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

The bronze man began running. He ran lightly, for a large man, with a long muscular spring in his legs and
an easy agility over logs and through the brush. It was not too dark to tell fairly well where the thickest
undergrowth lay, and avoid it.

He knew where the ridge road lay. The first thing he had done, one of the first things he always did in a
matter of this kind, was look over the vicinity. The things he noted were the roads, the buildings, the
paths, the short-cuts, and whenever possible he learned by inquiry the local names and nicknames for
those places.

He had not, as yet, introduced himself to anyone, or stated his purpose to anyone. No one, as far as he
was aware, knew who he was or why he was here. He had told no one. He had been careful not to ask
enough questions to seem suspicious.

He had been quiet and inconspicuous. He had observed. It wasn't an accident that he had watched Pack
quite a lot. Pack was the one name he'd known when he came.

Pack's full name was Lowell Packard. He was a welder. What else he was wasn't certain yet. His name
had merely been given the bronze man as a possible suspect.
Watching Pack, the bronze man had seen him contact the other four, one at a time, and make the
arrangements for the meeting tonight. With the aid of very good binoculars and a not inconsiderable skill
at lip-reading, the bronze man had learned that they would meet at the truck, and when.

Pack was acting, the bronze man suspected strongly, at the behest of someone else. But he didn't know
who. Nor did he know how Pack had reached the higher-up.

The bronze man came to the ridge road. He reached it near the foot of the hill, a poor place to waylay
anyone. He reasoned that Pack and the others would be in wait further up the road.

The road was graveled. There was almost no grader ditch. Weeds grew up out of the gravel beside the
road, rank and uncut. He lay in the weeds, waiting.

It seemed he waited no time at all before he heard footsteps coming. He dared not lift his head, because
the weeds weren't tall.

The footsteps came rapidly. Then they paused. They came rapidly again, and this haste was followed by
another pause. It was an unnatural way to walk.

The bronze man took a chance and lifted his head. He could see a figure, only the outlines of it. But he
saw enough to know that the person was agitated, and stopping to listen every few paces.

When the figure came abreast, the bronze man came up silently out of the weeds and seized the person.
He knew he'd made an error, that he had hold of a woman, but it was too late then.



IMMEDIATELY he made a second error, when his impulse to be polite caused him to release the
woman. He didn't quite release her. Just in time, he realized she had a gun in the waistband of her slacks.

She managed to draw the weapon, but he got hold of it. It was a revolver, a hammer model. He got his
thumb-web between the hammer and the breech so the hammer could not fall. The hammer had a