Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 302 - Crime Over Casco

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CRIME OVER CASCO
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
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? XX.
I.
A singular telegram lay in the glow of the bluish light. It was addressed to Lamont Cranston,
care of the Cobalt Club, New York, and its message consisted of a single word:
TONIGHT
The signature too was simple. Apparently the sender hadn't wasted time in writing his full
name. Only the last name appeared; like the message it was in capital letters:
BROTHERS
What was happening tonight?
Who was Brothers?
A strange, whispered laugh stirred the darkness behind the bluish light, which was focused
downward upon a polished table.
It was the laugh of The Shadow. This curtained room, pitch-black save for that circle of
concentrated light, was the hidden headquarters that the master of crime investigators
termed his sanctum.
Long, thin hands, The Shadow's hands, unfolded a map beneath the light. This was a
topographical map, scaled an inch to a mile, and it showed an island-studded stretch of
water titled Casco Bay.
The Shadow's finger rested upon an island. It was a sizable chunk of land, nearly two miles
long and almost half as wide. It was marked with tiny black squares indicating houses, a
larger one that represented a hotel. Its name was printed on the map:
BROTHERS ISLAND
The mere touch of The Shadow's finger unraveled the cryptic telegram. The signature was
not a man's name; it was part of the message. Something was to happen on Brothers Island
in Casco Bay, tonight.
Whoever had sent this telegram to Lamont Cranston unquestionably knew him as a friend.
Furthermore, Cranston's status at this moment was that of a friend in need. It was not
surprising that a telegram sent to Cranston should have reached The Shadow. It happened
that the identity of Lamont Cranston was one that The Shadow used quite regularly while
investigation crime.
The Shadow's sanctum was in New York, Casco Bay was in Maine. There were few hours
yet before nightfall. Seemingly all that remained was for Cranston to take a plane to
Portland, Maine, check in the Lafayette Hotel, become The Shadow, and head for Brothers
Island.
There The Shadow could seek his unnamed friend or accomplish whatever task might be
expected of Cranston.
Very simple, on any day but this.
The Shadow's laugh came grimly as he folded the map and put it in a pocket beneath his
cloak, along with a well-stuffed envelope that was marked "Casco Bay."
Of all days, this was one when a swift flight from New York to Maine was anything but
possible.
Impossible, most certainly, for a man who called himself Lamont Cranston. The Shadow's
laugh told that as he placed a mirror in the light, removed his slouch hat and dropped the
folds of his cloak, to stare at Cranston's face.
An impressive face, Cranston's. Calm, well-molded, in a sense mask-like, as though it
veiled all that lay behind it, which indeed it did. For as The Shadow's hands spread across
that face and drew themselves downward, they literally removed the fullness of those
features.
The face was gone from the light before the hands had finished their peeling sweep.
Rubbing together, the hands disposed of the peculiar putty substance that formed the base
upon which Cranston make-up was overlaid. Then the hands placed the mirror in a flat box
which contained the required substances for the replacement of Cranston's features,
something which The Shadow could accomplish in a few minutes.
No need for The Shadow to look at the face which was actually his own, although he rarely
used it. He intended to use that face now, as a passport on an assignment so extraordinary
that no one else would ask for it, let alone hope that it would be granted.
The bluish light clicked off. Silence followed the departure of The Shadow. It was the only
silence, perhaps, in all Manhattan, for the walls of the sanctum were thick.
Outside, a torrential fury received this man who called himself The Shadow, but who was
now wearing cap and raincoat, carrying a small satchel containing the cloak and hat with
other items.
New York City was taking the final lash of the sidewinds from a tropical hurricane that was
now aimed for Nova Scotia and the Newfoundland Banks. The rain was now descending in
a sweeping sheet that had already flooded half the subways. It was due for a let-up soon and
until then, all vehicles had left the streets.
At least all vehicles but one.
A taxicab was waiting under the shelter of an old elevated structure. It was into this cab that
The Shadow stepped. No need to speak to Shrevvy, the driver. The slam of the door
amounted to an order.
