"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-07 Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"None of that damned talk," Kettler growled. He stared at Johnny with small eyes. "How much does Doc Savage know?"

"Doc Savage's knowledge is indeterminable, magnitudinous," said Johnny.

Kettler shot his jaw out. "You mean he knows about the whole caper? How'd he get wise?"

"That guy's kiddin' you, Kettler," advised some one who knew the meaning of the words Johnny had used.

Kettler instantly knocked Johnny down. The man could move with shocking speed. Johnny could recall but few times when he had been hit so suddenly and with such blinding force.

Johnny buried head and shoulders in the snow when he fell, and lying there, was conscious of a whining in his ears. He thought it was aftermath of the blow, then remembered the radio transmitter he had abandoned.

He got up hastily and staggered away from the spot until they cornered him.

"Look!" said a man, and pointed.

Twenty-five yards away, the man who had been shot, the fellow whose presence had drawn Johnny to a landing, was sitting up. He was talking loudly and coherently to no one.

"That bird is tough!" some one muttered.

Kettler, saying nothing, took a deliberate aim with his revolver. The gun let out noise, fire, and jumped. A hole, round and blue, appeared in the wounded man's forehead and started leaking red. The victim fell back, silent, unmoving.

"He ain't tough enough to stand that, I betcha," said Kettler.

Johnny nearly shuddered himself off his feet. It was the coldest kind of a murder.


KETTLER EMITTED a stream of profanity. He sprang to Johnny, jabbed him in the stomach with the murder gun.

"What's Doc Savage know about this?" he gritted.

Breath steam - it stood out very distinctly in the cold air - ran a long plume out of Johnny's mouth, and then there was no more breath steam for so long a time that it seemed certain he must collapse from want of breathing.

"Out with it!" Kettler roared.

"Doc Savage - don't know - anything," Johnny said, his words small, halting.

It was the truth. Kettler did not believe it.

"Don't lie to me!" he yelled. "Has Savage figured out about them Vikings in that dragon ship?"

"Figured what out about them?" Johnny queried.

"Figured what they were - "

"Ps-s-t, Kettler!" a man hissed. "He's pumping you!"

"Uhm!" Kettler scowled and shifted his gun from Johnny's stomach to his mouth, with the result that the gaunt geologist's moist, tender mouth tissues clung to the gun steel most agonizingly, and tore when Kettler yanked the weapon.

"Hah!" Kettler leered. "Does Doc Savage know about Qui?"