"028 (B088) - The Roar Devil (1935-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE ROAR DEVIL
A Doc Savage Adventure by KENNETH ROBESON


Chapter 1. THE DEVIL IN THE WOODS

THE flat-faced man looked tough. He also gave the impression of one who had been around a bit. Yet he was deceived by a very simple ruse.
He had been looking into the radiator of the gray car to see how much water there was, and when he straightened, he saw the purse and the wrist watch.
He should have realized they had not been there a moment before. He didn't.
He had been a fighter once. There were mounds of gristle about his eyes, his nose was flat and his ears did not have their original shape. He looked evil, but not stupid.
The flat-faced man rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand, which held a stubby black pistol, then he walked over to the hand bag and the watch and examined them.
The hand bag looked expensive, but it was hard to tell, because the makers of imitations have become skillful. Six diamonds around the wrist watch dial sparkled in the afternoon sun in a manner which could not have been equaled by glass. That was not cheap.
Then the man made his mistake. He pocketed his gun, so as to pick up both bag and watch at once. It was hard to say why he did that. Greed, possibly. He got his hands on the articles.
"Now hold onto them!" directed a woman's voice.
She came out from behind a bush that was thick with new, green spring leaves. She held a light .22-caliber automatic rifle pointed at the flat-faced man.
The man made an awful face that he must have practiced back in the days when he was a fighter, to scare opponents in the ring.
"You're the babe whats been followin' us!" he growled. He scowled at the little rifle.
The girl - she was in her early twenties - let him look more directly into the muzzle of the .22.
"The hole where they come out may not look big," she said. "But don't let that fool you. They're the new high-speed cartridges. Hold onto the bag and the watch."
The flat-faced man held onto them.
"You are Stupe Davin," said the girl.
"Never heard of the guy," the man denied promptly.
"Bend over and write it out in the dust of the road with your finger."
"Huh?" The man looked blank.
"I am deaf," said the girl. "Write it out."
The man used a finger and scratched, "D-o n-o-t k-n-o-w D-a-v-i-n," in the dirt.
"Liar," snapped the girl. "You pretend to be the private secretary of Maurice Zachies, known as the Dove of Peace, or Dove Zachies. Actually, you are his bodyguard and hired killer."
The man scraped, "N-o!" in the road.
The girl now searched him, and found a driver's license made out to Albert W. Davin.
"You are Stupe Davin," she said, and pocketed the license.
The man suddenly abandoned pretense. His flat face went purple with rage.
"The devil with you!" he snarled. "I got your number!"
"Write it!" the girl commanded.
"You're workin' for the Roar Devil!" the man yelled.
THE girl stood very still, and there was on her features the slightly blank and inquisitive look of those who do not hear well.
"I cannot hear you," she said. "Write it."
The man only snarled stubbornly.
She poked him with the gun. "Write it!"
He growled, "Listen, babe, I ain't opening my face to no - "
He did not finish, for the girl struck him suddenly and unexpectedly with his own automatic pistol, which she had taken from his pocket. She was tall, athletic, and there was nothing mincing about the way she swung the gun against his temple. The flat-faced man did not move after he fell.
There was a cheerful recklessness in the girl's manner as she held the fellow's wrist to ascertain that he was only senseless. She seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, as if it were only a game. She dragged the man over and dumped him into a thick brush clump.
"And you are Dove Zachies's number one killer," she sniffed.
A pocket of her khaki hunting jacket yielded a small box which, according to the label, held capsules of a standardized sleeping potion to be sold only upon prescription. She got three capsules down the senseless man's throat, doing it in a manner which a physician could not have improved upon.
She seemed in a hurry, but took time for a brief examination of the car - the doors, particularly. Their glass was thick and bulletproof. She compared the license numbers with the notation in a small green book, and seemed satisfied.
"Zachies's car," she said aloud.
She struck out through the woods, eyeing the ground.
It had been a wet spring in this mountain section of New York State, and the vegetation was luxuriant, the earth soft enough to hold footprints.
The girl found tracks before long. They had been made by a man with small feet, and the fellow was evidently not dressed for the woods, because he walked around brush clumps which a man in stout garb would have breasted.
The manner in which the trail meandered showed something else, too. The fellow was seeking the high spots, rocks and small hills. He was undoubtedly searching for something.