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

"This station is hundreds of mites distant," Doc Savage said.

"Sure?"

"Fairly. You can tell, after you have played with radio for a long time. This is one of our sets, the one Johnny had."

"You can tell that, too?" Renny rumbled.

"The particular quality of the carrier wave," Doc imparted. "There is hardly another transmitter that would emit the specific type of wave associated with our newly developed short-wave V. U. X. type tube."

Renny used an enormous forefinger to scratch his head. "But what would Johnny be keeping that transmitter turned on for. Running down his battery, isn't it?"

"Look here," Doc Savage said.

He pressed a button, which lighted a ground-glass compass rose, over which was mounted a pointer actuated by a loop aerial through remote control. The loop was situated on the skyscraper roof for better functioning.

Doc Savage moved the loop in the regulation radio compass manner, not getting the signals to their loudest, but to their weakest point, which was more easily detected.

Renny read the compass indicator.

"North by east, a quarter east," he said. "Holy cow! He's somewhere on a line drawn approximately between here and Greenland, or maybe on the same line if extended south through New York City."

"Exactly," Doc said. "It is very strange, this continuous operation of Johnny's transmitter."


RENNY EXTRACTED a newspaper from a coat pocket which looked as if it had been especially tailored with sufficient capacity to hold his enormous fists. He tapped the headlines.

"That business of the Viking pirates who took over that yacht is getting a big play," he said. "There is a story in here to the effect that Johnny examined the Viking dragon ship and declared it to be genuine and some hundreds of years old. Funny, eh?"

"Unusual, to say the least," Doc Savage agreed.

"And Johnny is supposed to have chased off somewhere investigating the mystery," Renny boomed.

Doc Savage was still in front of the radio. There now came into being a sound so soft and eerie that its presence was at first unnoticeable. It was a trilling, low, indescribably mellow, a sound so fantastic that it defied description. The fantastic note seemed to filter from everywhere; it was as if the very air were saturated with it.

The trilling was the sound of Doc Savage, a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of mental stress. He did not do it willfully. He had made it always, since he could remember. And now he seemed to realize what he was doing, and the unearthly note ebbed away.

Renny eyed the bronze man sharply. That sound always meant something was up.

"Strange, that business of the radio transmitter going steady," he said, echoing Doc's earlier statement. "It's got some queer angles."

Queer angles, it did have. They found out just how queer an instant later.

Something that glinted whipped through the air. Renny had a flash realization of what it was. A knife! It flashed directly for Doc Savage's back.

The knife struck Doc in the back, point-first, and with ugly force.

An alarm clock began ringing deliriously.