Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 169 - River of Death

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RIVER OF DEATH
Maxwell Grant
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. MINSTRELS OF DEATH
? CHAPTER II. THE MAN ON THE FERRY
? CHAPTER III. VISITORS FOR MR. HOLLISTER
? CHAPTER IV. THE VANISHING BOOK
? CHAPTER V. A BEAUTIFUL MERMAID
? CHAPTER VI. THE CHINESE LAMP
? CHAPTER VII. CREATURE OF THE DEEP
? CHAPTER VIII. THE FLOATING FOLLIES
? CHAPTER IX. A DANGEROUS WOMAN
? CHAPTER X. THE ISLAND OF MUD
? CHAPTER XI. THE COVERED PIER
? CHAPTER XII. THE SHADOW'S GEOMETRY
? CHAPTER XIII. THE INNER LOCK
? CHAPTER XIV. THE SUPREME FOE
? CHAPTER XV. BEHIND THE MASK
CHAPTER I. MINSTRELS OF DEATH
THE Hudson River was a broad expanse of darkness. The hour was long past midnight. A haze of fog
drifted low on the surface of the river. Nothing was visible except the hazy pier lights of Manhattan and
the fainter gleams that twinkled on the New Jersey side.
Through that protecting darkness a speedboat moved downstream.
The boat was painted jet-black. The men in the boat were black, too. There were four men. Burned
cork had darkened their faces so that they looked like colored minstrels. But there was nothing comic
about the gleam of their watchful eyes.
These men were criminals. Their speedboat was a floating arsenal.
Their goal was a pier on the New York side of the river, about a mile from the pointed tip of Manhattan.
Pier A was down at that tip - the headquarters of the harbor police. But the thugs aboard the black
speedboat were ready for water cops. Nor were they worried about rival crooks. A whispered name,
passed furtively from lip to lip, would scare small-fry river pirates from the misty blackness of the
Hudson.
Davy Jones!
The speedboat veered suddenly. It began to glide unseen toward the Manhattan pier line. Voices
whispered to one another in the black craft. The name of Pike was mentioned.
Pike was the leader of these mobsmen of Davy Jones. He sat crouched in the bow, directing the
progress of the speedboat. From the clipped talk that passed between Pike and his men, it was evident
that a raid was about to be made on a steamship named the Equator. The plans that had been cunningly
made to cover up the theft of priceless loot, made the crooks chuckle.
They were repeating tonight what they had cleverly done on other occasions. The police had no
knowledge of gigantic crime going on under their very noses. They had no suspicion of the existence of a
supercriminal who called himself Davy Jones.
The clifflike shape of the Equator loomed suddenly ahead. It was in a wide water berth between two
piers.
Everything favored the black-faced pirates. The shore line was piled high with crates and boxes,
preventing any view of the river from West Street. The pier next to the one where the Equator lay was
dark and deserted. A strike had interrupted repairs to that pier. A derrick barge lay alongside, with a
jumble of timbers and machinery.
The pirates expected help from a crooked steward aboard the Equator. Nor were they disappointed. A
rope ladder dangled snakelike above the water. But there was no sign of the peering head of the
steward.
Suddenly, Pike cursed. He had drifted close enough to see the shape of a second boat! It was a
blunt-nosed dirty craft, moored directly below the dangling rope ladder. It was empty.
Pike recognized the boat instantly. It belonged to a river thug named Sailor Marco, who earned a
precarious living by stealing whatever his gang could lay hands on. They sold it to cheap fences on the
Jersey side of the river.
PIKE'S action was swift. He boarded Sailor Marco's clumsy craft and scuttled it. The blunt-nosed boat
sank with a greasy gurgle. The speedboat took its place at the foot of the rope ladder. Not a sound had
been made to alarm the thieves already aboard the liner.
Leaving one of his henchmen below, Pike and the other two climbed the rope ladder noiselessly. They
found the steward dead on the deck. A blow from a blackjack had crushed in his skull.
There was no sign of the river thieves. But the littered surface of the shadowy deck showed what was
going on. Cases of merchandise had been brought up from the hold. One of them had been broken open.
The rest were still intact, waiting to be lowered over the side.
Pike and his two pals moved cautiously toward a companionway door which had been pried open. They
knew there were six men in Sailor Marco's gang. They wanted to trap them without the risk of gunfire.
But fate intervened in the shape of a flashlight that suddenly emerged from the companionway door. The
beam focused on Pike's snarling face. There was a yell of dismay, followed by the roar of a shot. More
men tumbled into view on the deck.
