Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 299 - The Banshee Murders

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THE BANSHEE MURDERS
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I
? CHAPTER II
? CHAPTER III
? CHAPTER IV
? CHAPTER V
? CHAPTER VI
? CHAPTER VII
? CHAPTER VIII
? CHAPTER IX
? CHAPTER X
? CHAPTER XI
? CHAPTER XII
? CHAPTER XIII
? CHAPTER XIV
? CHAPTER XV
? CHAPTER XVI
? CHAPTER XVII
? CHAPTER XVIII
? CHAPTER XIX
? CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER I
ALL was pitch-black in the seance room. That blackness was weird, like an invisible jelly that held all
present in gluey imprisonment.
Only the moans of Madame Mathilda filtered through that gloom. Madame Mathilda was the medium
and when she moaned, it meant that a materialization was likely to occur.
Hence the sitters in the seance room were tense, with one exception. Lamont Cranston was unperturbed.
Cranston liked darkness - the blacker the better. When blackness became absolute, it saved him the
inconvenience of wearing the black cloak and slouch hat that ordinarily enabled him to blend with dusk or
gloom.
Which, in two words, meant that Lamont Cranston was none other than The Shadow.
Now Madame Mathilda was moaning louder, with accompanying tremolos that produced a ventriloquial
effect in the darkness. Gasps sounded here and there among the sitters; they thought they were hearing
spirit voices.
Space, direction, sense of proportions, were apt to fade from a person's mind during a seance held in
total darkness, but not in Cranston's case.
To Cranston, this was just an overstuffed parlor on a side street a few doors east of Central Park. It
contained the usual quota of about a dozen clients who came here in hope of witnessing spirit
manifestations; plus a few strangers of whom Cranston was one.
The other strangers included Police Commissioner Ralph Weston and Inspector Joe Cardona. Cranston
knew their exact location in the darkness, particularly that of Cardona.
Parked on the other side of the medium, Cardona was supposed to grab a ghost if one arrived and
Cranston was expected to do the same from his flank. Turning on the lights was to be the province of
Commissioner Weston, who was stationed near the door.
Except that there wouldn't be any ghost to grab. Knowing that fact, Cranston was a trifle bored.
Madame Mathilda dealt in "clairvoyant and clairaudient materializations," a high sounding definition which
caused the commissioner to think a lot was due to happen. The police had received a lot of complaints
lately about wealthy people investing large sums in questionable ventures due to spirit guidance.
Therefore to grab a phoney ghost in a much advertised medium's parlor would be a fine starting point
toward cracking up a growing racket.
But those terms "clairvoyant and clairaudient" were a hitch that Weston didn't recognize. They meant
simply that Madame Mathilda saw and heard things to which ordinary eyes and ears were not sensitive.
All she had to do would be describe spirits and relay what they said; that would satisfy the regular
customers and with it disappoint the strangers.
Right now, Madame Mathilda was coming to that phase and Cranston was settling back in his chair
hoping it would soon be over, when he saw the glimmer.
It was a dot of light, an uncanny thing that might have come from outer space. It blinked like some
strange eye, nervous and untraceable.
Yet not untraceable to Cranston.
Before the seance began, Cranston had taken in every detail of the room. He had noted a loose-hanging
corner at the top of an old blackout curtain that Madame Mathilda had drawn across a high window
opening into a courtyard. Since the court itself was very dark, that gap had not admitted any light until
now.
Only Cranston and the medium could see it, for they were the only two faced in that direction. Cranston
studied the phenomenon calmly, analyzing the blinks as something distant from outdoors. The effect upon
Madame Mathilda was electrifying.
The medium's trill-sprinkled moans culminated in a stupendous shriek.
"Canhywllah Cyrth!" she shrilled. "Canhywllah Cyrth!"
Whatever those words mean, they were echoed by another woman's voice, close by Cranston's elbow.
