"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 140 - Racket Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

best he could.
Veering for the left side of the avenue, he smashed his foot to the
accelerator and gave his car the gas.
As the sedan whipped forward, Cardona saw the truck driver let go the
brake handle and start a huge tug at the wheel. He, too, was doing the natural
thing. He was yanking the truck to the right. As luck had it, that move was
offsetting Walton's spurt.
Though Cardona didn't analyze it in those exciting instants, the moment
of
the crash had simply been postponed for a matter of another second. The truck
was due to demolish the sedan a short distance beyond the corner, instead of
at
the spot where the streets actually crossed.
Rescue came, though, with a speed that eclipsed a hurricane. Rescue,
fraught with danger for the person who provided it.


NO one in the sedan was looking to the left. None saw the trim coupe that
had leaped suddenly from the other side of the railway tracks, straight across
the path of the locomotive. It was there, outlined vividly by the searchlight,
hurtling for the safety of the corner that the sedan had just passed.
An ordinary driver would have been worrying about his own plight; he
would
have had both hands on the steering wheel, as the pilot of the locomotive
almost
nosed the rear wheels of his coupe.
Not that driver. He gripped the steering wheel with his right hand alone,
as his head and left arm thrust from the open window beside him. The
locomotive
didn't worry him. He had calculated that he would beat it over the grade
crossing.
He wasn't watching the sedan. It was using his own tactics: speed to
avert
collision. What he sought was to avert the truck's mad careen to the right.
Could that be halted, the sedan would clear.
The driver of the coupe was garbed in black. The light from the
locomotive
showed a slouch hat above cloaked shoulders. The extended left hand formed a
tight, black-gloved fist that gripped a .45-caliber automatic. A trigger
finger
pressed.
The thunder of the locomotive, the screech of brakes were drowning sounds
that muffled the gun's report. But the stab from the automatic's muzzle was
plain. It tongued straight for the driver of the swinging truck. The bullet
found its mark.
The coupe was off the railroad tracks, the locomotive a blur of blackness
behind it. The sedan was slithering for safety, rescued by the fraction of a
foot. For the truck driver, slumped behind his wheel, was no longer yanking
his
juggernaut to the right.