Pike didn't reply to that shot. He was a shrewd killer. His two henchmen were invisible in the deck
shadows. Pike cried out, as if in terror, and began to retreat.
The thug with the flashlight had seen only one man. He anticipated an easy victory. With a yell, he raced
forward. The rest of Marco's mob darted after him.
They ran into a deadly ambuscade. A hail of lead ripped from a Tommy gun. Men reeled and fell. Blood
smeared the dark decks.
Of Sailor Marco's mob, three were killed instantly. Another was painfully wounded by a slug that pierced
his kneecap. He thrashed around on the deck in agony.
The other two fled. Pike took after the man who raced toward the bow of the liner. He had no fear of the
Equator's crew interfering with his vengeance. There was only a skeleton crew aboard in port, and the
treacherous steward had locked them in the fo'c's'le. Pike's pursuing feet made a rapid echo on the
deck.
But the fugitive was racing with the fear of death in his heart. Squirming and dodging, he reached the
liner's bow before Pike's fuming gun could cut him down. He vaulted the rail and leaped desperately.
The bow of the Equator projected above the street. The crook landed among the piled cases of
merchandise stacked there. He was up in an instant. But a bullet from Pike ripped through his shoulder
and dropped his arm useless at his side. The blow staggered the wounded thug, but didn't stop him. He
vanished beyond the mountainous piles of merchandise.
Whirling from his botched attempt at murder, Pike raced back to his own men. The thunder of gunfire
had scared them. Already the alarm had penetrated to the shore. The distant bleat of a police whistle was
audible. The pier watchman was undoubtedly telephoning to the harbor police at Pier A.
Those henchmen of Pike wanted to get away.
They got, instead, savage orders to stay. Sailor Marco was still unaccounted for. Pike ordered an instant
search for him. Marco had recognized Pike. Davy Jones' lieutenant knew it from the shrill yell Marco had
uttered at the beginning of the fight. Unless Marco was killed, the secret of a master criminal was in
danger of exposure.
But Sailor Marco knew his peril. He was hidden within a few steps of his murderous foes, waiting for a
chance to reach the rail of the liner. His opportunity came when Pike's men separated swiftly for a hasty
search.
MARCO ran like a deer. He vaulted overboard as a hail of bullets whistled toward the blur of his body,
struck the black water with a plume of spray and vanished. Grim faces at the rail watched for him to
reappear.
But Sailor Marco didn't. Born and raised on the water front, he was an expert swimmer. He had gulped
in a quick breath of air during his dizzy plunge to the river. He swam underwater, hidden from sight of the
killers high above. He passed the squat hull of the derrick barge opposite the Equator and swam to the
pier beyond it with the speed of a water rat, vanishing to safety.
Pike, venting an oath of fury, knew that he had doubly failed in what had been planned as a perfect
crime. Two of Marco's gang had eluded the hail of bullets, including the cunning Marco. Pike's identity
was no longer a secret. And through Pike, the unknown master criminal who called himself Davy Jones
might be reached.
But Pike didn't lose his nerve for an instant - or forget the real purpose that had brought him to the
Equator.
Disregarding the growing clamor ashore and on the river, he raced down into the hold of the liner. He
was gone only a couple of minutes. When he emerged he was panting, but there was triumph in his slitted
eyes. A mysterious packet was slung around his neck.
The lookout in the black speedboat below was yelling a frightened warning.
"Hurry it up! Let's go! The whole damned river is awake!"
But Pike was still not finished. Some of the boxes of merchandise on the deck were broken open and the
contents scattered about. To the eyes of the police, it would indicate a cheap water-pirate job. It would
camouflage the real purpose for which Pike had come: the packet that dangled from his neck.
He leaned over the dead mobsters on the deck and pressed against their foreheads something which he
had whipped from a pocket. It left a queer three-pronged insignia on the pale skin of each corpse. It was
a design in indelible ink - a mark that would not fade, even from the salt washing of river water.
The mark was that of a trident. Every water-front crook in New York would know what that meant. It
was the insignia of Davy Jones!
The bodies were flung overboard. The thug who had been shot through the kneecap was carried a
prisoner down the swaying rope ladder. He was tossed into the black speedboat. Its engine awoke with
a roar of power. It made for the open river.
As it did so, a blinding white searchlight pierced the blackness of the Hudson. The alarm had reached the
harbor police at Pier A. The police boat was closing in on the murderous fugitives.
