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

Johnny spat crimson, said nothing.

"Damn, I'm gonna shoot him!" Kettler proclaimed.

"Wait a minute," grunted a man. "I ain't so anxious to stir this Doc Savage up. We'd be prize suckers to get him on our necks by croakin' this bony guy."

"We may have already gotten him on our necks," grunted Kettler m reply. "How we gonna know? This mug won't talk. I know mugs who won't talk when I see one."

"Listen," said the other.

They drew aside, where Johnny could not hear their "Ps-s-s-t" of whispering, then both departed, shuffling carefully over the snow crust. Those behind guarded Johnny with careless efficiency. When he tried to talk, they kicked him and used their fists. He fell silent. He heard distant chopping noises.

Some fifteen minutes later a shout came from Kettler, and Johnny was hauled over the snow crust.

Kettler stood beside a stream. This was frozen over, but there was running water under the ice. It could be heard. The ice had cracked during the intense cold of winter, and pressure had shoved it up at the edges, causing a number of larger cracks. Johnny was hauled over the rugged ice to the middle of the stream.

The ice was thick, and they had chopped a trench in it, seven feet long, three wide, and almost three deep.

Johnny was now bound hand and foot. Wrists and ankles were lashed together so that he could not stand erect. He was thrown into the bottom of the trench. Chunks of chopped ice which had not been scooped out gouged his bony frame.

Some one brought a heavy rock, which had been pried from its frozen bed with difficulty. The rock was so heavy that they rolled it into the pit instead of lifting it and lowering it. It knocked air out of Johnny's lungs with such violence that almost a minute elapsed before he could start breathing again.

"What's - idea?" he managed to gulp.

"You're gonna tell us where Doc Savage hooks into this," he was informed.

Johnny only glared.


HE COULD hear them chopping the ice near by. Their axes, no doubt, had been brought from their plane. The chopping sounded hurried. The men appeared to be no great lovers of physical labor, because there was plenty of grumbling.

Dogs - they were big sled huskies - bounded about, barked and chased rabbits. Wind whined in the cold stunted trees along the creek bank. Listening to it, Johhny thought of the distant violins again. The sound struck him as funeral music. Snow sifted in on him. It was covering him like a shroud. A funeral shroud. He shivered.

"What are you doing with me?" he yelled, a little uneasily, unsteadily.

A man leered down at him. "The guy is forgettin' his big words."

Kettler came and looked down. The man had a face like a devil, Johnny thought, a canine sort of a devil. It was altogether the most unlovely face the lank geologist and archaeologist could recall.

Johnny glared up, at the devil-like face. The glaring was a measure to preserve his own control. A man does not get scared so badly if he can keep his mind on doing something else.

"Gonna spill it?" asked Kettler.

Johnny said, "No!"

Men appeared. They carried folding canvas buckets, no doubt also gotten from their plane. Water was in the buckets. They must have dipped it up from a hole they had chopped through the ice.

"Pour it in," directed Kettler.