Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 304 - Alibi Trail

VIP免费
2024-12-22 0 0 145.3KB 56 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
ALIBI TRAIL
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," June 1946.
A strange Spanish playing card, a baggage check and a bank check are the
only clue guiding The Shadow along a trail of crime and death. Can the Master
of Darkness throw light on the forces of evil and bring them to justice?
CHAPTER I
The big private transport tricycled itself into a landing that was rather
miraculous considering the thickening fog that was turning the ground flares
into smudge pots. What made it all the tougher was the limited size of this
little-used flying field on Long Island.
It looked like an emergency landing, but it wasn't. The whole thing was
planned and Jerry Reeth knew it. That was why he was here, waiting by the
hangar, and trying to look inconspicuous.
The plane had a good pilot, otherwise he wouldn't have made it, so on the
pilot's account, Jerry was pleased at the nice landing. That was quite a
concession on Jerry's part, considering that Brenda Van Dolphe was on the
plane. She was one person toward whom Jerry Reeth extended anything but wishes
for a happy landing, despite the fact he'd never met the girl.
Right now, however, Jerry Reeth intended to meet Brenda Van Dolphe.
Little clusters of men were starting toward the plane, barely visible in
the swirl of the night fog. Jerry hurried in the same direction, hoping he
wouldn't be noticed. Lights indicated the transport's door, and a few people
were stepping out, a muffled girl among them. Unquestionably she was Brenda
Van
Dolphe, the girl whose face was as great a mystery as the sources of her
father's fortune.
Jerry was a dozen yards short of the plane when the flanking men closed
in
on him. Then, for the first time, he realized that they weren't just curious
to
see the mysterious Miss Van Dolphe. They were wearing uniforms, representing
either state police or some local constabulary, and they were here to form a
cordon to crowd out people like Jerry. A pair of them picked Jerry for a
starter and pounced on him.
Instead of waiting for that pair to announce their authority, Jerry
asserted his own. He did it with his fists, placing his punches well. The
darkness swallowed the faces and the fog muffled their oaths, but a moment
later another pair of officers was lurching after Jerry. As they grabbed him,
he twisted almost free and nearly within reach of the girl from the plane.
The Van Dolphe girl had stopped stock-still. Beside her, Jerry saw a
sharp-faced man, probably Cedric Treat, the secretary who answered all her
letters. In the background, a tall imposing man was helping a tubby lady from
the plane and both had turned at the excitement. That didn't interest Jerry;
he
was concerned with the girl.
And the girl was concerned with Jerry.
Brenda Van Dolphe was wearing a coat of ermine, its collar turned up
around her face. Above was a Cossack turban of the same white fur, tilted
jauntily over the girl's forehead, just showing her eyes. As Brenda drew away
from Jerry's reach, the men put the grapple on him, hauling him back in turn.
To Jerry, the girl looked aloof rather than startled, but Jerry was
wrong.
The cry proved it:
"Miss Van Dolphe!"
It wasn't Jerry who gave the call. A choking arm was too tight about his
neck. The shout came from another direction, given by a man who bulged
suddenly
from the fog, trying, as Jerry had, to shake off interceptors. But this man
was
burdened with a squarish object that he was thrusting forward as though he
intended to fling it.
Maybe the girl mistook it for a bomb, for she tried to turn away, half
tripping over the soggy ground. Her collar fell away and the lights from the
plane showed her face, a very frightened face, which perhaps enhanced its
beauty. It was indeed a beautiful face, because in that moment, Jerry hated
the
girl for having it. He'd wanted Brenda Van Dolphe to be ugly and if she'd just
been normally good-looking, Jerry's prejudice would have been enough to class
her as homely.
But in that one glance Jerry saw features as finely molded, as perfectly
blended, as any he could remember from anywhere, including stage and screen.
As
for rendering emotion, the fabulous Brenda had that faculty too. Her lips and
eyes had gone wide, proving that even fright was something she could manage
prettily.
Even the girl's slight cry was tuneful as the flash-bulb exploded.
The square object the man was shoving was a camera. He'd caught a
three-quarter profile of beautiful Brenda and he couldn't have wanted a better
shot. In fact, he wasn't going to get another, for a variety of reasons.
Half-blinded by the flash, but recognizing what it was, the girl had wheeled
away and was muffling her face again. The camera man was getting muffled too,
by the local law. The secretary and the big man were scurrying the girl away,
towing along the waddly woman to a limousine that had swung up near the plane.