"Canhywllah Cyrth!" This woman's tone was a gasp. "I see it too! It will bring the Gwrach y Rhibyn!"
"She is materializing there upon the rock!" Madame Mathilda was shrieking anew, but her words were
coherent. "She has raven tresses and her arms are ivory, she is reaching for the branch of lilac above the
crystal pool!"
Apparently this referred to the Gwrach y Rhibyn, whoever she was, for the glimmers of light were no
longer twinkling through the corner space of the blackout curtain. Calmly, Cranston waited to hear more.
It came.
"In her other hand she holds a dirk!" There was hysteria in the medium's high-pitched voice. "In one hand
life, in the other death! Which is to be, you must ask her, for only she can answer!"
"Yes - yes -" Cranston could hear the words panted by the other woman. "I must ask her -"
"But you must wait!" screamed Madame Mathilda. "She is waving her hands, this woodland spirit, in
token of farewell. The vision fades, all but the hands, now they are going into mist, but she is flinging
tokens of this visitation. Here they are!"
The medium gurgled that last utterance. Something brushed past Cranston's face and from the center of
the room there came a clatter across the hardwood floor. Then those sounds were drowned by the hard,
violent thud of the medium's body landing on the floor, echoed by the crash of an overturning chair.
Other screams punctured the darkness, voiced by sitters who imagined that they too had seen the
singular vision hysterically described by Madame Mathilda.
Strange how a cramped space, pitch-dark, could turn crazed shrieks into reality through the power of
suggestion!
Except that Officer Reilly wasn't cramped, nor was it pitch-dark about him. Just starting his nightly patrol,
Reilly had all the open space of Central Park in which to amble and already the moonlight was silvering
that vast expanse of green.
It was the moon that attracted Reilly's notice. It was taking up a whole side street, over there to the east
of the park, as if all the traffic lights in Manhattan had been rolled into one big yellow ball and hung there,
saying "Caution."
It wouldn't have surprised Reilly if the moon had switched to red or green, the way all traffic lights did,
after hovering on yellow. For Reilly had a strong dash of imagination and therefore liked to believe that
the impossible could happen.
Of course if people told you of something that they'd really seen, that was different. It might be that they
were right. For instance, Patrolman Reilly remembered his old aunt who had once sworn that she had
seen a banshee. Therefore people found it unwholesome to argue against banshees with Reilly, because it
might cast doubt upon his old aunt.
Therefore banshees came into the "seeing is believing" category where Reilly was concerned and that was
why Reilly now stood stock-still.
Reilly was staring squarely at a banshee!
Outlined against the moon, the weird creature fitted banshee specifications and more. From above her
shoulders streamed flowing long hair; her outstretched arms were sweeping as if her hands were casting
curses upon everything within a wide enough range to include Reilly.
She was atop a rock, beyond a shrub-clustered slope that was skirted by a stony path. Below, hidden
beyond the rock, lay a sizeable pool that had its outlet under a rustic bridge that Reilly crossed when
covering his beat.
The path was the shortest route to the rock and Reilly would have taken it at once, except that his dread
of banshees somewhat stilled his urge toward duty; but as Reilly stared, he began to wonder if this
creature could be a banshee after all.
According to some authorities, Reilly's aunt for one, banshees were fearsome hags who wore garments
resembling tattered coffin shrouds. This sylvan sprite was slender and shapely, while at this distance and
in the uncertain moonlight, her raiment seemed to consist solely of her flowing hair.
What broke the spell was the breaking of the bough. As Reilly stared, he saw the banshee's arms
complete their sweep by grasping the branch of an overhanging tree and breaking it away. That was
against the rules of Central Park and banshees were no exception. Furthermore, a physical act by a spirit
creature struck Reilly as against the rules governing banshees.
The lithe creature of the rock was snapping a smaller branch from the broken large one when Reilly, duty
prevailing, began a dash up by the path which carried him briefly away from where he could see the rock.
