"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 173 - Death's Harlequin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

and lifted her upward. Again the trigger of his strange weapon jerked.

Number One stepped away from the puff of brownish vapor and watched Jane Purdy
collapse. She was not dead, but unconscious.

It was her silvered fingernails that interested the corpselike intruder in the Harlequin suit.
Producing a tiny bottle from Jane's handbag, Number One dissolved swiftly the coating of
silver that covered the girl's long, tapering nails.
The result was startling. On each of the nails, except two, a tiny face had been drawn with
what looked like indelible black ink. The two other nails held initials.

Eight faces and two initials from the alphabet formed what was evidently a code. A cunning
message that had escaped even the keen, resourceful search of the Secret Service matron
at F.B.I. headquarters.

The tiny pictured heads were crude. They were the sort a child might draw. But with the aid
of a code book, Number One had no difficulty deciphering the message.

Jane Purdy had carried her own death warrant from the beauty shop! For the message
read:
This girl is traitor. Advise immediate death. V. M. Suspicious.
"V. M.," of course, was Vic Marquette. Number One didn't care about him. He had a
profound contempt for the government Secret Service. They hadn't even been able to
prevent his own personal vengeance on a traitorous agent.

Very carefully, he removed the indelible marks from Jane's unconscious fingers. He used a
greenish paste that dissolved the queer markings and left the nails smooth and natural.

Number One was now ready for a horrible and cold-blooded double murder. But he had no
intention of letting the Washington police suspect murder when they found the remains of his
two victims.
The spy picked up a short steel bar from the shadowy corner where he had waited unseen
for his victims. It was not an ordinary bar. The steel was covered with a soft layer of black
felt.

A single blow of this soundless weapon killed Jane Purdy. It struck an inch or two below the
base of her skull and broke her spine. Walter Roscoe died in the same swift fashion as he
lay in a drugged sprawl on the floor. It was the most cowardly kind of murder, but the shrill
giggle from the thin lips of Number One showed that he enjoyed it.

He moved with catlike strides to the telephone and called a private number not listed in the
Washington directory. Vic Marquette would have been interested in that number. It was a
wire that led to a soundproof room in the fashionable beauty shop run by Madame Alyce.
The voice of Number One uttered a crisply brief message: "Special order! Admit no more
preferred customers until further notice!"

His voice was metallic, utterly unlike the one which Jane Purdy and Walter Roscoe had
heard. Evidently Number One was a master of tone control.

Swiftly, he consulted a notebook, then called a second number. There was a bit of