"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 041 - The Killer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

THE KILLER
Maxwell Grant
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? CHAPTER I. AT THE PIER
? CHAPTER II. THE MINES OF DURANGO
? CHAPTER III. THE SECRET LIST
? CHAPTER IV. THE MEXICAN SAILS
? CHAPTER V. MEN SPEAK OF DEATH
? CHAPTER VI. MULLRICK MOVES
? CHAPTER VII. THE MEETING
? CHAPTER VIII. FROM THE MARQUEE
? CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND LETTER
? CHAPTER X. ONE THREE SEVEN EIGHT
? CHAPTER XI. THE POISONED PIN
? CHAPTER XII. THE THIRD LETTER
? CHAPTER XIII. THE MAN ON LONG ISLAND
? CHAPTER XIV. THE SPOKEN CLEW
? CHAPTER XV. UNDER COVER
? CHAPTER XVI. THE FINAL CLEW
? CHAPTER XVII. IN THE TOWER
? CHAPTER XVIII. THE CAPTURE
? CHAPTER XIX. THE ACCUSATION
? CHAPTER XX. THE GRAY FEDORA
? CHAPTER XXI. ONE AGAINST SIX



CHAPTER I. AT THE PIER
BILLOWS of heavy fog were swirling from the North River. The low-hanging clouds that had swept
Manhattan with an early evening drizzle were dipping to meet the waters of the harbor.

Trapped smoke which could not rise amid the moisture-charged atmosphere, added a smudgy tone to
the thick mist. The fog seemed a living monster. From its depths came the hoarse, raucous blasts of
steamship whistles, accompanied by the high-pitched, staccato blares of tugboats. These penetrating
sounds, their sources invisible, gave the fog a weird existence that might well have been its own.

Moreover, the fog possessed a motion. The piers along the Manhattan river front broke its creeping
mass; from the rifts thus caused came little swirls of dense mist that resembled the clutching tentacles of a
mammoth octopus.

This illusion was most apparent upon the lighted stretch of the Central American Shipping Pier. Powerful
incandescents, set at regular intervals, seemed feeble as they battled against the blotting inroads of the
fog. One gust of thick cloudiness stretched its enveloping folds completely along the pier; it cleared
reluctantly, and left spots of misty blackness that dispelled themselves like vanishing ghosts.

A dock worker, pushing a trunk truck along the pier, stopped suddenly to stare at an obscure corner
where a patch of fog was melting like black smoke. The truck pusher's jaw dropped. His hands became