Those details were lost on Jerry Reeth, who could only see the girl's
face, etched like a negative print in the half-blackness that his eyes, too,
had gathered from a straight look at the flash bulb. In fact, Jerry didn't
realize that the girl was gone, so vividly did her after-image hover before
him. But there were other impressions, vague ones of reeling men, coming
directly Jerry's way. Ripping from his captors only to bring them pouncing
after him, Jerry lunged into the mass.
Jerry was mixing it with the pair who had grabbed the photographer. Loose
for the moment, he took them by complete surprise. Then, with Jerry proving
himself a clouting menace, everybody took care of him at once. He went down
beneath a pile-up that reminded him of a Freshman Bowl Rush. Jerry might have
taken a lot of punishment if somebody hadn't loosened the melee with the
shout:
"That camera guy! Stop him!"
Racing off somewhere in the fog, the photographer reached a car and
Jerry,
being dragged along in the pursuit, heard the fellow working on the starter.
Then, amid the sudden blaze of flashlights, the local police found him, seized
him, and hauled him from the front seat, camera and all. When he relinquished
the camera, they pounced for it, each cop anxious to claim the prize. They
didn't worry about the photographer any further and he made a quick leap back
to his car where he'd just started the motor when they grabbed him. The car
went scooting madly out through an open gate in a direction opposite that
taken
by the limousine.
Jerry's case was somewhat different. The constabulary marched him over to
the hangar where they were rather surprised when they ushered him into the
light. He wasn't the King Kong they expected; in fact, Jerry was rather
handsome, discounting a few scars and a growing black eye, all acquired in the
recent fray. He was handsome in a rugged way, with straight profile and broad
chin, but that was logical enough, considering the way he'd battled.
Before anybody could start asking questions, a big police lieutenant
shoved into the hangar and scowled when he saw what was going on. One of the
officers handed him the camera; holding the scowl, the lieutenant finally
brightened and gave the camera to Jerry, putting a question that sounded
somewhat like a statement:
"Yours?"
In answer, Jerry shook his head and this time the lieutenant really
scowled as he looked at the silent cops.
"Who does this belong to?" he demanded. "What did you grab it for?"
The officers began to explain matters, which only made it worse.
"We were here to keep the field clear," roared the lieutenant. "To keep
back a crowd if there was one. Of course we were supposed to protect the dame
if she needed it, but you should have stopped that camera man before he got to
the plane. Since he shot a picture he had a right to it and to his camera,
too."
One of the cops thought he'd better square things by putting a burden on
Jerry.
"It was this guy mixed us up, lieutenant," declared the accuser. "We
thought he was going to grab the girl. It looked like maybe he was out to
stage
a snatch."
The lieutenant glowered at Jerry, came over, whirled him around, gave him
a thorough frisk.
"No gun on him," the lieutenant decided. Then, to Jerry: "What you got to
say for yourself?"
"Don't blame the officers, lieutenant," returned Jerry, rather blandly.
"I
imagine I was somewhat intensive."
"Yeah? And why?"
"On account of my friend," replied Jerry, thinking fast. "I was supposed
to draw everybody my way, only I didn't. I managed a fair job though" - Jerry
added a grin - "because he at least took the picture, though I suppose all he
got was a load of that ermine wrap the Van Dolphe girl was wearing."
The lieutenant made another reversal of expression as he thumbed from the
hangar.
"You mean you were stooging for the camera man?"
A nod from Jerry.
"And you know where to reach him?"
Jerry bluffed a very confident nod.
"Then give him back his picture box," suggested the lieutenant, sweetly.
"Don't add our compliments; just say we didn't even take it. Since he handed
it
to us, we naturally kept it for him until we found out how we could reach him.
And now if you'll excuse us, we'll close the field for the night. You'll have
just about time to get out of the gate."
Taking the hint Jerry raced for the gate, carrying the camera with him.
But on the way to his car, which was parked outside, that certain elation that
he felt began to fade. Though he carried the camera very conspicuously as well
as carefully, Jerry was regarding it as anything but a prize. Its weight as
well as its looks were against it.
Once in his car, Jerry made sure. At the risk of spoiling what might be
the only photograph of Brenda Van Dolphe in existence, Jerry opened the camera
and found that his hunch was right. This wasn't the box that had snapped the
all-important shot. The photographer must have dumped that in the back seat of
his car, where he had this one planted in the front all the time.
