"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 030 - Spook Hole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The man with the bludgeon took his teeth out of his tongue to suck in a breath, then set himself again,
ready for the killing blow.

He got a surprise.

A noise sounded from ahead. There was also a sound as if some one had pushed down on a tire valve
and let the air leak out for an instant.

The man with the taped hawser sprang forward. He whipped out a flashlight. He thought that his
one-armed quarry had fallen. He wanted to take advantage of that fact.

The flashlight popped a white cone. The man with the hawser let out a loud grunt. He tried to stop,
slipped on the wet cobbles, went down flat on his back, and the big raindrops wet his face. He turned
over, got up, and without looking back, ran.

He had left his flashlight behind. It was still on, pointed so that the beam was on him. He wore oilskins
and a seaman's sou'wester. He ran madly, with great leaps, and did not look back as long as he was in
the flashlight's glow, which was for some distance. He had seen an apparition.

THE apparition was huge and black, shiny from the rain, and it crouched over the prone figure of the
one-armed man. The latter was not entirely prone; his head and shoulders were off the cobbles, for the
fabulous black figure had him by the neck.

An instant later there was a dragging noise, and a water puddle gurgled as if something had been hauled
through it. The nearest warehouse was a score of yards distant. A plank squeaked inside of it.

The big raindrops fell like solid things on the warehouse roof. Thunder let loose another great bumping.
The elevated train clanked on downtown.

Inside the warehouse, a thin rod of brilliant white light appeared. It undoubtedly came from a flashlight,
but the beam was little thicker than a pencil, even at the end. It prowled over the one-armed man's
figure.

The fellow was bound now, with lengths of that very stout-tarred cord known to sailors as Italian marline.
Both his wrists and ankles were secured, and these were lashed together so that he was doubled over in
such a manner as to discourage rolling. A sponge was held tightly in his mouth by a wire which could not
be chewed through.

The one-armed man had changed. Changed In a startling way. He actually had two arms.

Obviously one of his arms had been confined tightly to his side by a long bandaging of canvas. The
canvas had been stripped off. The thin flash beam picked up its snaky length on the floor.

Several times the flashlight prowled along the arm which had been strapped under the coat in such a
manner as to be almost unnoticeable. It was as if the matter of the arm constituted some mystery which
needed solving.

There was not enough of light from the thin flashlight to show the giant black apparition who was doing
the examining. The light string collapsed. The squeak of a floorboard was the only sound as the big black
figure departed.