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

Of all vessels near the Jersey coast, the Marmora was least open to
suspicion. Coast guards had given her a clean slate, and with good reason. She
was owned by Jerome Trebble, a multi-millionaire who spent his life at sea.
The
only time that the Marmora touched at a port was when she needed supplies; and
that, sometimes, did not occur more often than once in two months.
As Lamont Cranston, The Shadow had once met Jerome Trebble. Very few
people had been granted the same privilege. Despite his wealth, Trebble was a
recluse who hated the world, and had sworn that when he died, he would still
be
at sea.
Had he been penniless, he would probably have chosen a hermit's cave on
the side of some isolated mountain; but, being overburdened with wealth, he
had
preferred a yacht. He spent many thousands annually upon the upkeep of the
Marmora, but that scarcely dented his tremendous income.
Since Trebble couldn't navigate his palatial yacht alone, he had a crew
aboard; also, a small retinue of chosen servants. Perhaps it was such human
contact that kept him from becoming a complete recluse.
Once in a while, Trebble became sociable enough to invite visitors on the
Marmora, provided that he thought they were interesting persons. It was
through
one of those rare invitations, extended to Lamont Cranston, that The Shadow
had
managed to meet him, for a single evening, when the yacht was moored in Long
Island Sound.
Right now, The Shadow was wondering who else might have met Jerome
Trebble. He was drawing a line along another chart, that showed the entire
seaboard, tracing back the course of the Marmora for the past ten months.
New Orleans, Halifax, Savannah, Bermuda - The Shadow's line swung
southward again and stopped. His laugh was repeated in the gloom. The spot
that
he marked, the port where the Marmora had visited nearly eight months ago, was
Havana.
Checking on a list beside the chart, The Shadow found that the yacht's
departure from the Cuban capital had occurred at about the time when Pointer
Trame had last been seen there.


REVERTING to the colored pins, The Shadow made a careful study of other
vessels indicated, for a special reason of his own. He tapped a red pin that
stood for the Monarch of Bermuda, but decided that her course wouldn't suit
him. He wanted to find a ship that would be passing the Marmora at a specific
hour; and the second one he picked was near enough to serve his needs. She was
the New York-Savannah liner City of Birmingham, approaching New York from the
South.
By The Shadow's calculation, the City of Birmingham would sight the
Marmora two hours after dawn, some fifty miles off shore, east of Norfolk,
Virginia.
Reaching for the telephone, The Shadow jiggled the hook, finally