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

Zun-n-n-g! The sound came from the spot Monk had left. He knew something had hit the wall near the telephone stand, hit it very hard. The sound was loud over the alarm clock bell.

Monk felt under his left arm, then grimaced. The holster was there, but the machine-gun pistol was not. Monk was a careless soul, and he had lain the gun aside while he worked.

Moments dragged. The alarm clock rang on. Monk began to wonder if it would ever run down. The secretary was still attacking the door. It sounded as if she had gotten the fire axe out of the penthouse vestibule.

Monk got up on his hands again, walked himself toward where he had lain his gun. He got it, one of the machine pistols which Doc Savage had perfected. He held it by the trigger guard with his teeth, and hind-walked to a light switch. He set himself. Then he turned the switch on, bringing a blaze of white light which hopelessly ruined the chemical project under way at the moment.

Monk's hair all but stood on end.

It was not what he saw. It was what he did not see. There was apparently no one but himself in the dark room.


AT LEAST half a dozen times, Monk ran an intent scrutiny over the dark room. There were many stands of apparatus, cases, metal boxes, jugs and a few packing boxes. None of these were of sufficient size to harbor a man.

Devoting one eye to the job, Monk discovered he had been using the dull blade in his pocketknife to saw at the thong. He opened a sharp blade, and finally sawed through it. He laid the thong aside for future examination. It was the toughest piece of leather he had ever seen.

Monk made a complete circle of the room. He saw no attacker. He went over and gaped at the thing sticking in the wall beside the telephone stand.

It was a bobtailed spear, a thing with a heavy, razor-sharp head, and a shaft less than three feet long, very heavy. A tassel of flexible thongs on the end of the shaft evidently served the same purpose as feathers on the extremity of an Indian's arrow.

Monk left it sticking, and went to the alarm clock. It ran down just as he reached it. The thing was cheap, the type sold by most drug stores for less than a dollar.

A volley of loud blows on the door reminded Monk that his secretary was still trying to get in. He went over.

The key had been turned in the lock. He was positive of that. He turned the key back and opened the door.

The secretary who came in was as near being the prettiest secretary in New York as Monk had been able to achieve after interviewing some hundreds of applicants. She was excited, but that only made her prettier.

It was obvious that she had not the least idea of what had happened, so Monk told her.

"Now, what do you make of it?" he finished.

"No one came in or left, I'm positive," said the young woman, who had brains as well as beauty.

Monk took another tour of inspection around the dark room, which was a part of the penthouse chemical laboratory which he maintained down here a stone's throw from Wall Street. Monk was by way of being one of the nation's leading chemists. He came back and eyed his secretary foolishly.

"Do I look all right?" he demanded.

"No worse than usual," the young woman replied. "Why?"

"I thought maybe I had an attack of the jimjams and imagined what happened," Monk said.

"Don't be silly."

Monk suddenly handed the young woman his machine-gun pistol.

"Guard the door with that," he commanded. "I'm gonna go get Habeas Corpus."

"That hog?"