"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 117 - Vengeance Is Mine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

catastrophe to come.
Giving the cab the gas, The Shadow beat the police car to the turn.
Instead of swinging right, he jammed the brakes and cut hard toward the police
car, forcing it to the curb. Skidding around at the entrance of the blind
street, The Shadow alone could see events at the inner end of that
thoroughfare, for the police car had overrun it.


THE two men had halted their coupe at the buttress of the bridge.
Scrambling from the car, they were finding a way from the cul-de-sac, through
a
broken fence beneath the bridge pillars. Their scurry was quick; they were
gone
almost as soon as The Shadow spied them. They had need for haste.
Five seconds passed; barely time enough for irate policemen to scramble
from their halted car and dash over toward The Shadow's cab. Then came the
shock that left the officers rooted.
Unlike The Shadow, they did not expect it.
A sudden flare spouted from the coupe - a fountain of blaze that lighted
the dullish structure of the big bridge. Air quivered with that volcanic
burst;
hard upon it came a booming roar that echoed from the steel girders above.
The coupe vanished like a bursting cannon cracker. High in the air went
chunks of metal, slivers of paling from the board fence. Debris bombed
everywhere; strips of rubber tires and loosened cobblestones settled in the
space where the shattered car had been.
Windows from old houses answered with their tinkle. Cars passing on the
bridge above quivered and came to quick stops. The last sounds came from the
fall of the coupes broken fenders; a license plate dropped with them from the
darkness above.
Two murderous men had escaped. To halt the chase, they had set off the
bomb that they had taken from Zanwood's apartment; it had been stowed in their
car when they had gone back to meet The Shadow. Viciously, they had hoped to
massacre their pursuers.
It dawned upon the police that the blocking tactics of the cab had saved
them; but the rescued officers had no chance to ask questions or give thanks.
As they stared, bewildered, into the vacancy of the blind street, they heard
The Shadow's cab pull away.
Heading toward the river, The Shadow took the turn to the left. He chose
a
weaving course from street to street; then halted. Wearily, he stepped to the
curb; motioned Moe to take the wheel. When the cab started again, The Shadow
was reclining in the back seat.
Though his head still throbbed, The Shadow had regained his full
faculties. That explosion, which he had instinctively foreseen, had been
sufficient to dispel the last traces of his daze. He realized that he had
carried on the desperate chase through set determination alone.
A grim laugh whispered from The Shadow's lips. It was one of solemn
foreboding; it told that he considered his quest a failure, even though he had
driven two foemen to maddened measures and saved the lives of the officers in