Through the torrential rain, the taxicab set out for LaGuardia field.
At the airport, a plane was waiting in the hanger. Shrugging mechanics were standing by,
wondering why they were needed. This ship had been kept ready for a mission that
apparently had been abandoned.
Someone was wanted to fly out to sea, find the hurricane's center and bring back a report on
his observations, provided that the reconnaissance plane returned at all. Probably the storm
center would bounce it like something flung against a fly-wheel, and allow the pilot, at best, a
chance for a forced landing somewhere along the coast of Maine.
So far there had been no takers. It seemed that the mission was off.
And then, as though making a forced landing of its own, Shrevvy's cab arrived and
disgorged its passenger. The mechanics stared at the man with the satchel who strode into
the hanger. Then, as he shook back the collar of his raincoat, the man's face was
recognized.
A mechanic spoke the awed recognition:
"Kent Allard!"
He was a legend, Kent Allard, the intrepid aviator who some years ago had disappeared on
a flight to South America, to turn up later as the chief of a tribe of Xinca Indians in Yucatan.
He had been given a huge reception on his return to New York and since then had
disappeared into obscurity.
The reason was that he preferred for practical purposes to appear as a gentleman named
Lamont Cranston, friend of the police commissioner, and man-about-town. But that was a
quiet secret between Kent Allard and his other self, The Shadow.
Now, as Allard, The Shadow was asserting a right that was truly his, that of undertaking an
air mission worthy of his reputation. Allard, the man who had proved he could return from
oblivion, was Candidate Number One when it came to an enterprise that was to test a
hurricane's mettle.
One hour later, the first stage of Allard's adventure was behind him.
Piloting the reconnaissance plane, this ace of adventurers was flying into the great black
wall that girdled the slow-moving storm center of the monstrous hurricane. Tossed like a
leaf, the stout ship was preparing for the giant fling that would toss it to an inevitable forced
landing.
Except that Kent Allard had already picked the location where that leaf would land. That spot
was an island called Brothers in a bay named Casco. The swirling vagaries of the great
storm had stolen valuable time and the chances were certain that The Shadow would be late
for the appointment.
This pilot was now The Shadow, wearing the cloak and hat that were his favored garb so
that he could clip off the last few minutes when he arrived at the destination which he was
defying death to reach.
But there were other hazards than the storm, dangers that threatened the sender of that
telegram, whose name only The Shadow knew.
Hazards that meant death, already on its way!
Casco Bay was anything but lovely, that black September night.
A howling tempest was raging in from the northeast, hoisting waves through the channels
between the outer islands, giving them new impetus across the broad expanses of the inner
bay.
They called it a gale in these parts, in keeping in with the traditional definition. It was actually
the left sector of a tropical hurricane that was twisting counter-clockwise as the storm center
veered far out into the Atlantic to spend itself there.
Jud Fenwick knew what the storm was, but didn't say so. He didn't want to discourage the
Commodore from making his last trip from Foreside Landing to Brothers Island, which was
where Jud wanted to go. No mere gale would worry Commodore Tupper, but the term
hurricane might deter him by its novelty.
Hence Jud gruffly said just "H'lo, Commodore" as he plopped across the bouncing
gangplank from the big float to the good ship Starfish, alongside. When storm warnings
flaunted along this coast of southern Maine, other skippers battened down their hatches and
shoved their boats into coves, but Tupper simply brought out the Starfish, flagship of his
pygmy flotilla.
The Starfish was a stout job, in appearance, as broad of beam as she was in length. Only an
optical illusion, but it was what won the craft her name. Lobstermen always gave Tupper's
pride a wide berth, claiming she might be aiming to port or starboard instead of dead
ahead. A "lubbrey old starfish" they'd termed her, so the Commodore had finally given her
that name.
Settling in the benched cockpit of the thirty-footer, Jud found himself the only passenger on
board. Having reached the Foreside on the last bus from Portland, he expected the Starfish
to pull out immediately, since its schedule depended on that of the bus. Nevertheless, Jud
looked up from under the flapping awing, to glance along the pier by which passengers
reached the float.
