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

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "Or, rather, good afternoon. It is afternoon, isn't it?"

"Don't you know whether or not it is afternoon?" Doc Savage asked.

Sam Joseph seemed somewhat confused. "I guess so," he said. "That is, I was watching the snow, and the bluebirds singing in the snow. It only snows in the afternoon, does it not, or is it only on Wednesday, the first of June?"

Doc Savage asked Montague Ogden, "How long has he been talking like that?"

"Gracious, I never heard him speak like that before," Montague Ogden said. "I really haven't."

"His conversation hitherto has been rational?"

"Oh, yes. It really has."

Sam Joseph said, "I came out of the hill and it was very dark, but there was the fish in the sand, with the ice all around it. We sat down there, the fish and I, and we had fine steaks and caviar, but the fish wouldn't eat the caviar because he was not a cannibal, he told me. When the fish said he was not a cannibal he had a very deep voice."

Monk Mayfair, Doc Savage's assistant, looked at Doc thoughtfully. Monk put the end of a forefinger against his own right temple and made a motion as if he was winding up something.

"Like the things you pull corks with," Monk said.

Doc Savage studied Sam Joseph for a while. The man was smiling, but it was a vacantly empty smile, a smile without intelligence or even much feeling behind it.

Doc turned back to Montague Ogden again.

"The devil statue," Doc said. "Where is it?"

Montague Ogden seemed startled. "Oh, the devil. It is around somewhere, I suppose."

"Get it."

"But now you can see that poor Sam Joseph is - "

"The devil," Doc said. "The devil that talked. We want to see it.',

Montague Ogden now seemed distressed, and also his brow wrinkled as if he was trying to think where the statue was, and he scratched his head.

"Oh, how silly of me," he said. "How really silly. Of course, I remember now. In my den. I'll get it. I placed the statue in my den and I will get it now."

He turned away.

Doc said, "Monk, go with him."

"Me?" Monk was surprised.

"Yes, you," Doc said.

"But - "

Monk stopped, and turned and followed Montague Ogden. Monk had remembered that when you argued with Doc you usually found yourself exceedingly in the wrong.