"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 047 - The Black Falcon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

in response. The Shadow's bullets, aimed a few feet above the wall, had clipped these ruffians while they
aimed and had dropped them wounded.

The others had flung themselves upon the floor. They were unscathed; but they had lost the opportunity
to deliver a quick response. After the lights went out, they rose to fire at the steel door.

Bullets zimmed against the barrier. The four racketeers in the cardroom joined in the shooting. Men
surged forward through the gloom. A cry came to end the fire. A man pressed the switch by the steel
door.

Where every eye expected to see the crumpled form of a black-cloaked figure, there was no one in
view! The Shadow had pressed the switch that opened the steel door. He had left as the volley of shots
had begun. All had been foiled, for there had been no light from the anteroom to show that the door had
opened.

The answer was discovered when some one slid away the barrier. The lights in the anteroom were out.
Steve and Mac, the guards, were lying gagged upon the floor. They were released; Steve pointed to the
outer door of steel.

"I heard the ring," he explained. "I looked through the peephole. There wasn't no one there. I opened the
sliding door; then he got me."
"Same here," grunted Mac. "I heard a rap. I thought it was Steve. Then I was yanked out as soon as I
opened the door. The lights were out."

"It was The Shadow," gasped Steve, in an awed tone. "I seen him, but Mac didn't. He grabbed both of
us. But he put the lights out here before he knocked for Mac."

Foiled crooks stood disgruntled. Pursuit was too late. To seek The Shadow was the last deed that any
one intended. None cared to risk a new encounter with that fierce fighter of the night who had invaded
this stronghold alone to deliver deserved death to Rowdy Kirshing.

WHILE the baffled men of crime lingered in their stronghold, a trim coupe rolled to a stop on a side
street near Times Square. Black-gloved hands came from darkness. They showed in the dim glow from
the sidewalk.

Keen eyes surveyed a packet that rested between those hands. It was the stack of crinkly bills that The
Shadow had taken from Rowdy Kirshing. The eyes now saw the strange marking that adorned the paper
strip about the packet.

A black feather! This was the only symbol of the person who had paid Rowdy Kirshing, big shot
racketeer, a price for service. That marking, as yet, was the single clew to the man behind some insidious
game of crime.

A soft, echoing laugh came from hidden lips as the eyes of The Shadow identified the species of the
plume. That bit of evidence denoted a bird of prey.

It was the feather of a falcon-dyed black!

CHAPTER III. CRIME FOREWARNED.
A BLACK feather!