"Doc Savage Adventure 1933-11 The Czar of Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"Doc Savage can! Take the word of an old woman who knows enough to discount half of what she hears. Doc Savage is a man who was trained from the cradle for the one purpose in life of righting wrongs. They say he's a physical marvel, probably the strongest man who ever lived. And moreover he's studied until he knows just about everything worth knowing from electricity and astronomy to how to bake a decent batch of biscuits."

"Maybe you've been putting too much stock in wild talk Aunt Nora?"

"Didn't I tell you I only believe half of what I ever hear?" Aunt Nora demanded.

Jim Cash smiled. The elderly lady's optimism seemed to cheer him.

"I hope Doc Savage is up to expectations," he said grimly. "Not only for our sake but for those other poor devils back at Prosper City."

"You said a mouthful!" Aunt Nora agreed. "If Doc Savage isn't able to help us and Prosper City I hate to think what'll happen!"

The touring car rooted on through the rain and gloom for nearly a mile. Then the engine gave a few pneumatic coughs, died, coughed a few more times and silenced completely.

"You're out of gas!" Aunt Nora snapped.

Jim Cash shook his head. "But I just got gas. It must be water on the distributor

"Out of gas!" repeated Aunt Nora firmly. "I know how these old wrecks act!"

Easing into the drizzle Jim Cash got a measuring stick from under the seat walked to the rear and thrust it into the tank. His gasp was startled.

"Empty! I don't understand how that could happen!"

"Maybe that filling station was a gyp!" called blond pretty Alice Cash. "They might not have put in any gas."

"I guess that was it honey," Aunt Nora agreed. She opened a road map, peered at it by the glare of a flashlight. "There's a little jumping-off place down the road about two miles. You'd better walk to it Jim."

Jim Cash hesitated. "I don't like to leave you two."

Aunt Nora opened a capacious leather hand bag. She produced two big, businesslike blue revolvers. She gave one of them to Alice Cash, and the blond young woman handled it in a way that showed she could use it.

"Anybody who monkeys with us won't find it healthy!" Aunt Nora said dryly. "You go on, Jim. We'll be all right."

Relieved at sight of the weapons, Jim Cash slopped off through the rain. He walked on the left side of the pavement, where he could see the lights of oncoming cars and evade them.

A few machines passed him, going in both directions. He did not attempt to flag them, knowing it would be useless. Motorists who pick up strange pedestrians late at night are few and far between.

He descended a small bill. At the bottom, he crossed two bridges -- one over a stream, the other spanning the line of an electric railroad.

He had barely crossed the second bridge when several flashlights gushed brilliant white upon him. In the back glow of the flashes, he could discern the figures holding them.

Each was a tall cylinder of black. And upon every figure was the green likeness of a bell.


THERE WAS something hideous in the way the raven figures stood there, saying nothing, not moving. The rain, streaking down their forms, gave them a shiny look.

Jim Cash stood as if blocked in ice. He had been pale before, now he became positively white.