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

darkness: Wolf's word to go! He didn't have to specify the rest. As the truckers turned, startled, a dozen
hoodlums came lunging from the darkness, brandishing guns in the glow of the gate lights that fronted the
museum wall!

SHOTS didn't initiate the drive, otherwise The Shadow would have fired on his own. His restraint was
for the benefit of the flat-footed truckers. Wolf Lapine, hat pulled down low over his eyes, was snarling
for the trapped men to get away from the vans - a thing also ordered by the gestures of Wolf's followers.
What Wolf intended was to take over the vans, grab the treasure crates and make an armored getaway!

Not that Wolf knew about the police cordon; he simply wasn't leaving things to chance. Turning
implements against their owners was a Lapine specialty, something he'd staged often in his bank
robberies. And the men by the trucks, thinking they still might live if they obeyed, proved themselves
suckers for Wolf's trick.

Still doing their puppet act, the truckers fled with one accord for the gateway to the museum, only to
have Wolf's ugly snarl follow them. Having kidded these men into forgetting the security that their own
vans afforded, Wolf didn't intend to let them remain at large to figure in a counterthrust or help protect the
crates from the museum. His snarl was an order for his murderous followers to chop down the fleeing
men as they ran!

That was where The Shadow had his say - with guns! Slashing down the nearest marksman, he delivered
a fierce, challenging laugh that rose to a mighty, shivering crescendo, waking what seemed to be the
echoes of gathered years from the vast gloom surrounding the Argyle Museum!

The battle laugh of The Shadow!

Few crooks could ignore that defy. On this occasion, none could. For The Shadow, slugging opponents
from his path, not only wheeled to present gun muzzles in their direction; he was veering between them
and the nearest armored van, indicating his full intent to take over the mobile stronghold that they sought
as theirs!

They still had a way to stop him - with bullets that would more than match The Shadow's fire. Wolf's
command came, but it wasn't needed, for it was drowned amid the burst of guns, Wolf's men supplying
the fusillade of their own accord. And with that blast, The Shadow vanished!

Gunfire couldn't have eradicated him completely, nor would his laugh have mirthed a new taunt if any
shots had reached him. Yet laugh The Shadow did, from blackness that blotted him. He'd thrown his
foemen completely off their stride and aim!

A quick reverse spin was The Shadow's method. He'd abandoned his pretended drive to take over the
van. Crooks were welcome to occupy the vans and drive them away, so long as those vehicles were
empty. They hadn't guessed that while they fired, aiming ahead of The Shadow's well-faked drive, so as
to clip him as he came into line - which he didn't.

Gone the other direction, The Shadow had accomplished his real motive. The fleeing truckers, forgotten
by the men who would have massacred them, were safely through the gate and spreading to the inner
shelter of the great wall surrounding the brownstone museum!

And now The Shadow's guns began to jab. Like echoes came the talk of other automatics at longer
range, from both flanks. Cliff and Hawkeye were in the fray, herding Wolf's crowd into The Shadow's