It was during that trifling interlude that Reilly proved himself a man of determination, unwilling to abandon
whatever course he had begun.
For from the crag that overhung the pool, the spot that Reilly could not see, yet could locate by the
direction of the sound, there came the certifying token of the banshee, a weird, rising wail that ended in a
harrowing scream.
Hardly had the cry ended before the hurrying patrolman was above the slope, blowing his whistle as he
arrived. Shouts came from across the pool as persons reached the rustic bridge and pointed excitedly to
the overhanging rock in proof that they, too, had heard the unearthly wail.
Then Reilly was stock-still again, still trilling the alarm and beckoning to other persons who appeared
along paths well down the flanks of the slope. Cars were stopping on a drive below, even two riders on a
distant bridle path halted their quivering horses, as the steeds whinnied terrified answers to the trailing
scream.
From further away came the rising siren of a patrol car, responding to Reilly's call, but it seemed like
something from another world. For the world in which Officer Reilly now stood could well be termed
unearthly in itself.
Reilly was on the very crag where he had seen the beauteous maiden with the flowing hair; on every side
were witnesses who could not only testify that they too had glimpsed the ethereal creature, but were
placed where they could cut off all parts of escape.
Yet like the banshee that she represented, the spectral visitant was gone. The only proof that such a
creature could have been here was a broken branch from a lilac tree that rustled lightly overhead.
Though Reilly did not notice it at this moment, that lilac branch was not intact. It lacked a twig that had
been snapped from it as rudely as the branch itself had been wrested from the tree!
CHAPTER II
MADAME MATHILDA responded well to the aromatic spirits of ammonia. In fact they were the only
spirits that had actually appeared in the seance room.
Nevertheless the scene was not without a trace of mystery.
Just before she had passed out with a horrible wail, the medium had shrieked something about objects
representing life and death. Those items were on exhibit in the light that now filled the parlor. They were
lying in the very middle of the room, the things that Madame Mathilda had named: a sprig of lilac and a
dagger.
Commissioner Weston took the case in hand. That was, he took Madame Mathilda in hand, by planting
a hard hand upon her shoulder and shaking her to her feet despite the protests of the faithful clients who
surrounded their poor medium.
Announcing himself in a tone of final authority, the commissioner started to declare that the medium was
under arrest for producing fraudulent materializations, only to find himself interrupted by a timid-looking
client who suddenly became vociferous.
"Those aren't materializations!" the man argued. "They are apports. You have no case against this
medium, commissioner."
The term "apports" rather stumped Weston until Cranston intervened in his calm style.
"This gentleman is right, commissioner," declared Cranston. "A materialization is the partial or complete
production of an actual spirit form. The mere arrival of an object in a seance room is called an apport,
particularly when the object is inanimate."
The distinction didn't quite satisfy Weston.
"These things were materialized," stormed the commissioner, gesturing to the knife and the sprig of lilac.
"Of course the medium faked it, but she claims the objects came from the spirit land."
It was Madame Mathilda now who was interrupting with emphatic headshakes. Somehow she couldn't
find the voice which had been so rampant only recently.
"You are wrong, commissioner," continued Cranston, patiently. "These are obviously material objects
which can be traced to a natural source. The twig for instance has been broken from a lilac tree quite
recently; we may discover that the dagger belongs in some museum.
"True the medium may claim that they were brought here by spirit forces" - Cranston was glancing at
Madame Mathilda, who halted her head shake and began to nod - "which certain scientists might decide
to be evidence of some fourth dimensional activities. Outright skeptics might class the whole matter as a
fraud, but it was not the sort that you came here to uncover, commissioner. You hoped to witness a
materialization, but you saw none."
Before Weston could reply, another person entered the argument. This was another of the medium's
clients, a gray-haired woman whose very vigor belied the term elderly. She was the person who had
gasped the strange words when the medium talked of seeing a figure on a rock.
