"Doc Savage Adventure 1933-12 The Phantom City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

In guttural Arabic, the four muttered that they understood. They arranged themselves in the murk.

Reaching under their coat tails, they produced their long swords. The sheaths were tight enough to hold the weapons in place, and they could be drawn downward in handy fashion.

"Fools!" their chief hissed from the box. "Replace those! There is to be no killing until we have the information we desire!"

Back into the spine scabbards went the blades, each man being careful not to prick himself with the deadly tip of his weapon.


"HE is coming soon?" one man asked in Arabic.

"At any minute," replied the man, remaining unseen in the box. "Watch the street to the left, my sons."

"How will we know him?"

"He is a big man. Wallah! He is the biggest man you ever saw! And his body is of a color and seeming hardness of a metal - bronze. A giant man of bronze!"

The four peered down the street, then drew back.

"It is a dark street and full of bad smells," a man muttered. "You are sure he will come this way?"

"Directly across the street is a great steel door. See you it?"

"Na'arn, aiwah! Yes!"

"Beyond that door is a garage where this bronze man keeps many cars. In this street one is permitted to drive in only a single direction. Therefore, he will come from the left."

The four men peered at the giant steel doors across the thoroughfare. For the first time, they noted the towering size of the building above it. The structure was of shiny metal and expertly fitted gray masonry. It shot upward nearly a hundred stories.

"The bronze man lives there?"

"On the eighty-sixth floor," said the voice in the box.

"Wa!lah! This fellow must have great wealth to live in a place like that!"

"He is a strange man, this bronze one! He is a being of mystery, one about whom many fantastic tales are told. His name is familiar to every one in the city. The newspapers carry feature stories about him. Yet he is almost a legend, for he does not show himself to the public, and does not seek publicity."

"But he has that which we want?"

"He has. We have but to find where it is kept. That is your job."

Squatting like four brown owls, the quartet kept unwinking eyes fixed to the left, down the somber street.

"Have you found aught of the escaped white-haired girl?" asked the man in the packing case.

"No trace, 0 master. But our comrades search everywhere!"

"Taiyib malihi Very well! She must be caught and brought back to my yacht!"