The Shadow Omnibus 07 by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Format: epub

CHAPTER XII. THE MIGHT OF KOY SHAN

OUT upon a lonely New Jersey road, not far from the town of Hopewell, Blaine Goodall was following a well-paved path to Trenton. The road which the corporation president had taken was excellent, despite its moderate width.

A light drizzle was beginning. The road was slippery, and Goodall dropped the gait of his sedan to forty-five miles an hour. Up to now, the man had been traveling between fifty and fifty-five.

Blaine Goodall was grumbling to himself. He could not understand why his friend Beecham had changed his mind about this trip to Trenton. Goodall had been angry ever since he had received the telephone message at the Union Club.

Because of the message from Beecham, Goodall was now riding alone. Had his friend been thoughtful enough to have informed him earlier, he would have been able to start at eight o'clock, and would now be enjoying a comfortable bed in a Trenton hotel.

The drizzle, foggy in parts, had made driving uncomfortable. Goodall could not understand the lack of consideration which Beecham had displayed.

Little did Goodall suppose that his chance conversation with Hugo Urvin had been the real cause of the present state of affairs! A chain of remarkable events had occurred immediately after that talk, and at this very moment, Goodall was riding into unexpected difficulties.

One driving hazard that annoyed Blaine Goodall was the frequency of crossing signs. Every time that he slowed the coupe in response to a shining warning, the driver discovered that the crossroad was nothing more than a third-class highway. Nevertheless, Goodall instinctively obeyed each caution as he approached it.

He was on a long, curving stretch of deserted roadway. Somewhere, in the distance, the whirling beacon of an airway marker played elusively across the horizon. Those flashes of light were always the same space away. Goodall decided that the road must be circling the beacon.

Something thrummed from far behind. The sound increased to a distant roar.

An airplane? It sounded more like a powerful motor that was following along the road, yet the swiftness of its approach convinced Goodall that it must be an air rider rather than an automobile, for the sound was gaining constantly.

A curve. Another crossing sign. Goodall applied the brakes and grunted as he rolled across a dirt-road intersection. He pressed the accelerator as he rose over a sloping bridge. Then, in the midst of this barren stretch, events began to happen.

THE roar behind became a terrific sound as a high-powered follower swept past the bend which Goodall had just taken. Powerful headlights glimmered in the mirror in front of Goodall's face.

Something else loomed ahead - across the highway, Goodall saw a touring car. The vehicle was parked at a slight angle, heading the same way that he was driving; but Goodall realized that if he kept on, a crash could not be avoided.

Powerful lights, accompanied by a terrific roar. That was the sign from the rear. A black, rakish automobile, like a pirate ship of the road, barring the way ahead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.