Shadow 158 - Crime Over Boston 09-15-38, The by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant [Grant, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Street and Smith
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“SOME dough for you, Barney,” informed Harry briskly, “- if you give me the dope I want. About a ship that went out of Boston a few nights ago, and may have come back.”

“What kind of a vessel?” demanded Barney.

“Tell me the ones you know about,” replied Harry. “We’ll get to that afterward.”

“Got a pencil and paper?”

Harry supplied them. Barney drew a rough plan of the water front, indicated an obscure, abandoned dock.

“There was a ship used that pier,” he told Harry. “She’s likely to dock there again if she’s needed. She ain’t in the harbor right now, but when she does come in, that’s where she’ll be.”

“What kind of a ship?”

“A ghost ship,” croaked Barney with a grin. “Leastwise, she came from a fleet of ghost ships.”

“An old freighter?”

Barney chuckled scornfully.

“Dockin’ there?” he questioned. “Not a chance, matey. This vessel was an old rumrunner. Built for that trade.”

The description was the one that Harry wanted. It fitted the ship that The Shadow had observed in the Rhode Island bay. Harry asked Barney what else he knew about the craft.

“I know her name!” Barney was triumphant. “She’s the Escapade. What’s more, I can tell you where she come from. She was with that bunch of tubs that was bought cheap by Inter-Coastal Lines.”

“Inter-Coastal bought the Escapade?”

“Naw. You got it wrong. Whoever peddled them ships to Inter-Coastal, owned the Escapade, too. When they’d sold what they could to Inter-Coastal, they sent the rest to the ghost fleet. The Escapade went along, but she didn’t stay there.”

“Do you know any of her crew?”

Barney scrawled some names on the piece of paper.

“I ain’t sayin’ for certain,” he declared. “But some of ‘em may be aboard her. That’s all I can tell you.”

Harry pocketed the paper, pushed the money to Barney. The squinty man was stuffing the bills in his pocket when Harry turned out the light. Harry heard Barney move toward the door, then return. He whispered to Harry and shoved the money into the younger man’s hand.

“There’s a fellow out there” - Barney was hoarse - “lookin’ in from the side door. He knows me, because I seen him comin’ off the Escapade. He warn’t with the crew, though. He was a passenger.

“There’s others with him, an’ maybe they’ll be askin’ questions. I’ll tell ‘em I ain’t talked to nobody; an’ if they find my pocket empty, they’ll believe it. I’ll trust you to get the cash to me tomorrow.”

In darkness, Barney left the room. Harry approached the door, held it ajar while he listened. He heard Barney shuffling toward the side door, but the clatter of dishes from the front drowned any conversation that Barney might have had with the man who awaited him.

The next minutes were tense. At last Harry placed his eye to the crack in the door. He saw Barney seated at a table near the side door, with a glass and bottle in front of him. Probably the men had gone; Barney had just stopped for a drink.

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