Something blue came knifing through the wind and the feeble lights that swayed along the
pier identified it as a girl in a shiny slicker, who wore a Sou'wester hat of the same color.
She reached the gangway that led down from the pier to the float and navigated its wooden
cleats in expert style, but she met disaster when she reached the float itself.
The whole float was awash and more. The waves had been bumping its far end upward, so
that it broke them in the fashion of the sea-wall, but now a wave came surging while the float
was making a dip. What happened was the kind of thing you'd read about in a description of
a storm at sea.
A great mass of green bay came all at once and lifted the girl right off the float. She'd have
probably wound up as flotsam down among the Portland shipyards, miles to the south, if the
Commodore hadn't providentially docked the Starfish on the lee side of the float, which in
fact was the only spot where he could have placed it.
The wall of the water hit the heaving side of the Starfish with a crash, and over the gunwale
sailed the chunk of blue humanity, flying so fast that she'd probably have hurdled the far side
of the craft if Jud and the Commodore hadn't intervened. Up from the bench, Jud was driving
one direction, while Commodore Tupper, arriving from the cabin, proved he could still be
spry at eighty.
Between them they intercepted the girl and benched her, breathless, like some huge fish
landed from the sea. By the dim lights from the posts of the Starfish, Jud found himself
staring at a flock of blond hair as thick and twisted as seaweed, but a lot prettier.
Jud hadn't expected to encounter anything like this around Casco Bay, now that the summer
people had pulled up stakes. Still, in that one long stare, he found himself wondering
whether the girl was really native to these parts.
It struck him that the girl was Scandinavian, a fairly frequent ancestry in this section of Maine.
Yet she had a foreign air, peculiarly at variance with the usual New England manner. For one
thing, she accepted this incident with a hauteur, as though disallowing the waves their right
to sweep her in such unseemly fashion.
Maybe the girl wasn't as haughty as she looked. Her face, framed in that flow of blonde
locks, had a high aristocratic nose, which wasn't unlovely, because her remaining features
had a contour that suited it. Her eyes, in turn, matched the blue of the sleek slicker that had
fallen clear away from her shoulders.
Underneath, the girl wore a blue sweater and if the way it fitted her was a criterion of the way
all sweaters fitted, Jud could understand why Hollywood had slapped a ban on sweater girls.
Jud's roaming eyes met the girl's blue gaze long enough to receive an indignant glare, which
the blonde accompanied by drawing the slicker up around her, clear above her chin. But the
glare, Jud took it, was a bluff.
The tight fit of the sweater wasn't all he'd noticed. Jud had followed the criss-cross of the
leather strap that ended in a sizable canvas dispatch bag that the girl was wearing at her
side, under the slicker. It reminded Jud of a knapsack, the type that the Girl Scouts carried.
Only this lady was a few years beyond the Girl Scout stage.
Old Commodore Tupper, a grizzled character as his eighty-odd years befitted, was quite as
interested in all this as was Jud. Tupper's beard slackened its wag, proving he'd forgotten
his tobacco chaw, which was something. Giving the brush-off with a flick of her long
eyelashes, the girl spoke to the Commodore.
"I am drenched," she declared, in a low precise tone. "I should like to change."
Foreign, all right, that accent. Likewise the girl showed a laxity of English by expressing the
rest with gestures. She tapped the knapsack beneath her slicker to indicate that it contained
a change of clothes, while with her other hand, she indicated her skirt, which was thoroughly
soaked. She completed her want list with a wave toward the cabin at the front of the Starfish.
The old Commodore nodded.
"Suit yourself, lady," he declared. "Reckon though, first I oughta roust Homer out."
Homer proved to be a scrawny thing that the Commodore rousted from the cabin by the
back of the neck. In age, he looked about eighteen, and acted about sixteen, which would
make him fourteen by Jud's calculation, based on recent observations of the Coastal natives
and the way they grew up fast. The hurricane was scaring Homer and he'd probably been
under one of the cabin bunks, if they were high enough to crawl beneath.
