"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 101 - The Green Eagle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

my car picked up one of the holdup men as I turned around to come back. I saw him plain. I didn’t stop
because I didn’t have no gun. I didn’t let on."

"Utterly preposterous." Ben Duck was fascinated by McCain’s control as the man spoke.

"Oh, it was you, all right." The sheriff fished out a pair of handcuffs. "Ducked down in a gully and
crouched against some sagebrush, didn’t you? Didn’t think I saw you, did you?"

McCain said, "I didn’t rob you."

"You’re the feller I’m arrestin’ for it," the sheriff told him.

The sheriff drove away with McCain his prisoner.



THE following day, Ben Duck had to work hard at fixing fence, which was the only job he liked less than
dude wrangling. He was therefore out of touch with what was going on until that evening, when he
telephoned the sheriff and was informed the officer was out of town, hunting McCain.

"I thought the sheriff arrested McCain." Ben said.

"He did," the deputy advised him. "And put him in jail. Trouble is, the jail only held this McCain about
thirty minutes."

"McCain escaped?" Ben asked.

"Quicker’n you could bat an eye. Picked the cell lock, somehow." The deputy swore. "McCain didn’t
answer any questions."

"I’ll be durned!" Ben said.

Later that night, he locked himself in his bunkhouse room and examined the puzzle. Made by hand, he
decided. It was a strange item for an old man to be carrying around in his saddlebag. One sure thing, it
was handmade, not a factory product. It had obviously been made painstakingly by hand, the work
showing vast patience, rather than skill. The little feathers had been carved painstakingly out of lead. Ben
noted some machine markings on one of the feathers that led him to decide they had been whittled out of
bullets.

It was a tough puzzle. He spent an hour getting all the leaden feathers into the eagle. But still he did not
have anything sensible.

He used his jackknife and took it apart. He did not learn anything. He put it back together carefully.

The puzzle would exactly fit inside a large flat tin which had contained cigarettes. Ben closed it inside the
tin, then pressed adhesive tape carefully around the edges. He applied more tape until he was sure the
thing was waterproof.

Next Ben got two of his dirty shirts and a pair of Levis and hid the taped cigarette tin containing the
puzzle in these. He walked out to the horse-watering tank.