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

"Of course you knew it hadn't," Montague Ogden said. Monk Mayfair explained to Ogden, "'When you've been in the kind of a business we're in for a while, you get so you don't go around taking things at face value."

Doc Savage said, "We will examine Sam Joseph now." The bronze man spent nearly an hour with Sam Joseph, doing the things a doctor does.

"According to all indications," Doc said, "the man has an advanced cerebral fibroma."

The bronze man then asked Monk to telephone the hospital and arrange for reception of the patient.

Doc told Montague Ogden, "I am going to call in other brain specialists for consultation. Do you have any particular doctors you would like to have pass an opinion?"

Ogden stared.

"I thought you were supposed to be the world's leading brain surgeon," he said.

Doc passed up the compliment, explained, "In a matter as serious as this we prefer to have a consensus of opinion."

Montague Ogden nodded. He seemed to be surprised, but to consider the matter reasonable now that he thought of it.

"Could I bring in Dr. Nedden?" he asked. "He is my private surgeon."

Doc Savage nodded. He had not heard of Dr. Nedden, but that did not mean the man could not be good.

"Certainly," the bronze man said. "Call Dr. Nedden." They transferred Sam Joseph to the hospital, a small but wonderfully equipped hospital uptown, which specialized in brain cases, and which was largely supported by Doc Savage. He did most of his work there. Doc did not, as a matter of fact, do a great deal of surgery for surgery's sake, his specialty being stubborn
and unusual cases upon which he could apply new and experimental technique.

Dr. Nedden appeared. He was a stocky man, face reddened by the outdoors sun, clothes immaculate, who seemed to know what he was doing.

"I have examined the patient previously," he explained. "The unusual cerebropsychosis aroused my interest, and I was fairly sure it was cerebral fibroma. I made a thorough examination with a cerebroscope and found nothing to support any other diagnosis."

Doc Savage called in two more specialists, and their diagnosis was the same.

"Cerebral fibroma."

Monk asked, "'What the heck's a cerebral fibroma, anyway?"

"A brain tumor. A fibrous type. That makes it very difficult to remove," Doc Savage explained.

"'Why don't doctors use words you can understand?" Monk wanted to know.

"For the same reason that chemists do not use small ones," Doc told him.

Monk had to grin at that. There was nothing more incomprehensible to a layman than a chemical formula, even when you simplified it and used the symbols. But if you took one of those chemicals and tried to explain what it was by using small words, it would run into an afternoon's work.

Doc Savage found Montague Ogden.

"Your office manager, Sam Joseph, has a brain tumor," Doc told Ogden. "An operation is the only answer."

"He will not die?"

"There is no such thing as a minor or a completely safe operation," Doc told him frankly. "But he should pull through."