The rousting of Homer accomplished two things: it cleared the cabin for the lady and it
enabled Commodore Tupper to shove off. This was accomplished by untwisting the ropes
from the float-cleats and letting Homer prod away with a boathook while the Commodore
started the motor that was located amidships, where the gunwales were high.
Then the girl was in the cabin, the Commodore was at the wheel, Homer was crunched in a
corner under the shelter of the high-built bow and the Starfish was plodding into the teeth of
the gale and finding that the term teeth was a very mild way to describe it.
Finding he had sea-legs, Jud used them to join the Commodore beside the big wheel. He
was careful to pick the windward side, so as not to block Tupper's occasional delivery of the
tobacco juice, which went to the leeward.
"A tough night, skipper," said Jud.
"Gales is gales," philosophized Tupper. Then, with a chuckle that covered their recent
adventure, he added: "Jest like gals is gals."
"A nice number, that blonde," commented Jud. "Ever see her before?"
"Yup."
"Know her name?"
"Yup. It's Nilja."
"Nilja what?"
Old Commodore Tupper gave Jud Fenwick a very sharp eye and held it.
"Been around here a spell, young fellow?"
"Not very long, Commodore."
"Long enough to read the names on the tubs the lobstermen call boats? I mean when they're
painted good enough to read?"
"Why, yes," realized Jud. "They're names like the Nellie G and the Susan J or the -"
"That's enough," interrupted Tupper. "All first names, hain't they?"
"Why, yes."
"Then first names is all that matters."
With that philosophy, advice, or whatever it might be, the ancient mariner removed his eyes
from Jud, turned to leeward, and aimed a quota of tobacco juice.
From the darkness of the bay a bell-buoy clanged as though Commodore Tupper had found
it as a target.
Pitching hard, the Starfish kept on its blind course, with old Tupper's hands manipulating the
wheel so tenderly that he seemed to be studying every caprice of the mighty wind. Almost as
though talking to himself out loud, he stated:
"Names are funny things. Most often they don't fit persons, nohow. That's why I don't go
asking folks what their names are. Of course when they start asking about other folks, it
seems like they ought to give their own names -"
This was leading straight to Jud, which for reasons of his own was something he didn't like.
However, an interruption ended the Commodore's probe.
Out of the blackness of the bay rose a white mass that Jud mistook for a tidal wave, as did
Homer, who hid his head and bleated. All old Tupper did was give the wheel a jerk and hurl
a few indiscriminate curses into the gale. Then the white mass became the sleek length of a
trim, well-built yacht, a sail-rigged craft, with lights glittering from its rail and masts. There
were shouts amid the wind, the silent scamper of men along the rail, as the Starfish veered
off and lost herself amid the blackness. The old Commodore became coherent.
"The Rover," he identified. "Belongs to Greeley Thodor, drat him. A landlubber, for all he's
sailed the Seven Seas. Dragging an anchor here in the Bay! Wonder he hasn't lost the
Rover, the way the Equinox went."
Though he had a vague idea of what the Commodore meant; Jud didn't say so. He'd
learned one thing in this region, that is, you closed up like a clam, nobody questioned you
further. From now on, the Commodore could do all the talking, if he wanted. Jud didn't want
to talk.
Neither did the Commodore. He didn't hanker for a one-sided conversation. So Jud worked
back to his bench and sat there, watching for Nilja to come out of the cabin.
Only Nilja didn't come out.
Chugging motor, howling wind, smashing waves, all turned the fierce pitch of the Starfish
into a huge monotony until the Commodore unerringly picked the landing on Brothers Island
and swung his stout little ship into one of the really protected coves where an easy landing
could be made despite the hurricane.
They came alongside an unperturbed float where Jud handed the Commodore his ticket
and went up a steep gangway that barely wobbled. At the top, the wind was heavy, but Jud
could see the lights of the Brothers Island hotel, the Bayview House, not far away among the
swaying trees.
