"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 317 - Ten Glass Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

was a new identity, a mustache, colored glasses, a stooped walk, the new name, when all the time that
harsh face was somewhere in the environs?

It had all seemed so simple at first. Maybe it always looked simple. Perhaps the Greeks were right,
perhaps you did carry your fate inside you.

The door opened on the fifth floor. The car was now almost empty. He walked out of it just as if he were
a carefree shopper. Ahead lay what? Materially there was a floor full of phonographs and radios. Two
record players were going full blast as though in competition. One was playing Beethoven's Ninth... and
the other? The young man scowled as he tried to get the beat of it.

What was it? "Get out of Town"... That was too apt. It was like a corny clue in a bad play.

If only he could get out of town. If he could vanish off the face of the earth for a while it would help. If he
could... his brain stopped working. Coming up the escalator, face set, eyes incurious, was the face of his
fate.

The man had been trailing him for... it seemed like forever. Really it was only two days. Forty-eight
hours. Two days in which he had neither slept, nor barely eaten.

The harsh-faced man seemed not even to notice his quarry. He looked around. He made a small grimace
at the warring sounds that came from the rival phonographs. To the naked eye he could have been a
shopper.

The young man, looking around desperately for some kind of exit, caught a distorted reflection of his own
face in a highly polished piano top. Could that be his face? That gaunt, lined thing?

He was young, barely twenty-eight, but the face that leered at him looked like a middle-aged, haggard
man with the worries of the world on his shoulders.

It was time for a showdown. The whole thing would not be half as nerve-wracking if he could be sure
that his trailer was a detective. But would a detective have given him so much leeway? Why had he not
been arrested two days back? Why was the man just following him?

His face lightened. He looked younger. He'd call the bluff of the other man! He darted forward right past
the tall thin man. He jumped on to the handrail of the escalator.

All his life he had wanted to slide down a long banister. Here was his opportunity. He smiled a gay,
devil-may-care grin and slid out of view of his nemesis.

It caused quite a sensation. He came rocketing down the banister from the radio phonograph floor down
to the floor which was devoted to baby things. Young mothers and old looked up as the kiting figure
came crashing into view. He landed on his feet and darted for a closing elevator door.

Ah, he thought, this was the way to do it. He was having some fun for his money. He ran into the elevator
and smiled as the doors came together. Let his trailer top that!

But a sudden thought wiped the smile off his face. He had gambled with the fates. Gambled to see if the
man would call for help, blow a police whistle, show in one way or another whether or not he was a
detective.