"Doc Savage Adventure 1933-03 Man of_Bronze" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

Here is the general information concerning it:

Some twenty years ago, in company with Hubert
Robertson, I went on an expedition to Hidalgo, in
Central America, to investigate the report of a prehistoric - "


There the missive ended. Flames had consumed the rest.

"The thing to do is get hold of Hubert Robertson!" clipped the quick-thinking Ham. Waspish, rapid-moving, he swung over to the telephone, scooped it up. "I know Hubert Robertson's phone number. He is connected with the Museum of Natural History."

"You won't get him!" Doc said dryly.

"Why not?"

Doc got off the table and stood beside the giant Renny. It was only then that one realized what a big man Doc was. Alongside Renny, Doc was like dynamite alongside gunpowder.

"Hubert Robertson is dead," Doc explained. "He died from the same thing that killed my father - a weird malady that started with a breaking out of red spots. And he died at about the same time as my father."


RENNY'S thin mouth pinched even tighter at that. Gloom seemed to settle on his long face. He looked like a man disgusted enough with the evils of the world to cry.

Strangely enough, that somber look denoted that Renny was beginning to take interest. The tougher the going got, the better Renny functioned and the more puritanical he looked.

"That flooeys our chances of finding out more about this heritage your father left you!" he rumbled.

"Not entirely," Doc corrected. "Wait here a moment!"
He stepped through another door, crossed the room banked with the volumes of his father's great technical library. Through a second door, and he was in the laboratory. Cases laden with chemicals stood thick as forest trees on the floor. There were electrical coils, vacuum tubes, ray apparatus, microscopes, retorts, electric furnaces, everything that could go into such a laboratory.

From a cabinet Doc lifted a metal box closely resembling an old-fashioned magic lantern. The lens, instead of being ordinary optical glass, as a very dark purple, almost black. There was a cord for plugging into an electric-light socket.

Doc carried this into the room where his five men waited, placed it on a stand, aiming the lens at the window. He plugged the cord into an electric outlet. Before putting the thing in operation, he lifted the metal lid and beckoned to Long Tom, the electrical wizard.

"Know what this is?"

"Of course." Long Tom pulled absently at an ear that was too big, too thin and too pale. "That is a lamp for making ultra-violet rays, or what is commonly called black light. The rays are invisible to the human eye, since they are shorter than ordinary light, but many substances when placed in the black light will glow, or fluoresce after the fashion of luminous paint on a watch dial. Examples of such substances are ordinary vaseline, guinine - "

"That's plenty," interposed Doc. "Will you look at the window I've pointed this at. See anything unusual about it?"

Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist and geologist, advanced to the window, removing his glasses as he went. He held the thick-lensed left glass before his right eye, inspecting the window.

In reality, the left side of Johnny's glasses was an extremely powerful magnifying lens. His work often required a magnifier, so he wore one over his left eye, which was virtually useless because of an injury received in the World War.

"I can find nothing!" Johnny declared. "There's nothing unusual about the window!"

"I hope you're wrong," Doc said, sobriety in his wondrously modulated voice. "But you could not see the writing on that window, should there be any. The substance my father perfected for leaving secret messages was absolutely invisible. But it glows under ultra-violet light."

"You mean - " hairy Monk rumbled.