"046 (B052) - The Vanisher (1936-12) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"I don't like that," exploded Max Landerstett.
THE alarm bell rang monotonously, an even clangor that neither rose nor fell. Over its donging came the noise of men running, of shouting. These sounds were not loud.
"Now what in the hell has happened is the question I want to have answered, if anybody has an answer ready," said Max Landerstett. "The thing puzzles me greatly, and"—he flung his gun to the girl—"if you will take this firearm, my pretty blond colleague— " He dashed for the door. "I'll do my best to learn just what the hell has happened."
He vanished through the door.
The girl looked after him, biting her lips.
Her momentary diversion of interest was a mistake, for it gave Doc Savage an opportunity to leap. His spring was long and silent, and he clamped a corded bronze hand upon the gun and got it as readily as if the girl had handed it to him. The floor was too slick for such gymnastics and Doc lost his balance and came down, bringing the girl down also.
She was fast. She almost jabbed her fingers into his eyes, but he moved enough and her manicured finger nails—she wore them manicured to points after the current fashion—cut his bronze skin a little.
Doc put a hand against her shoulder and shoved hard and she spun around and around on the slick floor, clawing and scratching in an effort to stop herself and making angry gasping noises.
"I told—that windy Max—never to leave me alone— guarding you!" she said in spurts.
Doc got on his feet and left her, confident she had no other weapons, because her snug frock afforded no concealment for any. The floor was so slick that the bronze man found it best to move his feet as if skating on ice.
The girl screamed a warning when he was more than halfway across the room.
"Back of you!" she screamed. "Watch out!"
The warning was a move on the girl's part that showed her character was not bad, showed that she was involved in the affairs for some inspirational reason, and that she did not approve of life-taking. But the warning was not necessary, for Doc had already heard the door open.
He leaped, putting his feet out straight ahead, so that when he came down, he slid across the glassy floor as if greased, lying almost prone. It was simple to turn his head and note what had happened.
There was a door on the far side of the room; it had opened. He had heard the opening. In the aperture, two men stood spraddle-legged and aimed sawed-off shotguns at them both.
The men were two of the twenty insurance and holding concern men who had been forced in cells in place of convicts who had vanished so mysteriously from the State penitentiary. Doc recognized them from the pictures taken before they had fled the warden's house through a window.
Their sawed-off shotguns blasted fire, noise and buckshot slugs as large as pistol bullets.
DOC SAVAGE was rolling, reaching for the doorknob when they began shooting. They had come into the room a little too late, and were shooting too suddenly. The buckshot slugs—out of cartridges loaded for deer hunting in brush with shotguns—crashed into the walls, missing Doc.
Then the girl went into action. She tipped the heavy mahogany table over, tried to send it sliding toward the men in the door. Her feet slipped and she fell prone. One of the men shot at her, but the thick mahogany table top stopped the slugs easily.
Doc Savage went out through the door, which he had gotten open.
The big cathedrallike room where the girl lay behind the table was lighted by one chandelier, a fruit tree of bright, small lights hanging from the remote ceiling.
The girl, remaining behind the table, reached, got a chair and heaved it upward. It hit the chandelier. Fortunately, it caused a short circuit which brought a shower of hissing blue sparks, then darkness.
With the darkness, Doc Savage came back into the vast room. It was surprisingly dark. There were no windows in the room, except high up, and these were curtained and draped. It could hardly have been darker at midnight.
"Damn that girl!" said one of the men in the door. "We gotta get her!"
"Sure," said the other. "Only don't kill her. I can swallow most things. But not woman croaking!"
"Blamed knight in armor!" gritted the first, and cut loose three times with his repeating shotgun, driving slugs toward where the girl lay sheltered. "Dame or guy, it's all the same to this cookie! Come on! Let's fog her out of there!"
The other said, hoarsely, "The human race is lower than damned animals!"
Doc Savage reached out in the darkness and took the first man by the neck, one hand back and below the ears, the other hand back and above the ears. The bronze fingers did something slow and skillful, grinding, exploring a little.
"Ee-e-e-k!"
said the man, small and mouselike, and he became as slack as a sack of sticks.
Doc Savage lowered the man, who was senseless because of the skillful pressure on nerve centers.
The other had heard his companion squeak.
"What was the idea of making a noise like that?" he demanded.
The next instant he knew, because he made one himself, an almost identical noise, perhaps a bit louder than his comrade had made.
He fought madly. His gun went off, throwing a momentary red blush over the surrounding floor and showing, with almost imperceptible briefness, the sprawled form of the other convict. Then Doc laid the second invader alongside the first.
"Miss Yell," Doc called.
"Oh," said the girl's voice. "So you didn't run out on me?"
"No," Doc said. "I wanted to talk to you."
"That's too bad," the girl remarked grimly, "because now I'm going to run out on you."
She did. Doc raced her madly to the opposite door, but she got through it, got it locked in his face.
IT was a heavy door. The bronze man grasped the knob and exerted strength until the screw holding the knob to the lock spindle broke and the lock came away in his hands. He thumped the door once experimentally with a palm, then set himself on the slippery floor and gave a terrific smash. The panel split, let his hand through, and he groped for the key.
When he got the door open, the girl was gone.
Men seemed to be running all through the house. There was one shot, muffled, as if a firecracker had gone off under a tin can. Feet ran more swiftly. Men yelled.
Monk began talking in a high, yammering voice.
"Dag-goned lawyers!" he complained. "All alike! Knock a guy down so they can get away, and what do they do? Try to take charge of things and go one way while I go another! The dumb cluck of a fashion plate!"
A gun banged.
"Ouch!" Monk said. "Don't you know you might shoot me?"
A harsh voice said, "Did I miss you?"
"About an inch."
"I'll try to do better!"