"Perhaps you have heard of me, commissioner." The woman spoke with a hauteur that suited her tall and
somewhat portly stature. "I am Sylvia Selmore, one of the very people whose affairs you are trying to
protect by meddling into them!"
Weston acknowledged the introduction with a bow. He had often heard of Sylvia Selmore, former
lecturer, writer, champion of peace and reform, as well as being generally eccentric and wealthy enough
to continue so.
"There was a materialization," Miss Selmore insisted. "I witnessed it along with the medium!"
At that, Madame Mathilda sank back with an unhappy gasp that called for more spirits of ammonia. To
give the medium air, Cranston tugged away the blackout curtain covering the courtyard window, then
opened the window itself. The darkness of the court was complete, with no trace of that distant light
which had blinked the curious signal.
Yet at that moment, Cranston wouldn't have wanted the blinks to recur.
Thanks to the darkness, Cranston was viewing something closer and better. The blackness of the
window pane gave it the quality of a mirror in which he observed Madame Mathilda. All eyes had turned
toward Cranston, therefore the medium relaxed in unguarded style.
Reflected by the lights of the room, Mathilda's face revealed not only the opening of her shrewd eyes, but
the satisfied smile that crept across her lips. Sole witness of the medium's minor triumph, Cranston
recognized the reason for it. Madame Mathilda was erroneously assuming that the clue of the dangling
curtain now was gone. She didn't guess that it remained in the memory of the very person who had
destroyed it, Lamont Cranston, otherwise The Shadow!
Now attention was back upon Mathilda, so her eyes were closed again. Moaning feebly, the medium
began to recuperate in slow, well-rehearsed style. Coming completely from her fake trance, she stared
wonderingly at the faces about her, as though to ask what had happened.
Portly Miss Sylvia Selmore rallied to the medium's aid.
"Poor dear," expressed Sylvia, referring to Mathilda, "she can't remember a thing that happened. She
was in a trance you know and everything she saw was a clairvoyant phenomenon."
Angrily, Weston drew himself up to say something, then switched to a brusque-mannered silence, his
broad face glowering to a degree that seemed to bristle his short-clipped military mustache.
"She heard things too," continued Sylvia, "because she is clairaudient. Then the spirit itself controlled her
and spoke through the medium's voice."
Miss Sylvia nodded as though she knew all about such phenomena, but her theory didn't help solve the
question as to whether or not there had been an actual materialization, the thing that the law wanted to
witness.
It was Inspector Joe Cardona, a swarthy, stocky individual who brought up that point. So far Cardona
had been a good listener; now he proved himself a good talker. Facing Miss Sylvia, Cardona put a blunt
query:
"Tell me, Miss Selmore, you saw these things that the medium talked about, didn't you?"
"Partly," acknowledged Sylvia. "I am sure I saw the Canhywllah Cyrth."
Cardona repeated Sylvia's pronunciation of a term he never could have spelled.
"Canhywllah Cyrth," said Joe. "What does it mean?"
"The English call it a corpse candle," explained Sylvia. "Canhywllah Cyrth is the Welsh term. I am Welsh,
you know. My family dates back to early Pennsylvania, shortly after its settlement. The Canhywllah Cyrth
is a strange, tiny light that announces the arrival of the Gwrach y Rhibyn."
Weston gave a despairing gesture at hearing this second name repeated, but Cardona was persistent.
"What is the Gwrach y Rhibyn?"
"A family spirit," explained Sylvia. "Some call its appearance a bad omen, but not those who understand.
More often than not, the Gwrach y Rhibyn brings a fair warning. I didn't see the Gwrach y Rhibyn, but
Madame Mathilda did, which proves she must have materialized somewhere."
"Who materialized?" put in Weston, briskly. "Madame Mathilda?"
"No," retorted Sylvia. "The Gwrach y Rhibyn. I have seen her myself, when death threatened the family.
