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

that he was backing Pharco. Mr. Kelburn did the same, and actually threatened
me, once, in the presence of Mr. Aldriff, if I betrayed them to the Magnax
Corp."
It took both Weston and Cardona to quiet Joan after she heard Nevlin's
little speech, and the glares the girl gave the secretary actually worried
Nevlin. In one breath, he lost the spunk he had displayed earlier.
"You see?" queried Nevlin, turning to Weston. "She knows, commissioner!
My
life isn't safe while Kelburn is at large! I'm not a brave man." Nevlin's tone
was pitiful. "I wasn't a hero this evening. I knew that Kelburn would kill me,
because I knew what was in that box. I had to yank the light cord. It was my
only chance!
"I'd like to get away from here, commissioner" - the pint-sized secretary
was darting looks at the door, as though expecting Kelburn to appear - "and be
somewhere safer!"
"Go upstairs and pack," ordered Weston. "You can go into town with me,
Nevlin. Meanwhile, I shall talk to the servants. I want you to come with me,
Miss Kelburn."
Dulther and Sigby decided to go along, too, and took it that Cranston was
coming, for he followed them as far as the reception hall. There, Cranston
paused.
Alone, he smiled, and a soft laugh came to his lips. It was a weird tone,
heard by his own ears alone, and it had a sinister throb. An echo from the
recent past, that laugh of The Shadow.
Cranston's eyes gazed upstairs, where Nevlin had gone. They returned to
the
door of Aldriff's den, that room whose sealed door had been under The Shadow's
own surveillance. If anyone should have testified that Aldriff's death was
suicide, that witness was The Shadow.
Again, the keen eyes changed direction, as though weighing Nevlin, the
living secretary, against Aldriff, the dead employer. Then, gazing afar, as if
into the past, Cranston thrust his hands deep in his pockets and strolled
toward
the room of doom itself.
That distant gaze was another weighing process. The Shadow was balancing
the scales double. On one side he was placing Dulther and Sigby, the big men
of
Magnax; on the other, Smead Kelburn, the missing promoter, and his loyal
niece,
Joan.
Lamont Cranston could have phrased his opinion, The Shadow's, in a single
word, as had Joe Cardona. But a stronger word than suicide was needed to give
The Shadow's answer to the death of Arthur Aldriff!


CHAPTER V

THE WRONG GUESS
 INSPECTOR JOE CARDONA rubbed the back of his neck, wondering what was
wrong