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

metal can. Compressed air sent it hurtling toward the bullet-smashed windows of the police pilothouse. It
exploded inside with a gushing cloud of dense white vapor. Tear gas!

Out of that fog staggered the bluecoat helmsman, clawing at his agonized eyes. The police boat swung
wildly in an erratic half circle. Other cops sprang to take over the controls, but the dense fog of tear gas
drove them back.
The powerful, black speedboat vanished up the Hudson.

Pike turned over the controls to one of his pals and sprang back to where the wounded prisoner from the
Equator lay groaning in the cockpit. He forced the prisoner to talk with means that would have sickened
an ordinary criminal. He discovered with a grin of delight that Sailor Marco had an appointment in
Manhattan on the following morning. Marco was coming across the river from Hoboken on the
nine-o'clock ferry!

That was all Pike wanted to know. The prisoner's doom was sealed. But he wasn't shot or stabbed to
death. The victims of Davy Jones always met a more meaningful end.

The prisoner was towed behind the speeding black craft at the end of a strong rope. When the boat
slowed a few minutes later and the body dragged aboard, the man was drowned.

Pike ordered the black speedboat toward the jutting shape of the recreation pier at 125th Street. He
whispered grimly to one of his henchmen. The thug leaped ashore. The sodden body of the drowned man
was shoved across to him. Shouldering his grisly burden, he disappeared in the darkness.

A closed car was parked nearby. The car drove stealthily away with the drowned victim hidden under a
lap robe in the rear.

AGAIN the speedboat curved outward into the river. Pike had gambled grimly against time. His daring
nerve was proved when he ran almost instantly into a withering burst of rifle fire in midstream. The
crippled police boat was still doggedly pursuing the efficient killers in the employ of Davy Jones!

The fog of tear gas had cleared from the pilothouse. Another bluecoat had taken the helm. But the
searchlight was still damaged. The clink of tools was audible in the pauses between the crash of rifle fire.

Pike chuckled. Without a searchlight, the cops had no chance. He crammed on every ounce of power his
engines could deliver. Long before the sweating police mechanics could make a temporary repair job on
the shattered searchlight mechanism, the roar of the criminal speedboat had dwindled to a purr. The purr
died in absolute silence.

Suddenly, there was a shout of elation from the cops toiling at the wrecked searchlight. A temporary
rigging brought renewed electric current. A new bulb was screwed into position in front of the powerful
reflector. The eye of the searchlight sent a dazzling white cone along the black waters of the Hudson.

It revealed nothing!

Cries of astonishment went up, from the staring cops in the bow. The speedboat had been less than a half
mile ahead when its pulsating roar had died. Yet the boat was gone! It had vanished as abruptly as if the
cunning thieves had upended the stern and driven the boat straight downward into the muddy bed of the
river.