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

Coldly commanding, those eyes, as they had been ever since Dick first saw
them, but they were hypnotic, rather than evil. In fact, Dick could feel a
friendliness in the strange man's stare.
Memories were coming back, those of Dick's last meeting with the man,
when
Greug had rescued him from the wreckage of a bombed chalet. It was Greug who
had
sent him on the road to safety and apparently the man meant to do the same
again.
With his one-word command, Greug included Eric's body with a gesture and
a
few moments later, Dick was helping Greug lift the burden, not toward the
door,
but in the direction of the kitchenette.
There, where his own elbow had been not long ago, Dick saw a gaping
cavity, the front of the dumb-waiter.
Inside was a sizable elevator, large enough to hold a person, which it
promptly did, in the shape of Eric's body. Greug rapped a signal and the
elevator slithered down with such rapidity that Dick was still staring when it
popped up again, empty.
"Get in."
Obeying Greug's order, Dick felt the lift drop like a plummet. The trip
ended with a modified jolt that rolled him out into the waiting hands of a
pate
of square-faced men who sat him in a chair beside Eric's body. Then the lift
was
speeding upward again.
This time it was Greug's turn.
His face a study in utter rigidity, Greug was standing between two open
doors, one the door of the living room closet, the other, the window-like
entrance to the dumb-waiter shaft. Over his left arm, Greug was holding the
coat, vest and hat that belonged to Eric Henwood.
In his right hand, Greug gripped a Luger automatic, aimed toward the
curtains leading to the hallway. He was prepared, though, to make a sudden
shift, for he was sighting in that same little mirror above the telephone
table, where Dick had seen his face the night before.
Greug was listening for sounds from the outer door and if they brought
any
of the enemies that he expected, this frozen-faced doctor would instantly go
into action. He was using the mirror to increase his angle of vision and if
the
door should shove inward, it was obvious that Greug would accept it as the
gauge
of battle.
What relieved the tension was the sudden arrival of the dumb-waiter, up
for its final passenger. Hearing the clatter of its arrival, Greug heeled
about, entered the lift and slid the sash down. Muffled taps sounded from
within the shaft and the dumb-waiter slithered downward.
Still seated in his chair, Dick was watching the square-faced men place
Eric's body in a pine-wood box that had the general appearance of a coffin.