"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-03 Land of Always Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

LAND OF ALWAYS-NIGHT



A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson


(Originally published in "Doc Savage" Magazine March 1935. Bantam Books reprint February 1966)



Chapter 1

THE BUTTERFLY DEATH


IT is somewhat ridiculous to say that a human hand can resemble a butterfly. Yet this particular hand did attain that similarity. Probably it was the way it moved, hovered, moved again, with something about it that was remindful of a slow-motion picture being shown on a screen.

The color had something to do with the impression. The hand was white, unnatural; it might have been fashioned of mother-of-pearl. There was something serpentine, hideous, about the way it strayed and hovered, yet was never still. It made one think of a venomous white moth.

It made Beery Hosner think of death. Only the expression on Beery Hosmer's face told that, for be was not saying anything. But he was trying to. His lips shaped word syllables and the muscle strings in his scrawny throat jerked, but no sounds came out.

The horrible white hand floated up toward Beery Hosmer's face. The side street was gloomy, deserted except for Beery Hosner and the man with the uncanny hand. The hand stood out in the murk almost as if it were a thing of white paper with a light inside.

Beery Hosner went through a convulsion of fright. Beery was a rather unusual fellow. He was a crook who looked the part. At best, he was rather a sickening specimen, and now his aspect was doubly unwholesome. He managed to pump words out.

"Naw, naw, don't!" he choked. "I dunno where it is! So help me, I don't!"

The other man made no answer. His fantastic white hand
-- the other one never moved, as if it were dead -- was not his only unusual characteristic. His eyes were unnaturally huge and so very pale as to be almost the color of water, and he had a thin face, a thin body. When occasional distant automobile headlights caused him to cast a shadow, the shadow was skeleton-thin.

Beery Hosmer broke out in gibberish.

"I don't know," he gulped. "I wouldn't kid you. I don't know anything about it!"

The other man's white hand kept moving.

"Where is it?" he asked. His voice was utterly flat; it held the mechanical quality found in the speech of persons so deaf that they can hardly hear themselves talk.

Beery Hosmer tried to back away. He was already pressed against the darkened window of a candy store.

"Wouldn't I tell you if I knew?" he whimpered. "Lookit, Ool -- "

The hand of the man called Ool seemed to move a little slower.

"You have it," he said tonelessly. "You were on your way to endeavor to sell it to this man Doc Savage. It is in the money belt which you carry around your waist."

Beery made choking sounds. He was almost sobbing.

"Take it easy!" he blubbered. "We can fix this tip. Gimme time! Lemme think!"