Shadow 304 - Alibi Trail 06-01-46, The by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Street and Smith
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

THE man in the little room was very busy with his work. The little room was a dark room and his work consisted in examining a developed photographic plate. A single light was shining just above his head and he was very pleased with the negative that he held between his hands.

That negative showed Brenda Van Dolphe in the startled pose that she had struck just after her arrival at the Long Island air field.

The man who surveyed the picture with a satisfied chuckle was Russ Wilbert, the photographer who had so recently phoned Brenda, to offer her first opportunity to buy this exclusive camera shot.

To Wilbert’s credit it needed to be said that blackmail was not part and parcel of his business. Any national magazine would be pleased to publish this shot as the picture of the week and that was why Wilbert had taken it. But the emphasis which the newspapers had placed upon a mysterious camera man, the fact that even the possession of the picture might run him into complications with the law, had induced Wilbert to phone the Van Dolphe manse and offer the exclusive at what he regarded as top price.

There was another reason for Wilbert’s chuckle. If the police had been going to ask him questions, they would have done so quite a while ago. For Russ Wilbert rated among the top-notchers in his profession. A thorough checking of last night’s assignments among the photographic elite, would have proven that Wilbert had been in no place specially and therefore could have been the mysterious camera man of the air field.

However, having foreseen that, Russ had faked an out of town job. He’d chosen Chicago for its locale, hence he couldn’t have returned to New York by this time. Except that he hadn’t left New York at all.

So the police, if looking for anyone, were probably scouting out a lot of small-time camera fans. They certainly hadn’t been around this neighborhood, because Russ had been looking for them whenever he went out to eat. Only once had anybody noticed him sneaking back into his apartment house and the man in question certainly couldn’t have been a detective.

However they disguised themselves, New York detectives wouldn’t go in for fancy chauffeur uniforms. The man that Russ had seen was wearing that sort of regalia and had probably been looking for another address in the block.

Such were Wilbert’s thoughts at what was to prove the most crucial moment in his life. That moment arrived as the photographer held the plate to the light. It didn’t occur to Wilbert that there might be even the slightest connection between the girl in the photograph and the chauffeur who had been around this neighborhood. Wilbert hadn’t the slightest notion of what was to happen.

When it happened, it happened swiftly.

A gun spoke sharply, its echoes loud within the confines of the little dark room. Those echoes were accompanied by the tinkling clatter of glass.

Wilbert, for the moment, was looking at space.

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