"Doc Savage Adventure 1942-07 The Man Who Fell Up" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"You are not in the army now, Strand," he said.

Strand got very white, like a man who had taken a needle through his stomach in a way that would make a man very sick. He did not say anything.

"You will be going to your death," Strand repeated.

Rod swallowed. The trouble he had with his swallow showed he was scared as well as grim.

"It's the only thing left to do," he said. "Shake hands, Strand." He took Strand's hand and shook it gravely. "I'm going in. If it is to death, that is the way it will have to be."

And with that, Rod walked into the green skyscraper, walked in to his death as he had been warned!


DEATH, however, came to Rod Bentley in a fashion which was not immediate but which was startling.

Several things happened first, but one of these things was more important than the others, as is often the case with incidents.

The important thing was Tottingham Strand's inability to get into the green building. He tried. He stood there for a few seconds, fighting his impulse to save his friend or at least share his friend's danger, until he lost the battle. Then he rushed forward to the door through which Rod had gone. The door was locked.

Strand wrenched savagely at the knob. He was incredulous; he stepped back, scowled. He leaped forward and kicked the door.

"Open up!" he bellowed.

Echoes of his kick on the door and his shout came back from inside the building with about the sound a pebble makes when dropped in a large cavern. He tried it again.

Strand's anxiety became a kind of frenzy. Sweat stood like hot grease on his forehead. He ran back from the door. He stood and stared up at the building, and the building was like an old green skeleton. Nothing moved. There was no life anywhere.

The sweat kept coming out on his forehead. He started trembling, the calves of his legs first, then his knees. And finally, when he tried to wipe the perspiration off his face, it was as if his hand were patting against the skin.

He stood there for minutes. Then he began running along the side of the building, leaping to get at the windows. There were boards nailed inside the windows. The glass was broken out almost everywhere. But the boards were too solid for him to burst inside.

He ran back in desperation to look again at the building, and it was then that he saw the man on the ledge.

The ledge was high up, one floor down from the roof. It was not wide, probably two or three feet.

The man there was Rod Bentley. There was no doubt of that. He was backing away along the ledge. He had gone out on the ledge, fleeing from something.

There were shots, then! Two rapping reports. Then three more. Rod Bentley slumped down as if hit!

In order to see better, Strand wheeled, raced back to the opposite side of the street, then stopped and stared upward.

Down the street, a couple had stepped out of a doorway to stare. A man and a wife, probably. They had heard the shots. The woman leveled an arm at the high ledge and began screaming. She screamed twice, with a quick intake of breath between. Then she stopped shrieking with her mouth roundly open, a cavity of surprise.

Strand became rigid, as if all his muscles were tight strings. The figure above had fallen off the ledge. Possibly, the term "fallen" was not applicable, because the figure, although coming off the ledge, was going upward! It fell up! It fell up and up until it was small in the sky, finally a dot, eventually nothing that was visible. The form that had been on the window ledge became, in plain, unvarnished fact, if evidence of the eyes was to be believed-and there was no reason to disbelieve them - an upward-falling object that fell out into space.

This, of course, was not easy to believe, even if seeing is believing. The two people, the man and wife who had come out on their doorstep to see what the shooting was about, stood there gap-jawed for something like five minutes before they thought of anything to say to each other.

Strand had started running and had run out of sight by that time.