"035 (B071) - Murder Mirage (1936-01) - Laurence Donovan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Now thunder cracked and rolled. Lightning played with lurid lashing over the tops of cloud-scraping buildings. Between these flashes, the building fronts took on a greenish glow.
Doc halted in front of one window of the music store. Brushing aside the new fall of snow, he picked up a woman's chain-mesh purse. His fingers touched the cold metal of a small automatic pistol.
He held the purse and the pistol in his hands.
"The initials are S. F.," he stated, pointing to the silvered lettering on the side of the purse. He flicked one of several cards from a case inside the purse.
"Lady Sathyra Fotheran," he read aloud.
"Blast it!" howled Monk. "Y' mean them alley buzzards got the lady? Lookit, Doc!"
Doc Savage already had seen what now brought a long gasp from Monk. Monk was scooping up a pair of earrings and a costly wrist watch.
"Must have stripped the woman of her jewelry and then dropped it when the cop started pluggin' at them," observed Ham. "Here's one of her rings."
He had discovered the diamond ring glittering in the snow near the curb.
"I think not," stated the Man of Bronze. "Notice the peculiar light. It's in the snow. It's stronger in the diamond than anywhere else."
The fluorescent glow still lingered over the street. The scene was almost like that of a brilliantly painted stage. It was as if a strong phosphorescent substance, perhaps a special sulphide of zinc, had been spread over everything.
Again the trilling sound filled the space around them. Only in a moment of greatest stress did this emanate from Doc. And the man of bronze was standing motionless. His eyes had followed the focusing point of the strange glow in the street.
"Howlin' calamities!" squawked Monk. "Danged if I believe what I'm seem'! Ham, do you see it? There in the window?"
"You are seeing it, Monk," stated Doc. "Rather you are seeing her."
AN "el" train had rumbled to a stop. Several persons came down the stairway. Police sirens wailed from two directions. The first squad car hooted into the block and the driver picked out Doc's group in front of the music store as a point to stop.
Detective Inspector Carnahan was red-faced and choleric. Followed by four men, he sprang out in the snow. A minute later, he was bellowing orders.
"Ring in the block! It's Slim Decarro and Creeper Hogan of that cursed Jano gang! They got one of the boys! There's been a mob rubout here! HiyaЧso you're here, Savage? What brought you into this, or is this just one of them funny accidents?"
The red-faced inspector confronted the Man of Bronze.
"It wasn't any accident," said Doc, calmly.
"Then what do you know about this?" demanded Carnahan. "Who was them Jano killers out to get? An' how did it happen they left them rats in the street? I thought we had this rubout stuff about cleaned up."
"It wasn't a mob feud, inspector," said the bronze man quietly. "It was the murder of a woman."
"A woman! What woman?" barked Carnahan. "Where is she?"
"Right there," pointed Doc. "In the glass of that window."
"In the glassЧa murdered womanЧsa-ay! You must've been eatin' nuts this time for sure!" howled the inspector, the blood boiling his face to the color of a beet. "Whadda you thinkЧwell, for Pete's sake! O'Malley, Connors, come here!"
Detectives O'Malley and Connors made dry, clucking noises in their throats. Their eyes bugged and they edged closer.
"By all the saints!" gasped one. "It's nothin' but a picture!"
It might indeed have been only a picture. If so, it was most extraordinary shadowgraphing. In the thick plate glass, a woman appeared to be walking. The form was more of a silhouette, black in color. It lacked the highlights of a photograph.
But it was life-size, as if the woman's body had been flattened and merged with the glass. One slim arm was extended upward, in the position of warding off a blow or some threatened danger.
Inspector Carnahan rubbed his hand dubiously over the glass. The surface was smooth, unmarred.
"Get that door open!" he rapped out. "Bust the lock or smash the window, but get in! We'll see about this nutty stuff! Savage, you stick around! I'll wanta talk to you!"
Carnahan seemed to be one of New York's few detective inspectors with lack of wholesome respect for Doc Savage's reputation. It happened this was the choleric Mr. Carnahan's first contact with the man of bronze.
When the lock was pried loose and Carnahan himself had crawled into the display window, the inspector discovered he had not progressed in the least. The inside of the plate glass was as smooth as the outside.
"But sure, an' there's a woman there, an' she ain't never been in that window before," asserted Detective O'Malley. "I was in the shop only yesterday afternoon, buyin' my boy a mouth harp. An' the glass was as clean as a hound's tooth!"
Inspector Carnahan was far from pacified. He again confronted Doc Savage.
"That loony picture in the window don't mean a thing, Savage. Now why do you think a woman was bumped off? Where is this woman? Where is the corpus delicti?"
"
You'll never need to seek farther than this window, inspector," the man of bronze declared, solemnly. "In that glass, as plain as you'll ever see, is your corpus delicti."
Chapter III. MEN OF DARK FACES
THE skin of Inspector Carnahan's face resembled a blown-up toy balloon, inflated to the bursting point.
"O'Malley! Connors!" he barked. "You keep guard on that crazy window while I get some more men! An' I'm puttin' out the alarm for Whitey Jano! I thought that mug had dropped this strong-arm stuff an' got himself into the upper tiers!"
Inspector Carnahan meant by that it was his belief "Whitey" Jano had become a crook of a little higher order. His record showed he had been brought in twice, charged with forms of extortion that savored of a shrewd confidence game. And Whitey Jano had moved from a hangout on the lower East Side to a luxurious penthouse in the vicinity of Central Park.
While Inspector Carnahan was concentrating his puzzled attention on the window of the murder shadow, Doc Savage had unobtrusively slipped into the small yellow coupщ. He was careful not to disturb the cushions of the wide single seat.
From a small vial taken from an inner pocket, the bronze man sprinkled a grayish chemical powder. This covered the seat from side to side. Almost instantly, the plush of the cushions took on a curious yellow glow. This was the nap of the thick plush slowly coming back to place after having been compressed.
This informed Doc that two persons had occupied the small car. A small inside plate told him the coupщ was a rented car. Checking on the owner, the man of bronze swung back to the street.
Crossing the street, Doc followed the curb to the corner by the "el." He returned slowly along the curb in front of the music store. Now he knew there had been two cars, besides the coupщ, on the scene at the time of the woman's murder.
Monk and Ham were still giving their attention to the window of the shadow. Doc slipped between them.
"Stick here," he directed. "Don't let anything happen to that glass. The police are not likely to find anything except the bodies in the street. Stay here until the deputy medical examiner decides what to do about the picture."
DOC'S movement away from the small crowd now collected around the window was unobserved by Inspector Carnahan. The bronze man glided into the nearest alleyway. His immediate goal was the public phone booth from which the frantic voice of a woman had called. He knew the call must have been almost coincident with the shootings and the murder.
Just before he emerged into the adjoining street, Doc halted abruptly in the darkness of the alley. Directly across the street was the black mouth of the continuing alley. Across this gloomy space, some lighter shadows had suddenly passed.
There were several figures. They could have been ghosts, judging from the noiselessness of their movement and their color. The figures seemed to be clothed in white sheets. Doc glimpsed the red tail-light of a car farther in the alley.