"Shadow - Back Pages - 370515 - The Kid Faces Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

From: The Shadow, Treasure Trail, 5/15/37

THE KID FACES DEATH
By Steve Fisher

The shoe-shine kid takes another lesson in crime-detecting and bags a
murderer!


"Slug" O'Donnel leaned back in his chair, took a toothpick out of his mouth
and pointed it.
"Danny," he said, "I promised you that time the Hindu kept you locked in his
closet that I'd give you a break on another case sometime. Now that was a rash
statement, made in a moment of ЧofЧ"
"Of gratitude," Mike Ryan, his redfaced detective partner, came in dryly.
"Yes," Slug O'Donnel went onЧ"of gratitude. You must know, Danny, that
tipping off kids like you on big crimes, no matter how smart the kids are or how
lucky they are in turning up a valuable clue now and then, is, to say the least,
highly irregular. If the chief found out, your friend, Mike Ryan, and I might get
bounced out of the homicide squad like a couple of duck eggs out of a hen's
nest!"
The twelve-year-old shoe-shine boy's eyes became a trifle troubled. He
shifted the shine kit to his other shoulder, turned his checkered cap around and
around in his hands. He had red hair, freckles, and frank blue eyes; and he had
been featured in several cases with Slug O'Donnel and Mike Ryan, where he had
been able to spot clues that aided them in making important arrests.
"What are you driving at, Slug?" he asked.
Mike .Ryan lighted a short stogy and puffed on it. "Kid, what he's really
driving at is that he wants you to do us a favor, and count that as the break he
promised you."
"That's not true, Mike!" Slug roared. "IЧ"
"Sure it is," Mike Ryan interrupted. He shoved his derby back on his head.
"You see, there's a guy down on Third Avenue, a merchant, who claims his life
has been threatened. He hasn't any notes, or anything like that. Just claims that
some one is going to try and murder him, and won't tell us who, outside of the
fact that it'll probably be a woman.
"The chief thinks he's screwy. Says we can't throw a ring of police protection
around every half-baked guy who asks for it. I'm inclined to agree with the chief.
This guyЧhis name is HudsonЧ refuses to cooperate with us beyond telling us
that he's going to be bumped off."
"That's it, Danny," Slug said, "that's the whole story. Only, I interviewed the
guy, and I was convinced that he was sincere. Naturally, a couple of detective
sergeants like me and Ryan can't hang around a store waiting for murder to
happen; especially when the chief doesn't sanction it. ButЧif anything should
happen, we'd like to get a quick tip on it."
Danny sighed, his eyes shining. "I see; you want me to go down into that
district and hang around shining shoes and keeping my eyes open. If anybody
suspicious come around, I should tell you. If Hudson gets murdered, I should get
you on the phone right away. Is that it?"
"That's it," O'Donnel and Ryan chorused.