"020 (B026) - Death in Silver (1934-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Shaky and pallid, Clarence Sparks backed from the door. He had overheard too much for his peace of mind. He was in the same boat with the young man who was fishing for minnows and caught a shark.



The fact that Clarence Sparks was backing away from the door undoubtedly saved his life.



There was a cataclysmic crash. The door of Winthrop's private office exploded to fragments. The whole partition wall caved. Part of the ceiling came thundering down.



Forty stories below, on the street, an ear-splitting crack of sound caused people to look up. It was like the lash of a stupendous thunderbolt. After one glance upward, the pedestrians cried out in terror and began to run.



A cloud of bricks, mortar and twisted steel was falling down the side of the skyscraper, giving at first the impression that the whole great building was coming to pieces. A moment later, to those farther up the street, it was evident that a great cavity had been blown in the side of the fog-piercing edifice.



Debris fell to the sidewalk with a great uproar. Three parked cars, fortunately unoccupied, were crushed, and a prowling taxicab was partially wrecked. The driver of the hack, slightly cut and bruised, got out and ran, squawling that there had been an earthquake.



Following the fall of the debris, there was a brittle jangling of dropping glass all over the neighborhood, for windows had been blown out by the blast. Numerous people were cut; others had narrow escapes.



Then came several moments of almost complete silence. The quiet was so complete that the droning of an airplane over the near-by river could be heard; then, as the plane swept away, there was the sound of a motor boat, also on the river.



The presence of the plane and the motor boat on the river at that particular instant came to the attention of a number of persons, and was later to become a fact of significance.



The tension following the explosion snapped. Women screeched and had hysterics. More stoic souls peered up in the fog and observed the yawning hole in the side of the skyscraper where the private office of Paine L. Winthrop had been. Policemen came running, and ambulance sirens wailed. Bedlam reigned.







Chapter 2



THE ARCHER IN SILVER