Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 168 by Maxwel l Grant

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

CHAPTER XII

CROOKS MAKE TERMS

IT wasn't long before Beak Barlett returned to his office. He arrived in a

fuming mood, because his trip to the parking lot had been unnecessary. It wasn't

his car that had received the battered fender. He had seen the car in question,

and it was an ancient wreck that someone had brought to the parking lot already

battered.

Who the boob was that had mistaken that jalopy for Beak's elegant roadster, was an unsolved question. Nobody knew who had called the Club

Carioca.

Beak would have been badly worried had he learned that one of The Shadow's

agents had made the call. About the only thing that would have stifled such jitters would be the added information that The Shadow had dropped into the concrete pit beneath Beak's fake elevator.

Ignorant of both facts, Beak seated himself at the desk and began to go over a stack of unfinished correspondence. A rap at the office door disturbed him.

Beak ignored the knock. He was busy. But the raps came again, in persistent fashion. When the pest knocked a third time, louder than ever, Beak strode from the desk and yanked the door wide. The oaths that he started to deliver faded rapidly from his thickish lips.

The man outside was Korza, dressed in his waiter's uniform. The fact that the fellow was back on the job aroused Beak's instant interest. He admitted Korza, and closed the door.

"Goofer's outside," whispered Korza, hoarsely. "I found him at his hide-out, and talked to him."

"Well, what's the stall?" queried Beak, resuming his usual purr. "Why doesn't the guy come up here?"

"He's out by the service entrance."

"Good enough. Bring him through."

Korza shook his head.

"They're after Goofer," he reminded, "and he knows it. He wants to see you, and all that; but he's been asking if there ain't some special way of getting in here."

Beak delivered a hopeless shrug. His lips tightened, as he pondered the problem. At last, he put the proposition plainly to Korza.

"I need a guy like Goofer," declared the racketeer. "Tell him that.

What's

more, let him know that it means big dough. But if Goofer's yellow, I don't want

him. Tell him that, too."

Those instructions reached deaf ears. If other thoughts had not been occupying him, Beak would have realized that Korza was yellow, whether or not Goofer was dyed the same hue. As a go-between, Korza was too scared of both Beak and Goofer to deliver any uncomplimentary message to either.

His own jitters held Korza speechless. Beak, misunderstanding his silence,

gave him credit for being determined.

"Forget it!" declared Beak. "Goofer's O.K., or he wouldn't have come as far as he did. We've got to slide him in here, so no body knows it. I tell you what" - Beak was eyeing Korza's attire:

"Give him a waiter's outfit and steer him up here."

THE suggestion was good enough to end Korza's qualms. The fellow went out,

and Beak waited at the door, until he heard another knock. The man that he admitted was Goofer Shayne, who promptly divested himself of a false shirt front and waiter's apron, along with a fake bow tie.

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