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

“Why well behind?”

“Obvious reasons. No shirt, for one thing.”

She said, “Don't be silly. I'll get you a shirt. I owe you that much, surely.” She was thinking that he'd
taken a big chance, offering to step out of the picture that way. Or maybe he hadn't—because wasn't she
inviting him along?
She was equally uncertain about him an hour later, when he left her. It had taken that long to have him
brought a shirt, a finer one than he'd had torn off him, undoubtedly. Because he wasn't expensively
dressed. Not at all.

He'd used the interval waiting for the shirt to show her his obvious traits, which he seemed to think, or
gave the impression that he thought, were good ones. He was a braggart. He made bum jokes. Not dirty
ones; just naïve and not clever. He boasted incessantly without bragging of specific deeds, but giving the
impression that he was a killer-diller.

It didn't soak into her until later, but the only specific things she learned about him was that he was using
the name of Jonas and he lived at the Shan Loo Hotel.

Adding it up, watching him hitch-step his way down the hotel corridor, she didn't get it. He hadn't made a
pass. He hadn't asked for a job. He hadn't offered to let her in on any big deal. Why, then, all this
finagling?

Maybe he was a slow and cunning worker.

He walked a few hundred feet through the grimy winding and slightly dangerous tunnels of the native
streets, then hailed a mache pulled by a knock-kneed horse, giving the address of his hotel, the Shan
Loo.

The Shan Loo was no dump. The Nip officers had favored it with their patronage during the occupation,
but it had been refurbished, was back under old management, and full of the better-heeled foreigners and
more successful local black-marketeers. There were a few Generals of the type that used to be called
War Lords, a scattering of diplomats, and quite a foundation of American businessmen out to squeeze a
dollar.

He was well into the lobby when he met one of these businessmen, a Mr. Wesley T. Goltinger. Mr.
Goltinger traveled on an expense account of a hundred dollars a day. Oil.

The meeting with Goltinger was a loud encounter.

“Doc Savage!” Goltinger yelped. “Good God! Imagine meeting you here!”

He stopped—he had to; Goltinger was in front of him like an autograph hound that had just discovered
Jimmy Stewart—and looked through and beyond Goltinger.

“Some mistake,” he said.

“Mistake nothing!” howled Goltinger. “I'd know Doc Savage anywhere. Why, I met you at an oil
chemist's meeting, remember? You gave a technical talk for thirty minutes, and I didn't understand one