Shadow 323 - The Magigals Mystery Winter 1949, 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

XII

REGAN REPORTS

SHOOTING stars were throbbing into mighty sunbursts and with them, Lamont Cranston could feel his head swell, then contract, time and again all in monotonous rhythm. Then, through his aching brain, came a slow recollection of what had happened.

Cranston opened his eyes. He saw the silhouette of Chicago’s skyline creeping back to life again, in a light like a dim dawn. Cranston was lying with his head propped on an arm and the portion of the skyline that he saw was so set that it seemed to be within a frame.

There was something wrong with that painted picture. It wasn’t illuminating fast enough. Time might be passing slowly to Cranston’s numbed senses and hazy vision, but he still could gauge it somewhat by his head throbs. Painfully, he counted ten of them, but the light showed no increase.

If something had gone wrong with the Planetarium show, it was all the better. For now Cranston was remembering what had happened in the midst of it, as well as he could remember. Something had come out of somewhere, probably the constellation of Orion the warrior, and had clouted Cranston properly. Now he recalled what it was that hit him, the butt end of a gun.

Cranston could vaguely recollect the stroke as he stared at the dim panorama which represented dawn. Whoever gave the blow must have lost the gun with it, for it had been practically flung at Cranston’s head. Just a wild chance in the darkness, but it was no longer dark here. If Cranston could find that gun, or his own portfolio which contained a brace of automatics!

Half rising, Cranston began to paw around on the chance of finding the missing gun, if missing it were. Realizing that some other person might be planning a similar search, Cranston raised his head wearily. Between himself and skylined light he saw a huddled man slouched in a chair at the next lower level. Something in the fellow’s crouch indicated that he might be planning a surge as soon as the light increased sufficiently. So Cranston decided not to concede that chance.

With a lunge, Cranston reached the huddled man and tried to clamp him in the chair thinking that like all the seats in the auditorium, it would be fixed solidly to the floor. Instead, it was loose. Cranston bowled it over, man and all. They hit the floor together, came up against a wall. By then, the other man was roused and grappling, while Cranston’s senses swam anew. Then they were at grips by the frame through which the skyline showed and a breeze, whipping Cranston’s face, brought back his scattered wits as he looked at the man with whom he struggled.

That man was Regan, the private detective.

This wasn’t the planetarium chamber with its circles of seats. It was Cranston’s own room at the Hotel Harbison. That skyline and the dawn that etched it weren’t artificial; they were real. What Cranston had been looking at was actually Chicago.

Relaxing, Cranston let Regan get his breath.

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