She appeared as a hideous old hag -"
"I get it," interrupted Cardona. "A banshee."
The comment stiffened Sylvia's hauteur.
"A banshee indeed!" The portly lady was indignant. "Banshees are wayward creatures that howl around
the walls of Irish castles for any and all to see. In Wales our family spirits are more particular. They
manifest themselves in ancient halls or beside sylvan pools."
"That's what Madame Mathilda saw!" Sylvia was becoming eager now. "She saw my family spirit
materialized beside some forest pool. As a token, the Gwrach y Rhibyn sent this" - Sylvia picked up the
sprig of lilac from the floor - "But with it there was a warning." Pausing, the portly lady pointed stiffly at
the dagger. "A warning that might mean death," Sylvia continued. "No wonder the Gwrach y Rhibyn
vanished with a wail!"
Sylvia finished that statement with a shudder and in a moment, most members of the group were quaking
too. For from outside the house there came a rising wail that at this instant carried everything unearthly in
its hideous cry.
Lamont Cranston wasn't one who shuddered, but he had to press a reassuring hand upon the shoulder of
a scared girl who was standing beside him. She was Margo Lane, who accompanied Cranston on many
of his milder adventurers. Margo had thought it a lark to attend a spirit seance, but this one hadn't proven
the mild affair she'd anticipated.
In fact, despite Cranston's steadying clasp, Margo would have let out a wild scream of her own, if she
hadn't suddenly recognized what the wail was - a thing which Cranston had caught upon the instant.
Neither human nor supernatural, the howl was purely a mechanical utterance from the siren of a police
car wheeling past the house in the direction of Central Park.
Immediately alert, Weston and Cardona exchanged glances that were promptly answered by the jangle
of the telephone. Cardona took the call in official fashion; then hung up and turned to Weston.
"Headquarters," stated Cardona. "They knew you were here, commissioner. That's why they called. All
available patrol cars have been ordered to Central Park."
Staring a moment, Weston demanded:
"A murder?"
Shaking his head, Cardona turned to Miss Sylvia.
"This thing you talked about, Miss Selmore," said Cardona. "The family spook with a Welsh name.
You're sure it isn't the same thing as a banshee?"
Again, Miss Sylvia exhibited her full dignity.
"Positively not!"
"Then you're due for an argument, with an officer named Reilly," announced Cardona. Plucking the lilac
sprig from Sylvia's hand, he added: "Right at the time Madame Mathilda was describing something, Reilly
saw it. A beautiful creature over by a pool in Central Park, breaking off a bough from a lilac tree, which
is against all regulations."
Bringing two handkerchiefs from his pockets, Cardona laid the lilac twig in one, then picked up the
dagger with the other, to wrap both items together. Then, to make the act official, the inspector furnished
this addendum:
"Officer Reilly says the creature was a banshee," declared Cardona, "and a banshee it is until we find out
different!"
CHAPTER III
HUNTING a banshee in Central Park was a shivery sport, even on a warm night. At least Margo Lane
found it so, despite the presence of police in plentitude. In fact it was the prevalence of uniformed
searchers that made the situation so uncanny. Only a banshee or its equivalent could have eluded the
sizeable cordon established around the rock-rimmed pool.
On the jutting rock where Reilly had seen the banshee, there was evidence to support the officer's
testimony. That evidence was a lilac bough which anybody might have wrenched from the tree, but it
bore a distinctive mark linking Reilly's banshee with Sylvia's Gwrach y Rhibyn.
There was a jagged mark where a portion of the branch had been ripped away and when Cardona fitted
the twig that he had brought from the seance room, it corresponded exactly!
Certainly this made it seem that Madame Mathilda had viewed the actual scene upon the cliff above the
pool and that in departure, the phantom had projected a souvenir of the occasion into Mathilda's parlor.
