"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 013 - Meteor Menace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

now to dedicate it. We hope Doc Savage will appear

Ham stepped forward, indicated that he wished to address the crowd, and the Chilean orator stepped
back politely.

"I have an unpleasant duty to perform," Ham said in clear, perfect Spanish. "You good people have all
heard that Doc Savage is one of those scarce individuals, a genuinely modest man. It embarrasses him to
play the hero in public. For that reason, he will not appear on this platform to-day."

A disappointed murmur arose from the crowd as they understood they were not to glimpse the famous
man of bronze.

"Look, Ham!" Monk snapped. "Over there by the hospital corner!"

MONK'S words impinged against the microphones, and all of the two hundred thousand or so people
present must have heard the ejaculation. Countless necks craned, eyes seeking the corner of the hospital
building.

A girl, tall and exquisitely beautiful, with hair the hue of mahogany, was struggling with several swarthy,
broad-faced men.

"It's Rae Stanley!" Ham barked.

Monk was already lumbering across the speaking rostrum, holding the box containing his pig over his
head with both hands. Ham leaped after the hairy chemist. They hammered heels down the rostrum
steps.

Monk put his head down, hunched his shoulders, and hit the crowd like a torpedo. Ham trod his wake,
fending off Chileans who resented being shoved, and showed it by lustily swinging their fists.
Hands suddenly seized Ham's ankles and jerked. He went down.

An avalanche of moon-faced, stocky men piled up on the lawyer.

"Hey, Monk!" Ham howled.

Monk spun and saw what was happening. He lowered his pig case carefully, then leaped into the fight,
emitting a bawling roar. Monk was ordinarily quiet, but his fights were howling bedlams.

Monk's hirsute hands clamped on the necks of two of Ham's assailants, and banged their heads together.
The pair became magically limp, their arms and legs hanging like strings.

Ham managed to sit up. His sword cane, whipping about, glinted like a sliver of solidified sunlight. The
steel leaped at a brown man.

The man threw himself madly backward, but saw he was going to be too late. His eyes protruded, and a
scream ripped past his teeth. Mentally, he could feel that glittering steel blade already fixed in his pumping
heart.

Ham turned the blade aside, however. Doc Savage and his men had a policy of never directly taking
human life.