Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 159 - The Dead Who Lived

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THE DEAD WHO LIVED
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. CRIME SERVES ITSELF
? CHAPTER II. THE SECOND THRUST
? CHAPTER III. LINKS TO CRIME
? CHAPTER IV. DEATH BRINGS A TRAIL
? CHAPTER V. THE TRAP THAT TURNED
? CHAPTER VI. DEATH DEFERRED
? CHAPTER VII. CROOKS TAKE COVER
? CHAPTER VIII. CRIME'S PURPOSE
? CHAPTER IX. THE SHADOW'S VISIT
? CHAPTER X. THE CROSSED TRAIL
? CHAPTER XI. THRUSTS THROUGH THE DARK
? CHAPTER XII. THE PAST LINK
? CHAPTER XIII. THE HOUSE IN THE HILLS
? CHAPTER XIV. FACTS BEHIND CRIME
? CHAPTER XV. BLAST OF DOOM
? CHAPTER XVI. BOSCO'S MISTAKE
? CHAPTER XVII. IN THE HIDE-OUT
? CHAPTER XVIII. THE SHADOW TALKS
? CHAPTER XIX. IN THE TEST ROOM
? CHAPTER XX. LIVING AND DEAD
? CHAPTER XXI. THE DEAD RETURN
CHAPTER I. CRIME SERVES ITSELF
A FRAIL, droopy-faced man was seated near the window of his hotel room writing a letter. At moments
he paused, a sly smile on his small lips, a gleam in his birdlike eyes. During those intervals, he stroked his
fingers through his thin, gray-streaked hair.
He finished the letter, applying his signature with a self-important flourish. The name that he wrote was
George Thurnig; and from his manner, he seemed to think that many persons knew that name.
Thurnig was wrong. He was almost unknown, here in New York. Even in Cincinnati, where he hailed
from, he was regarded as important only by persons who purchased automobile accessories at his small
chain of retail stores.
By tomorrow, though, the name of George Thurnig would be heralded throughout the country in a
manner which its owner neither expected nor desired.
At present, Thurnig was complimenting himself upon the letter that he had written. It was to a friend in
Cincinnati, and though cordial in style, it concealed much more than it told. For one thing, it revealed
nothing of Thurnig's present purpose in New York.
That was a matter that Thurnig was keeping strictly to himself and a few other persons, who were also
closemouthed.
The letter that Thurnig had written was limited to brief statements. It mentioned the fact that Thurnig had
been taken ill shortly after his arrival at the New York hotel. Just another case of indigestion, the sort that
frequently troubled him. The house physician had put him on a restricted diet for a few days.
That was ended. Tonight, the doctor had told Thurnig that he could go out, provided that he did not
overeat or over-drink. So Thurnig intended to visit the bright spots, but keep within conservative
bounds.
Sealing the letter, Thurnig addressed it and applied an air-mail stamp. He stepped toward the door and
stopped. He had forgotten something; enough to make him worry for the moment.
Hurrying to an open suitcase, Thurnig pulled a wallet from a deep compartment. The wallet was stuffed
with crisp currency, all in bills of high denominations. Thousand-dollar notes; next five hundreds; finally, a
batch of one-hundred-dollar bills. They totaled twenty thousand dollars, and the full sum was in the
wallet.
Thurnig's smile showed his relief.
The droopy-faced man carried the wallet in his hip pocket when he went out into the corridor to post his
letter. All the way to the mail chute, he kept up quick side-glances with his birdlike eyes. Carrying twenty
thousand dollars in cash was enough to make any man cautious, thought Thurnig.
Even though his better judgment told him that he was safe, Thurnig almost expected to see silent doors
pop open, to find himself covered by dangerous New York mobsters. Nothing of the sort happened.
Apparently, anyone who was after big dough had not been informed that George Thurnig carried it.
THE telephone bell was jangling merrily when Thurnig returned along the corridor. He hurried into his
room, locked the door and bolted it. When he answered the call, Thurnig recognized the voice across the
wire.
"Hello..." Thurnig's eyes showed pleasure, but his lips, close-set, told that he was too canny to mention
names. "I had hoped to hear from you... Yes, I am quite well again. I shall be able to keep the
appointment tomorrow night...
"My illness? Merely indigestion... What? You thought it might be my heart? No, no!" Proudly, Thurnig
thwacked his chest. "Hear that? It's the way the doctor tapped me... Yes, he said my heart was in
excellent condition...
