"Doc Savage Adventure 1943-05 The Talking Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

THE TALKING DEVIL

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

(Originally published in "Doc Savage Magazine" for May, 1943. Bantam Books reprint December 1982.)

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BACK COVER

Doc Savage is the target of a new, malevolent foe - the spirit of the King of Evil, who utters murderous commands through an ancient Chinese Devil Doll. Is Doc cursed? Or has a maniacal criminal genius discovered the ultimate key to Doc's destruction? To survive, the Man of Bronze plunges into a terrifying struggle that can end only one way - death!

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Chapter 1

THE DEVIL AND COMPANY


RENNY Renwick, the engineer, and Long Tom Roberts, the electrical expert, were on hand to meet Doc Savage when he brought his plane down on the Hudson River. Doc taxied the craft, managing it expertly on the wind-whipped river surface, into the big hangar which was disguised as a warehouse on the river front, almost in the shadow of New York's midtown skyscrapers. Renny and Long Tom were a little breathless as they met Doc Savage.

"It's a devil," said Renny.

"It talks," said Long Tom.

"A little statuette of a satan, or a devil, not much more than a foot high," Renny said. "It is made out of bronze or brass or some similar metal."

"It has a deep voice," Long Tom said.

"But only one man hears it talk."

"One man. Nobody else."

"His name is Joseph. Sam Joseph."

"The man who hears it, we mean," Long Tom explained.

Doc Savage listened to them patiently. Patience was one of Doc Savage's accomplishments, being one of the things that had been hammered into him as a part of the strange training which he had received in his youth - when, at diaper age, he had been placed in the hands of scientists to be subjected, over a course of almost twenty years, to an intensive program which was intended to fit him for one specific and rather strange career. Unlike many persons given an arbitrary training before they were old enough to know what it was all about, or speak for themselves, he had elected to follow the career for which he had been trained. It was an unusual career. It consisted, literally, of making other people's business his own. Or at least their troubles.

For some time now, Doc Savage had been taking it on himself to right wrongs and punish evildoers, traveling to the far corners of the earth to do so. He had five associates who worked with him. Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were two members of this group of five.

"A devil," Doc Savage said, getting it straight. "And it talks. But only one man can hear it.,'

"That's right," Long Tom said. "Sam Joseph."

"There are more details," Renny said.

"But they won't make it sound less silly," Long Tom declared. Renny took Doc's arm. "Come on," he said. "We will take you to talk to Montague Ogden."