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

Cranston saw some guests coming down. "Come along, Margo. It appears to be our privilege to tour the
second floor."

Margo didn't state that she'd already exercised that privilege. Close beside Cranston, she ascended the
grand stairs and gave a gesture toward the left, where a broad doorway showed a lighted picture gallery.

"Most everyone has finished looking at the paintings," said Margo. "Let's go in there, Lamont. We'll have
a chance to talk. I want to tell you about Johnny -"

Apparently Lamont didn't want to hear about Johnny. He was gone, when Margo looked around. It was
rather amazing, that vanish of Cranston's, for it must have covered about thirty feet of the well-lighted
upstairs hall.

Yet it wasn't quite complete. If Margo hadn't spent about two seconds in staring in the wrong direction,
she might have seen the cloak that was sliding over Cranston's shoulders or caught the flip of the slouch
hat that he was placing on his head.

You had to look quickly to spot that transformation, even in the light. Once done, as it now was, all that
remained was moving blackness. When blended with anything resembling darkness, all traces were gone.
Cranston had reached a suitable doorway just before Margo looked that way.

By then there wasn't any Cranston for Margo to see. He had become The Shadow.

CHAPTER VI
THREE to the right... Five to the left... Three to the right...

Johnny Craver was working the combination from memory, from the slip of paper that he'd studied at
intervals during the evening. Tense but steady, Johnny was listening while he worked, listening for any
sounds that might threaten to disturb his task.

Johnny was in Claybourne's trophy room, an extensive apartment near the rear of the third floor. Maybe
Claybourne who could conveniently forget so many things, had forgotten that it was in this very room that
he had once discussed Johnny's pitiful inheritance and had produced the few exhibits that went with it.

Clever of Claybourne to have his wall safe in this room, the last place where anyone would look for it. All
around the walls were trophies of the hunt, not Claybourne's expeditions but those of less grasping
relatives who had wasted time as sportsmen during the last few generations.

There were deer heads, moose antlers, stuffed catamounts and owls, even big fish mounted on plaques.
Interspersed among these dead creatures were the things that had slain them, old rifles, shot-guns, quaint
pistols, bows and arrows, rods and reels, along with a fair quota of harpoons.

All the place needed was the smell of powder and formaldehyde, being a cross between a gun shop and
an animal cemetery. Lacking such odors the room compromised by taking on a ghostly atmosphere from
the light that spread through the high transom to show the wall decorations looming like ghostly shapes..

Glass eyes of deer and moose, the lifelike stares of unblinking owls would have been enough to frighten
an ordinary burglar precipitated into this chamber of horrors. But Johnny was no ordinary burglar. He
had known where to look. Old Claybourne had let his hair down - what hair he had - that night when he
had so sorrowfully brought Johnny here. He'd let his young visitor see the safe behind the elk horns.