It was just an old, very shabby camera, if not a dummy, certainly the
next
thing to it - a decoy. Whoever the photographer was, he deserved credit.
Despite
his disappointment, Jerry chuckled. After all, he'd fared well enough, thanks
to
the camera man's ruse.
Maybe the camera man deserved even more credit, or perhaps Jerry Reeth
shouldn't have chuckled. Those were points that were due for further
consideration - and very soon!
CHAPTER II
DRIVING along a stretch of lonely road wasn't so very lonely when you had
Brenda Van Dolphe to think about. In the glare from the headlights, Jerry
Reeth
could still picture the girl's face, frozen in half-horror at the flash bulb,
and he rather regretted that his only souvenir had turned out to be an empty
camera.
A print of that photograph would be very nice to have, but Jerry would
probably be clipping it from a newspaper soon. The camera man, whoever he was,
wouldn't waste time peddling the photo and probably at a big price. But it
wasn't the value of the unique picture of a hitherto unphotographed girl that
interested Jerry. Where money was concerned, his claim on the Van Dolphe
estate
might run into box-car figures if he could ever collect it.
Jerry smiled at the thought of box-cars. Just at the moment, the
headlights were showing a few on a railway siding that flanked this old road.
As for figures, he was wondering how Brenda's would shape up, without so many
furs. Maybe he'd find out, the next time he met the girl, which Jerry had
already decided would be very soon. There were a couple of questions that
Jerry
wanted answered and he was tired of dealing through other people. That was why
tonight he had tried to meet Brenda Van Dolphe face to face and in a sense had
succeeded.
Again, Jerry smiled.
The way that face kept haunting him was something he rather liked, though
that didn't prove he had begun to like its owner. On the contrary, the fact
that the girl had looks was probably another count against her. Her good looks
would logically add to the conceit and arrogance that Jerry fancied she had
inherited from her father, Craig Van Dolphe, whose very name Jerry detested.
Now Jerry was picturing other faces that he had seen along with Brenda's.
He'd remember the sharp-faced man, who was probably Treat, the secretary. The
tall, imposing gentleman must have been Judge Jeffrey, the girl's uncle. He
might be all right, because he came from the other side of Brenda's family.
The
tubby lady couldn't be anyone but Senora Hidalgo, the duenna who had
accompanied
Brenda from Colombia.
As for Brenda's cousin, Captain Platt, he wasn't due in New York until
tomorrow. That was the factor that had thrown off the newspaper men, Platt's
announcement that he was going to meet his cousin Brenda at La Guardia Airport
the next morning. With the sole exception of the photographer who had come to
the obscure landing field on some lucky tip or chance guess, nobody had known
that Brenda Van Dolphe would be arriving in from Havana tonight.
At least no one except Jerry.
Jerry's grin of self-congratulation ended in a frown as he suddenly
reversed his own finding. In the mirror he saw the headlights of another car
coming closer behind him. It couldn't be the limousine, because it had turned
left ahead. Nor could it be the photographer's car, which had sped off on
another road that didn't connect with this one. On a hunch that the other car
might be bringing trouble, Jerry gunned his accelerator.
The coupe, which wasn't too old a model, whipped past the line of
sidetracked box-cars and really began to eat up the narrow road. It was only a
mile until the road swung across the tracks of the Long Island Railroad and
took a short stretch to a trunk highway. Once there, Jerry wouldn't have to
worry about anybody.
Then came the short rising howl of a siren, like a banshee wail at
Jerry's
heels.
So that was it - a police car!
Maybe they'd decided they wanted the camera after all and a fine time
Jerry would have explaining why it was empty now. Or possibly they were just
peeved because Jerry had out-talked them and were goading him into speeding so
they'd have an excuse for arresting him. In either case they'd get another
argument and Jerry was just in the right mood to begin it.
Letting his coupe coast so the other car could overtake him, Jerry
allowed
himself to be forced over to the side of the road, where he braked to a stop.
Meanwhile, the siren had chopped off its brief howl in a manner that Jerry
should have recognized as too polite, but didn't. At least he didn't think of
it until men from the other car were crowding up to his, telling him to get
out
from behind the wheel.
That was when Jerry realized that the only similarity between this
contingent and police was the fact that both carried guns.
