"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-01 The Mystic Mullah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

THE FIRE-FACED MAN


DOWN the corridor a way, and around a corner, there was a plain metal door, the panel of which bore a name in small letters of a peculiar bronze color:

CLARK SAVAGE, JR.

This door whipped back and a tall, incredibly bony man popped out. The man was thinner than it seemed any human being could be and still exist. He wore no coat, and a rubber apron was tied about his midsection. Rubber gloves were on his hands, and one hand held a magnifying glass made in the shape of a monocle.

He peered about, blinking, searching for the source of the shrieks which had drawn his attention. But there was a crook in the corridor and he did not see the form of Hadim immediately.

The bony man absently stowed the monocle magnifier in a vest pocket under his rubber laboratory apron, and advanced. He rounded the corner, jerked up and stared.

Hadim was now motionless on the floor, and his head was angled back in a grotesque posture which no man could attain normally.

The bony man in the rubber apron suddenly snapped a hand to an armpit and brought it away gripping a weapon which somewhat resembled an oversize automatic pistol. He flipped this up and tightened on the trigger; the weapon shuttled, smoked and made a noise like a gigantic bullfiddle. It was a machine pistol with a tremendous firing speed.

One of the sinister green wraiths was still inside the corridor, rolling against the window as if seeking blindly to escape. The stream of bullets from the machine pistol passed through it, disturbing it, fattening it a little, but not destroying it or seeming in any way to affect its unholy life.

The stream of lead broke glass out of the window. The green harpy squirmed through the opening and floated away into the gloom, losing itself over the nest of skyscraper spires.

The skeleton of a man stood very still for a long minute.

"I'll be superamalgamated!" he muttered finally.

Stooping, he examined the body of Hadim, for Hadim was dead. When Hadim's head was moved, there was a grisly looseness about its attachment to the body, as if it were only connected by a cord no stiffer than a wrapping twine.

The bony man eyed Hadim's extraordinarily long knife.

"Sixteenth century Tananese," he decided aloud. Then he employed the monocle magnifier briefly. "Wrong. Tananese, all right, but of modern construction, using sixteenth century methods of tempering and moulding. Most peculiar."

The wall beside Hadim's body was of plaster, painted over, and it was scarred with numerous rather odd looking marks. These came to the thin man's attention.

"I'll be superamalgamated!" he gulped again, using what was evidently, for him, a pet ejaculation. He stared harder at the marks. Down the corridor, an elevator door clanked to a stop. Before the door opened, voices could be heard. They were very loud voices, angry. It sounded as if a fight was about to occur in the elevator. The cage door opened and a man came skidding out.

This man was slender, waspish, with a high forehead and a large orator's mouth. His attire was sartorial perfection from silken topper to the exact hang of his tail coat. He carried a thin, black cane.

He yelled at the open elevator door, "You hairy accident! You awful mistake of nature! You insult to the human race!"

A most striking looking individual now came out of the elevator. His height was no greater than that of a young boy; his width was almost equal to his height. His face was mostly mouth, with a broken nubbin of a nose, small eyes set in pits of gristle, and scarcely a noticeable quantity of forehead. His long arms dangled well below his knees and the wrists were matted with hair that looked like rusted steel wool.

Had the corridor been a little less brilliantly lighted the hairy gentleman might have been mistaken for an amiable gorilla.

The hairy man squinted little eyes at the dapper one and said, "Pipe down, you shyster, or I'll tie a knot in your neck!

Then they both saw the tall skeleton of a man down the Corridor. They could not help but note his excitement.

"What's happened, Johnny?" demanded the apish fellow. They could not see the body of Hadim, which lay around the bend in the corridor.

"Johnny," the bony man - he was actually William Harper Littlejohn, world-renowned expert on archaeology and geology - gestured over his shoulder with the monocle magnifier.