The Crimson Death by Maxwell Grant & Walter Gibson

Author:Maxwell Grant & Walter Gibson [Grant, Maxwell & Gibson, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Espionage, Fiction, Thrillers
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1941-08-18T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX. MR. RALPH PALMER

ELSIE HORTON stood quietly waiting on a crowded sidewalk in a busy part of town. She was demurely dressed. In one hand she carried a black leather case of a portable typewriter.

Elsie didn't feel very good. A strange, gnawing headache was bothering her. But she didn't attribute the headache to the water she had drunk from her vacuum jug the night before. Nor was she unduly suspicious over the fact that she had been sluggish and lazy when she had awakened that morning.

Her thoughts were about Howard Brinker and the role she had to play to betray him to John Copley. Elsie had rehearsed her part perfectly. She knew that whatever Brinker was foolish enough to admit in her presence would go out over the air. It would be heard and recorded by John Copley and his son in their private office at the Copley steel plant.

Elsie felt very pleased with her own cunning.

She didn't notice a slightly shabby shopgirl who waited nearby at a bus stop. Busses from many different routes halted there. The shopgirl seemed to have trouble finding the bus she wanted. A half dozen came by and still the shopgirl waited.

She didn't resemble in the slightest the attractive brunette who had borrowed a corkscrew from Elsie Horton the evening before.

Margo herself was just as clever as Elsie in handling a difficult assignment.

A taxicab waited out of sight around the corner. There was no driver in the seat of the parked cab. He was in a nearby bar, sitting on a stool near the window.

He kept away from his taxi because he didn't want to be picked up by the wrong passenger. He had driven Margo to this busy corner. He was ready to drive her wherever else she wanted to go.

Moe Shrevnitz was the cabby's name. Pals of his called him Shrevvy. But Shrevvy's pals in the hack business were unaware of a certain secret in Moe's life. Moe was now - as he had been for years - a trusted agent of The Shadow.

At the bus stop, Margo continued to watch. Suddenly she saw Elsie move closer to the curb. A limousine was rolling slowly along the avenue past the bus station. Its chauffeur seemed to be looking for an empty spot to park.

But Margo noticed that the chauffeur's gaze centered on the blonde with the typewriter case. She also noticed the license plate of the limousine. The car belonged to Howard Brinker. Brinker was not in it.

Margo ducked around the corner. The observant Moe Shrevnitz paid for his beer and left at once. He darted across the street. His cab swung around the corner a moment after Margo had hopped inside.

Moe took up the trail of Brinker's limousine.

He didn't know where it was going, but he was an expert in sticking to an auto trail without betraying his own presence.

Moe had nothing on Elsie Horton. She didn't know where she was going, either. But her baby-blue eyes had a sly light in their clear depths.

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