"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 024 - Red Snow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

had the shine of grease paint. Each held a sawed-off automatic shotgun.

As one man, all six leveled their shotguns at Doc Savage and began shooting.

ONCE each day since childhood, Doc Savage had forced himself to go through a routine of exercises
lasting for two hours-exercises which had not only given him an amazing physique and unusually sharp
senses, but had developed his thinking processes as well.

He had, for instance, made reels of motion pictures showing the encroachment of danger in all the
manners he could conceive, as well as men attacking him in various fashions. He made a practice of
viewing these frequently, giving himself split parts of seconds to think of a way out of whatever difficulty
presented, and striving to think of a new way out each time he viewed the scenes.

He always witnessed these films in private, because the procedure usually struck others as somewhat
silly. But by this device, he had schooled himself to think swiftly in pinches.

Doc was hanging from the window sill by his hands. There was not much room to swing back up. It
would take a moment. Dropping to the ground would be even more foolhardy, for there was no shelter.

But there was another window below, with a window box holding flowering plants on the sill. Doc
dropped.

The window box broke under his weight, fell free, spilling rich black dirt and plants. But it held the giant
bronze man for an instant, long enough for him to bundle his arms about his face and dive through the
glass panes into the hotel room. He landed ungracefully in a shower of glass.

Shotgun slugs clouted at what remained of the window panes. With a loud ripping, lead came completely
through the thin wall of the hotel. It was a frame building, lightly constructed, and the automatic shotguns
seemed to be charged with two or three large lead slugs to the cartridge. The guns were making thunder
in the street.

Doc Savage came to his feet, ran to the door, found it locked, and rammed it with a shoulder. The cheap
wood panel fell off its hinges and let him through to his right. Outside, the shotguns still whooped.

From the stairway came another uproar, a grunting and squealing punctuated by irregular thumps and
yells.

A pig appeared, tumbling headlong down the steps, squealing with every bump. This pig was a truly
remarkable specimen of the familia suidae, having the legs of a dog, a scrawny body, a snout of
incredible length, and a pair of ears which might well have been meant for wings.

A man followed the shote, head over heels, down the steps, yelling painfully each time he collided with a
tread. The man had lean shoulders and thin hips which gave him a waspish contour, and he was attired in
a fashion that was sartorially perfect-striped trousers, fawn vest and cutaway, and a dislodged silk hat
kept pace with his progress down the stairs. Although it looked as if the man was being jarred hard
enough to loosen his teeth, he still retained a tight grip on a slender black cane.

Pig and man slammed out on the floor at the bottom of the steps. The man sat up dazedly, then struck
furiously at the pig with his cane. The shote jumped at just the right instant.