"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 290 - Death has Grey Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

meant
more than a demand for silence; they were mutual signals calling for a slash.
It was just a question which killer would beat the other to the stroke.
Right then, the poised blades froze in mid-air.
A calm tone belonging to neither of the would-be murderers, was telling
both to drop their knives. Between the shove and the vicious faces, Dick saw
the calm visage of Cranston, whose face he remembered from the elevator but
whose name he didn't know. Cranston's hands, at shoulder level, were behind
the
necks of Dick's persecutors and each fist was loaded with an automatic.
This was a cool antidote to murder, before the deed could be
accomplished,
but the savage pair did not long tolerate the threat. Like a well-drilled
team,
they suddenly dodged from the gun muzzles and spun about with double purpose.
One intended to stab Cranston; the other to give Dick the slash. If
Cranston had fired his guns, he might have stopped those deeds, but not with
certainty. Instead he whipped into a two-way maneuver of his own.
A ward with one gun met the stabbing knife with a clang that knocked it
from the attacker's hand. A swing of the other automatic forced the second man
to make an arm fling which in turn shortened his knife slash, since his elbow
was driven against Dick's chest. Bowled back into the doorway, Dick landed
half-sprawled and the knife merely carved the air above his head.
It was then that the big guns talked.
Cranston didn't aim at the snarling pair, who seemed to melt down to the
sidewalk, then come springing up again like human mushrooms, the first
reclaiming his lost knife in a deft, rapid scoop. Downward shots might have
found Dick instead of the two attackers.
Neatly planted, Cranston's shots were just close enough to make the two
men spread and Dick thought surely they'd be taking to their heels. Instead,
they dove into the scene again.
Cranston was their mutual target now and guns or no guns, Dick wouldn't
have given him a chance. He was practically flattening himself, evening
clothes
and all, as though hoping he could drop right through the sidewalk. Now Dick
was
coming to his feet intending to charge into a fray that was over before he
could
start.
Swinging arms, driving feet came up from the sidewalk to meet those
flying
dives. Instead of finding Cranston, the baggy assassins were bouncing past
each
other like a pair of India-rubber men. The amazing Mr. Cranston must have met
them with some tactics that carried these light-weights further on their way
and from the tumbles they took, Dick expected a couple of broken necks where
they properly belonged.
 Instead, the men came up again.
This time, Dick didn't let astonishment hinder him. One of the men was
rising out there by the lighted curb, intent upon regaining a knife that had