized that the other was from a different
world, because of the very attraction that had drawn them together. But Ted
hadn't realized it, not even when he learned that Isabel came from New York.
His first visit here, to the home of Stephen Kelwood, the banker, had
awakened him, and since then Ted had been traveling in a wide-awake daze. He
knew that Isabel really loved him; but, considering his own limitations, he
had
begun to wonder why.
Here, on the threshold of another meeting, Ted was almost ready to turn
abruptly, dash down the steps, and drive off in his ancient car, when the door