Shadow 236 - Crime's Stronghold 12-15-41, 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

TEN minutes later, a pair of crooks came dashing into the kitchen to report that the apes were getting too much exercise. The gibbons had climbed a magnolia tree and wouldn’t come down. In going after them, the keepers forgot Boola and Tongo, and now those two were missing.

“Find that baboon!” stormed Griff, turning over the cook’s job to Gabby. “The gorilla has sense, and he’ll come back. We’ll get the gibbons down from the tree later, but that fool baboon will make plenty of trouble if we don’t round him up!”

Baboons preferred the ground to trees, and their favorite diet was fruit, so it wasn’t surprising that the crooks soon discovered Boola among the trees of the haphazard grove, eating oranges that were lying on the turf.

They hauled him back to the bungalow, and found that Tongo had returned. One-handed, the gorilla pushed the baboon into the proper trailer; then followed along to help collect the gibbons.

Tired of the magnolia tree, the pair came down, and made for their cage at Tongo’s threat. He didn’t grab them as he had before, and Griff suddenly noticed that the gorilla had only one hand available. Under Tongo’s other, arm was a folded newspaper. He yielded it when Griff reached for it.

“Smart boy, Tongo,” approved Griff. He gestured the ape into its cage. Then, to the men, Griff remarked: “Tongo saw me take newspapers out of the R. F. D. box. He must have gone along the road to find another box that had one. He picks up tricks quick.”

They went inside and Griff tossed the newspaper in the fire. Their lunch finished, Griff told two of the crooks to take the trailers, apes and all, back to Englemere’s.

“If you meet up with any coppers,” he told them, “say that the circus hired your buddies, but didn’t want the monkeys, so you’re going to try the jungle gardens. It’s getting dark soon, and we won’t need the apes as a front any longer.”

The two thugs left with the trailers. Griff motioned to Gabby and the pair that remained. He led them to a door that connected with the garage. When Griff opened it, they saw a sleek four-passenger coupe. Griff told them to load the professor’s Vapor Gun in the ample trunk compartment.

“We’ll start in about twenty minutes,” declared. Griff. “It’s only about eight miles to Lakedale, and we’ll roll in right after dark. That bank job will be a cinch, and if the going is good, we ought to be back at Englemere’s soon after the monkeys get there.”

As Griff finished, he assumed a listening attitude. He heard the purr of a motor somewhere outside, and mistook it for a car stopping on the highway. Then, as the throbs suddenly returned, Griff relaxed.

“One of those student planes,” he said. “They’re always flying around here. That one is probably the last. They have to quit when it gets dark. They can’t wise to anything, anyway.”

There, Griff was wrong.

Overhead, the mosquito plane was

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