"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 169 - River of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Joe knew Cranston, but he merely nodded. Under his orders, the startled ferry passengers were herded
together. Shrewd police eyes scanned every male face. The man they were searching for was not among
them.

Cardona muttered a low-toned oath of disappointment. He permitted the passengers to leave the boat.

Cranston, however, did not depart. He had drifted toward the darkness of the vehicle runway, where his
car was parked farther back. He smiled and advanced, as he saw Cardona beckoning to him.

"Hello, Mr. Cranston! Sorry to annoy you with that quick passenger search, but we're here to pick up a
guy who was supposed to be on this trip of the ferry. Did you happen to see a passenger who looked
like this?"

He showed Cranston a photo. It was a picture of the thug with the beady eyes. Cranston's reply didn't
reveal the elation in his mind. He sounded politely puzzled.

"Of course! I remember him! Sailor Marco, eh? And you say he's a criminal. He was on the ferry, up
front with the rest of us. He disappeared when we began to nose into Manhattan. A rather queer incident
happened, as a matter of fact."

He described the pretty girl who had brushed close for an instant to Sailor Marco. He told of the girl's
trip to the stern of the boat, her scream of fright when a mysterious masher had insulted her. The masher,
too, had disappeared. Neither he nor Marco had been among those who had left the boat.

Yet they were not aboard it, either.

"I knew it," Cardona growled. "That whole masher business was a plant. The girl screamed to create a
diversion. It gave Marco a chance to vanish to wherever the rat did vanish."

He spat an oath of chagrin.

"I wish I had spoken to you sooner! We could have nabbed the girl. She must have walked calmly
ashore with the other passengers. Unless -

"Come to think of it," Joe cried grimly, "I didn't notice any dame such as you described leave the boat!"
He swung suddenly toward his plain-clothes men. "Did you boys see her?"

There was a general shaking of heads. None had seen the pretty blue-eyed girl walk from the ferry.
Cranston knew why. The girl was still aboard. She was hidden in Cranston's own car, by chance!

The Shadow had witnessed with his own eyes the girl's clever fade-out. He had watched her sneak
nimbly inside the trunk at the rear of his car, while he loitered near the dark entry of the vehicle alley. That
was why he had paid no attention to the police when they had first leaped aboard the ferry.

He had no intention of allowing the police to find her. There was really no crime with which to charge her.
She'd pretend she had become hysterical with fright and had hid instinctively when she saw the police.
Cardona would be up against a blank wall if he put her under arrest.

"Look!" Cranston said suddenly.