So Jud started up the slope to the Bayview House, only to turn and look back, hoping that
Nilja would appear from the top of the steep gangplank. Instead, a curious phenomenon
took place, one that could hardly be called an appearance.
One by one, the lights flickered as if a hand of blackness had twisted them, then turned them
on again. It was as if something from the night had intervened, and Jud could almost picture
a shrouded shape of blackness moving across his line of vision.
It was something Jud Fenwick didn't like. Turning, he hurried onward, losing himself in the
blackness of the trees, along the winding slope leading up to the Bayview House.
Odd, that fleeting blackness back at the landing. It was something that Jud Fenwick would
remember when he met with someone called The Shadow!
II.
The Bayview House was just what Jud expected it to be.
Built longer ago than anybody cared to remember, the frame hotel was shivering in the gale.
In fact, its shiver would have been alarming, if its very age had not been proof that it had
weathered many storms like this.
A pug-faced clerk was asleep behind the counter that answered for a hotel desk, and above
him, swaying to the howl of the wind, hung a large framed chromo entitled "September Gale"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with the verse of that famous poem printed along with a portrait
of the author.
Jud banged a brass bell on the counter until he woke the clerk, who looked surprised to see
a customer, and finally collected his scattered wits enough to find the registration book, so
that Jud could sign as the first guest of a blank week.
Maybe the clerk was suspicious, maybe he wasn't. The way his face kept changing could be
due to the sway of the kerosene lamps that illuminated this ancient lobby. Jud Fenwick
hesitated a trifle, then used a pen to sign his right name: Judson L. Fenwick. Hands on the
counter, the clerk was impersonating a bull-dog looking in a window, anxious no doubt to
see if Jud had brought any baggage. Jud forestalled that with:
"Room for the night. How much?"
"Two dollars," returned the clerk. "Of course, we'd like to -"
"In advance." Jud tossed the clerk a sample of the common currency of Maine, namely a
two-dollar bill. "Where's the room?"
The clerk handed Jud a key with a tag half the size of an auto license plate. It bore the
number 103. As supplementary equipment, the clerk provided a stubby candle in a crockery
candle-stick.
"You'll find extras up in the room," he said, nudging toward a stairway that had a lean like a
curved dip on a roller-coaster. "Use all you want, now that the season's over. Candles were
kind of short this year."
Jud took it that the clerk meant short on numbers, not in length, as might have been inferred
from the stubby specimen that the clerk had just lighted. Anyway, it paved matters for a
query Jud had in mind.
"Guess it's a lot of trouble," put Jud, "going into Portland or over to the Foreside, for
everything you want to buy."
"We deal here on the island," returned the clerk. "Buy from Harbison's, we do."
"Harbison's?"
"Yup. General store, down a piece from the landing."
"Closed for the season, I suppose," said Jud. "Guess I'd have seen the lights if it had been
open."
The clerk furnished a bull-dog snort at that one.
"Harbison's been open regular for ninety years," he stated. "Got some of the original stock
in that upstairs store-room of his, I reckon. I mean what was the original stock his grandpap
stowed away there. Course he closes nights, that's why you didn't see any lights."
"Ninety years," remarked Jud. "The Harbison's must have done a lot of business in that time,
except in the winters."
"The store stays open winter," twanged the clerk. "Does some of its best trading,
thenabouts."
"Trading?" queried Jud. "You mean business on a swap basis?"
"Might call it that," nodded the clerk. "Like when somebody moves and don't know what to
do with their household things, Harbison's gets them -"
"Or like when somebody dies?"
The question was too pointed, like the barb on a fish-hook. Like the dog-fish he resembled,
the clerk held fast to the bait once he snapped it.
"Like when one dies?"
For the first time the clerk was awake enough to study Jud's face, except that he couldn't
see it. Jud had picked up the candle-stick and was artfully lifting the candle flame between
himself and the questioner.