THE searchlight bathed the black craft with daylight brilliance. The criminals dived for cover. Three of
them took up firing positions. Pike remained coolly at the engine controls, keeping a stretch of white,
bubbling foam between the speedboat and the advancing cops.
Police rifles began to crack. Bullets struck the black hull with a spiteful thwack! But the slugs merely
flattened and dropped into the river. The boat was protected by armor. Two thugs at a shielded machine
gun in the stern worked with grim speed to raise their deadly bullet mill. Its air-cooled snout jutted
through the slit in the steel shield.
Pap-pap-pap-pap!
That first burst of spraying lead gave the gunmen their range. The flaming snout lifted. Lead whistled
accurately toward the glaring eye of the police searchlight.
The light went out. The policeman who had been operating it plunged on his face, his body riddled in a
dozen places. Darkness dropped like a cloak on the river.
But the uniformed helmsman of the police launch had guts! Crouched low to avoid the hail of lead, he
began to close up the gap that separated the two vessels.
This was exactly what Pike wanted. He shrilled an order to his third henchman - who had ducked toward
the weapon lockers.
The crook raised the pipelike snout of a cumbersome weapon. He loaded it with what looked like a
metal can. Compressed air sent it hurtling toward the bullet-smashed windows of the police pilothouse. It
exploded inside with a gushing cloud of dense white vapor. Tear gas!
Out of that fog staggered the bluecoat helmsman, clawing at his agonized eyes. The police boat swung
wildly in an erratic half circle. Other cops sprang to take over the controls, but the dense fog of tear gas
drove them back.
The powerful, black speedboat vanished up the Hudson.
Pike turned over the controls to one of his pals and sprang back to where the wounded prisoner from the
Equator lay groaning in the cockpit. He forced the prisoner to talk with means that would have sickened
an ordinary criminal. He discovered with a grin of delight that Sailor Marco had an appointment in
Manhattan on the following morning. Marco was coming across the river from Hoboken on the
nine-o'clock ferry!
That was all Pike wanted to know. The prisoner's doom was sealed. But he wasn't shot or stabbed to
death. The victims of Davy Jones always met a more meaningful end.
The prisoner was towed behind the speeding black craft at the end of a strong rope. When the boat
slowed a few minutes later and the body dragged aboard, the man was drowned.
Pike ordered the black speedboat toward the jutting shape of the recreation pier at 125th Street. He
whispered grimly to one of his henchmen. The thug leaped ashore. The sodden body of the drowned man
was shoved across to him. Shouldering his grisly burden, he disappeared in the darkness.
A closed car was parked nearby. The car drove stealthily away with the drowned victim hidden under a
lap robe in the rear.
AGAIN the speedboat curved outward into the river. Pike had gambled grimly against time. His daring
nerve was proved when he ran almost instantly into a withering burst of rifle fire in midstream. The
crippled police boat was still doggedly pursuing the efficient killers in the employ of Davy Jones!
The fog of tear gas had cleared from the pilothouse. Another bluecoat had taken the helm. But the
searchlight was still damaged. The clink of tools was audible in the pauses between the crash of rifle fire.
Pike chuckled. Without a searchlight, the cops had no chance. He crammed on every ounce of power his
engines could deliver. Long before the sweating police mechanics could make a temporary repair job on
the shattered searchlight mechanism, the roar of the criminal speedboat had dwindled to a purr. The purr
died in absolute silence.
Suddenly, there was a shout of elation from the cops toiling at the wrecked searchlight. A temporary
rigging brought renewed electric current. A new bulb was screwed into position in front of the powerful
reflector. The eye of the searchlight sent a dazzling white cone along the black waters of the Hudson.
It revealed nothing!
Cries of astonishment went up, from the staring cops in the bow. The speedboat had been less than a half
mile ahead when its pulsating roar had died. Yet the boat was gone! It had vanished as abruptly as if the
cunning thieves had upended the stern and driven the boat straight downward into the muddy bed of the
river.
Suddenly, the beam of the police searchlight focused on an object in the river. The thing proved to be a
log, floating half submerged on the murky surface of the river.
A stick of wood thrust into the log held a fluttering rag. A uniformed arm reached out and clutched the
white rag as the police craft drifted slowly past. It was a man's handkerchief. On it was a grim stencil
mark in indelible ink: a trident.
It was the only clue to the mystery of a drowned speedboat. It made no sense to the police. They didn't
know the real meaning of the crime that had taken place aboard the Equator. They thought that a gang of
unusually efficient river pirates had attempted to steal a few cases of merchandise.
