"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 231 - Garden of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Outside, the sun had completely set. Save for that lamp in the study, the house was filled with darkness.
Under the lamplight, The Shadow watched a full five minutes. There was no change in the color scheme
of the doll that he had substituted. Its skirt remained blue.

Turning out the lamp, The Shadow left the unimpaired doll on the desk. Retaining the package, with its
black-skirted evidence, he returned downstairs. He opened the front door, tested it, to find that its
automatic latch was set.

Dusk was thick across the front lawn, but birds were chirping busily from high tree branches. Those
sounds drowned voices that came from the curb beyond the front walk.

Just as The Shadow caught the human murmurs, someone turned on a searchlight from a car. The brilliant
glow raked the walk and found the front door as its target.

In that instant, The Shadow was swinging the door shut as he wheeled back into the gloom of the front
hall. He was quick enough to hide himself, but arrivals saw the door slam. There were shouts, echoed
from about the house.

New arrivals had snared The Shadow within the silent house of doom!

CHAPTER II. THE VANISHED PROWLER
WITH his slam of the front door, The Shadow blocked the invaders coming from the walk, but from their
yells, he knew they'd come smashing through windows to reach him. Whoever the arrivals were, The
Shadow couldn't afford to let them grab him, or even get a real impression as to his identity.

His only course was to play the fugitive, so swiftly and effectively that his trappers would be mystified as
well as unsuccessful. With that aim in mind, The Shadow cut through darkness for the nearest and most
logical outlet: the route through the sun porch.

It was blocked before he reached it. The door came smashing inward, and The Shadow, wheeling back
across the living room, was almost spotted by the glare of flashlights. He caught glimpses of uniforms and
knew immediately what must have happened.

Two factors, quite unrelated, were responsible for The Shadow's present predicament.

First: the telephone off the hook in Bendleton's study. The central operator must have worried about it
and called the police. Second, The Shadow's inspection of the study wasn't quite over when the police
arrived. They'd seen the light go off and had promptly surrounded the house, sure that something was
amiss.

At this hour, with dusk actually at hand, the gloom of the mansion's interior was noticeable on sight. One
light, going off, with none to replace it, smacked of a prowler. Though the police expected to find a
burglar, rather than a murderer, they'd class a fugitive as both - should they capture him.

Such wouldn't help The Shadow's own investigation of Bendleton's strange death. But he wasn't planning
to be captured. The invading police would have to see him first, and he didn't intend to let them manage
even that.

A pair of officers, springing into the living room, saw curtains swishing from the farther doorway, marking