"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 117 - Vengeance Is Mine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

hurl. The splintered humidor rammed the door edge squarely at the spot where
the gun projected.
The gun half jolted from his hand, the killer had no chance for new aim
while The Shadow remained within his immediate range of fire. By the time he
had wedged the door farther open, to jab his gun deeper in the room, The
Shadow
had reached the wall switch with a long, accurate dive. The killer caught a
flash of swirling blackness; then the room was plunged into darkness.
Leaping from the fire exit, the man with the gun blazed three shots for
the wall switch. Silence followed the gun bursts. With a muttered oath, the
killer produced a flashlight and flicked its rays on the wall. He was moving
forward as he used the light.
He stopped short; this time, snarled words in Spanish came spontaneously
from his lips. It was not his usual language, for his mutters had been in
English. Evidently, this hardened killer reserved a Spanish epithet for times
when he experienced total surprise.
The space below the wall switch was vacant. No black-cloaked figure lay
upon the floor. The Shadow had not stopped his swift swirl when he reached
that
point. He had faded farther in the darkness, toward a spot of safety.
The killer had supposed that The Shadow, if still alive, would fire in
return. That guess was wrong. The Shadow had tricked his enemy; and with
double
purpose. First, to bring the man from his spot of security behind the fire
door;
second, to produce a hand-to-hand struggle in which the assassin could be
captured alive. For The Shadow was positive that this man was the one who had
delivered the bomb to Zanwood. The rogue formed a direct link to the unknown
master crook who had plotted Zanwood's murder.


BEFORE the startled marksman could realize how fully he had been tricked,
The Shadow surged upon him from the darkness. The flashlight was extinguished
as it skimmed across the floor. The killer's wild swing of the pistol was met
by the clashing return stroke from one of The Shadow's automatics. Sledging
hard, The Shadow drove the pistol from the assassin's grasp.
The fighters locked. In the darkness, The Shadow recognized that he had
met a powerful grappler. The man was big, but wiry despite his size. His
shoulders were not broad in proportion to his height, and he had a way of
shifting them to elude The Shadow's clutch. The big man's mistake was in not
recognizing this grapple as a mere preliminary. He did not guess that The
Shadow was shifting him into position for a jujutsu hold.
The right time came. Tense in the darkness, both strugglers seemed equal;
but The Shadow was ready to give the big man a long hoist through the air. The
fellow's snarls in English, with occasional words of Spanish, seemed of little
help to him. They aided, however, without the big man knowing it. Those
mouthed
words covered a sound from the outer door.
That door swung open suddenly - even without The Shadow expecting it. In
from the doorway came a husky man of middleweight proportions, his face