Pike, however, knew better. A perfect crime had been committed - except for the escape of Sailor
Marco. Tomorrow would take care of that, Pike decided, with a grim tightening of his lips.
He chuckled as he unfastened a packet from about his neck. There was river water above him, but he
was not beneath the Hudson, as the police might suppose from the manner in which he had disappeared.
The police were destined to be helpless. But Pike failed to take another grim personality into
consideration. The personality of a man whose life was devoted to the wiping out of master criminals of
the type whom Pike served.
The Shadow!
Would The Shadow be drawn into this amazing mystery? Fate was already moving swiftly to answer that
question.
CHAPTER II. THE MAN ON THE FERRY
TWO men were discussing the events on the Hudson River the night before, which had filled every
morning paper with sensational headlines. They were close friends. One man was Joe Cardona, acting
inspector of New York police. The other was Clyde Burke, crack reporter of the Classic.
"The whole thing smells phony to me," Clyde Burke said.
"Phony?" Cardona growled. "Two harbor cops dead! A gang of river pirates wiped out by another gang
- who promptly disappear into the depths of the Hudson like a bunch of deep-sea divers! Men found
floating in the river with a queer mark on their foreheads! Another discovered drowned in the Central
Park Lake, in the middle of Manhattan!"
Cardona drew a deep breath.
"And this business about Davy Jones! Who is he? What is he? My stoolies tell me that for weeks the
underworld has been buzzing with quiet rumors that a supercriminal has taken over the entire water front
of New York. The stoolies were afraid to talk before this morning. It sounded too silly. Then this thing
busts in our faces, and every paper in New York except the Classic is yelling at me to make an
immediate arrest. You call that phony?"
"I'm talking about the robbery itself," Clyde said quietly.
He pointed out what he meant.
The loot involved in the crime aboard the Equator didn't make sense. A few smashed boxes of cheap
merchandise might have attracted the two-bit mobsters of Sailor Marco, but never those efficiently
murderous henchmen of the unknown Davy Jones. Something more important was behind the Equator
massacre.
"I figure it this way," Clyde said. "Sailor Marco and his punks were after the cheap merchandise. Were
the other guys after it, too? I doubt it. Not with the high-powered boat and the complete arsenal they
seemed to have. I think Sailor Marco's gang got in the way of these bigger shots.
"That's why they were branded on the forehead and drowned. That's why one of them was boldly lugged
across Manhattan and dumped into the Central Park Lake. The whole stunt was a challenge to the
underworld as well as to the police. Don't you see the warning? Keep clear of Davy Jones - leave the
river front to him - or you'll end up in Davy Jones' locker!"
It was Cardona's turn to grin. He bent forward and chopped a quick command into the square black box
of his desk annunciator.
"Bring in Smoke Paretti!" he growled.
"Paretti?" Clyde said, startled.
"We found him hiding in the back room of a West Street flophouse, with a bullet through his shoulder.
Nobody but you knows that he's under arrest. He admits he was aboard the Equator last night and got
shot when he jumped ashore. Claims that he didn't recognize any of the other gang. But I got a hunch that
Paretti has softened up considerably. If he doesn't know anything, he can give us a line on Sailor Marco -
who does know, or I'll eat my hat!"
A moment later, Paretti was led in by two stalwart detectives. He slumped heavily into a chair and the
dicks went out. Smoke's arm and shoulders were bandaged. His face was deathly pale, but his wound
was not serious. The pallor on his face came from terror.
Cardona spoke gently to him, asked him a question. Paretti's lips clamped. He refused to talk.
Instantly, Cardona's pleasant face changed. His jaw hardened, his dark eyes became flinty.
"Listen, Smoke! You're on the spot! Squeal, and I give you my word you'll go free as a State's witness
after we nail those cop killers. Or you can keep your trap shut; and I'll see that you go to the chair for
murder!"
"I didn't kill no cops! You can't prove I was in that black speedboat. I can prove I wasn't!"
Cardona nodded.
"Sure you can, Smoke. But can you prove you didn't bump off Rat Murphy a little over three weeks
ago? That's the murder rap I'm talking about. Think it over."
Paretti's face turned green. He knew that Sailor Marco had killed Rat Murphy. But he knew also that he
was finger man for the job. His voice rose in a shrill squeal.
"I'll talk! The hell with Marco! Why should I front for him? He scrammed and left me to take a slug,
damn him! I don't even know where he's hiding. But I can tell you how you can pick him up in half an
hour!"