"Yes, fit as a fiddle - that describes me. So I am going out tonight... Yes, sir, as soon as my tuxedo
comes up from the valet... Of course, I shall be careful of myself. Thanks a lot, for giving me a call."
Thurnig hung up the receiver; he paced to the window. Propping his elbows there, he studied the glow of
Times Square, with its flicker of big electric signs. That distant glare meant life, excitement, the sort that
Thurnig wanted. He was fit to enjoy it; to have a real fling in Manhattan.
Thurnig's lips pursed to form a smile of anticipation, that was not to be realized.
He must have been staring from the window for a full ten minutes, when a short rap sounded outside his
door. For an instant, Thurnig was startled; he waited for the knock to be repeated. When silence
persisted, he decided that it was the valet.
He went to the door, opened it cautiously. He saw no one when he peered into the corridor. It was then
that he remembered the Servidor. Stepping back into the room, he locked the door again.
The Servidor was a simple and useful device that Thurnig had found in many hotels. The door, with its big
bulge, had two panels, with a space between. The outside panel could be unlocked by hotel employees,
to pick up or leave laundry or clothes. The inner panel was controlled by the guest within the room.
Thanks to these doors within doors, the employees stayed out of the rooms, and that pleased Thurnig.
He was a bit absent-minded; apt to forget important matters, even the twenty thousand dollars that was
so important to him. Remembering the money at this moment, Thurnig pulled the wallet from his hip, to
lay it in the suitcase.
Returning to the door, he opened his side of the Servidor, expecting to find his pressed tuxedo.
Instead of the suit, Thurnig saw an upright box made of metal. It was wedged in the Servidor; from its
top came a wire that was hooked to the panel that Thurnig had just opened. The wire actuated a shutter
device in the top of the metal box.
Thurnig saw the shutter slide open. He heard its click; heard the hiss that followed it. From the box came
a smoky, yellow vapor that licked lazily toward the man who viewed it. Before Thurnig recovered from
his astoundment, he was choking, coughing, from the effects of a nauseous gas.
The vapor's immediate effect was to stagger him. He wavered, rooted to the spot where he stood. Then
came the instinctive impulse to fight off the gaseous foe, to suppress it as a hideous monster. With a wild
fling of one arm, Thurnig slammed the flapping panel of the Servidor.
But the remedy came too late. The gas tank had delivered its full quota. Enveloped by the yellow cloud,
Thurnig was seized by a frantic desire for air. Clawing as if clutched by a living creature, the man
stumbled toward the window.
Behind him, the gas was dissolving into the air; but that offered no relief. The stuff had done its work;
deep in his lungs, Thurnig could feel its grip. He managed to pry the window upward, to stare downward
into the darkness of the hotel courtyard. Then, his elbows tightened on the sill; slowly, they relaxed.
Thurnig rolled prone upon the floor.
Sounds told that the outer panel of the Servidor was being opened cautiously. There was a muffled
scrape as the gas box was removed; next, a slight thump from the closing outer panel. The evidence was
gone.
SOME minutes later, a valet arrived outside Thurnig's door carrying the expected tuxedo. He inserted the
suit in the Servidor, and knocked. Thurnig did not answer; the valet remained, however, a trifle puzzled.
He expected to hear Thurnig take the tuxedo at once, for the guest had specified that he would be in his
room to receive it by half past eight. The valet knocked again; finally, he opened the outer panel, to note
that the suit was still there. Closing the Servidor, the valet went to the corridor telephone and called the
desk.
He learned that Mr. Thurnig had not been seen in the lobby. He was told to wait where he was. Soon,
two men arrived; one was the hotel detective, the other the house physician.
"Better unlock the door," the doctor told the dick. "Acute indigestion is serious, and Thurnig may have
had an attack."
They found Thurnig by the open window, sprawled in the very position where he had fallen. The doctor
stooped above him anxiously, listened to his heart.
Thurnig was alive.
"He withstood the attack," declared the physician. "Help me place him on the bed. We should have no
trouble reviving him."
Thurnig did not revive. He lay motionless as ever, after his coat, vest and collar had been removed; no
restorative had the slightest effect upon him. His face was grayish; his breathing came slowly, painfully, in
a ceaseless monotone.
"What is it, doc?" asked the house dick, his own face strained.
"It looks like sleeping sickness," returned the physician. "All the symptoms of trypanosomiasis. And yet" -
the doctor looked around the room suspiciously - "it is strange that it should have come so suddenly. This
case is unusual. This patient must be taken to the hospital at once!"
