The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson Read Free Book Online Page A

announcers call lapel mikes.
    “Somebody has been listening.” His powerful voice throbbed through the room. “In the room below! Let’s look into that!”

    NO puff of wind could have gone out of the room and down the stairs more speedily than Doc made it. The distance was sixty feet, and Doc had covered it all before his men were out of the upstairs room. And they had moved as quickly as they could.
    Whipping over where the wall could shelter him from ordinary bullets, Doc tried the doorknob. Locked! He exerted what for him was a mild pressure. Wood splintered, brass mechanism of the lock gritted and tore—and the door hopped ajar.
    A pistol crashed in the room. The bullet came close enough to Doc’s bronzed features that he felt the cold stir of air. A second lead missile followed. The powder noise was a great bawl of sound. Both bullets chopped plaster off the elaborately decorated corridor wall.
    Within the room, a door slammed.
    Doc instantly slid inside. Sure enough, his quarry had retreated to a connecting office.
    All this had taken flash parts of a second—Doc’s men were only now clamoring at the door.
    “Keep back!” Doc directed. He liked to fight his own battles. And there seemed to be only one man opposing him.
    Doc crossed the office, treading new-looking cheap carpet. He circled a second-hand oak desk with edges blackened where cigarette stubs had been placed carelessly. He tried the connecting door.
    It was also locked—but gave like wet cardboard before his powerful shove. Alert, almost certain a bullet would meet him, he doubled down close to the floor. He knew he could bob into view and back before the man inside could pull trigger.
    But the place was empty!
    Once, twice, three times, Doc counted his own heartbeats. Then he saw the explanation.
    A stout silken cord, with hardwood rods about the size of fountain pens tied every foot or so for handholds, draped out of the open window. The end of the cord was tied to a stout radiator leg. And a tense jerking showed a man was going down it.
    With a single leap, Doc was at the window. He looked down.
    Of the man descending the cord, little could be told. In the streaming darkness he was no more than a black lump.
    Doc drew back, whipped out his flashlight. When he played it down the cord, the man was gone!
    The fellow had ducked into a window.
    The flash went into Doc’s pocket. Doc himself clambered over the window sill. Grasping the silken cord, he descended. Thanks to the coordination of his great muscles, Doc negotiated the cord just about as fast as a man could run.
    He passed the first window. It was closed, the office beyond darkened and deserted-looking.
    Doc went on down. He had not seen what window the quarry had disappeared into. The second window was also closed. And the third! Doc knew then that he had passed the right window. The man could not have gone this far down the cord.
    It was typical of Doc that he did not give even a glance to what was below—a sheer fall of hundreds of feet. So far downward did the brick-and-glass wall extend that it seemed to narrow with distance until it was only a yard or so across. And the street was wedge-shaped at the bottom, as though cut with a great, sharp knife.
    Doc had climbed a yard upward when the silk cord gave a violent jerk. He looked up.
    A window had opened. A man had shoved a chair through it, and was pushing on the cord so as to swing Doc out away from the building. The murk of the night hid the man’s face. But it was obvious he was Doc’s quarry.
    Like a rock on the end of the silken rope, Doc was swung out several feet from the building. He would have to chance to grab a window sill.
    The man above flashed a hand for the cord. A long knife glistened in the hand.

Chapter 6
WORKING PLANS
    A T no time had Doc Savage ever put his ability to think like chain lightning to better use than he did now. In the fractional split of time that it took his golden eyes to register the deadly