"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 241 - Vengeance Bay" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

The laugh of The Shadow!

CHAPTER II. ONE SLIGHT ERROR
IN ways of mystery, The Shadow was quite the equal of Vedo Bron and the two men who trailed the
remarkable refugee. Where the car ahead was following Bron's cab by keeping it in sight, The Shadow
was seeing to it that neither Bron nor the trailers knew that he was in the game.
True, The Shadow's cabby deserved some credit. He was Moe Shrevnitz, a secret agent of The Shadow
and the speediest hackie in Manhattan, and he knew the tricks of the city streets. But The Shadow, in his
turn, knew Moe's abilities and limitations and therefore was able to guide him along routes that Moe
might otherwise have avoided.

Somehow, The Shadow seemed able to divine the course of the cars ahead. There were times when he
ordered his own driver to swing across to another avenue, or take a short cut through a side street. In
those instances, the chase was actually lost, but it always came back again.

On the wrong avenue, Moe would suddenly stare to see the other cars sweep out in front of him. Those
side-street excursions were equally productive of results.

When the chase narrowed to the lower tip of Manhattan Island, The Shadow became positively uncanny.
He had that sector mentally divided into pockets and was capable of telling in which one the chase would
end.

Swinging beneath the mammoth heights of great buildings, Moe jerked the cab to a stop near the water
front. There, across the way, Bron's cab was stopping; behind it, the other car sidling into a space
between some huge trucks that were parked for the night.

From his cab, Bron took a cater-cornered path on foot. For a few moments, he was boldly in the light, a
figure in evening clothes so perfectly fitted that they were a giveaway to anyone who knew him.

Then, showing the chameleon traits which had enabled him to elude the armed hordes of dictators, Bron
took to the darkness of the alleyway, disappearing in commendable style.

By then, The Shadow was out of Moe's cab and performing a glide that was positively phenomenal.
Credited with being able to disappear in open view, The Shadow was really accomplishing that famed
result. Watching from the cab, Moe couldn't see a trace of him, and the darkness through which The
Shadow glided seemed to hide even his own shadow.

Darkness, it so happened, was The Shadow's chosen element. He knew its ins and outs as though he
were a part of it. The very garb that he woreтАФblack cloak and slouch hatтАФwas designed to aid his
fade-away into nothingness.

It wasn't that The Shadow completely disappeared. He just knew how to be away from the places where
people looked for him.

In this instance, The Shadow was making a wider circuit than Moe supposed. By the time he approached
the alleyway, the black-clad stalker saw two men move in ahead of him. They were the pair who had
trailed Bron from the night club, and each had a face that would have graced a rogues' gallery.

Superficially, they were respectably clad, but they looked uncomfortable in their store clothes. Their
coats bulged from sweaters beneath and the bulges had humps that indicated hidden knives or guns.