The Shadow - Crime Rides The Sea Part 9

Rubbing his chin, Bradden turned to Cliff.

"Maybe there's something in what you say," said the skipper. "So I'll leave it to you to line up that mob. Tell 'em we don't want no ma.s.sacre; that we may have to use them fellows on the salvage ship. Only, get a move on! I'll be up, if you don't!"

Cliff took to the hatchway. As he went, he shot a nod to Harry thatBradden didn't see. Harry caught the idea.

WITHOUT a light to betray her, the lugger eased in as Bradden ordered. Up on the deck, Cliff was buzzing to the crew. They were to lay low, he told them; to wait for word from Bradden. If it didn't come, Cliff would give it.

"Those lights aren't enough," said Cliff to the thugs beside him. He was referring to a few electric bulbs that glowed from the deck of the Hercules, flat against the water. "We're going to lay to for a while. Maybe until daylight."

n.o.body objected. But Cliff was counting heavily on matters down below. He wanted to send Hawkeye to work along with Harry, but he couldn't get a word to the wizened man. Too many thugs were close.

Below, Bradden was coolly slicing a cud of chewing tobacco from a plug.

He shoved the tobacco in his mouth. turned toward the hatchway. He stopped, mouth half open, the cud distending the lower half of his left cheek.

Harry Vincent blocked the way with an automatic in his hand.

"Mutiny, huh?" mouthed Bradden, when he finally found his voice. "I didn't take you for a rat, young fellow!"

Harry's persuasive nudge forced Bradden back to a corner. Rat or no rat, Harry meant business, and the skipper knew it. He chewed his tobacco meditatively.

"Maybe you ain't got nerve enough to shoot," said Bradden. "Let's see about it."

He started a half circle toward the hatchway ladder. A brisk order from Harry stopped him. Bradden changed tactics. He moved slowly toward Harry, giving his lifted arms a crablike motion.

"One step more," Harry told him, "and it's curtains!"

As he spoke, Harry thrust his gun forward, at the same time making a neat calculation. He was moving the weapon to where Bradden could make a grab at it, but there was a trick to offset that. The method was to take a backward step, that Bradden wouldn't notice because his eye was on the gun.

It would have been perfect, if Harry hadn't forgotten Bradden's many-boxed table. As he went back, Harry b.u.mped the thing.

He grabbed for the wall, trying to get his balance, and Bradden was charging on him like a wild bull. Harry's gun hand had gone up; he slashed it downward. But the scar-faced man ducked, poked a big fist right for Harry's eye.

Floundering among the tumbling boxes, Harry lost the gun and rolled across the floor. Bradden grabbed the automatic and pocketed it. Springing to the ladder, he shoved his head out through the hatchway, saw the salvage ship right alongside.

"All right!" bellowed Bradden. "Board her!"

Dropping below again, Bradden looked for Harry, saw him getting up from the floor. Both fists circling, the skipper did a half dance forward, intending to batter the man who had tried to cross him. Harry swung in to meet him, and ducked the first hook that Bradden flung.

Coming up, he showed the lugger's skipper just how it should be done; only, Bradden learned very little from the lesson. All of Harry's weight was behind the punch that met the skipper's jaw.

Nothing was left of the overturned boxes after Bradden struck them. He hitlike a lump of iron, and he was out cold when he struck.

HARRY reclaimed his gun and took to the ladder, just as the Welcome sc.r.a.ped the Hercules. He saw startled men bob up aboard the salvage ship, blinking at sight of aiming guns. It was Cliff's shout, alone, that stayed the ma.s.sacre: "Let's get them!"

That order wasn't for the mob. It was taken by The Shadow's agents. With Cliff, they flung themselves upon the closest thugs, slugging hard. They had guns, all except Jericho, who sprang from the galley with a pair of skillets, that he ruined upon convenient skulls.

The attack on the Hercules was forgotten in the midst of that uprising.

Snarling mobbies wheeled about, to battle the fighters in their midst. Guns barked; though wild, those shots predicted death for the scattered fighters who served The Shadow, for the odds were more than five to one against them.

Intervention was the only hope. It seemed impossible, but it came.

From beyond the side of the lugger that faced the open sea, a vivid glare sprang across the water. The brilliance of a mammoth searchlight was cutting a widespread swath from less than a hundred yards away. The fringes of that glow revealed the whiteness of a yacht that had crept up through the dwindling drizzle.

It was the Marmora!

Crooks couldn't help turning toward that glare, for it captured all attention. It blinded them for the moment, until something partly intercepted it. What they saw then, riveted them even more.

