"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 336 - Blackmail Bay" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Looking up at the clouded, darkening sky, he added finally: "Come. It is time
we began our vigil."
They went to the living room on the land side of the ranch house. When
they settled there, Margo was convinced that Kroft must have had a meeting
with
Cranston while she had been working in the library. The old judge displayed a
confidence that she herself had invariably felt when she knew that The Shadow
was somewhere in the offing. Even the slightest sound attracted his attention,
as though it represented a vital moment that he expected. Then Kroft's smooth
forehead suddenly wrinkled at the sound of a steady thumping from outside the
house.
"That sounds like the old windmill pump that Hobbs was going to fix,"
declared Kroft. "But who could have started it - and how? Or why?"
As the thumping continued, Kroft came to his feet and stepped to the back
door, beckoning Margo to join him. When he opened the door and stepped to the
rear porch, a voice came hoarsely from the dark: "Who's that! Who's there!" On
impulse, Kroft pressed a switch and floods of light came not only from the
house, but the surrounding trees as well. The circle of light carried almost
to
the pump-house; and there, on the fringe of the glare, stood Hobbs, holding a
large satchel in one hand, a double-barreled shotgun crooked over his other
forearm.
That sight literally produced a chain reaction. An answering shout came
from the path leading up from the birch grove. As Hobbs dropped the satchel
and
raised the shotgun, he heard the call, "Hi, Ezra!" and recognized Torgesen,
who
was wheeling a bicycle up the path. Hobbs lowered the gun. The store-keeper
leaned the bicycle against a tree and approached with a wave of greeting, but
by then, Hobbs was aiming for another target farther down the path, a white,
roundish figure that flitted in ghostly fashion as though about to merge with
the birches.
The effect was so startling that Margo could understand why Hobbs fired
on
impulse, but as he did, he floundered backward as if the recoil had acted
before
the shot, sending the gun blast straight upward. Margo looked just in time to
see a weird, cloaked figure merge with the blackness beyond the circling
light.
Apparently The Shadow's intervention had prevented a fatal shot, for the white
shape proved to be a human and not a ghost. Stepping forward from the birches
was Madge Moffat, wearing white slacks and jacket. But even as Hobbs
recognized
one mistake, he made another.
Lurching forward from a level path through the pine trees that skirted
the
cove came a roughly clad man with a noticeable limp, evidently determined to
reach Hobbs before he could fire a second shot. Obviously, he hadn't seen The
Shadow's intervention, while Hobbs, jarred by that same action, was befuddled
enough to blame this new attacker. Up came the shotgun and again, The Shadow