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

The soldier was afraid the place wouldn't have a back door. He was right. But it had a basement and a second floor. He took the stairs to the second floor.

There was a bank of elevators and he got in one of them and rode down to the basement, which was also a part of the leathergoods store. He waited around there for a while, looking at suitcases. He had the clerk show him a tan leather case, and faced the stairs and the elevators while he examined it. He saw nor heard nothing alarming. He asked the clerk if there was a back door, and the clerk got such a funny look that the soldier walked off and left him.

The soldier walked out of the front door.

The man who had tried to knife him was no longer on the sidewalk. The man was nowhere in sight. None of the other knife-wielders were to be seen. Nobody recognized the soldier as a participant in the action of a few minutes before. The soldier didn't stick around long enough to give them much chance.

He went to a bar. He had three snorts of rye. He burst out in a sweat and he became sick with the feeling that nerves give to a man's stomach. He was plain scared.

After he felt that he was able to walk down the street without falling on his face (and it took him some time to get back that much control) he got moving.

He went to a phone booth and looked in the phone book for a name: Renwick, John, civil engr.


JOHN Renwick, civil engineer, had an office in a ponderous building two blocks from Grand Central station on Fortieth Street. The office was not quite seedy, but it had no floss. The furniture was old, of walnut, and the middle-aged office girl also looked as if she were made of walnut. She listened to the soldier state that he wanted to see Renwick if Renwick was in town.

"He's in town," the office girl said. "Wait a minute."

She went into the inner office, closed the door and put her back against the door.

"A soldier to see you," she said. "Gives his name as Bob French. Says he met you at Yung-shun, wherever that is."

"Yung-shun," Renny Renwick said, "is in China."

You first noticed Renny Renwick's fists. They were too big. He was a big man, more than six feet, more than two hundred pounds, but the fists were still too big.

The fists, as a matter of fact, were the index to the man. They were capable hands, almost ridiculously strong, hands that were not made for soft work or for softness of any kind. Gentleness, yes. But not softness. There were scars on the fists where they had hit things, and the hide was leathery where the sun had beat them, and the palms calloused from handling heavy things.

"Hunan province in China," he said. "That's where we built that intermediate field for the B-29's. Holy cow, was that a place for you! Shoot this soldier in here."

The middle-aged office girl opened the door and told the soldier, "Shoot you in, he says."

The soldier came in holding out his hand and saying, "You remember me?"

Renwick jumped to his feet and roared.

"Hell, yes! Holy cow!" he roared. "What are you doing here? Did they run out of rice whiskey in China? You're the last man I expected to see."

"My time was up and they shipped me home," the soldier said.

"When was that?"

"A week ago."

"Only a week? What are you doing sober? Sit down. What became of Sleepy Wilson? And what about what's-his-name, the flop-eared guy we stole the jeep from that night?"

The soldier didn't answer the questions. He started to, but his words stubbed their toes on his fears and fell flat on their faces.

What he did say was, "Look, I'm in trouble."