They weren't masked, but Jerry couldn't see their faces because it was
too
dark. He hoped they were conscious of the fact, because if they were, it meant
they might not decide to shoot. On the contrary, if they thought Jerry was
looking them over, tallying the faces that he couldn't see, they might give
the
blast and be done with it.
One of the group said gruffly: "Let's have that camera, mug."
So that was it, the camera. But if Jerry gave it, then what? Figuring
what
this bunch would do was a problem. It reminded Jerry of the time a squad of
krauts had hemmed him on the fringe of the Battle of the Bulge. While they'd
been figuring whether to take him to the rear or load him with some bullets,
Jerry had taken off past a line of ammunition trucks.
Maybe he could do the same right now, or its equivalent. For Jerry could
hear the wheezing, heavy-plodding chug of a Long Island freight coming along
the track beside the road. Coolly, but in a tone that didn't seem his own,
Jerry said:
"You want the camera? I'll give it to you."
They let him turn and reach into the car. They hadn't much to lose since
three of them were prodding Jerry with gun muzzles and if he'd come around
with
a revolver of his own, it would have been the last thing he did. And Jerry was
deliberate too, not just to prove he was only reaching for the camera, but to
give the freight time to come along.
It was a singular scene with the giant eye of the locomotive flooding
down
the track, yet not quite including the halted cars in the fringe of its
widened
glare. Unfortunate perhaps, otherwise the locomotive crew might have been able
to observe and report on crime by the wayside.
There was a fortunate angle, too.
Easing into the scene was another car, its headlights out, its motor
smothered by the approaching roar and clatter of the train. Its driver was
bringing it into line with the halted ears, but to the right of Jerry's where
hard-baked ground lay between the road and the railway.
A closing door announced that someone was alighting from the ghost car,
but the noise of the door was also muffled by the freight train's clatter. A
stealthy figure was moving forward, totally unsuspected in the darkness.
If Jerry had stalled a short while longer, he wouldn't have had to spring
a surprise of his own on the men who pressed him with their guns. But Jerry
was
already well advanced with his own plan.
Carrying the camera in his hands, Jerry was bringing it around to the
front of the car so he could show it in the light. The guns were crowding
right
along in back of him.
"I guess you want the plate," Jerry was saying. "Anyway, you're welcome
to
it, camera and all. Here's the works - so take it!"
Around the front of the car, Jerry turned and flung the camera into the
first face he saw. Then, with a twisting dart, he loped across in front of the
lights and made a mad dash straight toward the railroad track. He hoped they'd
think he'd ducked around on the other side of the car; if so, he'd have all
the
time he needed.
The gunners thought he'd done just that. In hot pursuit, they all took
the
wrong direction. But the ruse never could have worked the way Jerry intended,
and for a simple reason he had overlooked. In making that mad rush across the
track, Jerry was thinking only of the locomotive, not its searchlight.
Jerry was beating the locomotive and with plenty to spare as he hurtled
across in front of its approaching pilot, but the giant glare picked him out
and made him a vivid target. Those pursuers, if capable at all with guns, were
being given a perfect opportunity to pick off the fugitive.
Good fortune prevented them from taking that opportunity; good fortune in
the form of an unexpected fighter who met Jerry's enemies in a powerful surge,
as one man shouted to the others and pointed the way that Jerry had gone. With
a fierce, challenging laugh that even the locomotive's roar could not drown,
that lone battler hurled himself into the thick of the gunners, sledging down
their aiming hands with strokes from a brace of automatics.
They knew that laugh, these men of crime; they recognized the cloaked
figure that materialized as it plunged them into the glow of the headlights
that gleamed from Jerry's abandoned car.
This was the black-clad menace that all men of evil feared:
The Shadow!
CHAPTER III
SEEN from the road, Jerry Reeth's figure was diving headlong, as though
flayed by the bullets that were represented by the spurts of enemy guns. An
instant later, that figure was blotted from sight by an intervening curtain, a
mighty curtain of clanging steel, the freight locomotive.
The gun barks were faintly audible to Jerry, though they seemed very
distant amid the clangor of the locomotive. And bullets were really distant,
for not one shot was fired in Jerry's direction. The dive that Jerry took was
merely policy. Hitting the cinders on the far side of the track seemed the
proper business, so Jerry flung himself flat and waited while the engine went
crashing past.
