"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 009 - Mobsmen on the Spot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Louie stays. You can keep him warm."

The hunch-shouldered man in back grumbled: "I don't like ridin' next to a stiff." But the door closed again
softly.

OF the six swarthy passengers in the car, five of them were alive.

Ernie, the thick-set man who was their leader, cautiously opened the door and peered out. His squinting
eyes strained to pierce the gloom. From a distance came the lonesome rumble of an elevated train. Aside
from thatтАФ silence.

He cursed under his breath. Then, an instant later, he suddenly tensed. Through the stillness he heard
faintly the exhaust of a heavy-duty truck's motor.

Ernie's eyes glittered. The three men in the rear seat shifted slightly, their ratlike faces tense, strained.

Soon headlights flashed on the stalled touring car. The brakes of the moving vehicle, a huge storage van,
ground to a halt.

From its covered driver's seat, two men leaped out. They seemed in a hurry; impatient to get the
obstructing car out the way. They shouted gruff inquiries.

"Give 'em the works," spat Ernie. Suddenly the curtained doors of the touring car swung open. The
gangsters poured out; swarmed upon the van men.

A quick scuffle; the panting sound of blows. A metal-incased fist slammed against the jaw of the larger
man, the van's driver. He slumped to the street like a wet paper bag.

The smaller man grappled with two of the gangsters, then fell as though stricken dead when a heavy
wrench crashed over his ear.

"Bust up this load!" came Ernie's low-pitched command.

The slight, wiry forms of the thugs moved swiftly, ghostlike, through the gloom. Two of them climbed into
the driver's seat; two more ran around to the rear.

A short crowbar in the hands of one of the latter pair had already been inserted at the tailboard. He
threw his weight onto it. The board creaked. And at the sound came a low exclamation of warning from
the other gangster in the rear.

He pointed to a small, low-hung sedan, drawn up to the curb within only a few feet of them. So silently
had it arrivedтАФrolling up with a closed motorтАФ that none of the mobsmen had observed its coming.

The thug with the crowbar turned sharply. As he did, a peculiar, sighing sound came from the half-open
rear window of the darkened car.

The gangster cried out. The crowbar clattered to the paving. He seized his wrist.

"He's got a silencer!" grunted the wounded man. "Look out -"