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

"You," said Ool, "will have all infinity in which to think." The white hand darted. There was no slow-motion effect this time. No onlooker could have told whether or not the hand actually touched Beery Hosner.


ALL of the pent-up terror of the last few moments burst from Beery Hosmer's slack lips in one animal scream. He wrenched violently backward. Head, shoulders and elbows rammed into the plate glass of the candy store.

The window collapsed. Glass crashed to the cement walk with a jangle.

Beery seemed to be trying to get a gun out of an armpit holster. But he thrashed about like one suddenly stricken mad. He kicked trays of chocolates and mints out on the sidewalk. Great shudders began to course over his scrawny body, but did not persist for long, because he gave a vast, wheezing sigh and slumped over, becoming as inert as the chocolate creams crushed beneath him.

Ool leaned into the window. His left hand remained at his side, as if lifeless. His right hand drifted to Beery Hosmer's shirt, wrenched. Two buttons flew and clicked far out in the street, then chamois of a money belt tore with a rotten sound.

The object which Ool brought into view resembled a pair of goggles, more than anything else. But as goggles, they were peculiar, for the lenses were as large as small condensed milk cans, and their glass -- the stuff did not look like true glass -- was almost jet black.

One thing was striking. The workmanship was exquisite.

Ool put the goggles on, and they contrasted grotesquely with his chalky face. Then he made a disgusted sound, took them off hurriedly and pocketed them. A psychologist would have called the little incident strange. It was as if the donning of the goggles had been an instinctive action.

There was nothing hurried about the man's movements. He reached down, picked up a chocolate, tasted it and smacked lips. Then he took off his hat and scooped chocolates into it until it was nearly full.

Walking away, he ate the candy avidly, as if it were some exquisite delicacy with which he had just become acquainted.

At the corner, Ool passed under a streetlight, and a peculiarity about his hair became apparent. It was lttle more than a golden down, like the fine fur on a mouse.

One man saw Ool go under the streetlight. The man was a janitor in a near-by building.

It was inevitable that the breaking glass should have attracted attention, and within a few moments, a uniformed policeman came running. He' stood looking at the candy strewn over the walk, at first not noticing the human form in the window. Then he saw it, swore, and leaned in to make an examination. When he backed away, he looked puzzled.

"Guy must've had a fit, fell in the window and died," he muttered.

That was the story the next editions of the newspapers carried, after a medical examiner had expressed the tentative opinion that death was due to natural causes.

Moreover, there had been over a thousand dollars in the chamois money belt, and since this was intact, it did not seem that the motive was robbery.

It was some hours before the police got a different slant on the story. It required that long for the janitor who had seen Ool go under the streetlight to make up his mind. The janitor was a timid soul. His story created quite a furor when he decided to talk.

The janitor had seen the whole thing.



Chapter 2

PLANS


EARL MAURICE "WATCHES" BOWEN stood in his modernistic Park Avenue apartment and poured eighty-year-old Napoleon brandy into a fragile glass, tested its bouquet long and pleasurably, then took a sip and blotted his lips with a silk handkerchief.

He was a big man, with some surplus around the waist. His dress was immaculate, his manner suave. He did not look the part of one of the smoothest crooks in the big time.

Watches Bowen leaned back in the exquisitely moulded chair and absently fingered the thin yellow gold chain which connected the two lower pockets of his vest. There was a watch on either end of the chain. There was a jeweled timepiece on each of his slightly thick wrists.