CARDONA nodded to Clyde. The reporter grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil. His nimble fingers
transcribed in shorthand the shrill words of the terrified Paretti.
When Paretti was finally led away, cringing with fear, Clyde pointed to his stenographic notes; but
Cardona shook his head. The facts were already neatly arranged in his methodical police mind.
They were startling facts.
Cardona knew now that there had been four gunmen in the black speedboat. All four had been disguised
with burnt cork. But Sailor Marco had recognized the leader before he escaped from the hail of gunfire.
Marco was hiding in Hoboken; Paretti didn't know where. But he disclosed something far more
important.
Marco had boasted that he knew who the lieutenant of Davy Jones was. He was coming to Manhattan to
arrange plans for blackmail. He expected to pry big dough out of an unknown supercriminal by
threatening to expose the identity of the lieutenant who had headed the raid on the Equator.
Cardona sprang to his feet. So did Clyde Burke.
"This is all off the record," Joe snapped warningly. "If you come with me, you've got to promise that you
won't spill a word in print until I give you permission."
"Right!" Clyde replied.
Plain-clothes men spilled into the room. They were given quick instructions. Two cars left police
headquarters without any fuss. Cardona rode in one. Clyde sat well back in the other, to avoid being
recognized by a newshawk from a rival paper.
Their goal was a ferryhouse on the west side of Manhattan.
LAMONT CRANSTON stood, hat in hand, enjoying the salty breeze that blew across the choppy
waters of the Hudson.
A punctual man, it pleased him that he had made the nine-o'clock ferry in time. He was driving into town
from his palatial home in New Jersey, to attend to some routine investment matters. His sleek limousine
was parked in the ferry's vehicle alley. Cranston had sauntered up front to enjoy the cool breeze.
Few people noticed Cranston. A millionaire, a world-famous traveler, a big-game hunter, he chose to live
quietly and without publicity. His name appeared occasionally in the social and financial pages of the
newspapers.
But today, as he stood idly near the churning bow of the ferry, Cranston's mind was concerned with
crime. Like most of the other ferry passengers, he had been shocked by the newspaper headlines that
announced the strange piracy aboard the Equator, and its murderous and mystifying sequel.
A burning glint appeared in the depths of his deep-set eyes. For an instant, another, inner, man was
revealed behind the placid exterior of Lamont Cranston. Then that grim, briefly exposed personality
vanished.
Cranston preferred it to be that way. It would hardly do for ferry passengers to realize that The Shadow
was standing at their very elbows.
Lamont Cranston was The Shadow! Crime-fighter extraordinary!
It was a secret that no one suspected - not even Police Commissioner Weston, nor Acting Inspector Joe
Cardona, although both were warm personal friends of Cranston.
Lamont Cranston continued to think about the unknown criminal who chose to call himself Davy Jones.
Suddenly, however, his attention was diverted swiftly to something closer at hand.
Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a ferry passenger whose face interested him. The man was
Sailor Marco. Cranston didn't know that, but he divined that the fellow was a crook. His whole
appearance indicated that to the trained observation of The Shadow. Furtive terror seemed to flick in his
beady, unpleasant eyes.
The Shadow's gaze turned toward eyes that were a lot easier to look at. They belonged to an amazingly
pretty girl. She was wearing a light frock that revealed the perfection of her figure, as the breeze outlined
the soft material tautly against her slim body.
She was watching the crook that Cranston had noticed a moment earlier. Cranston was unable to tell
whether a secret signal passed between them. Presently, the man melted among the crowd of passengers.
The girl walked slowly to the rear of the ferry.
Cranston wondered if the pair were planning to meet unobserved at the deserted stern of the boat. He
waited awhile. Then he began to move slowly through the dark vehicle runway.
He had barely taken three steps when a shrill cry roused him to action. It was the terrified scream of a
woman. It came from the rear deck where the pretty girl had headed.
She was standing alone when Cranston saw her. He hung back, allowed other passengers to run to her
aid. Her body was quivering with fright. There was a livid bruise on her bare forearm where someone
had clutched brutally at her. There was no sign of the thug with the beady eyes.
The girl offered a hysterical explanation for her scream. A man had insulted her. When she had resented
it, he had struck her. He had fled through the women's cabin. She described her assailant. He was not the
man Cranston had noticed up front. Either that, or the girl was lying.
A search of the women's cabin failed to find the alleged masher. The cabin itself was deserted. The
passengers who had remained indoors - nearly all of them men - had stayed on the smokers' side.