To emphasize his testimony, Reilly led the investigators back to the spot from which he had first seen the
banshee. Pointing to the rock, he declaimed:
"'Twas there she stood, reaching for the branch, which as any eye can see, was a good bit above her
head. What she was wearing I wouldn't know, after seeing her from this distance only, but 'twas scanty.
The moon is higher now, but right then it was bucking traffic over from across the park and against it I
could see the banshee's hair, all waving with the black glisten of a raven's wings.
"Only half way there I was, when she gave the banshee screech and vanished. Mind you, there is
nowhere else she could have gone except into nowhere, as others here will testify. Some saw her from
the bridge, others heard her from the bridle path and the drive. It's their word, not mine that you can
take, though nobody lives that has ever questioned the word of a Reilly."
At Weston's suggestion, they went around to the bridge and studied the rock from there, only to find the
mystery even tighter. Though the top of the rock was dim because of the overhanging tree, the front
surface caught the full glisten of the moonlight.
Except for slight crevices and the tough, stunted bushes that grew from them, the rock was almost sheer
until it reached the water's edge. It certainly couldn't have hidden a random figure, but Weston's doubts
concerned the brow of the rock. With a cautious look at Reilly, to make sure that the patrolman wouldn't
feel that his own testimony was being criticized, Weston spoke to persons who had been on the bridge.
"Regarding the woman on the rock," said the commissioner. "Are you sure you really saw her there? It's
dark up there from this angle. You didn't have as good a view as Reilly."
"There was moonlight then," returned one of the witnesses. "It was shining straight at the rock top. The
lower part was darker at that time."
Another witness corroborated this statement. In addition there were some who had arrived when they
heard the wild departing shriek of the creature that was more and more assuming the proportions of a
banshee. Some had heard the crackling of the lilac bough; others had glimpsed the sylphlike figure that
had flung the tree branch. All admitted that their view was vague, but that the shape was real until the
moment that it dwindled, as if swallowed by the rock itself.
One witness gave a novel bit of testimony. She was a middle-aged woman attired in an out-of-date riding
habit and her face was as long in expression and as solemn as that of the horse that stood beside her.
"I did not see the rock, nor the person on it," this woman declared. "What attracted my attention was the
light that blinked very strangely, off yonder."
The woman stabbed a long finger in a direction at an angle to the rock and on a level a trifle above the
trees. Following her point, others saw only the silhouetted outline of a tall apartment building to the west
of Central Park.
"That light," suggested Cardona, suddenly. "Was it like a candle, floating through the air?"
The long-faced woman thought a while, then nodded so vehemently that her horse followed suit.
"The corpse candle," said Cardona to Weston, "or whatever they call it in Wales. The thing Miss
Selmore said she saw, commissioner."
The commissioner wasn't impressed. He eyed the long-faced woman dubiously as though wondering if
she had played the banshee and then skipped off to acquire her riding habit and her horse. But after a
brief appraisal, Weston decided that this witness couldn't have come up to the specifications of the
woodland sprite who had been described in captivating terms.
It was time to tighten the cordon and bring in the banshee. So the commissioner dismissed class and went
about his business, which left Margo on the bridge by moonlight, thinking she'd have a few quiet words
with Lamont. But when Margo looked around, she found herself alone and realized only too suddenly
that she hadn't seen Lamont Cranston during the past ten minutes.
Somehow this setting was becoming a trifle too spooky. The ripple of the water beneath the bridge, the
added tumult where it tumbled into a series of cascades down the lower slope, were sounds that
threatened to drown anything less than a banshee's wail. If such a howl should again disturb the night,
Margo didn't care to be the only person to hear it.
Looking for somewhere else to go, Margo happened to glance beyond the westward trees. A moment
later she was riveted by a sight she didn't want. It was starting again, that blinky light that Madame
Mathilda and Miss Selmore had called the Canhywllah Cyrth!
Oddly, the sight stiffened Margo's nerve. At least this was one mystery that she might solve in her small
way. So she started in the direction of the intermittent light, even though it led around to the other side of
the rocky pool which was unexplored territory to Margo.
