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

"The chap was skittish," Cranston claimed. "Do you know, just before he
went upstairs I spoke to him while his back was turned, and he jumped as
though
I'd pressed a gun against him. I believe he'd have drawn his own gun, right
then, if he'd had it.
"That's probably why he brought the revolver from his room. His nerves
were
so on edge that he would have fired at shadows. Why, the servants told me that
he was shooting at nothing when the cab drove away! They even caught the fever
and went grabbing for someone they thought they saw. Someone who just wasn't
there to grab!"
Joan gave a grateful smile. Cranston's opinions helped the statements she
had made. Then other men were coming into the house, to report that they
hadn't
caught Nevlin. His cab had slipped them, as it had when Kelburn was its
passenger.
Twenty minutes later the cab, itself, returned. Demble, the driver, came
shakily into the house and reported. Nevlin had spotted a local train stopping
at a little suburban station and had jumped from the cab to take it. The train
had pulled out before Demble could do anything about it.
Cardona put in a call to the Pennsylvania Station, only to learn that the
Long Island local had arrived there and discharged its passengers.
While Cardona was grousing, because Demble's information had come too
late,
the telephone rang. Answering it, Joe listened intently, then turned to the
others and exclaimed:
"It's Nevlin!"


IT was Nevlin, all right, but the fellow wouldn't listen to reason, not
even when Commissioner Weston got on the wire to cajole him. Weston ended with
words that had the tone of threats, whereupon Nevlin must have hung up at the
other end, for the commissioner very angrily slammed the telephone on the
table.
"From the way the fool talks," asserted Weston, "you would think the
devil
was after him! He's afraid of Kelburn, afraid of Joan, even afraid of himself,
I'd say. He talks of imaginary enemies, and says he can't count on us to
protect
him. He wants to hide, so I suppose the best plan is to let him. He'll show up
later, on his own."
"After we find Kelburn, he will," put in Cardona. "That ought to end his
worries."
"He may reappear sooner," observed Dulther. "You know, I think that
Nevlin
felt that he had spoken out of turn."
"When he admitted knowing of the transactions between Kelburn and
Aldriff,"
agreed Sigby, with a nod. "It might brand him as a party to the swindle they
perpetrated."