"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 234 - Temple of Crime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

In this case, he had delegated Margo Lane as proxy. However, Margo was confident upon one point:
namely, that since Cranston wasn't a participant in this weird parade, he would be somewhere in the
offing, as The Shadow.

Such thoughts curbed Margo's fear. Each time she spied a fantastic figure vanishing amid the poplars, she
regarded it as friendly, not hostile. Still, she didn't like to people the grove with many shadows when she
was thinking in terms of only one: The Shadow. So Margo set her eyes straight ahead and kept steady
pace with the torch bearers who accompanied the procession.

Poplar leaves were whispering louder; with their welcome they seemed to lisp that there would be no
turning back. New thoughts gripped Margo, and they didn't comfort her. She was worried, even though
sure that The Shadow was near.

The Cult of Ammon!

It had all seemed quite silly, when Margo first joined it. Along with two dozen others, she had come to
the great mansion owned by Amru Monak, the very wealthy and extremely modern Egyptian who
claimed to be a direct descendant of the ancient pharaohs.

True, Monak liked to talk of the past and dwell upon the marvels of ancient Egypt, the land of his
ancestors; but not until lately had he let such subjects take full control of him. It had all come about when
Monak bought the Temple of Ammon, at a price of half a million dollars, and had set it up in this poplar
grove, which was located on his large, high-walled estate.

A famous edifice, the Ammon temple. Unearthed from the Egyptian sand dunes, it had first been bought
by Uriah Keldon, a business magnate whose profits from railways, steamships, mines, and oil, had gone
into the purchase of fabulous art treasures, valued at many millions. Upon Keldon's death, the treasures
had been placed on the auction block, the Ammon temple among them.

Long ago, the temple had been taken apart, block by block, and brought to America, there to languish in
a warehouse, until Keldon would decide to erect it again, something that he had never done.

Having bought the temple from the Keldon estate, Amru Monak had promptly ordered it to be
assembled, and while the artisans were at work, Monak had struck upon the idea of forming an Ammon
Cult to revive the ancient rituals once held within the temple.

Quite intriguing, but very absurd, and it had reached its height tonight. Like the other members of the cult,
Margo had retired early, to be wakened a half-hour before dawn. Then, for the first time, she had attired
herself in the ancient Egyptian garb of sandals, skirt, and sleeveless tunic, all of white. She had joined the
others, to find the women similarly arrayed, while the men were clad in long white robes.

THEY had begun their march, these faithful, with Amru Monak at their head, and now, within the grove
of whispering poplars, the parade had lost all semblance of a farce. It had become something very
solemn, gripping the participants with awe. Slow, steady steps along the tree-shrouded path were
carrying Margo and her companions centuries into the past.

No longer were they treading the ground of a modern estate not many miles from New York City. They
were tramping the soil of a sacred grove near the ancient city of Elephantine, in Egypt, Land of the Nile.
All that was needed to complete the illusion was sight of some landmark belonging to antiquity. It came
as they reached a clearing in the grove.