"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 303 - The Curse of Thoth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

"Just who is Mr. Zerland seeing?"
The fellow at the switchboard tried to swell into importance, but it didn't work with a keen-eyed
questioner like Harry. Through the window, Harry added:

"Just who is up there with him now?"

The clerk hesitated, then gave a sly look at a sheet of paper beyond his opposite elbow.

"A couple of men seeing him on business," the clerk admitted. "Their names are Barstow and Curvin.
Guess I can tell you that much. Nobody said I couldn't."

"That's being civil," approved Harry. "Now take a side-slant at that list and see if you don't see my name
topping it, as one of the privileged few. The name is Albersham."

The fellow looked, turned his head up toward the wicket, and nodded.

"That settles it from A to Z," acknowledged Harry. "Mr. Albersham sees Mr. Zerland. Give me the
apartment number and a pass or whatever else that elevator man needs to make him act human."

"It's 6B," the switchboard tender supplied. Then, rising to gesture through the window: "It's all right,
Kirky," he called. "Mr. Albersham can go up."

Keeping a poker-face to hide his triumph, Harry Vincent turned about as he entered the elevator. The
switchboard man had gone back to duty, but Harry's expression wasn't entirely lost, where a witness was
concerned. If anything, that witness had something of an edge on Harry.

Said witness was the fur-wearing lady who had preceded Harry at the window. She had started from the
lobby, but she hadn't gone beyond the door. She had turned too, to learn what a visitor to Zerland's
looked like.

It wasn't easy to guess a fur coat's contents from the back, but Harry had rather suspected that the girl in
the mink was of lithe construction. She was indeed, as he saw her now with the coat spread loose; she
was slender, tall, but stately rather than willowy. But it was the expression of her face that riveted Harry.

The features were truly exotic, as though sculptured from softened marble. Their complexion was
creamy, but reminiscent of cream lying thick upon the surface of coffee. The girl's eyes, peering from
beside a high-bridged nose, caught the light and showed a sparkle of a color that represented the exact
shade of Nile green.

A lovely face, yet as haunting as something from a dream, and fixed in mold. It was a face that could
have come from afar, either in terms of space or time. Not a semblance of a smile, not even a flicker of
an eyelash disturbed the serenity of that countenance.

But it wasn't until the door of the elevator shaft had clanged and the car was starting upward, that Harry
Vincent realized he'd been looking at somebody as straight from Egypt as if she had been the Sphinx
itself!

CHAPTER II
BY the time Harry Vincent reached the door of 6B, he was shaking off thoughts of Little Egypt, down