The Danger Zone and Other Stories
- Автор: Гарднер Эрл Стенли, Пронзини Билл
- Год: 2004
- Язык: английский
- Год: Crippen & Landru
- ISBN: 978-1-932009-22-4
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Danger Zone and Other Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Major Brane sighed. The sigh seemed to be almost an incipient yawn. “As you, yourself have so aptly remarked,” he said in differently, “behave learned not to grow emotional over political matters.”
The bearded man sneered. “I thought you came here for the girl?”
“I did.”
“You don’t seem anxious to save her from an unpleasant experience.”
Major Brane made a slight gesture with his shoulders. “I was employed to recover the check. I thought it might be a good plan to throw in a rescue of the girl for good measure.”
The bearded man suddenly lost his semblance of poise, his veneer of culture. He took a swift step forward, his beard bristling, the strong white fangs behind it contrasting with the jet black of the beard.
“Damn you! We’ll get that check out of you. We’ll fry you in hot grease, a bit at a time. We’ll pull off the skin and stick burning cigars in the flesh. We’ll...” He choked with the very vehemence of his rage.
This time Major Brane yawned outright. “Come, come!” he said. “I thought we had outgrown these childish displays of emotion! We are playing major politics, we two. If you have lost the check, you have lost the fight. Torturing through vengeance won’t help you any.”
“It’ll make you suffer! It’ll eliminate you from any future interference. You’ve blocked too many of my plans before this!”
Major Brane nodded. It was as though he considered an impersonal problem. “Of course,” he muttered politely, “if you look at it that way!”
The man turned his dulled silver eyes morosely upon the others, who had been standing at sullen attention. “Search him. Then the house. Then the streets.”
The men came forward. They were thorough about the search and not at all gently. Major Brane assisted them wherever he could. They pulled his pockets inside out, took away all of his personal belongings, searched his shoes, his coat lining, the lapels of his coat, under the collar.
Then they divided into two groups. One searched the house, the other group the street. The man with the beard remained with Major Brane, glowering at him, the nature of his thoughts indicated by the dark of his skin, the closed fists, the level brows.
Major Brane regarded him speculatively. “The girl is here?” he asked.
His answer was a scornful, mocking laugh.
“I merely asked,” said Major Brane, “because it is so greatly to your advantage to see that she doesn’t come to harm. I telephoned, of course, to friends of hers before I returned to the house.”
The bearded man gave a sudden start. Despite himself, he changed color. “Yes?” he asked. “And just what do you expect her friends to do?”
Major Brane pursed his lips. “Probably,” he remarked, “they would not be so unwise as to storm the house; but they are well versed in certain matters of indirection. You might have some trouble in leaving the house.”
The dulled silver eyes regarded him scornfully. “You lie!” said the man who went under the name of Brinkhoff.
Major Brane made a gesture with the palms of his hands, a deprecating gesture, partially of apology.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I despair of you, Brinkhoff: You have a certain shrewdness, yes. But you lack perspective, breadth of vision; and you are unspeakably common!”
That last remark was like the lash of a whip.
“Common!” yelled the infuriated man. “I, who have the blood of three thousand years of royalty in my veins! Common, you scum of the gutter! I’ll draw the sight of this gun across your cursed face! Just a taste of what you can expect...”
He leaped forward, swinging his arm so that the sight of the gun made a sudden, sharp arc. But Major Brane’s forehead wasn’t there when the gunsight swished through the air. Major Brane had flung himself backwards in the chair; and as he went over, he watched the sweep of the arm, elevated his foot with every bit of strength he could muster. The foot caught the wrist of the enraged man, sent the gun swirling through the air in a lopsided flight. The chair crashed to the floor, Major Brane rolled clear.
Brinkhoff saw his danger and jumped back. His bony, capable hand went to the back of his coat collar, reaching for the hilt of a concealed knife.
He caught the knife, jerked it out and down. The lights glinted from the whirling steel. Major Brane flung his arms out in a football tackle. For a moment it seemed that the downward stroke of the knife would strike squarely between Major Brane’s shoulders. But the Major was first to reach his goal, first by that split fraction of a watch tick which seems to be so long when men are fighting for life and death, yet is the smallest unit of measured time.
The Major’s weight crashed against the shins of the man with the dulled silver eyes. The impact threw him back. The stroke of the knife swung wild. The two men teetered, crashed. The man with the beard shouted, squirmed.
Outside, the hallway pounded with running feet. There were other voices calling down from an upper floor.
Major Brane swung his fist. Brinkhoff’s cries ceased. Instantly, Major Brane was on his feet, as lithely active as a cat. He swooped toward the chair which lay on the floor, lifted it bodily, held it poised for a moment, and then flung it, straight through the glass of the window.
The chair smashed a great jagged hole in the glass. There sounded the crash, the tinkle, of falling glass fragments. Then the chair toppled outward and vanished into the night. There came a thud from the ground below.
Major Brane jumped for a closed door on one side of the room. He flung it open and found that it led, not to an adjoining room as he had hoped, but, into a closet. The closet was well filled with stacks of papers, papers that were arranged in bundles, tied with tape.
Major Brane leaped inside, scrambled atop the bundles, pawed at the door, trying to get it closed. He had but partially succeeded when he heard the door of the room burst open, and the sound of bodies catapulting into the room.
Of a sudden, the sounds ceased. That, reasoned Major Brane, perched precariously atop the slippery pile of documents, would be when the others entered the room and took in the situation, the unconscious form of Brinkhoff sprawled on the floor, the window with its great jagged hole.
“Gone!” a voice croaked, and added a curse.
“Jumped out of the window...”
“Quick! After him. — No, no, not that way! Close the block! Signal the others! He’s got fifty yards the start of us. Turn on the red lights. Hurry!”
Once more, feet pounded in haste. Major Brane could hear excited shouts, comments that were called back and forth.
A small section of the lighted floor of the room showed through the half-open door of the closet. Major Brane watched that section of floor for a full two seconds, to see if there were any moving shadows crossing it. There were no shadows. The room seemed utterly silent.
Major Brane strove to step quietly from his perch, but a packet of documents tilted, slid. Major Brane flung himself back, lost his balance, put out his arms, and crashed through the closet door into the room.
Brinkhoff lay sprawled on the floor. A man was bending over him, and that man had evidently been in the act of going through Brinkhoff’s pockets when Major Brane, catapulting from the closet, had frozen him into startled immobility.
He looked at Major Brane, and Major Brane took advantage of his first moment of surprise. He rushed. The man teetered back to his heels, jumped backward in time to escape the momentum of that first rush. Major Brane landed a glancing blow with his left. Then he caught himself, turned, and lashed out with his right.
He realized then that the man with whom he had to deal was one who was trained in jujutsu. Too late he strove to beat down the other’s left. It caught his right wrist; a foot shot out; a hand darted down with bone-crunching violence.