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

He walked slowly now. He had lost his second wind, or whatever it was that had sustained him this long.
Ahead was a group of men. Ordinarily, in that other life he had left behind, he would have avoided such a
group. You can see them anywhere. Their social club is the street corner, their reason to be questionable,
their means of livelihood invisible. They were, in short, street hoodlums.

There were four of them. Here was another chance for the fates. If he had crossed the street and avoided
them, then Charley Bates would not have been arrested, and...

But he did not cross the street.

As he walked up to them, one of them who wore glasses said, "Pipe the suit. Costs big bucks. Take him,
Charley."

Charley said, "Well, I got this here date with Mingus, but..."

As the pursued man came abreast of them, the one with the glasses said, "Now."

The one with glasses stepped out and bumped into the man. Charley stepped forward and said out of the
corner of his mouth, "Whyncha watch where ya goin'?"

That was all.

All, except that across the street, a cruising dolly car saw what had happened. A cop in the dolly car
said, "Charley just dipped that character."

The other cop said, "You'd think these crumbs'd learn they can't work in daylight, wouldn't ya?" He
sighed. They got out of the car. The four street loungers saw the cops too late. They started to split. But
one of the cops grabbed Bates.

He grabbed him before he could ditch the leather. This is a fatal mistake for a pickpocket. The cop
shook him the way you would a bad puppy. He ran his hands down Bates body. He found the stolen
wallet.

Holding on to Bates with one hand, he flipped the wallet open. Only then, when he saw the name that
was under the celluloid of the identification card, did he look up and see that the man whose wallet had
been stolen had disappeared.

The cop said, "What a break! There's a three state alarm out for that lad!"

Bates said, "Of all the lousy breaks... I have to lift into a deal like that!"

Through a dirty window two flights up, the man whose wallet had been stolen looked down at the tableau
on the street. He saw the cop look up from his wallet. He saw Bates point at the house into which he had
run.

This really tied it. Now he was lost. His money gone, hidden in a house which he had never seen before,
in a city in which he had never been, with the cops outside, and his trailer... he looked further out the
window. There, perhaps a hundred feet away, was his implacable trailer.

All around him myriad cooking smells smashed in. Garlic and the ghost of eaten garlic was like a live