"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 094 - Castle of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

closely, then?"

"Your face is the same," expressed the officer, slowly, with a deliberate nod of his head. "Quite the same,
sir, except for one difference."

"And what is that?"

"Your paleness. Once you mentioned it, sir, I realized the truth of it. Had I been asked to choose which
one of you had come from Bombay, I would have picked the previous gentleman."

"How was he dressed?"

"In the best Bond Street fashion, sir."

"Indeed. I suppose he was on his way to some club?"

"He was, sir. Quite swanky with his light-gray topcoat, his bowler and his walking stick."

"Ah! A walking stick!" The man in the khaki coat took up a bantering mood. "I fancy that he carries it
quite rakishly, as though ready to cane any bounder who might disturb his passage."

The bobby had no reply. The description was so perfect that he again stood dumbfounded, able only to
nod.

"And, of course, he was going to his club," resumed the young man from the fog.

The bobby found words.

"Yes, sir. The Acropolis Club."

"That was it, sir," added the second bobby. "There was another man also going to the Acropolis Club;
but he passed by a trifle afterward. He was an American."

"And did he look like me also?"

"Not at all, sir."

The young man laughed heartily, while both bobbies smiled. Then, with a slight click of his heels, the
wayfarer gave a friendly half salute. With that, he strolled away into the fog.

TRAMPING footsteps faded as the bobbies resumed their beat. Crime had been a false alarm tonight.
The wave of robbery that had been discussed was rightly classed as something of the past. Yet crime had
not been banished from London.

It hovered still, as menacing as the fog; and, singularly, that first bobby at the corner had come in contact
with three men whom crime would soon concern. Grim events would involve those Englishmen who
looked alike; the swanky Londoner and his double back from India.

Into that same picture would come the man who had appeared between; the American who had been
directed to the place that the other two appeared to know more perfectly - the Acropolis Club near St.