"028 (B088) - The Roar Devil (1935-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"The Roar Devil," he said, "has already made one attempt to kill me."
Zachies dropped his hat, and his rather characterless face registered vast astonishment.
"Then the Roar Devil has marked you for death!" he exclaimed. "He must have realized you were in his path!"
"His path to what?" Doc asked.
"Some mammoth crime," Dove Zachies replied.
"I do not know what, and I hope you will believe me, even if that does sound strange."
Doc Savage tapped an inlay in the table top with the tip of a tendon-wrapped forefinger. His flake-gold eyes were steady on his visitor.
"Just what sent you to me?" he asked. "It was not a love of humanity, entirely."
Zachies managed to look injured, but he nodded.
"True," he said. "The Roar Devil asked me to merge my, ah - organization with his own. I refused. Now he is trying to kill me."
"You met the Roar Devil?" Doc asked sharply.
"I did not," Zachies denied. "He was only a voice over the telephone. A singing voice."
"Singing voice?"
"Exactly, Mr. Savage. And I can assure you that the singing of words will completely disguise a voice. It did this one, at any rate."
"Have you any concrete assistance to offer?" Doc asked.
"I certainly have. The Roar Devil is now haunting the mountains around Powertown, in upstate New York."
"How do you know that?"
Zachies leaned forward wearing an expression of intense seriousness.
"This Roar Devil is a monster who can do weird things, Mr. Savage. He bragged, when trying to enlist my aid, that he could destroy whole sections of the earth's surface. He said he would demonstrate on a small scale by shaking the earth around Powertown, so that the large dams there would be destroyed. He is doing that now, to impress me with his power. He is causing millions in damage and taking many lives, just to show me what he can do. Now I ask you, does that not make this Roar Devil a monster?"
DOC SAVAGE asked, "Have you investigated the situation at Powertown?"
"I have," Zachies said promptly. "I was up there today - I mean, yesterday. I and my secretary - bodyguard, I should say - were captured by a very unusual young woman named Retta Kenn, who I am positive is one of the Roar Devil's gang.
"Retta Kenn left us, probably while she went for more of the Roar Devil's men, or to tell her chief she had taken us. But some of my men, who had followed us, found us and released us. I was scared, let me tell you. I came directly to you."
Doc Savage said nothing for some moments. His forefinger absently stroked and tapped the inlay in the tabletop, as if keeping pace with his thoughts.
"Do you know anything more?" he queried.
"Only that I found a cabin with a young man in it who seemed completely paralyzed or hypnotized or something," said Zachies. "The cabin was owned by an inventor named D'Aughtell, and the young man was D'Aughtell's associate, Mort Collins. I got that information from searching the cabin. I think the Roar Devil has seized D'Aughtell and worked one of his spells on Mort Collins."
"What makes you think that?"
"The Roar Devil told me he could make a man into a living dead person. That describes Mort Collins's condition."
Doc Savage worried the tabletop with his finger.
"You say the Roar Devil has a singing manner of disguising his speech?"
"Exactly, Mr. Savage."
Doc gave the table several sharp taps.
"What about your cache, Zachies?" he demanded.
Zachies's mouth came widely open. He kept it open until he had put a long, pale cigar in it.
"I don't get you," he said.
"Is the Roar Devil not after your cache?" Doc asked.
"How could he be," Zachies said promptly. "I haven't got a cache. I don't even know what a cache is."
"A place where things are hidden," Doc supplied.
"I have nothing hidden," Zachies insisted.
Doc Savage studied him. The bronze man had been employing the information secured from the fellow who had tried to shoot him, while the latter was under the influence of the truth serum.
"I gather you are already after the Roar Devil," Zachies said at last.
"Right." Doc told him.
Zachies turned to the door. "Then I shall go." He paused to toss a card on the inlaid table. "There is my address. If you need the help of myself or any of my, ah - gang, just call on us."
"Thank you," Doc Savage said with just a trace of dryness, and escorted Zachies to the elevators.
IT was with considerable haste that the bronze man returned to the reception room. He went directly to the inlaid table and tapped on the particular bit of the inlay which he had been fingering previously.
A telegraph sounder clicked in response to the depressing of the inlay. But it did the clicking many stories below, in the basement of the skyscraper. The telegraph sounder was mounted in a resonator in Doc Savage's basement garage.
Two men were listening to the sounder, and from their expressions, it was evident both understood the code.
In appearance, these men differed about as much as two individuals could. One was a great, hairy fellow who came near bearing more resemblance to a bull ape than to a human being. He had practically no forehead, and a mouth which all but reached from ear to ear. He needed a shave, and his clothing looked like that of a tramp.
The other man was slender, lean-waisted, and his clothing was the ultimate in sartorial perfection. He carried a slender black cane. "M-a-n i-s l-e-a-v-i-n-g n-o-w," translated the dapperly clad man, listening to the sounder. "F-o-l-l-o-w h-i-m."
"You don't hafta read that to me, Ham," complained the apish man, in a small voice that might have belonged to a child. "I learned to telegraph before Harvard ever heard of you."
"Shut up, you accident of nature!" the other said unkindly.