Back by the automobiles, another sound had supplanted the spasmodic gun
bursts. That sound was a strident laugh, mocking and triumphant, The Shadow's
answer to the fighters who had turned their guns his way instead of Jerry's,
only to have their aiming muzzles knocked high and wide. Slashing as he
whirled, The Shadow was like a miniature cyclone, flinging his adversaries as
he clouted them, finally whipping off into darkness from which he could gain
new vantage.
Fantastically, The Shadow's laugh blended into a titanic burst that
caught
the exact key of the mirth's crescendo.
The whistle of the freight locomotive had picked up The Shadow's laugh to
give it that amazing magnitude. The great steel clodhopper was blowing for the
grade crossing, less than a mile ahead. But in the few seconds that it took
them to realize what the huge blare was, the stick-up men didn't wait to
argue.
Instead of firing wild shots into the darkness beyond the range of the
headlights, on the chance of picking off The Shadow, the half-dazed thugs
flung
themselves back into their own car. The motor was still running and the man
who
landed behind the wheel lost no time in yanking the gear shift and gunning the
car into a mad departure.
The crook-manned car shot itself right out of The Shadow's reach. He
hadn't tarried in the darkness, flanking the glow from the headlights. He'd
rounded the halted car intending to come up from behind it and attack the
baffled gunners from their own bailiwick. If they'd waited only a few seconds
longer, they'd have been slugged into submission.
As it was, they were away, before The Shadow could quite clutch the
handle
of the door that had slammed behind the last of them. They were shooting from
the windows, hoping to dissuade The Shadow if he tried to clip them from the
flank, for they hadn't the slightest notion that he was actually behind them.
Right then, The Shadow might have stopped the flight with well-planted
bullets into the tires or gas-tank of the fugitive car, but he had a better
plan. Jerry was safe; of that The Shadow had made certain with a passing
glance
at the moment of Jerry's dive beyond the intervening locomotive. More
important
than waylaying Jerry's attackers was the chance to trail them and learn more
about them.
Such thugs, if and when they talked, seldom could tell much of value, for
they were usually hired assassins, obtained through intermediaries. But if The
Shadow could tail them, learn more about them and their contacts, he might
gain
a lead to crime behind crime.
The Shadow slid into his own car and started an immediate pursuit. Again,
his was a ghost car with no betraying lights, for the road was straight and he
was guided by the mighty glare from the locomotive searchlight, well ahead.
Once more, the whistle blared for the crossing, which was visible now as the
lumbering giant ate up the brilliant path that stretched ahead of it.
Despite the warning, the car with its load of crooks was speeding even
faster, intent upon beating the iron monster to the goal. Rather than remain
on
The Shadow's side of the tracks, the fugitive gang preferred to risk a tangle
with a locomotive. It looked like they were going to receive just that when
their car veered for the grade crossing, but the driver must have managed an
extra spurt despite the swerve.
For the car was gone and an instant later, the locomotive was blanketing
the cross-over. Next, The Shadow's chase was ended by a long line of rattling,
swaying cars, a half a mile of them, which gave the crooks a minute of leeway
in their flight.
Braking his car near the crossing, The Shadow turned it around and went
back to look for Jerry Reeth, the one remaining factor who might furnish data
regarding the source of crime.
FINDING Jerry Reeth was out of the question, even for The Shadow. Jerry
hadn't let that line of freight cars go to waste. On his feet, running full
speed with the train, he'd hooked a ladder and clambered on board a box-car.
It
wasn't until the freight train reached a station five miles ahead that Jerry
again put himself into circulation.
Though a trifle bedraggled, Jerry made a reasonably normal appearance as
a
passenger on a local train that rolled into Manhattan on an electric line of
the
Long Island Railroad. By the time he alighted at Pennsylvania Station, Jerry
had
fairly well resolved his problems.
They were after the camera, that was all.
It might seem odd, a band of crooks hijacking a car just to deprive a
camera man of a single photographic plate. But if Brenda Van Dolphe was worth
so many million dollars, an exclusive picture of such a girl was
unquestionably
worth something in itself.
They had mistaken Jerry for the photographer, that was all.
Why not?
The real photographer had scooted out of the air field without declaring
himself, whereas Jerry had made an open departure carrying a camera. So they
had picked on Jerry. Such was Jerry's opinion as he came up the escalator, but
as he walked eastward from Penn Station, he began to analyze the question.
Maybe they'd been out there looking for Jerry himself.
