"017 (B002) - The Thousand-Headed Man (1934-07) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

In mid-air, he managed to clamp the bundle of guns between his legs, leaving his arms free.

The trees walling the street had huge branches. None, however, touched the house, or even came within several feet The bronze man's mighty leap carried him to them.

Heavily muscled arms out before him took the first shock of small branches. He could see nothing except the hulk of the trees in general. He grasped a limb, and when it broke he clamped another, held it' swung to a lower bough.

Below, voices howled; but there was no wild shooting. Flashlights spilled white funnels of light upward.

"He's in the bally tree!"

"Use the lights! Quick, you blokes!"

Doc dropped his bundle of guns. It thumped down and landed beside a bobby, who sprang wildly backward.

"Wot's this!" exploded the officer. "Bally guns!"

"Watch the house - the roof!" shrilled another. "He's tryin' some bloomin' trick! He threw the guns Into the tree to draw our attention!"

Which was exactly what Doc wanted them to think. They gave all their light and interest to the house. Discovery of no one on the roof puzzled them.

Siren screaming, the police car pulled up, erupting many uniformed men.

These newcomers were men who made rough stuff their business. They lobbed tear gas bombs into the house, then donned masks and entered. The opening bombs made a good deal of racket. The general babble of voices made more.

Under cover of all the sound, Doc Savage shifted to an adjacent tree, then to another, branch by branch. He slid to the ground and faded into the fog.

The night swallowed him.




Chapter 6

THE BOBBY TRICK


SEN GAT'S house in Shoreditch was dark. No orientals trod the streets in front, for the hour was getting late.

At the corner - a block distant - a stooped, wrinkled celestial crouched beside a tray which held sweetmeats and nuts. Buyers for the miserly wares could hardly be expected at this hour, but the wrinkled one sat patiently, head bowed, as if hoping ancestral spirits would take pity on him and send a customer along.

His eyes were sharp under his faded, flopping hat. They watched the door of Sen Gat's house, and seldom wavered.

A taxi rolled up before Sen Gat's abode, halted, and three гmen got out. One was tall and unbelievably thin, the second a giant with vast fists, and the third a lumbering ape of a fellow at whose heels a homely pig trotted.

Johnny, Renny and Monk stamped noisily up the steps and into Sen Gat's house. Their hands were inside their coats however, resting upon weapons which resembled oversize automatics, but which were actually supermachine capable of discharging bullets faster than a military machine gun.

The supermachine pistols were an invention of Doc Savage; their cartridges were not conventional lead slugs, but mercy bullets which inflicted a sudden unconsciousness instead of fatality.

"Watch it!" Monk said in his small voice.