"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 320 - Reign of Terror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

One of them said, "I'll go check on the coffins."

The porter said, "What's to check? The stiffs are all set, the turnscrews are in place, all you clucks gotta
do is stand around looking like dummies while the bereaved come in for a peek." He laughed to himself.
The young man, without a word left the room.

The other one posed in the front door where anyone going by would be bound to see how well dressed
he was. He held his hands at the binding that ran down along the side of his striped pants.

Severe as he looked he jumped when a voice came booming from the back of the funeral parlor. The
voice was yelling, "Mr. Corbaccio! C'mere! Hurry!"

Corbaccio slammed the door of his office open. He was angry. He said, "How many times I tell all you
fools to keep your voices down? What if somebody goes by and hears yellin' in here? What they gonna
think?"

He didn't stop muttering till he was in the back of the place and saw what the young man was making all
the fuss about. The young man pointed to two coffins.

Resting on top of the coffins, hands folded on their chests, were two men whom Corbaccio knew.

He said under his breath, "Dios mio! Larry... and Barrels! Wait'll he hears about this!"

The young man stammered, "They're dead, Mr. Corbaccio." He gulped, "They've been shot... for a
minute I thought... I had some crazy thought that our two customers had gotten out of their caskets... but
these are fresh. And they've been shot!"

Looking more closely Corbaccio saw that there was not a doubt in the world that Larry and Barrels had
been shot.

Someone once said that if the average man could come to life he would be a monster. This is probably
true since the average man is only possible statistically. However, the man who lounged in front of the
candy and cigar store across the street from Corbaccio's Funeral Parlor came very close to being the
stereotype of averageness. He was so completely ordinary looking, so grey almost, that he seemed to
blend into the background no matter where he was. Of all the people who had walked down the busy
street in the last half hour, not one had wasted a glance on him. He had bought a paper and dawdled
over looking through the want ads. Then he had ordered a two cent glass of seltzer.

He was just finishing it when he saw the door of the funeral home across the street open. He finished his
glass, and went into the candy store. There were only two phone booths in the store. He entered one.

That meant that when Corbaccio came into the store he had to use the remaining one. He slammed the
door behind him.

The extremely ordinary looking man in the first phone booth didn't have long to wait. Corbaccio's
message was brief, whatever it was.

Corbaccio hard heeled his way back out of the store. As soon as he was gone the man in the first booth
dialed a number. It was answered instantly.