That notion made Jerry laugh. Nobody except Simon Severidge could have
told them about a certain young man named Jerry Reeth. As for Severidge, he
was
the biggest close-mouth that Jerry had ever met. Maybe that was what he should
be, considering that Severidge was the attorney for the Van Dolphe Estate.
In his few interviews with Severidge, Jerry hadn't gotten anything out of
him and therefore didn't like the man at all. Not liking Severidge, Jerry was
willing to concede that the lawyer might have hired thugs to do a little work
on the side. It might be part of Severidge's job to hire a few strong-arm
characters to make sure that nobody took any pictures of Brenda Van Dolphe.
That brought Jerry right back to his original idea.
Nevertheless, he intended to ask Gonzales about it. After all, it was
Gonzales who had insisted that Jerry held a fair claim on the Van Dolphe
Estate, or a sizable portion of it. It was through that insistence of Senor
Gonzales that Jerry had gone to see Severidge in the first place.
In addition, Gonzales had furnished Jerry with assorted items of
information, all pertinent to Jerry's claim. It was also Gonzales who had
helped Jerry check on data regarding Brenda Van Dolphe and her relatives, as
well as when the girl would arrive in New York and why. In fact, right now,
Gonzales would be waiting in Jerry's pocket-sized apartment to learn how
successfully Jerry had crashed the gate at the air field and whether or not he
had gained the interview he wanted.
Maybe Gonzales would have a good answer for some of the details that now
bothered Jerry. The very thought quickened Jerry's pace and he lost no time in
bringing out his key as he entered the old house where he lived in a pair of
converted rooms that were called an apartment.
Unlocking the door of the apartment, Jerry found the light switch and
pressed it. He was rather surprised, somewhat disappointed, not to find the
place already lighted, with Gonzales awaiting his return. Maybe the senor
hadn't expected Jerry to return so soon.
Apparently, Jerry's guesses were off tonight. At least the last one was,
as he learned when he turned from the door. Jerry's gaze froze instantly as he
saw what was lying on the floor, squarely in the middle of the pint-sized
living room.
The thing was a body and there was no doubt that it was thoroughly dead.
The evidence to that effect was the knife handle that projected from the dead
man's chest. Jerry recognized it as his favorite hunting knife, a brutal,
long-bladed affair that he had brought from Canada and had kept in his trunk.
It wasn't exactly cricket for someone to take Jerry's own knife and kill
a
man with it, particularly when the victim was a friend of Jerry's, about the
only friend he had in New York. For the thing that harrowed Jerry more than
the
actual sight of the dead man, was the identity of that victim on the floor.
A darkish face looked up into the light, recognizable despite the
unnatural glare of its glassy eyes. It was the face of a man called Gonzales!
CHAPTER IV
A CURIOUS sense of contrast swept over Jerry Reeth. Now that he viewed
this scene, it seemed the direct opposite of the way things should have
happened. Not much more than an hour ago, it might have been Jerry's turn to
play dead man, for keeps.
Instead, Gonzales was filling the part.
How did it link with the episode on the Long Island road? Could somebody
have murdered Gonzales thinking he was Jerry?
These questions and more were filling Jerry's brain until they became a
whirl that revolved itself into a solid desire for self-preservation. Maybe
Jerry's own recent escape from death had stiffened him, but he didn't feel a
great regret over Gonzales. The fellow was an adventurer, the sort who thrived
on enemies as much as friends. It could be that someone had settled an old
grudge, using Jerry's apartment as a conveniently isolated locale. If so,
Jerry
should feel an animosity toward Gonzales, dead or alive.
Hard-headed, Jerry began to put his own case first. The knife was
incriminating evidence, so the best plan was to dispose of it. Coolly, Jerry
approached the body and stooped to grip the knife handle. His hand moved
mechanically, spreading for a sudden clutch; then froze as it was, when a cool
voice spoke from behind him:
"I'd leave that knife where it is."
Coming to his feet, Jerry wheeled with hands half-closed, not knowing
what
to do with them. He was facing a man whose face, though young, bore the mold
of
experience. It was a good-looking face, but in a practical sort of way and its
steady features were the sort that promoted confidence. Nevertheless, the
owner
of that face was taking no chances with Jerry. To back his statement, the man
displayed a solid automatic, which was aimed squarely in Jerry's direction.
As coolly as before, the stranger queried:
"You're Jerry Reeth?"
