Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 041 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER XI. THE POISONED PIN

IT was exactly eight o'clock when Harry Vincent left the lobby of the Hotel Goliath after his futile effort to follow the trail of Harland Mullrick. At fifteen minutes past the hour, a telephone operator, answering a call registered on the hotel switchboard, was startled to hear the gasping of a man's voice.

"Merk - Merk" - this was the inarticulate cry that reached the girl's ears. "Merk -"

The gasp ended in a choke. There was the sound of the telephone tumbling to the floor. Hastily, the girl called the desk.

"Something has happened in thirteen seventy-eight," she informed. "It sounds - it sounds like a man was dying!"

The nervous clerk looked about the lobby. He grabbed a bell boy by the arm, and sent him after the house detective, who was at the other side of the floor. The sleuth arrived; he heard the clerk's statement.

He hurried up to the thirteenth floor, the bell boy with him.

The door of Room 1378 had a spring lock. The house detective opened it with a pass key. He and the bellhop stood aghast after they had entered. In the corner, by the telephone table, a man was lying on the floor, the telephone beside him. His face was twisted in a hideous expression The man was dead.

The house dick called detective headquarters. The response was prompt. Ten minutes later, Detective Joe Cardona and a police surgeon were in the room where death had struck. Cardona was gazing at the full, fat face of a short, rotund man, who appeared to be the victim of a murderer's hand.

"He's registered as H. J. Pelley, Columbus, Ohio," informed the house detective. "I don't think that's his real name, though."

"Why not?" questioned Cardona.

"Look in his suitcase," said the house dick. "It was open; I didn't touch anything in it, but I saw the top letter on a stack. It's addressed, to Burton Blissip, Buffalo, New York."

Cardona looked in the suitcase. He found a small stack of letters. Each was addressed to Burton Blissip.

Cardona ran through them hastily. They consisted of bills and notices; mail which Blissip had evidently brought with him at the last minute before leaving Buffalo.

The swarthy sleuth went back to the corner of the room. The police surgeon was making his examination.

He looked up as Cardona approached.

"The man has been poisoned," he announced.

"How?"

"Evidently by an injection. Some virulent poison. I shall try to find the exact means."

Cardona nodded. He looked at the table where the telephone had been. He noted a map spread out. It rested upon a big blotting pad, and it was studded with white-headed pins. The map showed the country of Mexico.

THE detective noticed that the pins were chiefly at the left of the map, indicating spots near the Pacific Ocean. Looking more closely, he observed that they ran along the range of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

Some of the pins were tilted at an angle. It was obvious that someone had been touching them with finger tips, moving the pins from point to point.

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