"deathhastwohands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blackmon Robert C)

Wilma Trent, jammed down in the front compartment, was screaming shrilly. Rayburn, in the
back compartment, was cursing frantically and trying to scramble to his knees for another shot
at Moran. The detective twisted, got his knees up on the seat and started slugging at Rayburn's
head with both fists. He felt the jolt of two blows; then the front of the car dropped suddenly
as it went into the ditch. Moran gripped instinctively at the seat back.

There was a rending crash. and the car stopped suddenly! The horn started howling as Moran,
flung forward, sat down on the steering wheel with a jar that made his teeth bang together. He
heard Rayburn yell in pain, heard Wilma Trent screaming.

Driven by the fear of fire, Moran pawed for the left-door handle, found it and flung the
door open.

The sedan was cocked up at a crazy angle, its front end in the ditch, its rear wheels up on
the road embankment. Its lights, still burning, showed crushed weeds and the raw earth of the
ditch bank.


The horn stopped blowing, and there was nothing but Wilma Trent's frightened whimpering and
Rayburn's yells of pain as Moran scrambled out through the open doorway. There was an inch of
mud and water in the ditch. Sloshing in it, Moran pulled Wilma Trent from the car and set her
on her feet. The girl was crying, but she didn't seem to be injured.

Moran got the back door open. Rayburn was jammed up against the back of the front seat, one
leg twisted under his short body. He was yelling and pawing at the seat back with both plump
hands. Neither hand held a gun. His left cheek was gashed and blood streamed down the side of
his face, staining his collar. Grasping Rayburn's left arm, Moran pulled him from the car.
Rayburn screamed thinly in pain. His right leg trailed awkwardly. It was broken.

Moran carried the screaming securities dealer up to the road shoulder, laid him on the
ground and went back to the car. Wilma Trent was standing beside the wreck, whimpering, dazed.
Moran pawed around in the rear compartment and found Rayburn's gun. He dropped it into his coat
pocket, caught Wilma Trent's arm and led her up the embankment to Rayburn. Rayburn was squirming
on the ground and moaning in pain.

"All right, Rayburn." There was the bur of torn steel in Moran's voice as he bent over the
man. "This is the end of the trail. You're badly injured. Perhaps you'll die. Miss Trent and I
wouldn't shed any tears over that. If you had immediate medical attention--" He stopped, his
eyes glistening.

"A doctor! An ambulance! Please!" There was stark terror in Rayburn's pleading. "I'll pay
anything! I'll--"

"You'll sign a confession!" Moran said grimly.

He dug an old letter from his pocket, spread it on the broad rear deck of the ditched sedan
and wrote rapidly, speaking each word aloud as he wrote it. "I, Donald Rayburn, confess that I
hired two killers to murder the clerk who died in my office four months from this date. Frank
Trent is entirely innocent of this murder and of stealing the fifty thousand dollars in secur-