"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 141 - Satan Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The idea is to get him without any noise, and get him out of there without hurting him too much. That's
why I'll do the blackjacking myself. Don't any of you other guys hit him over the head or the heart. We
don't want him killed.”

Far away, toward the river, a steamboat whistle sounded mournfully. The dogs on farms for miles
around, as if they had been waiting for such an excuse, began yapping.

Pack finished, “We'll take Jones back in the hills a ways and have a talk with him. We've got to know
how much he's told.”

There was another silence. Dave began to make his hard-breathing sounds again, deep and heavy,
panting, as if the fear and nausea were animals in his chest over which he had no control. “Who-who-”
Dave choked on the question, tried again with, “Who is going to-to-”

“We'll get to that,” Pack told him. “Killing a man is easy at the time. It's just the before and after that gets
your nanny.”

“Take it easy, Dave,” Joe said.

Pack turned away in the darkness. “Let's get going,” he said. He spat.



Chapter II
THE bronze man slipped the knots in the rope which had held him against the pipe, concealed. He
crawled out on the side of the pipe-truck where the moonshadows were thick, and for a few moments
kneaded the places where the rope had cramped him. He crawled back under the truck and got the
rope, so that no one would have his suspicions aroused by finding it there.

He set off for the so-called hill road. There was no mistaking the road. It swept in easy curves up to the
crest of the mountain which overlooked the vastness of the lowlands where the river and the marshes and
the farmlands stretched. Ten minutes should bring him to it.

The man he wanted now was Jones.

He had not learned much, hiding there. Not as much as he had expected to learn. Not enough, standing
by itself, to repay him for the tedious sherlocking by which he had learned there was to be a meeting at
the broken-down pipe-truck tonight.

He tossed the rope on to a parked cat tractor, left it there. It had served its purpose.

Jones. Jones was the man he needed now.

He had not heard of Jones before. As a matter of fact, he had heard very little about anything. The sum
total of what he had known before was hardly more than he had learned by roping himself under the
truck and eavesdropping. So he was glad to hear of Jones.

Jones was something tangible. Jones was a door. If the door could be opened it might reveal the entire
mystery.