Against the brilliant spotlight stood a silhouetted shape, a weird figure in the gleam. It showed the outline of a cloaked figure, head topped by a slouch hat. Even the hawkish profile was discernible, as the black form turned.

As crooks jabbed their revolvers toward the sight they hated, they heard the tone that was the final token of their challenger's ident.i.ty.

From the deck of the Marmora came the unmistakable laugh of The Shadow!

The Marmora had reached the scene of the salvage ship by coming south at terrific speed under forced draft.

CHAPTER XV.

TIDES TURN.

FROM the tangle aboard the Welcome, many marksmen were shooting for The Shadow. Crooks were imbued with one idea: to finish him first, then take care of the few battlers in their own midst. It seemed, for a moment, that they had chosen the proper policy.

With the first barrage the cloaked shape vanished from in front of the searchlight, like a huge bat seeking darkness. Exultant shouts from the Welcome proved that crooks thought they had seen The Shadow drop, when he faded.

But the big light still burned.

It couldn't be that they had clipped The Shadow, for additional shots would certainly have extinguished the searchlight. He was somewhere else along the yacht's rail, and the only game was to pepper more bullets through the blackness.

Those crooks might as well have used pea-shooters.

The Marmora was beyond revolver range; a fact they hadn't recognized. The light that cleaved the drizzle was deceptive. It gave no indication of the exact distance. The mob was simply wasting ammunition.

The men aboard the Marmora weren't. They were beginning a return fire, inspired by The Shadow. Their weapons were high-powered rifles, that whistled sh.e.l.ls at an angle across the lugger's deck. Foolishly, crooks kept up their own barrage, thinking it would bring results.

A red light blinked a tiny, vivid dot from near the yacht's stern. It was The Shadow's flash. It told his agents what was coming. Instantly, they gave up their hand-to-hand struggle with the nearer mobbies and made hurried dives for the hold.

Only one man didn't go. Tapper had taken a bullet in the leg. He looked all right, until he stumbled near the galley; there, a pair of thugs forgot The Shadow long enough to pounce on Tapper. But Jericho was quicker.

He had ripped the small stove from the galley floor; he flung it from the hatchway against the pouncing crooks. They flattened to the deck; before they could get up again, Jericho's big paw plucked Tapper down into the galley.

Rifles were getting results. As crooks began to flounder, cool heads among them realized the predicament. They couldn't make for the hold, because The Shadow's agents had taken it over and were protecting the hatchways.

They saw an easier objective; one that offered them a double opportunity: the deck of the salvage ship alongside. The s.p.a.ce between was short enough to bridge, and it would require the mobbies only a few minutes to overwhelm the skeleton crew that manned the Hercules.

During such a fray, they would be immune from The Shadow and his riflemen.

They would have to halt their fire, to avoid injuring members of the salvage crew.

AS the first thugs turned to make that drive, The Shadow stepped into the fringe of the searchlight. His move seemed a trick to make the mobbies forget their new plan, but they weren't falling for that game again. They were out to get those men aboard the Hercules, a pitiful group who couldn't stand an armed onslaught.

The Shadow held a rifle; he was raising it. He had targets, but they were too many. With all his skill, The Shadow could not drop a dozen men before they had gone a similar number of paces.

That was all the distance the crooks needed to go to reach the deck of the Hercules. The salvage men were grimly expecting them, but with no weapons better than belaying pins. Those would be chaff against guns and knives.

Cliff Marsland wanted to make a sortie from the hold, to stop the coming ma.s.sacre. Harry Vincent held him back. He still remembered The Shadow's red light.

The next moment proved Harry's wisdom.

The Shadow's left hand had moved to the muzzle of the rifle. Plain in the bright light, it pressed an object to that muzzle. The object was shaped like a pineapple.

Quickly, the hand swung away, leaving the bulging thing at the rifle's end. The long gun spoke; there was a flash as the projectile speeded on its way, coming straight for the deck of the Welcome, an enlarging dot like a sunspot on the searchlight's face.

The thing was a rifle grenade!

Finding such ammunition in the yacht's well-stocked a.r.s.enal, The Shadow was using the grenade as a petard against Pointer Trame's own followers. He could have chosen nothing better than that missile, which he had reserved forthis emergency.

The grenade struck at the heels of the bellowing, charging cl.u.s.ter that was making for the salvage ship. It caught the crooks at the last possible instant, just when they were starting a rapid fire that seemed destined to clear the way before them. The grenade did more than end their desire for fight.

It blasted them.