The physician was still shaking his head when Thurnig was removed to be put in an ambulance. It was the
house detective, standing alone in the room, who had the next suspicion. He even sniffed the air as he
prowled about, but the odor of the yellow gas had departed long ago.
Then came the discovery that ended all suspicion. The dick found Thurnig's wallet, lying in plain view; he
gawked when he saw the bundle of currency. After he had counted the money he called a bellboy,
watched the fellow's eyes bulge.
"From the way the doc was puzzled," said the detective, "I thought maybe something had been done to
Thurnig. But this shows nobody was in it. No crooks would have taken a whack at a guy and left all this
dough loose!"
Crime had served itself, with George Thurnig as the victim. Crime that lay as deeply hidden as the
purpose that inspired it. For that crime had seemingly ignored the very end for which crooks strive: that
of quick, easy profit.
Thurnig's twenty thousand dollars, left untouched, was a smoke screen as effective as the mysterious
yellow vapor that had faded into nothingness.
There was an added element to the mystery of George Thurnig; one that concerned the victim's own
condition. It was summed up by the physician, who was driving alone to the hospital.
"For a moment," muttered the doctor, "I might have pronounced him dead. Yet he is alive - a dead man
who lives."
CHAPTER II. THE SECOND THRUST
THE name of George Thurnig was headlined the next morning. His case closely resembled that baffling
ailment known as sleeping sickness, which always becomes news.
Though physicians refused to make definite statements, the newspapers played up the possibility of an
epidemic. Plenty of New Yorkers failed to enjoy their breakfasts; took cabs to their offices to avoid the
subways, where germs might lurk.
The news wasn't the sort to please the average reader, but there was one man upon whom it had a
remarkable effect.
He was a portly, heavy-jowled individual, who was riding in a cab only because he detested subway
crowds and the exertion of climbing stairs. He was in a taxi when he saw Thurnig's name in the
newspaper.
Instant interest registered on the portly man's flabby face. His eyes, ordinarily small, opened so wide that
they became large. When the cab stopped at an office building, he slapped a bill into the driver's hand
without waiting for change. Showing a surprising burst of speed, the portly man reached the elevator and
wedged through just as the operator was closing the door.
The building was a small one; the elevator slow. The portly man chafed until he reached the fifth floor.
Once off the car, he bounded for the door that bore his own name and business:
MARTIN BRELLICK
Homecraft Correspondence Courses
Brellick's suite of offices was not so elaborate as its title implied. The rooms were tiny, and consisted
merely of an outer office and an inner one marked "PRIVATE". Stacked on shelves in the outer office
were sheaves of flimsy pamphlets, each group labeled as a different type of homecraft.
There was one stenographer in the outer office; she was staring, unconcerned, from the window when
Brellick entered. She looked about blankly, for sight of Brellick in a hurry was something unusual.
Brellick didn't stop to say good morning. He pounded into the private office, snatched up a telephone
and clicked at the receiver. When he finally slammed down the instrument in disgust, he saw the
stenographer standing in the doorway, fluffing her peroxide-dyed hair, while her jaw worked at chewing
gum.
"What's the matter with this telephone?" demanded Brellick.
"Out of order," replied the stenographer, in a weary tone. "I've sent for the repair men."
"Take a letter," snapped Brellick. "No - make it a telegram."
The girl shrugged her shoulders, went back to her desk to obtain a telegraph blank. The correspondence
course man followed.
"To the Apex Loan Company," began Brellick. "Will need ten thousand dollars -"
Brellick paused, suddenly opened the telephone book, to look up other names. The stenographer looked
at him as though she thought him crazy.
"You got that loan, Mr. Brellick," she began. "Don't you remember? The bank said you could have it, last
week."
"I need ten thousand more."
"But you already have it! You said you had ten thousand to begin with -"
Brellick glowered an interruption.
"My finances are my business," he declared, testily. "But since you seem to think they are yours as well, I
might as well make it plain. I wanted twenty thousand dollars. I had ten thousand to begin with, so I
arranged to borrow ten thousand. Is that clear?"
The girl nodded.
"And now I want to borrow ten thousand more," continued Brellick. "What does that mean?"
The stenographer's jaw slackened.
"You want thirty thousand!" she exclaimed.
"Bright girl!" rejoined Brellick. "Yes, I want thirty thousand dollars. The deal I'm going into may be larger
than I expected. A friend of mine" - Brellick chuckled deeply - "may be dropping out of it!"
