"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 305 - Malmordo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

MALMORDO
by Maxwell Grant

As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," July 1, 1946.

A daffodil as a symbol of danger; a creature with a rodent face; a menu
card with the circled message: "Midnight - Morte - Monday" send The Shadow in
pursuit of the world's most desperate criminal...


CHAPTER I

LIKE some weird creature from the deep, the crawling fog enveloped the
Steamship Santander as she lay at her North River pier. From the grimy
blackness that represented the river came the deep-throated blares of
steamship
whistles and the shrill squeals of tug-boats, like voices urging the thick
mist
forward.
The fog was kind to the Santander.
For one thing, the fog hadn't arrived until the banana boat had docked,
so
now its hemming mass was harmless. And now, artistically speaking, the
drizzling
mist was giving this floating junk-pile both grace and proportions that had
never belonged to such a ship.
The dim, dewy pier lights scarcely reached the side of the Santander. Her
hulk, fog-painted a whitish gray, seemed to be undergoing the swathes of an
invisible brush that produced a streamlined effect of motion. Magnified by
that
blanketing gray, the Santander literally towered out of sight, creating the
illusion that this squatty tub had the bulk of a leviathan.
Between the varied blasts of the frequent river whistles came silence,
broken only by an occasional splash. An angler might have mistaken those
sounds
for jumping fish, except that fish didn't jump in the oily, ugly water
flanking
these piers.
Then, like a warning all its own, came a slow, flat beat of footsteps
tramping inward from the pier end in slow, methodical rhythm. As those
footsteps neared a light that was hanging from a post, they were accompanied
by
a creaking from dried, warped boards that formed the surface of the pier.
Out of the fog loomed a burly policeman who, like the Santander, looked
three sizes bigger. His footbeats stopped as he heard a movement beside him;
bringing his swinging club to his fist, the officer turned sharply. The stir
had come from a batch of packing-cases stacked near the post. Hearing it
again,
the patrolman crouched and began a slow-motion approach to the pile of boxes.
Again the stack wobbled, to the accompaniment of a creak. The officer