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

Cranston preferred it to be that way. It would hardly do for ferry passengers to realize that The Shadow
was standing at their very elbows.

Lamont Cranston was The Shadow! Crime-fighter extraordinary!

It was a secret that no one suspected - not even Police Commissioner Weston, nor Acting Inspector Joe
Cardona, although both were warm personal friends of Cranston.

Lamont Cranston continued to think about the unknown criminal who chose to call himself Davy Jones.
Suddenly, however, his attention was diverted swiftly to something closer at hand.

Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a ferry passenger whose face interested him. The man was
Sailor Marco. Cranston didn't know that, but he divined that the fellow was a crook. His whole
appearance indicated that to the trained observation of The Shadow. Furtive terror seemed to flick in his
beady, unpleasant eyes.

The Shadow's gaze turned toward eyes that were a lot easier to look at. They belonged to an amazingly
pretty girl. She was wearing a light frock that revealed the perfection of her figure, as the breeze outlined
the soft material tautly against her slim body.
She was watching the crook that Cranston had noticed a moment earlier. Cranston was unable to tell
whether a secret signal passed between them. Presently, the man melted among the crowd of passengers.
The girl walked slowly to the rear of the ferry.

Cranston wondered if the pair were planning to meet unobserved at the deserted stern of the boat. He
waited awhile. Then he began to move slowly through the dark vehicle runway.

He had barely taken three steps when a shrill cry roused him to action. It was the terrified scream of a
woman. It came from the rear deck where the pretty girl had headed.

She was standing alone when Cranston saw her. He hung back, allowed other passengers to run to her
aid. Her body was quivering with fright. There was a livid bruise on her bare forearm where someone
had clutched brutally at her. There was no sign of the thug with the beady eyes.

The girl offered a hysterical explanation for her scream. A man had insulted her. When she had resented
it, he had struck her. He had fled through the women's cabin. She described her assailant. He was not the
man Cranston had noticed up front. Either that, or the girl was lying.

A search of the women's cabin failed to find the alleged masher. The cabin itself was deserted. The
passengers who had remained indoors - nearly all of them men - had stayed on the smokers' side.

Cranston, continuing quietly about the churning ferryboat, made a most interesting discovery. The masher
was not the only person missing on the boat. The beady-eyed crook whom Cranston had momentarily
lost sight of, was also no longer to be found!

However, Cranston had no time to pursue the investigation further. The ferry had already slackened
speed to enter its Manhattan slip. It struck with a bump and was made fast. Passengers began to leave.

BUT they were halted by a strange sight. A squad of plain-clothes detectives were leaping aboard the
moored ferry. Cranston recognized in the very forefront of the detectives the darkly grim visage of Acting
Inspector Joe Cardona.