Doc Release Ladder

AT 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 menace of that knife, he formulated a plan of action.

He simply let go completely of the silken cord!

This, in spite of the sheer fall of more than eighty stories directly below him--with not a possible chance of saving himself by clutching a projecting piece of masonry. This building was of the modernistic architecture which does not go in for trick balconies and carved ledges.

But Doc knew what he was doing. And it was a thing that called for iron nerve and stupendous strength and quickness of movement.

The silken cord, going abruptly slack before the chair the man above pushed against it nearly caused the would-be murderer to pitch headlong out of the window. The fellow dropped both the chair and his knife and by a wild grab, saved himself from the fall he had meant for Doc.

Doc, with a maneuver little short of marvelous, caught the end of the silken cord as it snaked past. A drop of a few feet, which his remarkable arm muscles easily cushioned, and he was swinging close to a window sill, none the worse for his narrow escape.

- The Man of Bronze (1933) Chapter 6