THE telephone repair man arrived in the outer office. Brellick decided to let the telegram go, hoping that
the phone would soon be available. The repair man started testing the wire in the outer office. Brellick
retired to his inner office; he was there when the stenographer ushered in a dry-faced man who carried a
doctor's satchel. Brellick recognized him.
"Hello, doctor!" said the portly man. "You're the medical examiner from the Southeastern Mutual, aren't
you?"
The physician nodded; he began to unpack a stethoscope.
"Some mistake," remarked Brellick. "I haven't applied for any more life insurance."
The doctor, himself, looked puzzled. Then:
"This must be a special examination," he declared. "Possibly to learn if you are entitled to preferred class
rates. I received word to come here."
"Go ahead with it, then," grumbled Brellick. "I'm handcuffed, anyway, until they get the telephone fixed."
The doctor completed the examination. Brellick walked out through the outer office, chatting with him.
Tapping his heart, the portly man remarked:
"So the old ticker's all right, eh, doc?"
"Excellent!" returned the physician. "Particularly for a man of your weight."
In the hallway was a listener - a man in overalls. Brellick took him to be the repair man's assistant. It was
after Brellick had returned to his inner office that the fellow entered, to speak to the stenographer.
"There's a phone call for Mr. Brellick," he said. "In the pay booth back of the drug store downstairs.
Whoever is calling says it's important."
The man in overalls was gone when Brellick came pouncing out of the inner office, after the stenographer
had relayed the message. He hurried to the elevator and went to the street floor. He had to go into the
next building to reach the passage that led beyond the drug store. There, in a dingy corner, Brellick found
the telephone booth.
The door of the booth was open; the telephone receiver was hanging loose. Brellick gathered it up, gave
a quick "Hello" into the mouthpiece. He heard a voice that he recognized, and promptly pulled the door
shut. The automatic light did not work. Brellick was in darkness, as he talked.
"I know," Brellick spoke rapidly. "I saw the news only a short while ago... Yes, I figure I can take half of
Thurnig's share... By tonight, of course..."
Cloudiness was creeping down toward Brellick's head. He couldn't hear the hiss that caused it until he
hung the receiver on its hook. Even then, the sizzle sounded feeble, for Brellick was conscious of
something far more horrible.
A yellow cloud was all about him, choking, forcing him to gasps that he tried to resist. He was sickened
by an odor that he could not identify. He saw the door of the booth so hazily that all outside was dim.
Wildly, Brellick found the handle of the door; he tugged, with no result. It wasn't until the hissing ceased
that the door suddenly yielded to his yank. By that time, it was too late. Brellick reeled drunkenly from
the telephone booth.
BEHIND the portly man, the yellow gas issued like a ghostly figure from the confines of the booth. It
wavered; its coils looked like fantastic clutching arms. That was only momentary. As Brellick staggered
away, the air of the passage absorbed the weird vapor. The cloudiness faded; the odor vanished with it.
Brellick was staggering for the open exit to the street. He was puffing clear air as he went, but it served
only to increase his stumbles. He was having the same after effect that Thurnig had experienced. Like the
previous victim, Brellick was fighting to reach the open.
He was on the sidewalk when he caved. Passers saw the long, hopeless sprawl that he took. A crowd
gathered; by the time an officer arrived, they were lugging Brellick into the drug store.
First-aid measures didn't seem to help. Stretched on an improvised bench of soda fountain chairs,
Brellick lay in a fixed stupor, his breathing heavy, slow, as though each effort would be his last.
Those who stood near were riveted. Those long gasps were like the slow ticks of a clock, coming in
endless procession, until their very monotony made them seem a certainty.
An ambulance arrived; Brellick was started for the hospital. Druggist and policeman scarcely heard the
whine of the ambulance's departing siren.
They were still counting those long, deep sighs that had come from the throat of Martin Brellick.
Within another hour, the big presses of the evening newspapers were grinding out early editions of
another sensational story. The dread malady of sleeping sickness had struck again, as suddenly as before.
The second victim was not an out-of-towner, like George Thurnig. He was a New Yorker, Martin
Brellick, who had been in Manhattan constantly for the past month.
It happened that photographs of both victims were available. Those pictures were rushed to press, and
for a caption, a quick-witted editor coined a phrase that aptly described the state of the men concerned.
The caption read: "Dead Men Who Live."
Both cases, however, were classed as the result of a growing epidemic. The possibility of crime was too
remote to be considered. The cases were outside the ordinary realm of police investigation, precisely as a
master criminal had intended that they should be.
Perhaps that master mind had overlooked the fact that in New York, there dwelt a being who could
scent crime where others believed that it did not exist.
