"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 009 - The Czar of Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Conditions in Prosper City are pitiful," continued Judborn Tugg, secretly wondering if he might not be
entirely mistaken about this bronze man. "People are starving. There have been bombings, beatings,
killings. It is all the fault of these agitators."

Doc Savage maintained a disquieting silence.

"Aunt Nora Boston is the leader of the agitators," Tugg said, telling an enormous lie without blinking.

Doc might have been a figure done in the bronze which he resembled, for all the signs of interest he
showed. But that did not mean he was missing anything. Doc rarely showed emotion.

Tugg sucked in a full breath and went on: "Aunt Nora Boston is aided by Jim Cash, his sister Alice, and a
young man named Ole Slater, who is hanging around Prosper City, pretending to be a play writer
gathering local color for a manufacturing-town drama. Those four are the ring leaders. They're the head
of a gang they call the Prosper City Benevolent Society. That organization is back of all the trouble.
They're just low-down trouble-makers. I'll bet they're paid by some foreign country."

This was so much more falsehood.

Judborn Tugg had not intended for his talk to follow these lines. But he was afraid to broach the truth. It
was those eyes of the bronze man's. Tugg would have been glad to get up and walk out, but he feared
the wrath of the Green Bell.

"I want to hire you to -- er -- punish Aunt Nora Boston and her gang," he said bluntly. "I'll pay you
plenty!"

"My services are not for sale," Doc Savage said quietly. "They never are."

Judborn Tugg's head seemed to sink in his fat cone of a neck. What manner of man was this?"

Doc went on: "Usually, individuals who are assisted by my five men and myself are generous enough to
contribute a gift to worthy causes which I name."

Tugg stifled a smile. So this was the dodge the bronze man used to make it seem he was not a hired thug.
Tugg thought he saw the light. This Doc Savage could be hired, all right!

"Just how big a gift would you want?" he asked cannily.

"In your case, and provided conditions are just as you have outlined," Doc replied promptly, "the gift
would be a million dollars."

Judborn Tugg narrowly escaped heart failure.

DOWN IN the skyscraper lobby, Slick Cooley was also experiencing a shock; but from a different
cause.

Slick had caught sight of Alice Cash and Aunt Nora Boston. The two women were mud-spattered,
bedraggled, and sodden from the rain. They left wet tracks across the polished lobby tiling. Their faces
were pale, frightened, and they seemed overawed by the magnificence of the giant building.