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

As before, an officer sighted a fleeting figure and shouted for the others to join the chase. The Shadow
was gone, with a quick dart behind a clump of shrubbery near the rear of the lawn, but the flashlights
showed the bushes waving.

From the other side, The Shadow was weaving a course to a rear corner of the grounds, shaking the
shrubbery as he passed.

Hurrying to cut him off, the pursuers didn't spot the point where he reversed his dash, for The Shadow
was completely out of sight. Picking an opening in the hedge, The Shadow eased through, without a
trace, and located his pursuers by their voices. They had reached the inner corner of the grounds, near a
large apple tree.

On the high branches, The Shadow could see the ruddy fruit against the afterglow of the sky. The apples
were ripe, and there were plenty on the lower branches, too.

Taking Bendleton's cane by the ferrule, The Shadow gave it a long, hard fling across the hedge, landing it
a dozen feet up in the apple tree.
The police heard the cane clatter in the branches. Apples were still pelting them as they arrived beneath
the tree. The cane didn't fall, its hooked handle had caught a branch, where they couldn't see it in the
darkness.

They jumped to the logical theory that the fugitive had climbed the tree, only to slip among the branches.
They were shouting for him to come down, threatening to shoot him if he didn't.

Heading the other way along the lane, The Shadow reached the limousine, which was barely discernible
in the dusk. He was removing his cloak and hat as he silently opened the rear door. Timing his next action
to the shouts that he still could distinguish, The Shadow spoke in Cranston's calm-voiced tone:

"Very well, Stanley. You may return to town."

As Stanley pressed the starter, guns began to spout back by the apple tree. The police were carrying out
their threat against an imaginary fugitive. Shooting up into the branches, they didn't hear the limousine's
starter, nor the smooth purr of the big car's motor.

Headlights, faced the opposite direction, were hidden by the hedge as the limousine rolled away. Finished
with their useless fusillade, the searchers came plunging through the hedge a little later; but, by then, the
limousine's taillights had vanished in the distance.

There was no mirth, however, in the laugh that throbbed from The Shadow's lips as he rode back to
Manhattan in the guise of Cranston. His escape from the police was not an exploit; it was merely a
correction of a mistake.

A mistake which had threatened even the meager evidence from which The Shadow, otherwise Lamont
Cranston, hoped to solve the murder of his friend, Richard Bendleton!

CHAPTER III. A MATTER OF MURDER
IN the well-equipped laboratory that adjoined his sanctum - a place hidden away in the heart of
Manhattan, and known only to The Shadow - The Shadow was making tests with the weather doll that
he had brought from Bendleton's. He was working with sooty scrapings from the chemically treated skirt;
sooty particles that, so far, hadn't yielded their full secret.