That personage was one whose power was feared throughout the underworld, though crooks had never
learned his identity. Crimeland knew that being only as The Shadow.
And The Shadow, alone, could solve the riddle of the Dead Who Lived!
CHAPTER III. LINKS TO CRIME
THAT afternoon, a visitor stood in the hotel room where George Thurnig had collapsed the night before.
The stranger was tall; leisurely of manner. His calm face was masklike, and the contours of his features
gave him a hawkish air.
As he smoked a thin cigar, the visitor strolled idly about the room. He paused at the window, to stare
indifferently toward the sky line of Manhattan. He stopped at a table to flick cigar ashes into a tray.
Choosing an easy-chair, he sat there smoking in the patient manner of a person who is bored; but too
polite to show it.
All the while, however, that visitor had been busy. His eyes, seemingly idle, had taken in every feature of
the room. He had noted the writing desk where Thurnig had last been seated. He had checked on the
position of the telephone. He had even examined the window sill, near which the victim had been found.
A serious-faced young man stepped into the room. He had a brisk, professional manner. Methodically,
he remarked:
"I shall be ready very soon, Mr. Cranston. If you can wait a few minutes longer -"
"Quite all right, Doctor Sayre," Cranston spoke from his chair. "I am in no hurry to leave."
Sayre left. Cranston arose; he stopped to relight his cigar close beside the door of a clothes closet. That
door was partly open. Cranston reached through, tugged a light cord. His eyes showed a keen glint as
they studied the interior of the closet.
Thurnig's tuxedo was hanging there. Cranston's hand probed the pockets, then extinguished the light.
His survey of the room was complete. Nowhere had this visitor uncovered a clue that indicated crime.
Cranston's eyes, though, were fixed upon a final spot that could scarcely be called a portion of the room.
That spot was the Servidor in the door to the corridor.
The door was ajar. Stepping to it, Cranston was half visible from the hall, as his inside hand opened the
Servidor. He shifted the door slightly; light from the window disclosed the Servidor's interior.
Keen eyes made an instant discovery.
The latch inside the inner door had a tiny plunger that could be pressed downward to set a signal,
indicating when clothes were in the Servidor. That plunger was circled by a small metal clamp; an object
that had no regular purpose.
Cranston tried the plunger. Because of the girding clamp, the plunger did not push to its full depth.
Examining the clamp closely, Cranston noted the glisten of a broken wire. To ordinary observers, the tiny
clamp would have passed notice, for it might have belonged on the plunger.
Cranston was no ordinary observer.
He had found a clue, from which he reconstructed the past. That clue meant the possibility of a
mechanism once set inside the Servidor; a device which, prior to its removal, could have brought ill
fortune to George Thurnig.
SOON, Cranston and Sayre were riding away from the hotel. Presumably, Lamont Cranston, wealthy
New York clubman and world adventurer and traveler, had merely accompanied Doctor Rupert Sayre
on a visit wherein the physician was investigating Thurnig's malady. Sayre was a specialist in the treatment
of rare diseases. It was logical that he should have gone to see the hotel physician.
"Thurnig's case," declared Sayre, "shows marked symptoms of encephalitis lethargica, an affliction to
which the term 'sleeping sickness' has been popularly applied. Quite different from trypanosomiasis, the
African malady carried by the tsetse fly.
"I prefer, however, to reserve a positive diagnosis until we learn if other cases occur. Encephalitis strikes
as an epidemic, although it attacks only a very small portion of the population."
Sayre was thinking deeply, and with good reason. He had met with other strange ailments in the past;
cases in which Cranston had shown interest. Invariably, they had turned out to be of human making:
criminal thrusts covered by the appearance of a disease.
Those cases had been investigated by a mysterious being known as The Shadow. Through them, Sayre
had met Cranston. The physician was sometimes inclined to believe that Lamont Cranston and The
Shadow were identical; at other times, that supposition seemed doubtful.
Certainly, on this occasion, Sayre could visualize The Shadow as the governing force behind the
investigation.
That was to be proven much sooner than Sayre realized.
When the physician had left Cranston's limousine, the big car proceeded to the exclusive Cobalt Club.
There, as Cranston alighted, he heard the shrill cry of a newsboy. Purchasing an evening newspaper,
Cranston read the report of Brellick's collapse.
Had Sayre known of that case, he would have probably pronounced Thurnig to be a sleeping sickness
victim; for here was apparent proof of an epidemic disease. Cranston, however, was armed with other
facts, small though they were.
