"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 105 - The Yellow Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

disobeyed a command.

The motor rumbled. The murderer's killers were on the verge of flight. The Shadow pressed the light
switch. In total darkness, he sprang toward the window, hurdling Dynoth's collapsed body. Gripping the
window frame with his left hand, The Shadow leaned out into the blanketing night.

He saw the death car, a low-slung coupe, starting along the side street, rearward from Dynoth's house.
Eyes glinting, The Shadow aimed. The range was short; his firm hand was about to deliver devastating
bullets. Punctured tires; a riddled gas tank - such possibilities were certainties to The Shadow.

Assassins who knew the secret of the Yellow Door were at The Shadow's mercy. One second more -
they would have been trapped in a crippled coupe. A short time interval; but it was not sufficient.

As The Shadow's finger squeezed the trigger of the .45, a splitting, thunderous blast quaked from below.
With an upheaving roar, the entire house seemed to lift itself from the ground. The window frame
shuddered, crackled sidewise. The Shadow was spun upward like a figure of straw.

Flames of the explosion swept upward from the depths. The boom of The Shadow's gun was puny, lost
in the terrific blast that shook the neighborhood. The flash that tongued, unaimed, from the automatic was
no more than a spark compared with the broad streaks of flame that spread upward, outward, as
dynamite shattered floors, walls and roof.

The shudder that followed the explosion was featured by falling ruins, by volumes of smoke that
enveloped the scene of disaster. The Shadow, the only living person in the house, was stunned, shaken,
hurled helpless and incapable by the blast.

The lights of the house were instantly extinguished. The room vanished. Dynoth's body was gone. Walls
had heaved outward; the roof had scaled upward; then, as after-effect, all settled back. Tumbling,
pouring, the fragments of the building collapsed inward to become a smoldering pit wherein dust and
smoke mingled to produce a grayish cloud amid the darkness.

INSTINCT alone saved The Shadow. Had he been at the door of Dynoth's room, he would have gone
down into the pit, for the floor had split to swallow everything that was actually in the room itself. The
Shadow, however, had been at the one spot that afforded safety.

Like a mammoth, clutching hand, the sucking intake of returning air had almost swept The Shadow
downward. All that held him was his grip upon the window frame. His gun was gone from his right hand;
instinctively, he clamped that fist along with the left. The window frame had cracked; but it formed a
partial structure as it loosened from the shattered wall.

Debris, smashing downward, was deflected. Lighter than the crumbling stone, the woodwork about the
window did not recover from the outward force of the explosion. Instead of rolling inward to the pit
where death was certain, it scaled downward, flopping crazily, to strike the ground just beyond the fringe
of the outer wall.

With it went The Shadow, twisted about, clamped in the broken frame itself. The frame struck on a
corner; it broke apart and sprawled its burden on the turf. Fragments of ruined shutters, masses of
splintered shingles came pouring down upon The Shadow's outstretched shape.

A stone from the falling chimney hurtled freakishly and struck the ground five inches from The Shadow's