"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 195 - The Spy Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Obligingly, Kelly stepped into his car. Darr joined him; they rode from the grounds, the guard's uniform
serving as their passport. They swung from the bleak area where the concrete walls of the factory
squatted like a white ghost in the dusk. They passed the low, corrugated buildings that served as
bunkhouses for the workmen.

Ahead were scattered lightsтАФthe border of a little town adjacent to the factory. As a member of the
office staff, James Darr rated quarters in a town house.

Half a mile brought them to the old-fashioned cottage where Darr lived. By then, the dusk had really
thickened. Honest Kelly didn't see the grin on Darr's face when the secretary hopped from the car.

Hurrying in through a gloomy, deserted hall, Darr sped upstairs and unlocked the door of a rear room. It
was a cozy room, already lighted by a crackling fire in the open fireplace. Many of the Apex employees
would have regarded that room as a prize, but Darr considered it a nuisance.

He preferred rooms with steam heat, and therefore regarded his present quarters as unbearable.
Chucking logs on the fire was too much effort, even though Darr kept them handy beside the hearth,
instead of in the large wood box that occupied an alcove past the fireplace.

At present, however, Darr had no complaint. He was thinking of other things; of an opportunity that
would bring sufficient reward for him to drop his hated job with the Apex Co.

How much Darr hated his job was evidenced by two empty whiskey bottles lying on the desk. There
were other bottles, too, that had once contained ginger ale; half a dozen of them, tossed in odd places.
Darr had a habit of using rye highballs to amplify the warmth from the log fire.

The expense sheets were in the desk drawer. Darr bundled them into his coat pocket. Removal of those
sheets revealed an odd-shaped instrument that looked like wooden lazy tongs.

The thing was a pantograph, an adjustable device used by draftsmen for copying plans. Its great
advantage was the fact that it could produce tracings on a different scale than the originals.

Already set to the gauge that Darr wanted, the pantograph was ready for immediate use. He clamped it
to the desk; using thumb tacks, he affixed a three-inch square of paper beneath a pencil-bearing joint of
the pantograph. Opening the envelope that he had stolen from the plant, Darr thumbed through sheets of
plans, found the one that he wanted.

Holding the plan flat with his hand, Darr gripped another pencil, set vertically in the end of the pantograph
arm. He began to trace the plan, carefully and steadily. Under the glow of a desk damp that he had
lighted the effect was almost uncanny.

The pencil that Darr was using had no point, for he did not went to leave evidence that the plan-sheet had
been traced. But the other pencilтАФat the spot where the links joinedтАФwas inscribing every detail, in
miniature style, upon the three-inch square of paper!

DARR'S eyes were darting back and forth from the plan-sheet that he traced to the paper on which it
was being automatically reproduced. But his eyes, nervous in their movements, were not the only ones
that viewed the process.
Hard, cold, were the other eyes that watched. Eyes that peered from the slightly lifted lid of the big wood