"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 145 - The Ten Ton Snakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE TEN TON SNAKES
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
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? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIV
Chapter I
YOU ought to know about ribbons. The yellow one with the two red stripes is for China Service. The
red ribbon with the pair of triple white stripe,тАФgood conduct. Purple with white ends, Purple Heart.
Blue, red and white stripes, Distinguished Service Cross. Blue, yellow and red bands, the Yangtze
Medal.

The years and the terrors of a man's life worn over his heart.

This boy had all of these ribbons. Except the good-conduct one. He didn't have that one.

He was wearing them, too. They looked like a flag on his chest. Normally he didn't wear them; he carried
them in his pocket, in a little teakwood velvet-lined case wonderfully made for him by a Karen in Burma.
The boy felt very deeply about them, but he wouldn't have admitted it for anything. However, he wasn't
exactly a boy.

He was over twenty-eight. Not old enough for that gray to belong in his hair. He was leathery and rangy
and long-nosed and blue-eyed and he looked at you as if he owned you. That is a thing American
soldiers are beginning to do, look at you as if they own you. And they do, in a way.

He had a callous like a corn on a finger of his left hand, his 50-calibre trigger finger.

And now they were trying to kill him.

He was walking down Fifth Avenue. Looking. Looking at everything gladly and hungrily, as if he wanted
to eat it. Looking at the legs of the girls walking on Fifth Avenue. Ogling the plaster-of-paris legs of the
mannikins in the store windows. Going тАЬwoo-wooтАЭ at the girls walking by him on the street. He wanted
to jump over the buildings, you could tell. He would get up on his toes and dance a step or two, and
whirl completely around. Like a ballet dancer. As if God had given him wings.
MURDER.

It was a very carefully planned thing, this project of sudden death. It was getting the care that a murder
deserves. The boy with the ribbons, the boy who was so glad that he was almost sick at his stomach,
was going to be slain in cold blood. Cold bloodтАФif anyone knows why they call it that.