"123 (B113a) - The Talking Devil (1943-05) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The man said nothing, but more fear swam in his eyes. He knew what had happened to Duster Jones, all right, and apparently that was the big thing now in his mind.
"The same thing will happen to you;" Rotary told him, "if you make one bleat or one jump."
They got out at the airport. The Harrison plane was refueled, ready for the air.
Rotary put the captive in the cabin, indicating that Sis should watch the fellow.
"I'll go get my papers for the New York flight," Rotary explained. "Getting papers every time you turn around in an airplane is a danged nuisance, but on account of the war I guess you gotta do it."
He went away and came back. "All set," he explained. He took over the controls, started the motor and warmed it, checked both magnetos, then swung the tail around, got out on the runway and fed it the gun when he got the 0. K. from the control tower.
The plane was soon slanting up into the sky.
Rotary Harrison turned to their captive.
"I didn't include you in my cargo when I checked out," he said. "You know what that means?"
The man got white.
"That's right," Rotary told him. "I can't have you along when we land." He turned to his daughter. "Sis, plot a course that will take us over one of the Great Lakes. And haven't we got a fishing tool back in the cabin that will do as a sinker for this hombre's body?"

Chapter VI. DEATH IN THE SKY

THEY flew north, left the Missouri River behind, climbed until the concrete ribbon of Highway 69 was a vague thread below and behind. Rotary turned the controls over to Sis, whispering, "Don't get excited, but you can act as if you are. I'm fooling about killing this bird."
"I knew you were," Sis said.
Rotary went back. He stood looking at the prisoner, who was sprawled in a seat and gripping the seat arms.
"Got a name?" Rotary asked.
"Smith," the man said.
"John Smith?" asked Rotary.
"Yeah."
Rotary hit him, drove two quick blows like lightning. The man lifted up in the seat, then flopped back. He turned slightly blue and his tongue stuck out and he breathed noisily.
"That's for John Smithing me," said Rotary. "I don't guess there's any need of fooling with you.
Rotary then fell upon the man, yanked him into the aisle, hit him again. That blow produced unconsciousness, but it was brief.
When the man awakened it was in time to find Rotary just finishing tying his ankles to his wrists, and both of these to an oil-well fishing tool, a piece of steel which weighed possibly forty pounds.
Rotary noted the man was awake. He made a gesture as if to hit him again, then changed his mind.
"What the hell," Rotary said. "What yelling you do on the way down won't hurt anything."
Rotary dragged him to the plane door and forced the door open against the propeller wash.
"See, we're over the Missouri River," Rotary pointed out. "changed our minds about the Great Lakes. Too far away.
Rotary then picked the man up, and - the fellow struggled horribly but ineffectively - heaved him out of the plane door.
The man's screams were ghastly.
Rotary seemed to encounter an accident. The loose end of the rope - it was a cowboy lariat - with which the man was fled, became tangled, apparently, with one of the seat supports. The man was stopped and dangled helplessly just outside the plane door. "Danged rope got caught!" Rotary bellowed.
He fought as if to free the rope. He did not succeed.
"Got a knife, Sis?" he yelled. "Gotta cut this hombre loose."
The screaming of the man dangling outside the plane, the propeller wash smashing against him with cold horror, became articulate words.
"Please!" he screeched. "Don't! I'll do anything! Anything!" Rotary sneered at him.
"Brother, you'd just tell me more lies," he said. "Sis, hand me that knife."
The man blubbered and screeched that he hoped to die if he was lying. He was about as scared as a man could become and remain rational.
"Oh, all right," Rotary said with seeming reluctance.
He yanked the prisoner back inside.
"Just one little fib and out you go," he warned the man.
The plot - the terrorized captive told Rotary Harrison - was a large thing, and it probably extended into foreign countries. There were millions of dollars involved, and there had been one murder executed and others were planned.
"The killing of Old Duster Jones was that murder?" asked Rotary grimly.
It was. But that one had been done by a man called Butch, who had been sent out from New York City for the job. Butch was a fellow who looked as meek as a rabbit, a regular milksop man in appearance, but a fiend who had the bloodthirsty instincts of a weasel.
"Why was Duster killed?" asked Rotary fiercely.
"He found out too much," the man explained. "Or at least I gathered that was what it was. It seems Duster was in a honkatonk one night and heard two men talking. He bought the men drinks and got them tight. He got their tongues loose and went riding with them in the night, and at the end of the ride he had learned enough to be dangerous to the plan."
Rotary scowled and demanded, "Why are they trying to knock off me and Sis?"
"Because," the man explained, "they are afraid you know too much."
"What makes them think that?"
"Your decision to go to New York."