Behind the case of Martin Brellick, he saw the opposite sort of evidence. To Cranston, it still meant
crime - more subtle, more deadly, than before. A master plotter had foreseen that medical men like
Sayre would be reserving opinion until new victims were reported.
That scheming brain had clinched the matter, by spreading what appeared to be an epidemic. But in
lulling medical investigators, the master crook had provided a new trail for The Shadow.
JUST before five o'clock, Lamont Cranston strolled into the office of Martin Brellick. He placed a brief
case upon a chair, introduced himself as a friend of Brellick's. Soon, he was talking with the gum-chewing
stenographer.
The girl remembered many facts, as she chatted. Somehow, Cranston's even-toned questions brought a
wealth of answers, even though the stenographer did not realize that she was being quizzed. Cranston
merely expressed sympathy for Brellick; expressed hopes that his business would not suffer by his
absence. Those remarks brought results.
"He needed a rest," insisted the stenographer. "He's tucked away ten thousand dollars, Mr. Brellick has.
He owns property, too; that's the security he used to borrow another ten thousand."
"I remember the loan" - Cranston spoke idly, as he gazed from the window into a courtyard - "because
Brellick mentioned it. I wasn't sure, though, that he had managed to raise it."
"Maybe that was the new loan," said the stenographer. "The one he was going after today. Another ten
thousand. Then he was struck - so sudden - just after that doctor from the Southeastern Mutual had said
he was in such fine shape. He must have overexerted himself, that's what."
"Overexerted himself? How?"
"Racing downstairs to answer that telephone call. The phone here was out of order. It was the repair
man's helper who made Mr. Brellick rush there. I'd have told that helper plenty, afterward, but he was
gone."
"Then the telephone was fixed by that time?"
"No. You know what the repair man found? A cut wire. Looked like rats had gnawed it. Took him a
long time to find it, too - working here alone, after the helper left."
Cranston decided to let the girl close the office. He went downstairs in the same elevator with her; but
outside, he turned back, as though he had forgotten something. Dusk was settling; the tiny offices were
dark when Cranston entered with the aid of a skeleton key.
A flashlight glimmered along the baseboard, settled on the spot where the repair man had fixed the
broken wire.
Then, in the gloom, Cranston made some telephone calls. His voice was a brisk, but guarded, tone, quite
unlike his own. He introduced himself under another name; stated that he was calling for Martin Brellick.
From the office of the Southeastern Mutual Company, Cranston learned that there must have been a
mistake, sending the physician to examine Brellick. The doctor was a regular company examiner; but
someone in the office must have given him Brellick's name through error.
When Cranston located the repair man who worked for the telephone company, he learned that the
fellow had not brought a helper. The repair man remembered that a chap in overalls had been hanging
around the hallway, but he had supposed he was the building janitor.
LEAVING Brellick's office, Cranston went to the street. He entered the passage of the adjacent building,
noted that it had a big door, to close it from the street. He had hardly reached the obscure telephone
booth before a man appeared at the outer entrance and began to close the door.
That fellow looked like an actual janitor. Before he locked the door, he came through the passage to
make sure that no one was in it. He did not see Cranston, who had stepped to a corner past the booth.
The janitor extinguished the dim lights. He went out through the street door and locked it behind him. In
the thick darkness, Cranston entered the telephone booth and pulled its door almost shut.
The booth's automatic light did not glow. Using a flashlight, Cranston inspected the top of the booth. He
observed that there was no bulb in the socket; and his keen eyes made other discoveries.
There was a thin, green-taped wire that ran from the door to the top of the booth. Another strand,
difficult to see against the booth's green paint, extended to the side where the door closed. Fastened
there, behind a molding, was a small latch. When Cranston's fingers worked it, the latch slithered
noiselessly toward the door.
If fully closed, that door would have been locked by the mechanism.
Looking upward again, Cranston probed the light socket with the glow of his tiny torch. He saw a disk of
black-painted metal studded with tiny holes. Gripping the socket, he drew it downward. The ceiling of
摘要：

THEDEADWHOLIVEDMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI.CRIMESERVESITSELF?CHAPTERII.THESECONDTHRUST?CHAPTERIII.LINKSTOCRIME?CHAPTERIV.DEATHBRINGSATRAIL?CHAPTERV.THETRAPTHATTURNED?CHAPTERVI.DEATHDEFERRED?CHAPTERVII.CROOKSTAKECOVER?CHAPTERVIII.CRIME'SPURPOSE?...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：74 页 大小：183.03KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

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