"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 166 - Crime Rides The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

freighter; which was outlined against a dim dawn that cut faintly through the
lifting fog. It seemed that the huge superstructure would crush the eggshell
craft beneath it. Above loomed the big single funnel, swinging downward like a
toppling tower.
There was slowness, though, in the final dive of the old freighter.
Scudding as rapidly as oars could propel it, the lifeboat cleared before the
freighter settled. Then came the moment when the Ozark quivered like a monster
in its death throes.
Twisting as she sank, the eight-thousand-ton ship poked its stern above
the water. The lifeboat was a hundred feet away, when the rudder followed the
big blades of the propeller into the ocean's depths.
Spinning amid a sudden whirlpool, the lifeboat threatened to capsize.
Fortunately, that last boat was not overcrowded; otherwise, she could not have
survived the maelstrom created by the suction of the sinking freighter.
Bobbing
on the surface, the lifeboat dipped sufficiently to receive a brief deluge
from
the ocean, but she withstood that test.
Soon, the little boat was sweeping into calmer waters, where she rode the
even swell of the Atlantic. While rescued men plied the oars, others strained
their eyes toward the spot where the Ozark had vanished. They weren't thinking
of the battered freighter, for the Ozark was a ship that should have been
junked before this cruise.
They were thinking of the freighter's cargo, that strong box with its
contents valued at two million dollars. With human lives at stake, they had
forgotten the gold and silver that Hugh Barvale had shipped aboard. They were
remembering it at last, and with awe, as their murmurs told.
Crime's purpose, strange though it might seem, had been to sink the Ozark
in order to get rid of the freighter's precious cargo. That was obvious,
because crooks had made no effort to seize the strong box before they sank the
ship.
Therefore, crime had triumphed. Criminals had won a victory, despite the
presence of their most-feared foe, The Shadow. Furthermore, those criminals
had
escaped unpunished, their evil work accomplished.
 Yet there was something that told that crooks might be due for future
disappointment. That something was a sound that stirred from somewhere in the
lifeboat, so evasively that, when men looked about, no one could tell whose
lips had uttered it.
The sound was the whispered laugh of The Shadow!


CHAPTER V

THE NEW CAMPAIGN

THOUGH Harry Vincent had encountered a full share of surprises while
aboard the Ozark, he was due to meet with more. The first came within five
minutes after the lifeboat had begun its shoreward haul.
Harry remembered that someone had given him a very timely lift into the