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

The minute the plane stopped, the crust on the snow collapsed, letting the ship sink down to its wings, and Johnny got out muttering big-worded imprecations. He foresaw some trouble in leaving the place.

Had he known exactly how much trouble he was going to have, the knowledge might conceivably have turned his hair white.

Johnny walked to the wounded man.

One peculiarity about the man's face struck Johnny distinctly. It was a full, crude face equipped with a horse's mouth, small bird eyes, and a nose of no consequence, but that was not what stood out distinctly. Many men have ugly faces. Not so many, however have their forehead, nose and eye area weather-beaten until the skin resembles the top of an old shoe, while the rest of their cheeks, jowls and neck remain the pale-blue color of skim milk.

Johnny absently decided this man had worn a very heavy beard for a long time, and had only recently shaved it off. Then Johnny began his examination.

The man had collapsed, and with good reason, for he had been shot three times. No, four. Johnny found the fourth through the man's foot, where he had not bled much. The other bullets were in his body, and they had bled plenty of scarlet blood.

The bullet victim's parka of fur, bearskin pants and big, pliable hightop moccasins looked extremely new, and Johnny, curious, twisted back the hood until he could see the collar band. Nothing there. He looked at the parka skirt. No Eskimo squaw had made these garments. They bore the label of a high-class sporting goods house on New York's Madison Avenue.

There was nothing else on the wounded man's person to give the slightest indication of who he was or what had befallen him.

Johnny ran back to the plane, saw it had sunken even deeper in the snow, expressed his opinion of that happening with several glossologic gems, and got a first-aid kit out of it.

The bullet victim was talking quite calmly when Johnny skittered across the snow crust to him.

"The secret of Qui is twelve hundred years old, Kettler," he said. "You got the breaks when you found the place the first time, but you'll never find it again without that goldenhaired girl."


IN A rational sounding, measured voice, the man talked to the one named Kettler, and he looked straight at bony Johnny as he talked, as if he had mistaken Johnny for the person, Kettler. But it was not that. The man was delirious, out of his head. He would talk for a while, then he would collapse. Johnny knew how it went.

"Kettler, I tell you I didn't let her go deliberately," the man said earnestly. "She banged me on the head with a rock. Look, you can see where she hit me."

He did not point, but Johnny looked, then blinked, for there was a fearsome bruise on the man's forehead. But the wounded man was still talking.

"She ran away," the man said. "I don't know where she went. I think she went north, back toward Qui. She ain't normal, that dame. But what else can you expect from Qui?"

The man stopped and breathed a little deeper than usual, and the result was a gurgling explosion that shot a crimson spray through his teeth and over the surrounding snow. From the number of blood spots frozen in the snow, that must have happened before. It was more than a minute before he went on.

"Kettler, you can't find Qui again without the golden-haired dame."

He had said that before.

"I couldn't help her scramming, Kettler," he said. "Don't shoot me."

He said that much too calmly.

"Damn you, Kettler," he said. "You've shot me. You left me here to croak. I hope you never get a smell of Qui again."

It was like listening to a story from fully conscious lips. But it was horrible, because of the dead quality of the tone. The man was dying, but dying so slowly that he might go on thus for hours, for days if he got proper treatment. He might not die, even.

"You won't find Qui, Kettler," said the man. "Don't like that, do you? Too bad, ain't it? Qui will go on like it is for maybe another twelve hundred years. Sure it will, when you don't get back to do your killing. Damn your killing, Kettler. I didn't like that part of the scheme."

Then, so suddenly that it surprised Johnny a little, the wounded man's mumbling became unintelligible. A gout of scarlet had worked up in the fellow's throat, and it bubbled there, making the words inarticulate.