"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 261 - The Museum Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

situation wherein it could prove its worth.

He'd pitched his metallic squad into a human tangle that hadn't time to escape the surprise attack.
Furthermore, the term "pitched" was accurate. They came headlong because they couldn't help it,
stumbling down the steps with gathering momentum that made them all the more formidable. Only by
diving headlong and taking a swift sideward roll did The Shadow escape the battering power of these
improvised Galahads.

Wolf Lapine managed to dive the other way while the toppling knights were flattening a few of his
followers. Coming to hands and knees, The Shadow thought the drive was over, considering how the
armored men had misjudged their footwork. But there came an element on which The Shadow hadn't
calculated. One man in armor might have clattered helpless, but with four involved, there was a chance
for cooperation.

They clanked against each other, stopping their own falls, even to the point of helping one another up, the
weight of the mail adding the needed leverage. They were swinging those metal fists, with Croom goading
them to action, and it went badly with more thugs who couldn't elude their path. A few of Wolf's men,
who still had cartridges, tried some spasmodic shots from longer range, therewith proving something
else.

Armor wasn't bulletproof - not to a direct hit. But in dodging, marksmen couldn't shoot point-blank.
Their shots were glancing ones that ricocheted from the plates of armor. Finding their footing on the level
ground, and encouraged by their own prowess, Croom's crew of ironclads hurtled onward.

The Shadow gave them right of way.

Good policy, considering that they ruled the warpath, which happened to be the way to the gate. With
Harry and the attendants flanking that route, crooks couldn't get clear of the boiler-plate brigade except
by dashing out to the street, where police in uniform and plain clothes were coming through. Crime was
broken in a way that should have proven permanent for Wolf Lapine.

Then was manifested the flaw in Croom's strategy. As police locked with the hemmed-in crooks, the
armored troop came clanging down upon them, battering even harder than before. The visors of their
ill-fitting helmets were down across their eyes; in the semidarkness, they couldn't tell friend from foe.
They expected the former to keep out of their way; when the police failed to do so, they were promptly
classified under the heading of enemies.

The whole walk was a melee, with Harry and the other flankers leaping over benches to drag the
armored reserves from the necks of the police. Timely intervention, because a swarthy police inspector,
Joe Cardona by name, was just deciding that the ironclads were crooks clad in stolen armor. The
museum attendants managed to shove the imitation knights apart and sprawl them among the fringes of
the garden, like so many junk heaps. But in the confusion, a few crooks broke away.

Wolf Lapine was among them. They were through the gate, while The Shadow was flanking the piled
men along the walk. Outside, Cliff and Hawkeye ripped shots at the fugitives, but the range was long, for
The Shadow's aids had dropped across the street when the police arrived.

Then The Shadow was with them, but a chase was futile. An odd crook crouched at the wheel of a
waiting car had picked up Wolf, and the few thugs with him. They'd rounded the next corner before The
Shadow could open fire.