"Who'd you be talking about?" demanded the clerk. "Nobody has died hereabouts in quite a
spell."
"Ninety years is a pretty long spell," parried Jud. "You spoke about Harbison's dating away
back. Some of the stuff they traded in might be rated as antiques."
Taking Jud to be summer people, the clerk relaxed. He gave proof of his fading suspicions:
"Reckon they might."
"Nice to know the store is open," concluded Jud, turning away with the candle. "I'll drop in
there tomorrow. Maybe I'll find some old furnishings from schooner cabins. Guess the old
sea captains got rid of them when they settled here on Brothers Island."
Paws on the desk, the clerk was glaring across; his voice came sharp as a bull-dog's bark.
"Only one of 'em settled here and that was Cap'n Gorling. Sounds like you must have heerd
of him. Cap'n Josiah Gorling. Purty near owned the hull island, Cap'n Gorling did."
Jud paused at the decadent stairway to nod back, still screening his face with the candle
flame. The clerk was trying to peek around it, but couldn't at that distance. Funny, the way the
bull-dog face swayed back and forth like the kerosene lamp that hung above the counter.
"If you're wanting to know about Cap'n Gorling," the clerk added sharply, "you might be
saying so. Only there's nobody will be telling you much about him, considering he was the
last of the Gorlings and he's been dead twenty years. What's more, he minded his own
business, which is good advice for anybody."
"Thanks," rejoined Jud. "I'll pass the advice right back. Give me a call for eight o'clock,
unless the place starts to blow down before then." He jangled the big key. "I'm in one
hundred and three. Remember?"
Sourly, the clerk scrawled the room number on the register and squatted back in his chair.
He was swaying in tempo with the big framed poem when Jud took a last look from the turn
of the stairs.
It took a lot of candle wagging to find 103 and it wouldn't have mattered much if Jud hadn't
found it. All the doors were open, showing gaping, empty rooms. The key was of the simple
variety that would probably have locked any door, so Jud took 103 just by way of formality.
Closing the door, he rammed the key home, twisted it so it was crosswise. It would take a lot
of clatter to knock that key around and shove it from the other side. Jud didn't intend to sleep
too hard to be unaware of such gyrations.
In fact, Jud Fenwick wasn't sure that he was going to sleep at all.
Even while he dabbed flames on the extra candles, Jud was disturbed by the tremors of the
old hotel, the rattle and rip of its shutters. Rain battered violently against the grimy window
panes as though ready to smash them with its pelt. But even the perpetual whoosh of the
wind didn't drown the crinkle of the paper that Jud could feel deep in his pocket.
Jud started to draw it out, the letter that he carried; then, looking past a candle flame, he saw
his own face in a cracked mirror and gave a short, blunt laugh.
That laugh suited Jud Fenwick.
Blocky of face, Jud had a look that could be politely termed rugged, though some people
might have called it hard. Maybe Jud liked the latter definition and was trying to live up to it.
His eyes, closed to slits, made a line as straight as his lips. Jud always laughed that way,
with a shove of his chin.
Then a voice spoke; Jud's voice:
"Who's there?"
It was only the wind, rattling the door. The hurricane must have cracked a few windows
somewhere and sent a chunk of itself whistling in through the hotel. The rattling stopped and
Jud waited to see if it would start again.
It did, but differently.
Somebody knocking this time. Probably the pug-faced clerk, nosing up here on some
excuse. Jud stepped over to the door, twisted the key neatly and gave the knob a sharp
yank, hoping he'd bring the fellow pitching through.
Only it didn't prove to be the clerk.
摘要：

CRIMEOVERCASCOMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?I.?II.?III.?IV.?V.?VI.?VII.?VIII.?IX.?X.?XI.?XII.?XIII.?XIV.?XV.?XVI.?XVII.?XVIII.?XIX.?XX.I.Asingulartelegramlayintheglowofthebluishlight.ItwasaddressedtoLamontCranston,careoftheCobaltClub,NewYork,anditsmessage...

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