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

"We can go through this way," Montague Ogden said. "It is shorter."

He turned to the left and opened a door and went through it.

Monk was following behind Ogden and watching Ogden's back when something hit Monk's head. It hit hard, whatever it was, and there was only a slight sound, a slight grinding, just before the impact landed. It took Monk on top of the head, slightly to the right-hand side, so that there was the grisly sensation of the blow sliding down toward the right ear and taking off the whole side of his head as it went. In the middle of this awful feeling it got very black and remained that way.



Chapter II

THE GREAT MISTAKE


MONK accomplished the feat of opening his eyes, but did it with some difficulty, after which he stared at Montague Ogden. Monk had the feeling that some time had passed, and did not dare move his body for fear his head would fall off it. There was a gouging pain in the small of his back.

Soon his ears recovered their ability to hear.

"That nasty picture!" Montague Ogden was saying. "Oh, that nasty picture! I told the interior decorator when he hung it over the door that something like this would happen! I told him it would be just my luck to have the picture fall down and brain somebody sometime."

Monk tried out his voice with a groan and found his vocal chords satisfactory. "I'm brained, all right," he said.

"Oh!" gasped Ogden. "He's conscious! He has recovered!"

Monk felt a hell of a long way from complete recovery and said so. "What hit me?" he demanded.

"A picture hanging over the door fell down as you went through," explained Montague Ogden. "It was one of those freak accidents."

Monk grimaced at Ogden.

"It's a good thing you were walking ahead of me when it happened," Monk said. "Or I would have thought you beaned me.

Montague Ogden laughed deprecatingly. Doc Savage, Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were standing around Monk, looking relieved that he had recovered. Monk wondered if he had recovered, or if there was going to be complications.

The gouging pain in the small of his back was awful. He investigated and found it to be the devil statuette.

"I must have fallen on the thing," Monk complained. "I wonder how many ribs it broke."

"That the devil statue which speaks?" Doc Savage asked.

"That's it," Monk said.

Montague Ogden said uncomfortably, "Of course, you gentlemen do not for a minute believe that the statue can speak?"

Doc Savage made no comment. He suggested that Renny Renwick find the building superintendent, and obtain a hacksaw and a cold chisel and hammer, in order that they might perform a dissection on the brass devil.

Fifteen minutes later they had the devil lying in half a dozen pieces on a table, and there was obviously nothing inside it but brass.

"That is that," Doc admitted. "The thing hardly seemed to have a conversational nature."