"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 006 - The Death Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Less than two months before, Lloyd Harriman had committed suicide in Florida. Like Seth Wilkinson,
Harriman had been a friend of Horace Chatham. One tabloid screamed this fact in lurid headlines.

Had Horace Chatham been concerned in Lloyd Harriman's death? Had Harriman committed suicide,
orтАФ

The question stopped there, but the inference was plain.

Perhaps Chatham had killed Harriman also. Braved by one successful murder, he would have possessed
the nerve to kill another man.

But even the tabloid restrained from making further imputation.

THREE days had gone by, without a trace of Horace Chatham. Yet the hue and cry still persisted.

Perhaps the hectic columns that told of the Wilkinson murder were becoming tiresome to the public at
large; but to one man, they were most enjoyable. This individual sat at his desk in a small office on
Forty-eighth Street, with piles of newspaper clippings in front of him, and smiled as he ran his scissors
through the pages of the afternoon newspapers.

The reversed letters on the glass door of the office proclaimed his name and occupation:

CLYDE BURKE

Clipping Bureau

Burke finished his search through the newspapers, then sat back in his chair, and lighted his pipe. He
seemed well contented with life.

Burke was a man not yet thirty years of age, but his firm, well-molded features indicated long experience.
He was light in weight, almost frail in build; yet his eyes and his face showed a determination found in men
who seek action.

One would have supposed that Burke, through keen imagination, found an outlet for his natural desire of
action by visualizing the events that he read as he clipped newspapers.

Even now, it was evident that he was putting together the items of the Wilkinson murder; that his keen
mind was formulating firm opinions. In fact, he was so engrossed with thought that he did not see the
door of the office open.

He started suddenly as he realized that another man was in the room. When he recognized his visitor, he
scrambled to his feet with an exclamation of surprise.

"Mr. Clarendon!"

The man whom Burke addressed stood silent and smiling. Yet his smile was as strange as his
appearance.

He was tall and wiry, with slightly stooped shoulders. His white hands had long, slender fingers, with