"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 319 - Murder on Main Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

"How does it feel?"

"Not too bad. I've got a splitting headache, but that's about all. Maybe that's why I've been having such
crazy ideas about... you know. About the widow."

The sheriff nodded. But he didn't have a headache even if the doctor did, and he could see no
alternative...

They got into their cars. The rain hit just as the sheriff stepped on the gas. At least he hadn't gotten wet.
His wife would be worried about him, he realized. She still wasn't used to his having to be out late at
night. He grinned to himself. No sense in phoning her. She might be asleep... still smiling, he drove off.
No, it wouldn't be a phone that would wake her.

After all, he had only been married two months.

In a way, it was too bad that the sheriff hadn't been married for twenty years. For if he had driven into
the center of town to phone, he might have seen a bizarre sight. And he might have heard an even more
bizarre sound.

Huddled in the rain, facing an angular stone, a dripping figure was bent over, hard at work. Muffled by
the pouring water that sluiced down, the figure was chipping at something.

The sound, that of a hammer on a chisel, was low.

It is doubtful that even if it hadn't been raining, the sound would have been heard ten feet away. As it
was, the sound died as it was born.
 CHAPTER III
TEETERING as he walked along the edge of the fence, Bobby Crossen wondered why the days just
before vacation seemed so long. His books balanced precariously on his head, he walked the railing
pretending that he was the great, fearless tight rope walker, Don Daring... now there was a man. He
remembered sitting in the circus holding his breath watching the man walk that rope way up high in the
top of the circus tent. Last year, it had been, yet he remembered exactly how Daring had looked. Why
couldn't he remember his school lessons that well?

He put the horrid thought of school out of his mind, even though the school faced him at the end of the
railing he was walking. The rain was drying everything off. He wondered if maybe... suppose the rain
hadn't stopped this morning... suppose the rain hadn't stopped for forty days and forty nights like the time
Noah had to build that big boat. Would he have had to go to school anyhow?

He was at the end of the railing. Arms outstretched to give him balance, he had come to face with his
fate. There was the school. He looked at it and sighed. Even if it hadda rained for forty days, he thought,
they'd a had a school on the boat.

He jumped down to the wet grass. Sure, there'd been a school on the ark. And his teacher would have
been there. He thought, scowling with concentration that twisted his young face, on the boat he wouldn't
have been able ever to give his teacher the slip. How can you play hookey on a boat?

He grinned. Maybe it was better it hadn't rained for forty days. One thing left to do, only one thing and
then he'd have to walk across the street to school. He took out his handkerchief and spit on it.