"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 318 - The Television Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

solution? Did you pick Homer as the killer? If you did, tune in next week and
match wits with Dorry. If you didn't, maybe you'll get better as we go along!
This has been a presentation of television station WBRRGX. (Organ sting up and
out.)


Lamont Cranston threw the script down on the table. So that's the way it
was supposed to have gone... instead... Cranston remembered the night, cold,
blustery, when he had walked into a little side street bar.
He had let the drink warm his insides before he looked around; even then
he didn't notice the television screen particularly. The playlet had been half
over when he had looked at the screen. The men in the bar were quiet. They
gave
the screen their undivided attention. There was nothing much else to do. It
was
cold out, warm in, the bar was almost deserted. The bartender had a hangover
and didn't want to talk. That left only the television screen perched up on
top
of a telephone booth.
At first, as the cocktail party proceeded on the screen, the men made
cracks about the female stars. But then, as the actors got going, they wiped
out the illusion of beings on a screen. They became real.
The bar was quiet. It got even quieter as the gloved hand came through
the
slit of the door. There was a circle of flame in mid-air. The bark of the
revolver when it went off made everyone jump.
Cranston blinked unbelievingly as on the black and white of the screen he
saw black blood spurt from the actor's head who played the part of Mannix.
Mannix fell forward into the fireplace. Cranston stared as he saw that
Mannix had fallen face forward into the burning logs. Something was wrong.
That
was no prop fire, it was real.
The door of the set opened and from the side, as though coming from
nowhere, a nervous looking, thin, febrile man with scanty hair and a bristling
moustache, ran onto the scene. He said, "Holy cow! He's dead!"
The actor who stepped through the door was the one who played Bob Dorry.
He said, "Cary... what the hell are you doing on the set? Are we cut off the
air?"
"Oh, my God no... we're not!" Larry, he's dead! He was really shot! His
brains are all over the fireplace!"
At that, but only then, the screen went blank.
The men in the bar looked at each other incredulously. The bartender,
hangover forgotten, said, "Say, do you really think?"
One of the men, cynical, narrow faced, said, "Nah... it's another one of
them Orson Welles, man-from-Mars things!"
Throwing money on the bar, Cranston left hurriedly. That had been no
hoax.
No living man would have thrown his face into a burning fire. No indeed...
besides, they didn't swear over the air... not if they could help it.