"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 290 - Death has Grey Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

was the very figure that Dick regarded as a figment of his own imagination.
Lamont Cranston, delayed by a dull conference with the police commissioner,
was
becoming his other self, The Shadow.
The whispered laugh that The Shadow gave was meant specifically for Dick
Whitlock, the man who doubted his existence. But it wasn't the sinister mirth
that The Shadow uttered when he planned to cloud the minds of men. Instead it
could have been defined as a laugh of pleasant anticipation.
Dick Whitlock was a man whose mind needed clearing and The Shadow was on
his way to supply that service.


CHAPTER VI

A RAINY night could play hob with almost anybody's plans. In Dick
Whitlock's case, it meant he wasn't going out at all, regardless of how Claire
Austley might feel if he didn't show up at the noisy night-spot known as the
Celebrity Club.
From the shallow closet in the corner of his living room, Dick was taking
a garish dressing gown which Jerry Trimm had provided along with the
apartment.
A horrible combination of blood-red crimson and jaundiced yellow, the gown
reminded Dick of an old-fashioned awning, nevertheless it was more comfortable
than coat and vest.
Thinking of awnings reminded Dick of the windows, so he stood there as he
filled his pipe, staring across at the rain-flecked roof of the old house.
Something much like a head and shoulders poked itself above the parapet and
Dick's eyes narrowed at the sight; then he decided that the object was simply
a
stubby chimney, half lost in the swirl of the rain.
Curiously though, it vanished and reappeared like some optical illusion
and Dick was so intrigued that he forgot how plainly he could be viewed from
the other side of the street. The living room lights were bright, etching Dick
in the framework of the window so sharply that even the colors of his dressing
gown, the whitish curl of his pipe smoke were distinguishable.
But Dick wasn't caring about danger from without. There was something
about the apartment itself that gave him the creeps. Any place where grey eyes
looked across your shoulder into a mirror, then vanished before you could turn
around, was a spooky place indeed. That was the reason Dick preferred to keep
the living room brightly lighted.
If the casement window hadn't been partly open, the room's reflected
lights would have prevented Dick from seeing that stubby chimney opposite.
Right now, the thing seemed to steady in the half-mist that rose from the
pelting rain, but before Dick could study it further, a buzz from the door
interrupted. Dick went out through the hallway to answer it and found Eric
waiting there, his hat brim dripping water on his rain-soaked coat.
"You're as bad as Jerry," laughed Dick. "If you'd looked at the sky when
you started out, you'd have had sense enough to wear a raincoat. Come in and
I'll give you some dry things."
They didn't go anywhere near the living room window on their way to the