"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 231 - Garden of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

Instead of trying to clamp the thrusting hands, The Shadow slashed his gun between them with a hard,
downward stroke. He expected his adversary to dodge, which would have enabled The Shadow to pull
the sledging blow and merely stun his foeman.

Instead, the lunger thrust his head right into it, taking all the poundage of The Shadow's terrific swing. It
was probably as hard a blow as The Shadow had ever delivered, and it violated the cloaked fighter's
policy of dealing lightly with an unidentified enemy.

A most unfortunate occurrence, unless this attacker proved to be an actual murderer who deserved the
death that such a stroke could give. The Shadow couldn't understand why his opponent hadn't dodged;
but that proved only a trivial puzzle. Far more amazing was the fact that the mighty smash didn't stop The
Shadow's adversary at all!

Talking the skull-cracking stroke like a mere mosquito bite, the huge lunger clamped a mighty hand on
The Shadow's gun, plucked it from the gloved fist that held it and slugged back with a force that made
The Shadow's slug resemble a wrist-slap!

Only by a headlong dive did The Shadow escape the smash of death. The gun butt grazed his head, and
even that force, less than a glancing blow, sent the cloaked fighter sprawling, groggy.

As he rolled to the inner corner of the coalbin, bringing up against a stone wall, The Shadow heard the
finish of his opponent's stroke. The sledged gun struck the partition of the bin and split the wooden wall
apart.

Light flooded in from the cellar. In the midst of the splintered partition, The Shadow saw his snarly
opponent. Though half dazed, The Shadow no longer wondered why the gun butt had rated second best
when it met with the creature's skull.

The Shadow's adversary wasn't a man; it was an ape, as huge an orangutan as The Shadow had ever
seen, in captivity or out!

THE orangutan liked the game of skull slugging. He was trying to detach himself from the wreckage of
the partition, so that he could come back and really mash the black-cloaked human who had sagged in
the depth of the coalbin.

Groggily, The Shadow was trying to draw another gun with one hand, while he used his other hand to get
to his feet. He'd have to be out of the way before the huge ape charged. A few bullets wouldn't stop such
an opponent.

Half to his feet, The Shadow slipped. His hand clutched the thing that accounted for his sprawl. It was a
large lump of coal, one of a scattered few remaining in the old bin. Ill luck, his hand encountering that
lump, while he was trying to shunt himself up from the floor. But The Shadow had a way of changing bad
luck to good.

Half slumping against the wall, The Shadow flung the coal lump at the ape. The black rock bounced from
the creature's shoulder, bringing a response that amounted to a monkey's guffaw. The big fellow liked this
new game of throwing things. He forgot the slugging business and flung the handiest of missiles; the gun
that he had borrowed from The Shadow.