"056 (B028) - Repel (The Deadly Dwarf) (1937-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The jungle glade was hot under a curtain of volcanic smoke. A fine ash was sifting down, making all the jungle gray and strange-looking. They were on the north end of the island. That end was swamp.
Doc and Renny lay near; Ham was beyond. Doc and Renny were still weirdly slack. They were not tied yet.
Monk suddenly sat up enough to get his teeth in his tormentor's leg. Monk's mouth was big enough to accommodate a respectable portion of leg. The man who had been stamping his stomach threw back his head and honked like a goose.
"I'll kill 'im!" he screamed, and scooped up a rock.
"Lay off!" the girl said sharply.
The man gritted, "But the chief is gonna get rid of 'em anyway!"
"Wait until he gives the word!" Bess Baldwin retorted.
"Listen, sister, what's the difference if—"
The girl showed her argument. It was flat and blue and probably held seven cartridges. The man lifted his lip off his upper front teeth, but did not say anything more.
Monk squinted at the girl. That man was afraid of her.
That meant the lady must be a pretty tough egg.
Every one stood around as if waiting for something. Monk wondered what, and craned his neck. He saw a man off to one side with a portable radio outfit. It was a modern set of military type, but alongside Doc's little gadgets, as crude as an alarm clock beside a lady's wrist watch. They were waiting for something over the radio.
The girl looked at Doc. She had been doing that a lot. She punished her lower lip with small white teeth.
"Savage should have awakened by now!" she said anxiously. "I'm afraid he didn't react naturally to the gas."
"Keep your shirt on, sis," her brother said. "He's alive."
Monk let out a relieved breath. He had not been sure.
The man at the radio called, "It's coming!" and listened.
He got up, eyed the prisoners, and spat.
"The chief ain't gonna wait until he locates that other one, Johnny," the man said. "He says for us to take Monk, Ham and this one with the big fists—chief says his name is Renny—over to the lava stream. Some of the other guys will be there with that runty one, Long Tom. All four of 'em go into the lava stream."
Bess Baldwin stiffened suddenly. "What about Savage?"
"You and Buddy stick here and watch him," the man advised. "The chief says you better not let him get away."
The girl put her teeth into her lower lip, and when she took them out, little red beads appeared. She said shrilly, "I've got something to say, too, and I might as well do it now."
She ran to the radio and elbowed the operator out of her path. It was a phone outfit. She knew how it operated.
"Chief," Bess Baldwin said into the mike, "you've steered clear of killing all through your operations. You've said that nothing stirs up trouble quite as fast. Why change your ideas now?"
She listened. What was said to her was not lengthy. She put the transmitter and headset down. Her face was blank.
The men picked up Monk, Ham and Renny and left.
The plane buzzed around in the sky above. Otherwise there was silence. The volcanic dust fell quietly. Doc lay motionless.
"What'd he say, sis?" Buddy Baldwin asked.
"He just—laughed," Bess Baldwin said hoarsely.
The brother dropped an arm over his sister's shoulder.
"That little toy of a man is the worst fiend who ever lived," he said. "Don't cross him."
The girl nodded. There was a sound as if something had come up fast in her throat and stopped.
Bess Baldwin still had the gun in her hand when she sank beside Doc Savage, groaning, "I can't understand what is keeping him senseless for so long."
Doc's hand had to move less than a foot to take hold of her gun.
THE girl said "Oh!"
Buddy Baldwin said "Oh-h!" got both hands over his middle and went into a squat. The gun which had hit him in the stomach hippety-hopped over the ground.
The girl looked vacantly at her hand. She did not quite realize it was her gun which had hit Buddy. Doc's throw had been something of a blur.
Buddy Baldwin had a gun somewhere in his clothing. He got his hands started toward it. Then Doc took hold of him.
Baldwin was big. He had learned self-defense in a school where men had fought for their lives. And he had no delusions about his ability. He knew he was up against it.
He got his arms around Doc, then tried to rub his bristling hair into the bronze man's face. Doc knew that one. The hair was greasy, flecked with something, some kind of powdered chemical that would blind an opponent.
Doc got his jaw around behind one of Baldwin's ears and rubbed nerve centers. Baldwin screeched in agony.
Buddy Baldwin convulsed. His shirt was silk. It tore. He got out of it, and Doc had the shirt, greasy with sunburn concoction and some of the man's red, burned hide.
The man tried to box next. He was good at that, too. They sparred. Their four fists seemed to become half a dozen fists. There came three or four small knuckle reports, then a loud one. Buddy Baldwin fell on his back.
Doc rushed. He was ordinarily more cautious. But the other had brushed his knuckles against his hair, and had put some of the chemical in Doc's eyes. Baldwin got his feet up in time.
Doc lifted, swapped his head for his feet. The kick had caught him where it should have disabled, or worse. But he landed as easily as a cat that had jumped off a porch.
Buddy Baldwin got up. He used his feet now. He knew a lot about a Scandinavian boxing game conducted only with the feet. A deadly art of defense.
Suddenly the two men were together and down. Buddy Baldwin never did know exactly what went wrong. He used his fists. And when he felt the hardness of the bronze man, a kind of unbelief came into his eyes. Sticks, dirt, leaves flew. The volcanic ash was a cloud.
The cloud settled, and Doc Savage was on Buddy Baldwin's back, with a hold that was something of a nelson, but different in a terrible way. Buddy Baldwin's skin pores began to leak.
He moaned about his mother.
The girl ran into the jungle and back. She had gotten the gun.