"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 011 - Double Z" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

face.

"Why do you think I am Tolland?" the man asked suddenly.

"I know you are!" declared the reporter. "Judge Harvey Tolland disappeared fourteen months ago. Foul
play was the story for a while, but I never figured you were dead. Now, why are you here?"

The positiveness in the reporter's voice was convincing. Had the other man been less anxious, he might
have realized that the Wise Owl was bluffing. Caulkins watched him keenly, waiting expectantly for the
reply.

It came. The older man pointed to a chair.

"Sit down," he said, in a hopeless tone. "There's no use in my trying to deceive you any longer. You are
right. I am Judge Harvey Tolland."

Caulkins dropped into the chair with a broad, triumphant grin. His quest of fourteen months was ended.
The greatest story of the year was in the bag. He had found the missing man, whose strange
disappearance had remained unsolved!

He watched intently as the tall judge strode across the room and unlocked a table drawer. Tolland
removed a paper from the drawer and thrust it into the reporter's hands.

"You have asked me a question," he said grimly. "You want to know why I disappeared. There is the
answer!"

Caulkins hastily unfolded the paper. He scanned the written lines that appeared upon it. Suddenly, his
hands began to tremble.

The older man, now calm, watched him grimly. The reporter's eyes were fascinated. They had completed
the reading of the message; they were staring at the cryptic signature that appeared beneath it.

Then Caulkins uttered his startled exclamation in words that were gasped through trembling lips.

"A threat from Double Z!"

CHAPTER II. OVER THE WIRE
NEVER was a man more dumfounded than was Joel Caulkins of the Classic, after he had read the note
shown to him by Judge Harvey Tolland. The fact that the older man was now calmly surveying him from
an opposite chair did not ease his perturbed mind.

For the cryptic name of Double Z spelled fiendish horror. It was a title coined from the strange signature
of a fanatic whose connection with a series of murders had terrorized New York and bewildered the
police.

Caulkins, with his inside knowledge of detective investigations, knew of the menace that lay behind that
strange signature. He had been shown other notes signed by Double Z, and not for an instant did he
doubt the authenticity of this one.

The two letters appeared side by side, one a half line lower than the other, so close together that they