Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 328 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

alley where Paulson had died. He also remembered the small, swarthy man who had driven SHADOW

BEWARE 53

Jasper Lorring's green Cadillac on the night Lamont Cranston had eluded Lorring. Now here was a small, dark-skinned man who had apparently followed Allard from Port Moresby, across the Coral Sea, to Townsville far up in Queensland, Australia. And yet he was sure, certain, that he had not been followed either from London or Sydney.

"And you're sure they are following us?" Allard said.

"Well, no," Max said, "not sure of that. All I know is that they took off right after us from Moresby. Now they're here, and they were damned close to us most of the way across while you were dozing."

Allard smiled. "I wasn't dozing, Max, I was thinking." Max laughed. "Looked like dozing to me."

"Well, perhaps I need some sleep then."

"You want me to check on those chaps?" Max said. "You need some sleep, too," Allard said.

"Not at my age. You go ahead, I know you want to make an early start. I'll amble around and do some snooping, very discrete like, eh?"

"All right, Max," Kent Allard agreed. He was tired.

In his small hotel room he slept the deep, untroubled sleep he always did. Anyone who happened to see him so deeply asleep could never have guessed that beneath this calm slumber was a mind ready to spring into full action at the faintest of noises, the minutest of changes in the air around him. Even asleep, the mind of The Shadow could sense the slightest hint of danger, of something infinitesimally unusual.

Over breakfast in the small dining room of the hotel, with a hot summer dawn just breaking outside with the cries of the strange Australian birds and the sound of the surf in the distance, Max reported what he had learned about the other aircraft and the swarthy man. Allard listened carefully.

"It's kind of peculiar," Max explained in a puzzled voice. "The ship is registered to a private Italian company, Perunia, S.A., a pharmaceutical outfit from Milan with a sales branch in Sydney. Pilot is an Italian, passenger is another Italian named Luigi Nenni, a company scientist."

"What's so peculiar about that?" Allard wanted to know.

"In the first place that's a special bush ship, and I know all the bush ships, but I don't know that one. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was a ship I've seen over at Perth. Only how did they get it reregistered in Sydney?"

"And in the second place?" Allard prompted.

"In the second place the purpose of their trip to Moresby is listed as 'scientific exploration for drug sources.' But they stayed in Moresby only a day, and they never left the town."

Allard nodded. "A scientific exploration takes more than a day, and drug sources are not plentiful in Port Moresby."

"That's what I figured," Max said.

"Where are they now?"

"I don't know, they vanished. What do we do?"

"Is their aircraft still at the field?"

"It is."

"Then we take off and keep an eye on it. Perhaps they just got cold feet when they saw New Guinea," Allard said.

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