Cranston, continuing quietly about the churning ferryboat, made a most interesting discovery. The masher
was not the only person missing on the boat. The beady-eyed crook whom Cranston had momentarily
lost sight of, was also no longer to be found!
However, Cranston had no time to pursue the investigation further. The ferry had already slackened
speed to enter its Manhattan slip. It struck with a bump and was made fast. Passengers began to leave.
BUT they were halted by a strange sight. A squad of plain-clothes detectives were leaping aboard the
moored ferry. Cranston recognized in the very forefront of the detectives the darkly grim visage of Acting
Inspector Joe Cardona.
Joe knew Cranston, but he merely nodded. Under his orders, the startled ferry passengers were herded
together. Shrewd police eyes scanned every male face. The man they were searching for was not among
them.
Cardona muttered a low-toned oath of disappointment. He permitted the passengers to leave the boat.
Cranston, however, did not depart. He had drifted toward the darkness of the vehicle runway, where his
car was parked farther back. He smiled and advanced, as he saw Cardona beckoning to him.
"Hello, Mr. Cranston! Sorry to annoy you with that quick passenger search, but we're here to pick up a
guy who was supposed to be on this trip of the ferry. Did you happen to see a passenger who looked
like this?"
He showed Cranston a photo. It was a picture of the thug with the beady eyes. Cranston's reply didn't
reveal the elation in his mind. He sounded politely puzzled.
"Of course! I remember him! Sailor Marco, eh? And you say he's a criminal. He was on the ferry, up
front with the rest of us. He disappeared when we began to nose into Manhattan. A rather queer incident
happened, as a matter of fact."
He described the pretty girl who had brushed close for an instant to Sailor Marco. He told of the girl's
trip to the stern of the boat, her scream of fright when a mysterious masher had insulted her. The masher,
too, had disappeared. Neither he nor Marco had been among those who had left the boat.
Yet they were not aboard it, either.
"I knew it," Cardona growled. "That whole masher business was a plant. The girl screamed to create a
diversion. It gave Marco a chance to vanish to wherever the rat did vanish."
He spat an oath of chagrin.
"I wish I had spoken to you sooner! We could have nabbed the girl. She must have walked calmly
ashore with the other passengers. Unless -
"Come to think of it," Joe cried grimly, "I didn't notice any dame such as you described leave the boat!"
He swung suddenly toward his plain-clothes men. "Did you boys see her?"
There was a general shaking of heads. None had seen the pretty blue-eyed girl walk from the ferry.
Cranston knew why. The girl was still aboard. She was hidden in Cranston's own car, by chance!
The Shadow had witnessed with his own eyes the girl's clever fade-out. He had watched her sneak
nimbly inside the trunk at the rear of his car, while he loitered near the dark entry of the vehicle alley. That
was why he had paid no attention to the police when they had first leaped aboard the ferry.
He had no intention of allowing the police to find her. There was really no crime with which to charge her.
She'd pretend she had become hysterical with fright and had hid instinctively when she saw the police.
Cardona would be up against a blank wall if he put her under arrest.
"Look!" Cranston said suddenly.
His sharp voice compelled attention. So did the direction of his rigidly pointing finger. He was standing in
the doorway of the women's cabin. It was the same deserted cabin through which the masher had fled
when the girl with the blue eyes had screamed. Cranston's finger was pointing at the paneled wall where
the drinking faucets were located.
Water was running down the outside face of the wooden panel, to puddle on the floor.
Cardona stood on a bench and pried the panel loose. It came away suddenly, and with it a deluge of
water that almost knocked him headlong from the bench.
The overflow of water was caused by something that had been crammed into the open top of the
concealed tank. Cardona's face went grim as he peered at a pair of shoes and two bent legs.
A man had been forced headfirst into the huge ice-water receptacle behind the removable panel. His
ankles were cuffed together with steel links. So were his wrists. His face was a ghastly blue when his
corpse was lowered to the floor of the cabin.
It was Sailor Marco. He had been drowned in the water tank.
THE motive for the drowning was grimly clear to Joe Cardona. The blueness of the dead man's forehead
couldn't hide the trident insignia that made a gruesome pattern on his wet skin.
Davy Jones had removed the last living threat to his hidden identity! Sailor Marco had carried his
dangerous knowledge to the grave. The police were up against a blank wall.
But the way to The Shadow was not closed. Hidden in the rear of Cranston's expensive car was a living
clue. He would use that clue to guide him closer to the heart of murder.
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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：76 页 大小：185.08KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

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