"143 (B094) - Violent Night (The Hate Genius) (1945-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

DOC lowered the red-headed man beside some bushes, indicated Monk and Pat should watch the fellow, and said, "I'll look around to be sure we won't be bothered here."



He walked a few yards into the brush, and unloaded Pat's overgrown gun, putting the shells in his pocket Then he went back.



"Coast seems clear." He made a pretense of taking the red-headed man's pulse.



"You're sure he's going to be all right?" Pat demanded.



Doc nodded.



"I'd better tell you something before we start questioning him," he said. "Listen to me, because there may not be time to repeat"



He hesitated, dangling Pat's six-shooter thoughtfully. He wanted to tell them some of the truth, enough truth to serve a purpose. But not too much. It was difficult to know what to say and what not to say.



He said, '"This is no time for too many details. But here is the situation roughly: We have been handed a job, the job of finding a man. It would be more correct to say that our job is to catch a man. And don't get the idea that the matter isn't important because we have only one man to catch."



He paused, considering how best to convince them with word -- and still not give specific facts -- that they were involved in something extraordinary. It was a little like trying to describe the Grand Canyon to someone who had never heard of the place.



He hesitated to tell them in plain words how big it was, knowing he would sound over-dramatic, so spectacular that it would be incredible. It would sound too wild to say that the immediate course of the war, the lives of innumerable men, the future of European nations, depended on whether they caught one man. That was goofy stuff if you put it in words. But it was not an exaggeration.



He said quietly, "If I told you how important it is that this. one man be caught, it wouldn't be quite believable, I am afraid."



"Who wants us to catch the guy?" Monk demanded.