"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 283 - The Chest of Chu-Chan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

THE CHEST OF CHU CHAN
by Maxwell Grant

As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," September 1944.

Mad murder! And a body in a locked chest pierced by the priceless Burmese
katar! Can a mere statue of a beautiful Siamese dancer come to life? A
pulsing,
dramatic climax gives The Shadow his startling answer.


CHAPTER I

JARED SHEBLEY leaned back in his teak-wood chair and toyed with the
Burmese
katar. His crisp smile, slicing across his parchment face, would have suited
an
Oriental potentate more than a New York curio collector.
Shebley's surroundings were in keeping with his appearance.
This was his curio room, the pride of his Manhattan penthouse. Its walls
were adorned with tall, narrow tapestries, woven mostly in gold and silver,
set
alternately between the glass-fronted cabinets that housed the rarities
comprising Shebley's collection.
It would have required a sizable pamphlet to describe those items. In
fact,
such a pamphlet was already in the making; the proof sheets were scattered all
over the chess table which Shebley used as a desk. The table itself, a bulky
and
elaborate affair inlaid with squares of black and white mother-of-pearl, was
one
of Shebley's chief prizes. It was supposed to be the table on which a Persian
prince had been maneuvering his men when he was captured, along with his royal
tent, by Hulagu, the Mongolian invader operating under the banner of Genghis
Khan.
As with most of Shebley's curios, the authenticity of this number was a
matter of some doubt, but not to Shebley. He believed it to be the genuine
article, and the only thing that bothered him was what Hulagu had done with
the
chessmen that belonged with it. Shebley would be very unhappy if some day that
ancient chess set showed up in the possession of another eccentric collector.
What bothered Professor Giles Frescott was the way in which Shebley toyed
with the Burmese katar.
No weapon more insidious could have been imagined, let alone fashioned,
than this royal katar or Oriental thrusting dagger. As he studied it across
the
chess table, Professor Frescott lost some of the benign expression that
usually
characterized his broad, elderly features. His eyes narrowed under his thin
gray