"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 243 - Room of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

other
as they reached the next yard.
While the servants were surrounding something imaginary, The Shadow sped
back to the house.


HE didn't expect the masked man to be loose, but supposed that if he had
managed a lucky escape, he would flee by the front door of the sun porch. For
if
he knew the vestibule route, the marauder should have used it in the first
place. So The Shadow rounded toward the front of the house, where he heard
shouts coming from arriving cars.
People were dashing in through the front door; others, seeing where they
went, turned and came The Shadow's way. Apparently, the masked man had broken
free and fled through the vestibule, after all, having the luck go out just at
the time when The Shadow was heading to the front of the house.
Reversing his course, The Shadow saw people flooding the side lawn,
spearing in many directions.
There were crashes from the hedge and shouts from the other side. On the
chance that they meant something, The Shadow plunged through. He heard yells
from his former foemen, the servants. They were running toward a car parked by
an old empty house next door.
A man was standing beside the car; he sprang into it, slammed the door,
and
started the motor, turning on the lights with the same action.
The servants jumped on the running board, and with them sprang a very
disheveled girl, whose sleeve was dangling from her arm as she made grabs, not
at the driver of the car but at the men who wanted to stop him.
The car was spurting forward. One servant lost his footing; another was
dragged from the running board by Joan. The third clung on, blocking any shots
The Shadow might have loosed, until the car went out through a driveway in a
hedge where the branches brushed the servant off.
It was a deep driveway, ruining The Shadow's chances of shots at the
tires
of the fleeing ear. Shots, moreover, would have produced trouble for The
Shadow
himself, considering that he was practically surrounded at the moment. He
heard
cars starting out in pursuit of the fugitive, so he left the chase to others.
Prepared to make his own departure, The Shadow paused near the hedge,
long
enough to hear the accusations that the servants threw at Joan when they were
bringing her back with them to the house.
They had recognized the man in the car, and they knew that she had, too.
The sobs that Joan choked back were just part of her useless denials.
The man last seen in flight from the next door driveway was Aldriff's
partner in swindle; otherwise, Joan's uncle, Smead Kelburn.


CHAPTER IV