"036 (B027) - Mystery Under the Sea (1936-02) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

She gave every indication of being completely floored.
DOC SAVAGE now consigned the job of watching the young woman to Monk. This task the homely chemist plainly relished.
"If you give me your word not to try to get away, it might make it easier on you," Monk told her.
"Nothing doing!" she snapped.
Ham looked at the ceiling and said, as if to himself, but in a loud voice, "That shows what a sucker Monk is for a pretty girl. He'd take her word, and it's probably not worth anything."
"I'll remember that, you dude!" the girl snapped.
"I believe her word would be good," Monk insisted.
"Thank you," said the young woman. "It would, but I am not promising anything."
It was evident that Monk was engaged in putting himself in solid.
Doc Savage gestured the young woman's attention to the enlarged photograph.
"I do not suppose you would translate those marks for us," he suggested.
"Right. I cannot see any meaning in them," the young woman assured him.
"But the man who made them was working for you," Doc reminded her. "He was trying to tell us something."
She snapped, "He was mad with pain. He did not know what he was doing."
The bronze man did not press her further. Ham, who had secured another sword cane, came over and studied the enlargement intently. Monk joined him, but was careful, however, to keep one eye cocked in the direction of the young woman. Monk was fully aware that, if she escaped, he would never hear the last of it from Ham.
Ham shook his head over the enlargement print. "I fail to make anything out of it."
Monk looked at the puzzling hieroglyphics from several angles.
"There's that wiggly line," he said. "It kinda looks like a crawling snake. There's kind of a half loop in the middle. There's what looks like a cross mark on the edge of the loop. An' there's some other lines off to the side, as if somebody had tried to draw a checkerboard."
The interior decorations of the anteroom had been made over recently, given a modernistic twist. The purpose behind this was not an appeal to the eye. The modernistic panels formed an excellent background for concealing such things as the map case which Doc Savage now opened.
This chart case was a large affair. It was rimmed with very brightly polished metal. This was an entirely effective mirror.
Doc Savage unrolled a chart of Long Island Sound. At the same time, he watched the girl's reflected image in the bright chart case rim. Doc ran a finger along the chart.
The young woman tried not to look uneasy and did not entirely succeed.
"The dead man was a sailor," Doc Savage said. "Therefore, he knew charts. The line he drew was a shore line."
"Huh?" Monk exploded. "Then that half a loop is a cove! A little bay. Wonder what one."
"Ten Fathom Cove, it would appear," Doc Savage said.
The bronze man indicated the spot on the chart, and Monk and Ham, after a brief inspection, nodded, agreeing that the shore line contour depicted on the chart almost exactly matched the wanderings of the wavy line which the dying man had inscribed on the floor.
Monk gave the young woman an amiable grin.
"We ain't so dumb, eh?" he asked.
"You'd better watch your step," nipped Diamond Eve Post. "That's all I can say."
THE sun may come up like thunder in China, as the bards intimate, but along the north shore of Long Island at this season of the year the rising of the solar orb was something of a sneaking process. A mist usually crawls up out of the Sound and rolls inshore. Out of this the sun crawls with apparent reluctance.
The sun was not yet up as Doc Savage braked his car to a stop. As a matter of fact, there was no evidence of it. But the usual dawn mists were beginning to roll in.
Monk alighted, then turned, ostensibly to aid Diamond Eve Post, but actually to keep a grip on her arm to discourage flight. Ham got out of the front seat. Unless absolutely necessary, Ham made it a policy not to ride in the same seat with Monk. Doc Savage locked the car.
There was deep stillness about them. No breeze fluttered leaves. Birds were quiet. It evidently was not the usual time which roosters picked for crowing.
Monk suggested to the young woman, "It'd sure be nice, if you'd bust loose with some information."
"Wouldn't it," she said shortly.
The road was behind them. They had pulled off on a disused lane, which led in the general direction of the Sound, and it was down this lane that they now walked.
"This is the quietest darn place I ever saw," Monk mumbled.
He was mistaken. He knew that an instant later.
A voice in the brush said, "Holy cow! I thought you would never show up!"
The texture of that voice was somewhat astounding. It was reminiscent of a lion roaring in a cave.
"Renny!" Monk exploded. "What brought you out here?"
The newcomer now separated himself from the brush, lighting his way by a flashlight over the lens of which he had tied several thicknesses of handkerchief, so that it would afford only a dim glow.
The man was a giant. His size, however, faded to insignificance, once a glance was directed at his hands. These members were unnaturally large. Each fist was composed of only slightly less than a gallon of bone, gristle and leathery hide.
He had a long puritanical face, and, if its expression was any indication, he had not a friend on earth. It was a peculiar trait of "Renny's" that he registered his emotions inversely—the happier he was, the more gloom that might register on his countenance.
"How'd you come to get out here, Renny?" Monk demanded again.
Doc Savage answered Monk's question, saying, "Renny got the story from me over the telephone, while you and Ham were having your troubles with Captain Flamingo. It was my suggestion that Renny come out here."
"Then you had already deciphered them marks on the rug?" Monk questioned.
"It was only a guess at first," Doc Savage said. "Later, our young lady here verified the accuracy of the guess by the anxious look on her face when this spot was indicated on the chart."
Monk addressed Diamond Eve Post hopefully: "It would save a lot of head scratching, if you would tell us what this is all about."
"Oh, quit bothering me," she snapped.