"Doc Savage Adventure 1945-03 The Ten Ton Snakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

The boy looked at the man.

"You blank blank," he said. "I think I know you."

He circled, looking at the man on the sidewalk.

"Why God bless you, I do know you," the soldier said. "What do you know about that. Doggone!"

And he began being un-nice to the man on the sidewalk. What the soldier proceeded to do was sickening, but it didn't sicken. He had been dealing with Japs, and the only safe Jap was one who couldn't be anything else.

He kicked in some of the man's ribs. The man was long and skinny, like a wolf with the sickness wolves get from eating too much carrion, so his ribs were close to the hide and broke easily. The soldier jumped on to the man's belly with both feet. This was guaranteed to rupture, to burst the bladder, etc.

The soldier got off the man's belly and leaned over the man's face and said, "Listen, bub, to what I'm asking you. Is Tucker French, my brother, all right? Is he going to be all right? What do you such-and-such plan to do to Tucker?"

The man on the sidewalk gargled his blood and teeth and pain. "Come on, boy," the soldier said. "Let's have an answer. Don't be bashful."

No answer.

"Come, come, boy," the soldier said. "What about Tucker? You're not going to hurt Tucker, are you?"

No answer.

"Oh yes, I nearly forgot," the soldier said. "What about the heavy stuff? You boys fixing to do something bad with the heavy stuff?"

The man on the sidewalk finally got his throat sufficiently clear of blood and teeth to form some semicoherent words. When he spoke, he was down to greatest fundamental of all, the thing than which there is nothing much more important. He said, "Please don't kill me."

He said not to kill him in Spanish, because Spanish and not English was his mother tongue.

As if answering his prayer, his friends came to his aid.


THE soldier was fooled this time. There were no shadows to warn him. There was only a mild looking man in a blue serge suit who sidled up to the scene with one hand over his mouth as if he was showing horror the way a woman shows it. When he was close enough to the soldier, he slugged the soldier on the side of the face.

The soldier wasn't greatly damaged. He began to fight. He wanted to fight anyway.

Two other men drifted out of the crowd and took a hand, beginning beating the soldier.

"Hey, this guy tried to knife me," the soldier cried. "Cut it out! Call a cop, if you want to help."

This was what he said before he understood that they were part of an organized attempt on his life. When he did realize what they were, he stopped talking. He did everything with his fists and feet that he could.

The men, finding the soldier was extremely tough, began producing knives. These knives did not resemble the knife the first man had tried to use, except in one particular. They were individualized knives. That is, each one was a knife which its owner liked. Which meant that they were men who carried their knives as a habit.

Such men would know how to use knives, so the soldier got away from them as fast as he could.

He escaped by running. He didn't make the mistake of going in either direction along the sidewalk. Instead, he popped into the nearest doorway.

They shot at him. The bullet went past his head and buried itself somewhere in the upper pant of the luggage shop in which he found himself.