"066 (B058) - The Munitions Master (1938-08) - Harold Davis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Chapter II



A MOB'S FURY





DOC SAVAGE leaped from the reviewing stand and fought his way to the stricken figures in the street. He did not seem to use much force, but he eased through the crowd where another would have found progress impossible.



Several hundred soldiers had fallen. They lay huddled, still in some semblance of the straight, well-ordered lines in which they had been marching.



But they would never march again. They had been crippled forever, had been left with shattered bodies.



It was as if their legs had been melted away, halfway to their knees. Their feet and the lower part of their legs had disappeared. There was a peculiar, sickening smell in the air.



Doc Savage dropped beside the body of the closest soldier, an officer.



A low, strange sound came suddenly. It was a trilling sound that apparently came from everywhere, but yet from no particular point. It was a sound the bronze man always made either when he was surprised or when he was warning of danger.



And he was surprised now.



There was nothing to indicate how the soldiers had been crippled. The stubs of their legs were seared as if from white-hot fire. That alone kept the men from bleeding to death. Had a sheet of intensely strong flame swept the street, it would have produced such a result; but there had been no such sheet of flame.



It was easy to understand, though, why the soldiers were silent. They were suffering from shock, dazed and half unconscious from pain.