"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 226 - The Blur" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

expecting him, and dealt with him as planned. But they weren't expecting The Shadow.

With a long spring across the falling lookout, he came like a black cyclone into the midst of the
murderous tribe and the faltering men who struggled against them.

The blobby light helped The Shadow even more than his foeman. Though he couldn't see their faces well
enough to recognize them, they couldn't see him at all. He used his guns as cudgels, jarring men right and
left, in order to get at their chief, the blur-faced murderer who was starting into Tex's office with the bag
of cash.

BY then, the fray had reached Terry Radnor. Until it did, Terry had been too bewildered to take a hand;
but now he saw his opportunity.

He could tell the killer by the bag the man carried, and he made a grab for him. They locked, and as they
spun about, Terry heard a snarl in his ear. It was much like the voice that had told him to take the note to
Tex. It hadn't lost any of its disguise, but it was ugly instead of persuasive. The snarl was the blurred
man's call for his helpers to free him from a troublesome antagonist.

Hands gripped Terry in the unreal light. He wrested free from them with a roundabout twist. Encountering
a driving figure, he thought he had again found the killer. He was wrong. Terry had found The Shadow.

Swung hard, a gun skimmed past Terry's ear and landed heavily against his shoulder. The Shadow's
stroke only increased Terry's delusion that he had gripped the foe he wanted, and he tightened his clutch.
Hurled backward, Terry bounced hard against the wall beside the office door, and as he reeled, partly
losing his hold on the fighter in black, something cold pressed against his neck.

Luckily for Terry, The Shadow caught the glint of the object in the flickery light. It was a gun, that either
the blur-faced killer or an equally indistinguishable subordinate was shoving Terry's way.

These murderers had finished Tex and the lookout; now, it was to be Terry's turn, for he was the only
remaining man who might furnish damaging information concerning certain persons among the casino's
clientele.

The Shadow did not have to analyze that set-up. It was enough that Terry was threatened by one of the
escaping crew. Swiping another blow past Terry's face, The Shadow struck the gun, and the hand that
held it, so forcibly that their owner took a side stagger through the office door.

It was Terry who didn't recognize the situation. He made another lunge at The Shadow, and instead of
grappling with an adversary who had previously out-clinched him, he used his fists. Terry was hitting
hard, though blindly, and The Shadow had to wheel away to ward off the attack.

Other mistaken fighters fell upon him. They were the rallied croupiers. The Shadow went down in the
midst of a pile of men.

Exultant, Terry thought that he had settled one member of the murderous tribe. He figured, too, that he
was capable of doing it, not knowing that his life had been saved by the very fighter that he had so
foolishly attacked.

Knowing that killers had dived into Tex's office, Terry went after them. Lights was blinking in the office,
too, but in the intermittent glare, Terry made out a yawning block of blackness on the far side of the