"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 302 - Crime Over Casco" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

was an island called Brothers in a bay named Casco. The swirling vagaries of the great
storm had stolen valuable time and the chances were certain that The Shadow would be late
for the appointment.

This pilot was now The Shadow, wearing the cloak and hat that were his favored garb so
that he could clip off the last few minutes when he arrived at the destination which he was
defying death to reach.
But there were other hazards than the storm, dangers that threatened the sender of that
telegram, whose name only The Shadow knew.
Hazards that meant death, already on its way!

Casco Bay was anything but lovely, that black September night.
A howling tempest was raging in from the northeast, hoisting waves through the channels
between the outer islands, giving them new impetus across the broad expanses of the inner
bay.

They called it a gale in these parts, in keeping in with the traditional definition. It was actually
the left sector of a tropical hurricane that was twisting counter-clockwise as the storm center
veered far out into the Atlantic to spend itself there.
Jud Fenwick knew what the storm was, but didn't say so. He didn't want to discourage the
Commodore from making his last trip from Foreside Landing to Brothers Island, which was
where Jud wanted to go. No mere gale would worry Commodore Tupper, but the term
hurricane might deter him by its novelty.

Hence Jud gruffly said just "H'lo, Commodore" as he plopped across the bouncing
gangplank from the big float to the good ship Starfish, alongside. When storm warnings
flaunted along this coast of southern Maine, other skippers battened down their hatches and
shoved their boats into coves, but Tupper simply brought out the Starfish, flagship of his
pygmy flotilla.

The Starfish was a stout job, in appearance, as broad of beam as she was in length. Only an
optical illusion, but it was what won the craft her name. Lobstermen always gave Tupper's
pride a wide berth, claiming she might be aiming to port or starboard instead of dead
ahead. A "lubbrey old starfish" they'd termed her, so the Commodore had finally given her
that name.
Settling in the benched cockpit of the thirty-footer, Jud found himself the only passenger on
board. Having reached the Foreside on the last bus from Portland, he expected the Starfish
to pull out immediately, since its schedule depended on that of the bus. Nevertheless, Jud
looked up from under the flapping awing, to glance along the pier by which passengers
reached the float.
Something blue came knifing through the wind and the feeble lights that swayed along the
pier identified it as a girl in a shiny slicker, who wore a Sou'wester hat of the same color.
She reached the gangway that led down from the pier to the float and navigated its wooden
cleats in expert style, but she met disaster when she reached the float itself.

The whole float was awash and more. The waves had been bumping its far end upward, so
that it broke them in the fashion of the sea-wall, but now a wave came surging while the float
was making a dip. What happened was the kind of thing you'd read about in a description of
a storm at sea.
A great mass of green bay came all at once and lifted the girl right off the float. She'd have