"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 134 - The Whisker of Hercules" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The young man's facial expression, his wheezing, his gray hard grip on the flashlight which made his hand
tendons show up like bone, were frightening things to the other.

“No, Charley, no! Listen, I only just bought that rifle and I was going to look—”

The young man made a cutting gesture as if the flashlight was a sword.

“You get this through your head!” he said. “If anybody touches Lee, if anybody lays a finger on her, I'll
smear the lot of you.”

He looked violently at the heavy-faced man, and glanced as violently at the driver.

He repeated: “I'll smear you, so help me! You and all the others. And that goes for the boss, too!”

There was more silence.

The car moved slowly, trailing a taxicab which was now about two blocks ahead. The cab was black,
and no different from a passenger car except for a TAXI sign on each door and in front above the
windshield. But across the back of the machine was a yellow banner advertising the Cedar County War
Bond Drive. And this conspicuous banner made the cab easily followed.

Bitterness was around the young man's mouth. “This asthma may have kept me out of the army,” he gave
each of the other two a fierce look, “but it won't keep me from messing you up plenty if anything happens
to Lee.”

“The trouble is,” said the driver, “she knows that story about Hercules.”

“Yeah,” said the heavy-faced man. “And it's plain as the nose on your face she's going to do something
about it.”

“She don't get hurt.”

“Sure, Charley. She don't get hurt. Sure.”

The heavy-faced man was vehement with his assurances. It occurred to him, as he felt tenderly of the
spots where the flashlight had hit him, that he might have been too emphatic, so that it would arouse
Charley's conviction that he was lying. Which he was. He thought: We've got to kill her, even if she is
Charley's sister. She doesn't know what that wild tale about Hercules means, but she can't be
allowed to carry the story around. She has to be killed. Maybe we can do it as an accident, to fool
Charley. His thoughts kept prowling in that vein.



SHE was a long, dark girl who had a perpetually pleasant face. The unvarying agreeableness of her facial
expression was unusual, and nice. The makeup of her features somehow kept them from looking sour
even when—as she was doing now—she frowned or looked grimly worried.

“Taxi.”

The driver turned his head. “Yes, Miss.”