"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 327 - The Shadow Strikes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

cigarette the flame of his lighter revealed his face in the night.
It was a heavy, pale, Slavic face of early middle age. The man was handsome, in a dissipated
way, with dark hair and small grey eyes and a straight nose. The grey eyes were hooded, sensual,
and with more than a hint of cruelty in them. The man had lighted his sixth cigarette when he
suddenly raised his head again to listen.
Above the rising wind of the storm there was the sound of another automobile approaching.
The engine of the car was loud and unmuffled in the night. As it came around the curve of the
highway, its headlights probing the night, the loud car slowed. It was a small, stripped-down
roadster with an open hood and chromium-plated twin carburetor. The car stopped near the
waiting man. He dropped his long cigarette to the ground and stepped toward the car and its
single occupant.
"You are late again," the man said in a voice that had a definite accent. "I must teach you
better manners. I do not have much time tonight."
"You want to get out?" the occupant of the car said.
"I did not say that," the man said.
"You can't get out," the driver of the car said.
"Don't threaten me, my friend," the man said.
The man bent, then, to lean into the car through its open window. In that position, half bent
with his face not yet inside the car window, the man's eyes suddenly widened in horror. He threw
up his hands to cover his face, staggered backwards, and collapsed at the edge of the highway.
He crawled weakly in the grass for a few seconds. Then he lay still. The man was dead.
At the instant that the dead man had first staggered backward, the driver of the car had leaped
out on the other side. The driver carried a peculiar length of pipe. When the man lay still on the
grass, the driver ran to bend over him. The driver searched the pockets of the dead man-searched
quickly, taking a large roll of money and a ring of keys. Then the driver ran back to the car.
From the rear of the car the driver brought out a light beach chair and carried it into the center
of the highway. In the center of the highway the driver stopped to listen. The night was silent
except for the sound of the wind and the distant rumble of thunder as the storm grew. Swiftly,
then, the driver returned to the dead man and dragged the body to the chair in the highway. The
driver propped the body up in the chair and ran back to the car.
The car backed away around the bend. There was a roaring sound that filled the night as the
car motor was gunned. The car came racing around the curve and smashed into the body seated
in the chair. The car screeched to a halt. The killer leaped out of the car and ran back to the
sprawled body of the dead man.
Above the noise of thunder there was the sound of another car coming closer. It was a deep,
powerful motor of a car driving fast. The killer picked up the ruined beach chair, raced back to
the stripped-down hotrod, and vanished into the night around the curve in the highway. The roar
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of the unmuffled motor faded. At almost the same instant, the powerful sound of the car
approaching from the opposite direction also ceased.
For a long moment the night was silent and still except for the wind and thunder of the
coming storm.
On the highway a pool of blood spread slowly around the body of the dead man.
The next instant the long-departed beachwear salesman would have been vindicated had he
been there. From the bushes that shrouded the gate to the Golf Club a figure glided silently out
into the highway. It was the shape of a giant bat. The batlike figure moved with amazing speed to
stand over the body in the highway. The burning, hypnotic eyes that looked down at the dead
man were not the eyes of a bat. They were the angry eyes of The Shadow.
Above the high collar of his black cloak, and below the wide brim of his black slouch hat,
The Shadow's eyes searched the highway. His ring, the rare fire opal girasol, flashed ever-