Brief hesitation convinced Jerry that he could lose nothing by admitting
fact. He nodded.
"The dead man was a friend of yours?"
Jerry didn't respond to that question.
"Whoever he was," came the stranger's query, "what was his name?"
"Why not ask him?" put in Jerry. "Or if it's a question of names, what's
yours?"
"Harry Vincent," replied the stranger, frankly. "Now what about the dead
man?"
"He called himself Gonzales," snapped Jerry, prompted by a slight nudge
from the automatic. "Anyway, I didn't kill him."
"I know that," said Vincent. "He's been dead too long. You couldn't have
arrived here soon enough to murder him, considering that you made part of your
trip by freight."
That statement startled Jerry, but he was quick to cover the fact. Eyes
narrowed, fists tightened against his coat front, Jerry tried to figure the
answer. How Vincent knew so much was a question, but a chunk of it must be
guess-work. Nobody could have seen Jerry hop that Long Island freight, but
somebody might have guessed it.
Who was the guesser?
Certainly not this chap Vincent. He couldn't have gotten here faster than
Jerry. Somebody must have relayed the word of the episode on the high-road;
but
that in turn produced a variety of possibilities.
Maybe the thugs had phoned some chum to intercept Jerry when he arrived
here; but Vincent didn't look the sort who would be deputized by such a crew.
Conversely, the Long Island police might have come across Jerry's abandoned
car
and notified Manhattan headquarters to check on the owner; but, again, Vincent
didn't look like a plain clothes man.
That left only one solution and a very sketchy one. Something had
scattered those thugs back on the highroad; Jerry knew it from having seen
their car do a scooting flight across the path of the locomotive at the grade
crossing. Though Jerry hadn't seen The Shadow, he recognized that somebody
potent must have been involved. From that, Jerry analyzed that Vincent must be
some emissary representing his unknown rescuer.
Perhaps Vincent was checking the notions that ran through Jerry's mind.
Was he waiting for Jerry to add them up or was something else to happen? The
answer came when the telephone bell began to jangle from beside a table in the
corner. Jerry made an involuntary motion in that direction and Vincent gave a
slight nod.
Then, before Jerry could reach the phone, Vincent's hand was stopping him
with the gun, but only briefly. What Harry Vincent did, was take a
handkerchief
from his pocket, drape it over the table phone.
Then Harry said: "Now."
Jerry liked the precaution. It meant that Harry didn't want Jerry to
implant his fingerprints over any others that might be on the phone. Stepping
back, Harry waited blandly, as though expecting Jerry to be properly impressed
by what came across the wire.
It was impressive enough, though it wasn't the voice Harry expected. He
could catch its tones as Jerry listened to them.
The voice was low, disguised, hardened in its forced snarl.
"Get going, Reeth," it said. "You've got about ten minutes before they
get
there. You don't want trouble with the coppers, do you? If you lam, you
won't."
That was all. As Jerry planted the phone back on its stand, he stared at
Harry and noted that the other man's eyes were somewhat puzzled. Then:
"So you have ten minutes," was Harry's comment. "In that case you can
spare a few. Only don't waste them. Let's hear what else you know about
Gonzales. It may be helpful to both of us."
"All right," decided Jerry, suddenly. "The more you know, the less reason
you'll see for me to be covering up. Gonzales knew my father down in Mexico."
"And your father was Felix Reeth, the mine promoter."
"I see you know some facts already," acknowledged Jerry. "That makes it
all the better. Since you've heard of my father, you'll probably remember that
he was framed for some phony mine promotions by his partner, a certain Craig
Van Dolphe."
Harry gave a noncommittal nod, which at least was a concession. Jerry's
use of the word "framed" was a matter of opinion, since technically, his
father
had been convicted of the fake promotion scheme which Jerry charged to Van
摘要：

ALIBITRAILbyMaxwellGrantAsoriginallypublishedin"TheShadowMagazine,"June1946.AstrangeSpanishplayingcard,abaggagecheckandabankcheckaretheonlyclueguidingTheShadowalongatrailofcrimeanddeath.CantheMasterofDarknessthrowlightontheforcesofevilandbringthemtojustice?CHAPTERIThebigprivatetransporttricycleditse...

展开>> 收起<<
Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 304 - Alibi Trail.pdf

共56页,预览12页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：56 页 大小：145.3KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 56
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注