"Doc Savage Adventure 1934-03 Meteor Menace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

AT the corner of the hospital building, the seizure of pretty Rae Stanley had been effected as thoroughly as had the downfall of Monk and Ham.

The young woman apparently had no weapon except her small fists and the sharp toes of her slippers, but she managed to draw several roars of pain from her assailants before they overpowered her.

Saturday Loo was in personal charge of the gang.

"You were warned to stay away from here," he told the girl angrily. "It is a foolish bird which pecks the friendly cat."

"Tell your men to take their filthy hands off me," snapped the young woman.

Saturday Loo favored her with a vicious smile, and accused her: "You came here to warn Doc Savage!"

Instead of replying, Rae Stanley kicked her captors on the shins. They made gobbling sounds which were Tibetan exclamations of pain.

"Come!" Saturday Loo ordered. "Bring the she-tiger!"

Drawing the rope from under his gaudy poncho, Saturday Loo looped it over the girl's arms. Flourishing revolvers in a threatening manner, the Tibetans made for the outskirts of the throng with their prisoner.

It chanced that their course led them directly toward an Antofagasta policeman. The officer confronted them.

"Que hay?" he barked. "What is the matter?"

Saturday Loo did not attempt to palaver. He did not even give the officer a chance to get out of their path. With murderous intent, the Tibetan leader leveled his revolver.

The Spanish race is one quick to show emotion, but it was doubtful if a son of Castile ever changed expression quicker than did that Chilean policeman. He was looking at death. His eyes glazed, and his sagging jaw made his mouth a round hole.

"No, senor!" he screamed.

But Saturday Loo only leered, and tightened his finger on the trigger.



Chapter 3

THE BRONZE MAN


SATURDAY Loo never did quite comprehend what happened next. He remembered a weird trilling sound which he first heard at that instant, however. He remembered that to the last minute of his life.

It was uncanny, that sound. It defied description, except that it might have been the song of some fantastic jungle bird, or the sound of a wind filtering among the ice pinnacles of a polar waste. Most incredible of all, though, was the way the note seemed to come from everywhere, and yet nowhere.

More than one Aymaran Indian onlooker discussed what next occurred over his camp fire of yareta when he returned to his Andean retreat.

A few imaginative souls maintained that a great condor dropped from the sky and hit the earth with a terrific explosion, and that it magically became the figure of a giant man of bronze. But the Aymarans are a race addicted to concocting myths.

They were right about the coming of the mighty man of bronze, but he did not drop from the sky. He came from the crowd with a swiftness which almost defied the eye.

The weird trilling which had sounded was part of Doc Savage, a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of stress. Sometimes the note came before a stroke of action, and often it meant that he was puzzled. Always it signified the presence of the giant man of bronze.

Doc Savage's hands had tendons nearly as thick as an ordinary man's fingers. One of these hands clamped upon Saturday Loo's gun wrist.