"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 285 - Fountain of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

"He wants to talk to me." Johnny's gaze turned toward a heavy oak door which was the entrance to
Claybourne's private smoking room.
"So I'm giving him his chance."

"His chance?"

"Yes, because I know he won't come through." A grit of Johnny's teeth amplified the glint in his eye.
"Forget and forgive; that's Claybourne's motto. He forgets the wrongs he did you and forgives you for
those you didn't do him. I'm going in there to prove it."

"And then?"

Johnny staged the clam act, instantly. He watched Margo coldly until her look of curiosity faded; then, as
if changing the subject, he asked, smilingly:

"Did you see my girl in blue?"

"No blue jobs under forty," replied Margo, with a head-shake. "Would any of them do?"

"Not according to specifications," said Johnny. "Perhaps I'm too ambitious, or maybe I just played a
hunch for the fun of it. Maybe I'll meet her somewhere else."

As Johnny turned to the smoking room, Margo's vigil ended for the time. Cranston had disappeared into
that same room, half an hour before, along with the pair of smoothies he was watching, so the Johnny
proposition could now be his as well.

Johnny was really quite a proposition.

In Claybourne's ornate smoking room, Cranston had just completed one of the most interesting
half-hours that he had ever spent. He had watched two first-rate swindlers operate in reverse, with a
speed that was almost breathless.

Either Sheffield Gilbin and Artemus Borgand had reformed through too much contact with society, or
Cranston had done them an injustice in branding them con men. They had talked themselves into buying
exactly fifty thousand dollars worth of very doubtful stock which Claybourne was anxious to unload in
what he considered ethical if not honest fashion.

Wealth was something that Claybourne exuded, therefore he could speak disparagingly of it, having an
overabundance. But when Claybourne belittled a stock, he was actually giving a sales-talk. Any stock
that wasn't due for an immediate jump seemed a disappointment to Claybourne, whose thirst for wealth
was chronic.

Gilbin and Borgand were willing to wait; in fact quite eager if they had a sure thing in hand. In asking
Claybourne if Southern Sugar was a good buy, they kept answering each other's questions, always in the
affirmative, until they closed the deal themselves, with Borgand signing a check to complete it.

They merely overlooked the obvious.

To Cranston, it was very obvious that Claybourne wouldn't be keeping anything but worthless stock in an