"Avenger - 4303 - Calling Justice, INC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Avenger)

fishlike; his face woodenly expressionless. He got the cigarette glowing and held it before her
face. "Your eyes, my dear," he said softly. "They're beautiful eyes. I shall take the left one
first." He moved the glowing end closer. "You'll naturally close your eye as the cigarette
approaches, my dear. Consequently, it will burn through the eyelid."

Staring up at him, Nellie knew that this was the end. She knew that this man meant exactly what
he said. He was going to do the thing that he threatened. He wasn't bluffing. There was nothing to
stop him, not even a bit of human feeling. He wanted the Zaharoff treasure and he was going to get
it.

Nellie could almost feel the searing agony that would come in a moment when the cigarette end
touched her lid. Her eyes were still inflamed by the tear gas. But that had been nothing to this.
She felt her knees trembling. She strained every muscle of her lithe body to break free‹without
avail. She stared in fascination at that glowing tip of fire inching closer with the expressionless
face of Royce Haggard behind it.

"We waited five years in jail for this chance," Haggard was saying softly. "We had the Zaharoff
treasure cached away and we planned carefully so as not to muff the prison break. We sent
Procter--that's your plump friend on the bus--to get the stuff, but he thought he could cross us and
make his getaway. You know what happened to him." Haggard's face moved closer with the cigarette.
"Do you think we'll let anything stand in the way now? Not even your pretty eyes, my dear!"

In a desperate, frantic effort to gain time, Nellie exclaimed, "But you'll kill me anyway--even
if I tell you!"

"That's right, my dear. But at least you'll look beautiful in your coffin. And the pain. It's
better to die without pain, believe me."

He moved the cigarette up so close that Nellie involuntarily blinked. She thought her eyelids
were being singed.

"Wait!" she gasped.

Haggard did not move the cigarette. "I'm waiting," he said impassively.

"I checked the stuff," Nellie lied swiftly. "In the hotel safe!"

"Ah!" said Haggard. He stood up to his full height, removing the cigarette. "The hotel safe! So
simple! And I never thought of it!" He chuckled and spoke to one of the two men who had remained
stonily silent throughout the ordeal. "You see, Corbey, how impossible it is to foresee everything?
To think of everything? We were looking for clever tricks, and this girl used the simplest one of
all. The hotel safe!"

Corbey said glumly, "We can't go for it now. The cops'll be swarming all over the place. By this
time the hotel people will know we aren't F.B.I."

"Naturally," said Haggard. "We'll have to wait till just before dawn. We'll take five men.
That'll be plenty. There'll be no more than one policeman on guard by then. We shouldn't have any
trouble at all with one policeman, eh? And the clerk will be glad to oblige us by opening the safe!"