"028 (B088) - The Roar Devil (1935-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The street was full of motionless bodies.
"I'LL be superamalgamated!" Johnny exploded.
"Exactly," said V. Venable Mear. "You see, I kept you in there talking until the gas blew out of the street. It was the same kind of gas which overcame you, and there is not much wind, so it took a little time. Incidentally, I have always wondered how the trick would work. Quite effective, don't you think?"
Johnny bent a studious stare on V. Venable Mear. "You are a metempirical personality," he said.
V. Venable Mear smiled, rubbed his hands. "On the contrary, I am a man who makes his living by studying criminals and ways of combating them. This gas and the method of its distribution is my invention. I shall sell it to banks. Yes, I shall put on quite on advertising campaign. It is against my nature to seek publicity, but I think I shall now call in the newspaper reporters. This should get me more advertising than I could buy with a million dollars."
Johnny looked at Doc. "I can't make this fellow out."
V. Venable Mear smiled more widely and executed a sharp bow.
"May I introduce myself again as the man - "
V. Venable Mear screamed and fell down.
Simultaneously, or almost so, there was a sound as if some one had whistled, and close on the heels of that, a lip-popping noise. Tumbling after that, so close that the noises blended, came the whooping echoes of a shot.
Johnny started, "I'll be super - "
Doc Savage knocked him down. Down and back, through the door into the house. And the bronze man followed him, bending over and getting the still-falling Johnny by the shoulders and dragging him on into the house.
During that split-second interval, a thunder of shots rolled in the street and bullets made unearthly and hideous noises as they mutilated the door and the door jamb.
V. Venable Mear was screaming - and rolling. There seemed to be blind insanity to his rolling, for it had carried him out in the street.
Johnny made something like a move to go after him.
"You couldn't make it," Doc told him. "Nobody could, unless they were in a tank. And even then, I wouldn't be so sure."
They could see two of the flashing guns. They were on top of a dwelling across the street. There were at least a dozen other guns going.
Doc Savage and Johnny moved backward. There was a passage inside the door, and it sheltered them.
They stood there until two men ran into view. They wore clumsy bullet proof capes, steel helmets, and kept their heads down to protect their faces as much as possible. They worked like soldiers making a charge.
The two seized V. Venable Mear.
"Be sure he don't get hurt!" one of the men gasped.
They dragged Mear away.
Doc and Johnny retreated. There was nothing more for them to do here. They could hear shouting, some one ordering a charge on the house.
Johnny had a machine pistol. He clipped a drum of tear-gas bullets into it and emptied them into the street. That held off the assault for a while.
They found the rear door. It was open, inviting. The surroundings were very dark. Doc Savage stopped Johnny before he could go out. "Wait," Doc advised.
He went back.
"Young lady!" he called.
There was no answer from Retta Kenn, no sound to indicate that she was in the house.
There was a kitchen, and from a shelf the bronze man got several ripe tomatoes. Back at the rear door, he tore off bits of the tomatoes and tossed them carefully, one piece at a time. They were soft, and because they did not roll after they fell, they sounded much like footsteps.
A revolver set up a loud bang-bang-bang! Bullets chopped and snarled where the tomato fragments had followed.
Johnny let a bullfiddle moan out of his machine pistol. A man cried out. His body fell heavily. There was no other sound from the alley, but much yelling around in front.
Doc Savage and Johnny were not interfered with as they ran away.
They loitered in the vicinity. The raiders gathered up Dove Zachies's men, who were unconscious in the street. They did not get Dove Zachies. They wanted him. There was much shouted urging to find his body, but they went without it.
They took V. Venable Mear.
Cars were waiting, big fast machines which boomed into the street and picked up every one. A radio police patrol car barged into the thick of it, to have the wheels all but shot out from under it. The startled policemen fell down a basement areaway, dragging one of their number who had taken bullets through his legs.
The raiders betook themselves away.
Not once did Doc Savage detect a trace of the girl. He and Johnny left the vicinity quietly.

Chapter X. TRAIL

THE sunrise was resplendent, its coloring an artist's dream. But not many city dwellers get up to see sunrises.
Johnny sat in Doc Savage's skyscraper office and frowned at an inspiring display of pale rosy light upon nebulous clouds, skyscraper spires, harbor water, ships. Doc Savage was going over the newspapers. They had broken out their largest type:
MAMMOTH MYSTERY RAID
STAGED BY GUNMAN HORDE
The story below kept pretty close to the facts as they had come to the attention of the reporters. There was no mention of Dove Zachies, Roar Devil or Retta Kenn.
PURPOSE UNKNOWN
There was some conjecture below that which had come from some alert rewrite man's brain.
GET-AWAY CARS ALL STOLEN
Seven cars had been found. The policemen who had come upon the scene had done a good job of getting license numbers. To Doc Savage's knowledge, there had been only seven cars.
V. VENABLE MEAR KNOWN