"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 006 - The Red Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

nets on the club tennis courts, and gagged with a sponge from the shower baths, held between his jaws by
his own necktie. Moreover, he was still unconscious from a head blow delivered from behind. He had not seen
his assailants.

"Get a move on, you hombres!" rapped the leader of the five runners. "We ain’t got all night!"

This man had two scars, one on either cheek. They looked like gray buttons sewed to his leathery brown
features, and indicated that he had been shot through the face sometime in the past. He was more burly than
the others—his weight fell but a little short of two hundred pounds. He carried his bulk with the lightness of an
athlete.



THE group sprinted on in silence, hugging the golf bags to keep the contents from rattling. Then, at a
command from the leader, they stopped.

"This is gonna be the place," he uttered as he waved an arm to indicate the spot.

"Are you certain about that, Buttons?" asked one of the others.

"Dang tootin’!" The wolfish smile of the man called "Buttons," made the scars on his cheeks crawl back
toward his ears. "Whitey’s telegram said it would be the No. 6 hole on this golf course. Whitey used to hang
out around New York, and he knew about this place."

In a puzzled fashion, the first man peered around. "I don’t see no number."

"You ain’t lookin’ in the right place! Blazes! Ain’t you ever played golf?"

"Naw—and you ain’t either! Why any grown man would fiddle away his time on this cow pasture pool is
more’n I can savvy."

"Dry up. This is the sixth hole. The number was on that white box of a contraption back there. You crawl in
that sand trap."

"You mean that hole full of sand? Do they call that a sand trap?"

"Hop into it!" snapped Buttons.

The other obeyed. With his hands, he hurriedly scooped a trench large enough to receive his form. Then he
plucked open the hood on his golf bag, and drew from it a short, well-worn .30-30 carbine, as well as a
single-action .45-caliber six-gun.

Shoving the six-shooter inside his shirt, the man stretched face-up in the trench he had dug. He placed the
rifle on his chest, throwing his coat over the breech mechanism to protect it from the sand.

Buttons now plucked a large sheet of pale-brown wrapping paper from a pocket. He wrenched off a fragment,
tore eye-holes in it, and spread it over the face of the man in the sand. Then he proceeded to cover the fellow
with sand, leaving the paper-masked head in the open. The job completed, he stepped back for an inspection.
He was satisfied. The pale-brown paper blended nicely with the sand.