"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 147 - Rock Sinister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

they were just being polite—the-customer-is-never-wrong stuff—in order not to offend a personage as
important as Kathy was. Or rather, two personages as important as Kathy and Abril were.
The two girls looked at each other. They didn't like each other, but at this moment they came near to
being friends. Their common terror formed a strong elastic between them.

The little man passed. He was going back to his seat.

He flashed them his big teeth again.

It is the custom in most South American countries for the gentlemen to show appreciation of the ladies in
some noticeable fashion. Hence a big grin, a whistle, or an appropriate remark, is considered de rigeur.
Something that would get a guy's face slapped on the corner of Tenth and Main Streets in Kansas City is
considered a justified tribute to the lady's beauty. This was the case in Blanca Grande, at any rate.

The small man obviously expected them to think that was all he was doing. He could hardly pass without
acknowledging the beauty of the two red-headed señoritas. Therefore the big smile. He was merely being
inconspicuous.

Kathy felt as if he had showed her a skeleton, instead of big yellow-white teeth.

The small man went on to his seat.

“What'll we do?” Kathy gasped. “Sic Square on to him?”

“It's a pleasant thought,” Abril said. “But I don't think it would be diplomatic.”

Square was a skull-cracking gentleman who was supposed to be their bodyguard.

“I think,” Kathy said, “that we should warn him about the little man, at least.”



BLANCA GRANDE had been the center of Inca civilization a thousand years before the day of the first
Conquistador. On her mountain peaks were ponderous Inca ruins constructed of blocks of stone. The
stone blocks were extraordinarily huge and of a type of rock not to be found anywhere else in Blanca
Grande. There was a legend to the effect that the Incas had developed an extraordinary race of bull-like
men for the job of packing these stone blocks the thousand or so miles which they must have been
transported.

There was another report that Square Jones was the direct descendant of these bull-men.

Square maintained otherwise. He insisted he had been born in Paducah, Kentucky, home of good
bourbon and Irvin S. Cobb, and to have attended—and graduated from—Kentucky State University.
He claimed he could produce his college diploma. He also insisted he was in South America because he
was a gold mining engineer, and in Blanca Grande because there was less gold being mined, but with
better prospects, in Blanca Grande than anywhere else.

He had never quite got around to mining gold, though. He was too good a man with his fists and muscles.
The truth was that he had arrived in Blanca Grande as a wrestler.