The explosion was terrific. It cleared a swath along the lugger's deck, ripping timbers, flinging them along with flying bodies. Half a dozen of the murderous mobsmen were withered by that shot; the rest were jarred by the concussion. Seeing The Shadow, they watched him with terror in their eyes.

Coolly, the black-clad fighter affixed another of the deadly grenades to the mouth of his perfect-shooting gun!

Mobsters made a wild scramble for the nearest cover: the hatchways that The Shadow's agents guarded. They were met by point-blank shots that sent them reeling back. One cl.u.s.ter, rallying toward the stern, was planning on a drive, when The Shadow's rifle sent its second message.

This time, the grenade blasted a chunk of rail from the lugger's stern.

It wounded a few thugs, who were very close, and it scattered the others. The Shadow had purposely lessened the power of that shot, offering the thugs the alternative of surrender.

Stepping swiftly from his place near the searchlight, The Shadow used his small flashlight to send a green glimmer. His agents on the lugger understood.

They sallied from their hatchways, to complete the victory over the badly jarred survivors of the scattered mob.

PERHAPS it was an after-effect, a sort of sh.e.l.l shock, that drove the crooks berserk. They didn't yield as meekly as The Shadow had expected; instead, they offered wild resistance.

But their efforts had no teeth. They were tugging at triggers of empty guns, reaching for sheaths that held no knives. The Shadow's agents - Harry, Cliff and Hawkeye - were shouldering them right and left.

Behind came Jericho, grabbing up those rolling forms, flinging them over the lugger's sides, sometimes in pairs. Once the water had cooled them, they would be meek enough for rescue. That task, however, was to be left to others.

The Shadow's flashlight was white again. As the searchlight suddenly vanished, the little glow began a signal. Harry saw it, and made for the hold.

He arrived in Bradden's cabin, to find the skipper sitting by the wall.

The jaw that Harry had punched was equal in size to the cheek where Bradden kept his tobacco cud. The lugger's captain was still very groggy.

"Get this scow going!" snapped Harry. "It's your only chance, Bradden.

The mob's wiped out!"

"Going?" Bradden blinked as he spoke. "Where to?"

"To sh.o.r.e," Harry told him. "If you beach us in a hurry, maybe you'll have a chance to go your own way from there."

Bradden stumbled to his feet. He bawled an order to the engine room, where a couple of his crew had been lying low, throughout the battle. Those fellows weren't mobbies; they were glad enough that the attack had failed. They went to work with a will.

The Welcome was chugging forward, when Harry shoved Bradden to the deck and made the fellow take the helm. Harry ordered a circling course past the Marmora. Behind them, the men on the salvage ship were hauling crooks aboard, one by one, wagging iron pins above the heads as fast as they appeared, demanding absolute submission with each rescue. The lugger gained speed; it veered past the stern of the Marmora. As the clumsy ship pa.s.sed, a figure made a long leap from the framework that supported the canopy over the yacht's rear deck. No ordinary jumper would have made that distance, but The Shadow cleared it.

He had the advantage of a higher level for a start; the steps he took across the framework were like the start of a broad jumper's run. He timed the veer of the Welcome to perfection, clearing the low rail at the instant when it was closest to the yacht.

Out from the sh.o.r.e, lights were sweeping the sea, announcing the approach of fleet coast-guard cutters, attracted by the sound of gunfire and explosions.

Soon they would arrive, to find the crew of the salvage ship in charge of captured crooks, with the Marmora moored near by, to help suppress any foolish break that the prisoners might attempt.

But the real victors would be gone. The Shadow and his agents were leaving the scene of this new triumph, in complete command of the very ship that had brought a tribe of desperate mobsmen to the battle!

Motor humming, the lugger was showing speed. Her low hull was black against the water, her course wide of the path along which the cutters came.

Only a few miles ahead lay breakers; beyond them, the sand where Bradden could beach his ship.

Having ended crime at sea, The Shadow and his aids would soon be shaping new events ash.o.r.e!

CHAPTER XVI.

THE OLD GARAGE.

IT wasn't long after dawn, but Harry Vincent was already back in New York.

It rather amazed him, when he recalled how much had happened in so little time.

The voyage of the freighter Ozark, the sea trip on the Welcome, had been plodding journeys that made distance seem long.

Things had been quite different, after Bradden had beached the lugger.

They had come ash.o.r.e at Brigantine, the resort just north of Atlantic City before the sun had risen. Lights had guided the lugger - the lights of a fishing pier, where early risers and all-night fishermen were trying their luck.