"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 298 - The Stars Promise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Grim in turn was the sight that brought that mirthless laugh. From what The Shadow saw upon the floor,
he knew that he hadn't just reached the threshold of a new adventure.

The Shadow had crossed that threshold.

CHAPTER III
THE thing upon the floor was a body, sprawled in the half-writhed fashion that represented violent death.
The victim was a man of frail appearance, which gave an inkling to the mode of murder. Past middle age,
he wasn't the sort who could have put up much of a struggle; therefore The Shadow judged that the man
had been strangled.

Over toward the corner was an easy chair in which the man had probably been seated. The chair had a
broad back, wide enough to hide a lurker. Looking at the victim's throat, The Shadow saw no traces of
finger marks nor the impression of a rope, so he began a search for some other form of lethal instrument
and promptly found one.

From a bureau drawer poked the corner of a silk scarf that had been poked there hurriedly. Down
through the slight opening, The Shadow saw that the scarf was twisted and its strands showed signs of
strain. It could have sufficed for murder and probably had.

On a writing table lay a ruler along with some pencils. An interesting exhibit the ruler, since it could have
completed a tourniquet if thrust through the knotted ends of the silk. Apparently some murderer knew the
methods of his calling, although crude in modes of covering up.

Now for other clues.

The victim was well dressed, but his face had the droop of dissipation that went with failure. The Shadow
classed him as some boardwalk character who probably traded on old acquaintance or chiseled his way
as a better-class panhandler. In giving the man this broken-down status, The Shadow allowed for the
changes that death had brought to the scrawny face.

Carefully searching the man's pockets, The Shadow came across some pawn tickets, an employee's pass
to the Long Pier, a hotel key for this very room, but with a hotel tag attached, and finally several dollars in
small bills. The pass bore the name of Peter Klurg and had a passable picture of the dead man.

These items were not all that The Shadow found. Beside Klurg's chair, half covered with a footstool in
which the man had apparently tangled during his forward sprawl, was a newspaper open at the racing
page. This edition of the Seaview City Evening Breeze, had probably been printed about two hours
before.

What intrigued The Shadow, however, was a chance item on the page opposite. It linked with other
matters in such fashion that a whole mental chain seemed to clank.

It was a death notice, covering a former resident of Seaview City, a wealthy collector named Hugo
Trenkler.

Again, The Shadow's laugh came with grim softness.

Here was something that The Shadow hadn't checked, the fact that Trenkler once had lived in Seaview