"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 153 - Murder For Sale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

He saw another car, a taxicab, stopping a few dozen feet away. The door of the
cab was open; the man from the coupe was making a quick dive into the taxi.
With that, Harry's view was ended. The express was across the higher
bridge, and was speeding downward into a tunnel. So far as Harry was
concerned, the sequel to the scene was a matter for imagination.

BACK at the bridge, other cars were stopping in the dusk. Their drivers
had seen nothing more than the swing of the doomed car's lights. The cars
formed a cluster, while people hurried from them to gaze over the ripped rail.
It was then the driver of the taxi supplied a loud-voiced suggestion.
 "Stick here," he shouted to the men from the other cars. "I'll go and
tell the parkies what's happened!"
Speeding eastward across the bridge, the taxi reached a traffic signal
tended by a park guard in blue-gray uniform. Leaning from the wheel, the taxi
driver announced that a car had gone through the bridge. From then on, the
park guard was too busy to wonder what became of the taxicab.
That vehicle followed a descending drive that led to the Parkway. Within
a few hundred yards, the driver leaned back and grunted an "0. K.", which
brought his passenger up from the rear floor.
From then on, that cab which the park guard had taken for an empty was
just one of many other taxis carrying passengers to the center section of
Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, park guards were using rowboats to reach the car that lay in
the shallows of the river. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for automobiles to
skid into the Schuylkill, and the efficient park guards were always ready and
equipped for rescue.
In this instance, they were too late.
Guided by persons upon the bridge, who could see the car's lights still
glimmering from the water, the guards reached the coupe. The door on the left
was almost ripped away, but the car had tilted to the right.
That accounted for the fact that a man who occupied it was buried deep in
the body of the car. The park guards dragged him out and rowed ashore. While
one man plied the oars, another tried to resuscitate the victim.
As he worked over the prone man, the park guard noted that the victim's
head flopped loosely from side to side.
"No use," gruffed the park guard. "This guy's neck is broke! He took a
whack, too, right on the back of the head. Look!"
Plainly visible beneath the victim's right ear was the mark. The park
guards decided that he had battered his head against some portion of the car
when the fall came to its sudden finish.
The only step that remained was to identify the dead man. It proved a
simple task. The victim's water-soaked wallet contained identification cards,
including a car owner's license that tallied with the coupe's plates, as noted
by other investigating park guards. The dead man's name was Louis Rulland.
That stirred the recollections of the park guards.
"Say!" exclaimed one. "This is the young fellow that came into a couple
of million dollars, only a few months ago, from all those mills his
grandfather owned over in Kensington!"
Yeah," agreed another. "The same bird that would have been jailed on a
drunken driver charge last week, if they hadn't given him a chance to sober up