"Shadow - Back Pages - 401201 - Hook McGuire Gives A Bowling Lesson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moffat George Allan)

"Fortunately, in this country we have just courts," Hook McGuire stated, "and
that ticket stub wouldn't be much evidence. However, I have something else;
something far more important. Professor Hendrick. Something I saw just a
moment ago, when I looked at the picture on the wall."
Professor Hendrick's little finger moved. It was a vague and indistinct signal,
but Hook saw it. And his ears heard a strange grinding sound under the floor.
Hook left the chair in a bounding leap that carried him well clear of it. As he
left the chair, it started to move, and then suddenly there was a gaping hole in the
floor and the chair disappeared.
His leap carried Hook to within a few feet of the professor. He came up from
the floor like a bouncing ball.
Professor Hendrick had yanked the automatic from his pocket. He brought it
up with a snap. It roared. The bullet cut the air over Hook's head, and as it did,
Hook's arms closed around the legs of the professor and the two crashed against
the table.
Then, suddenly, two other men were in the room, big, heavy-set men, with
expressionless faces. Hook saw them out of the comer of his eye. He raised the
body of the screaming professor high in the air, brought the body around like a
club, and then let it fly at the two men.
The body hit one of them, and Hook dove for the other. This second man had
no time to use his revolver. Hook's head was buried in his stomach. The man
grunted, and stumbled backward.
Hook's right went out in a swift, paralyzing blow that caught him on the tip of
the chin and sent the man down like a sack of bricks. Hook whirled. Professor
Hendrick had struggled to his feet. His gun had fallen from his hand. He swayed
a second, and then a hundred and eighty pounds of American fury in the form of
Hook McGuire hit him. The professor didn't even groan. He went down, limp and
unconscious.
Crouching near the table was the man first bowled down by the professor's
body. He had a gun in his hand. The gun roared, but Hook had performed a side
step and the bullet crashed in the wall.
Then Hook's right lashed out in a blow that sent the crouching man to the
floor, quivering and jerking as consciousness left him.
Police whistles sounded outside. Then a police siren shrieked, and a minute
later the room was filled with cops.
"Take those two round-faced boys to headquarters," Hook McGuire said to
the cops, pointing to Hendrick's helpers. "I'm taking Hendrick back to the Minton
home, to show Chief Ryan the killer of Professor Minton."
Ryan was still at the dead professor's home when Hook McGuire shoved a
furious and nervous Professor Hendrick through the laboratory door. The body
of Professor Minton had been removed, but the floor was still covered with
bloodstains.
"O. K., chief," Hook announced. "Here is the murderer of Professor
MintonЧand bowling found him for me."
Ryan stared at Hook's prisoner, then exclaimed: "This is Professor Hendrick,
the refugee professor who-"
"You are mistaken, chief," Hook interrupted. "This man, whatever his real
name, is a member of an espionage ring in this country. He was sent here to
watch Professor Minton in his work on the new explosive. He murdered Minton
so that explosive would never be known."