The light was like a will-o-the-wisp, but it served as a beacon even though it might not be leading
anywhere. Suddenly its flickers ceased and only then did Margo realize that her path had been guided by
the light itself. Now she was suddenly worried, for she was past the pool and practically among the
searchers who were clinging around it. If she ran into any of them, Margo might be arrested on suspicion
of having impersonated a banshee, which would mean a lot of troublesome explanations.
That thought impelled Margo to undertake a detour further around the pool and the immediate result was
grief. The turf gave suddenly and along with a deluge of spilling stones, Margo was precipitated down
into a narrow gully which was completely hidden under the spread of overhanging trees.
Though startling, the slide proved brief. As for the gully, it furnished exactly what Margo wanted, an
outlet past the cordon. As she crept along, moving away from the direction of the pool, Margo realized
that at intervals this narrow passage actually burrowed under solid ground where drives and bridle paths
crossed it. By the time the gully leveled off, the crowd of circling searchers was far behind.
Still, the ground was still high here, for as Margo ventured past some large boulders, she saw a
downward slope and beyond it some rapid moving lights that flitted a reflection from among the tree
roots. She realized then that she had reached a transverse, one of the speedways that cross Central Park
below the level of the driveways.
Those were the lights of automobiles, rolling along the underpass. Since there was no way to cross the
cut, Margo was about to turn and look for a pathway, when she saw a figure come stealthily from behind
a tree near the transverse.
It was a singular figure, lean anal stoopish that could hardly be termed more than an outline of something
human, though with a trifling stretch of the imagination it might have been mistaken for an orangutan
escaped from the Central Park Zoo. If the thing hadn't turned in Margo's direction, she probably
wouldn't have attracted its attention, but it did turn.
Sight of an ugly, darkish face leering into the moonlight brought a half-scream from Margo and that was
not only enough, but too much. The figure wheeled, unlimbered to full height, and whipped its arm back
to throw.
Right then an avalanche struck Margo.
That avalanche came in the form of human blackness, launched from the darkness of a large rock that
Margo had just skirted. Spilled by the drive, Margo sprawled headlong, hardly realizing that her rescuer
was The Shadow. For rescuer he was, as testified by a whirring sound that whipped past the spot where
Margo had just been, to end with a thud against a stout tree.
From her sprawl, Margo saw a sight that really dazed her. As The Shadow lunged toward the
embankment, the stooped man who had thrown the knife made another of his unlimbering motions, but
with a complete turnabout. It seemed that he literally scooped himself from The Shadow's grasp and
vanished into the darkness above the transverse which at that moment, fortunately for the fugitive, was
devoid of passing cars and their tell-tale lights.
It was The Shadow's voice that hissed the warning that Margo heeded. Scrambling up past the rocks, the
girl found a driveway and ran along it toward where she knew a cab was waiting for Cranston. Finding
the cab, Margo popped into it and felt safe at last, for she knew the driver. His name was Shrevvy and
his cab was always at Cranston's service, especially on nights like this.
Five minutes later, Cranston arrived back at the cab to report that the police hunt was still under way and
accomplishing nothing. In fact, Cranston seemed rather bored with the whole business until the cab had
rolled from Central Park and was swinging along a lighted avenue.
Then, turning to Margo, Cranston queried:
摘要：

THEBANSHEEMURDERSMaxwellGrantThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI?CHAPTERII?CHAPTERIII?CHAPTERIV?CHAPTERV?CHAPTERVI?CHAPTERVII?CHAPTERVIII?CHAPTERIX?CHAPTERX?CHAPTERXI?CHAPTERXII?CHAPTERXIII?CHAPTERXIV?CHAPTERXV?CHAPTERXVI?CHAPTERXVII?CHAPTERXVIII?CHAPTERXIX?CHAPTE...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：66 页 大小：164.42KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

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