"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 260 - The Money Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

came to the final bill.

"This note for Ten Tarka." Bert leaned close to the clerk's ear. "Mr. Brune said it was something extra
special. A lot of cash, Ten Tarka, but he needs it all at once. You understandтАФ"

Taking the bill, the clerk held it to the light and nodded. In a tone quite as confidential as Bert's, he
declared:

"One minute, please."

Bert threw a grin at Emmart as the clerk stepped through a doorway to a rear room. Emmart saw the
joke and remarked that the clerk had a sense of humor, too. They could hear him speaking to someone
about opening the safe. Clever of the clerk to carry the gag along. It would be a good laugh all around
when he returned with thirty cents.

The thing was even funnier when the clerk arrived, solemnly bringing a flat suitcase, which he handed
across the counter. His expression was more solemn than before, so Bert and Emmart kept straight
faces, too, as they accepted the suitcase and bowed themselves out of the office.

Bert carried the bag while Emmart picked up the cash box on the stairs. At the street door, Bert nudged
across the way.

"Let's have a drink over at that bar," suggested Bert. "I'll count our thirty cents while you're finishing your
report."

They entered the tap room and found a corner booth. Bert told Emmart to open the cash box, to receive
the thirty cents that was probably all in pennies. Therewith, Bert unclamped the suitcase and dumped it,
saying:

"I'll bet the guy stuffed it with old newspapers."

The suitcase was stuffed, but not with newspapers. Bundles of bills hit the table in a heap. This wasn't
foreign currency, it was good United States currency, crisp notes wrapped in paper bands that didn't
hide the denominations. The figures that showed on the green bills said one thousand dollars and the
paper bands were marked fifty to a stack.

Twenty of those bundles, as Bert and Emmart learned when they feverishly pawed them. As for the bills
that they thumbed in disbelief, there were fifty in each stack, as the bands declared. Staring at each other
like men in a dream, the two men settled back from the pile of green. This was a jest no longer.

In return for Brune's mystery note that bore the value of Ten Tarka, Bert Cowder and Gregg Emmart
had received the cash total of one million dollars!

CHAPTER IV. THREE MOVES AHEAD
ONE million dollars!

Crisp notes valued at a thousand dollars each, a full thousand of them, stacked in tight bundles that filled
a suitcase. Paid across an old counter in an unimposing upstairs office, by a drab-faced man who looked
like a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk.