"Doc Savage Adventure 1945-01 The Hate Genius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"Oh," Pat said, and subsided.

Later he asked Pat,"Mind loaning me your gun?"

"What gun?"

He told her patiently, "That portable howitzer you carry in your handbag. I want to borrow it to influence our friend here."

Pat got the piece of artillery out of her handbag. '"I can do without your wise sayings about this gun, this once," she said.

Doc said nothing, but Monk and Ham laughed. Pat's gun was an old-fashioned single-action six-shooter of Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok vintage. It weighed more than four pounds, which was as much as some hunting rifles. The blunderbuss was a family heirloom, and they had always wondered whether Pat could hit anything with it

Their driver got a glimpse of the gun. He became alarmed, judging from the way his color changed from mahogany to slate.

Doc selected a side road at random, told the driver to take it, then in a stretch of woods which looked lonesome, had the cab stop.

"Ham, you stay with the driver so he won't desert us," Doc suggested.

He seized the red-headed man and carried him into the woods. The fellow was showing no signs of consciousness.

"I didn't think I hit him that hard," Pat said uneasily. "His skull isn't cracked, or anything, is it?"

"He will wake up eventually," he told her.

This was not exactly true. The red-headed man was already awake. He had been conscious for about fifteen minutes, but doing a good job of pretending he wasn't.


DOC lowered the red-headed man beside some bushes, indicated Monk and Pat should watch the fellow, and said, "I'll look around to be sure we won't be bothered here."

He walked a few yards into the brush, and unloaded Pat's overgrown gun, putting the shells in his pocket Then he went back.

"Coast seems clear." He made a pretense of taking the red-headed man's pulse.

"You're sure he's going to be all right?" Pat demanded.

Doc nodded.

"I'd better tell you something before we start questioning him," he said. "Listen to me, because there may not be time to repeat"

He hesitated, dangling Pat's six-shooter thoughtfully. He wanted to tell them some of the truth, enough truth to serve a purpose. But not too much. It was difficult to know what to say and what not to say.

He said, '"This is no time for too many details. But here is the situation roughly: We have been handed a job, the job of finding a man. It would be more correct to say that our job is to catch a man. And don't get the idea that the matter isn't important because we have only one man to catch."

He paused, considering how best to convince them with word -- and still not give specific facts -- that they were involved in something extraordinary. It was a little like trying to describe the Grand Canyon to someone who had never heard of the place.

He hesitated to tell them in plain words how big it was, knowing he would sound over-dramatic, so spectacular that it would be incredible. It would sound too wild to say that the immediate course of the war, the lives of innumerable men, the future of European nations, depended on whether they caught one man. That was goofy stuff if you put it in words. But it was not an exaggeration.

He said quietly, "If I told you how important it is that this. one man be caught, it wouldn't be quite believable, I am afraid."

"Who wants us to catch the guy?" Monk demanded.