"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 176 - Terror Wears No Shoes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

knew how to hurt a man. Scum who had been strained through the sieves of Hongkong, Canton,
Shanghai, men whom the Shanghai Municipal Police, said to be the toughest in the world, would have
gone at with care. They had orders to take him apart, but leave the pieces hanging together, and that was
also soon evident.
She watched. She instantly saw how bad they were going to be. She was shocked. She knew violence,
and she could see, and she didn't want it that nasty. Not nasty enough that she would be bothered with
anything like pity.

She spoke shrilly, angrily, in Kwangtungese. A branch of the Chinese language full of snake-tongues. A
small automatic pistol, gold and jewels where it didn't need to be excellent steel, was in her hand.

They didn't hear her. They didn't see the gun. They were busy. The air, about eighty cubic feet of it, was
full of manpower. The general effect was that of a dark ball out of which came barks, yelps, grunts,
hisses, and in the course of a few moments, men in various degrees of injury. Those who could, ran. The
other two crawled away into the bushes.

He picked up his cane. His hat. He didn't have any shirt and his trousers had one leg more or less intact.
He leaned on the cane and looked at her.

“How long did it take?” he asked.

She wanted to giggle. She had an overwhelming impulse to do so. She had wondered what speech he
planned to make when he had established himself as Galahad, the hero, the savior. She wondered if it
was this one. If so, he might be somewhat original after all.

His next statement was a bit more in form: He said, “You shouldn't walk alone around here at night.”

She gave him a bromide herself. “You saved my life!” she said. She got proper drama into it.

He grinned slightly. “I didn't know it was going to be that rough.”

You probably didn't, she thought. But you did all right. In fact, you did about as good as I've seen done.

“You were wonderful!” she exclaimed.

“You think so?” he said. “I do best with odd numbers, really. Fives, sevens, nines.”

“You needn't joke.”

“I'm not.”

She said, a little more thoughtfully than she intended, “I can almost believe that.”

He was indeed a big man, and his features were not bad, not bad at all, and his eyes had a cast of
copper in them that caught the small lights from the lanterns on the hsiao lu. She detested handsome
men, and they always reminded her of two things, either throat-slitting weasels or knives with brown
bone handles. This one wasn't too handsome. And he was remarkably big for one without any fat at all.

He said, “If you will care to walk to the safety of the fan-dien, I will walk well behind you to see that you
get there.”