"039 (B073) - The Seven Agate Devils (1936-05) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Horrible contortion had come upon the dead man's features in his last moments, and still lingered. Yet that mask was not what gripped their attention and made Monk and Ham look somewhat strange, and made lawyer Pell become white and trembling.
The chest of the dead man had a hole in it. Had it been possible to find some one callous enough to do so, an arm could have been thrust through the hole.
"Lookit!" Monk leveled an arm at the concrete floor of the chamber.
On the floor stood a devil of agate.
Chapter IV. THE VAULT TRAP
HOMELY, APISH Monk's little eyes seemed on the point of jumping out of their pits of gristle, as he stared at the tiny statuette.
"The airport—that hole in the body—the red devil—" Monk, for once, had difficulty finding words. "Was there that glow of light, too, Doc?"
"The light came for a moment," Doc Savage admitted.
They all stared at the little scarlet devil. It was an unlovely thing, infinitely satanic. The statuette could not have been six inches over all. Droplets of what looked like molten stone clung to it, and a little puddle about the feet of the thing was still smoking.
Monk waddled over, reached down toward the devil, then jerked his hand back.
"It's hot as—as—hell!" he muttered.
"Search the place," Doc directed.
The building was not old, but whoever owned it had let it go to wrack, and, patently, none of it had been in use for a long time. They went over everything with the utmost thoroughness.
They found exactly nothing.
Monk wound up in the alley and sniffed curiously.
"There's that camphor smell," he said. "Still here."
"Moth balls," corrected Ham.
Monk scowled. "You know so much—maybe you can explain what happened to that guy inside? How'd that little red devil get there? An' what's it mean?"
Ham, rather than confess to Monk that the whole thing had him bewildered, turned and walked off.
Monk shifted his frown to lawyer Montgomery Medwig Pell.
"Don't you know anything about this?" he demanded.
"Nothing!" Lawyer Pell wrung his hands. "I wish I had never become involved in this, indeed I do! It is all utterly confounding to me!"
Monk went back into the death room and found Doc Savage kneeling on the floor. The bronze man had upset the devil of red agate, and was using a small pocket microscope—the periscope device converted by the substitution of lenses—to examine the repulsive statuette.
From the small scarlet thing, Doc shifted his attention to the face of the dead man.
Monk swallowed several times, and then demanded, "Don't tell me that—"
"Exactly the same thing as at the airport," Doc Savage told him. "The face on this satanlike statuette is quite distinct, small as the thing is, and it matches the face of the dead man."
"Queerest blame thing I ever heard of," Monk grunted.
The bronze man lifted the red statuette. He wrapped it in a handkerchief, knotted the corners of the cloth and carried the statuette with him as he went over to Montgomery Medwig Pell.
"Have you any idea why this dead man, before his death, was eavesdropping with a dictograph upon the proceedings in your office?" Doc Savage asked.
The reaction of that upon Montgomery Medwig Pell was surprising. The attorney shut his eyes tightly, put his arms down stiffly at his sides, and made fists of his hands. He fell backward, rigidly, as a tree falls.
DOC SAVAGE caught Pell, lowered him to the floor.
"What's wrong with him?" Ham demanded, anxiously.
"This thing must have been more than he could stomach," diagnosed Monk, who knew practically nothing about medicine. "Boy, for thirty cents, I'd faint, too!"
Some moments later, Pell's eyelids did a fluttery dance. In time, he managed to get shakily to his feet.
"I guess I can't—take it," he said, feebly.
"Maybe you had better go home," Doc Savage suggested.
"No, no!" Pell rejected the suggestion with surprising vigor. "I think I shall be quite all right, now."
Doc Savage nodded, then was silent for a time. Finally, he asked, "Where is the Cinema Trust Company?"
"In the business district," said Pell. "I can guide you there."
Monk put in, "There ain't no banks open at this hour."
Lawyer Pell shook his head, and said hastily, "Wrong. The Cinema Trust remains open twenty-four hours a day. It is near a number of movie studios which work day and night. There are also night shifts at a near-by factory. The Cinema Trust remains open to accommodate these workmen."
A police siren began wailing in the distance. They could tell that it was approaching.
"Some one has telephoned the police," Ham said, dryly. "Probably some one who heard the screams and the shots."
"We will go," Doc Savage said, abruptly. "Explanations to the police can be made later."
They hurried away from the vicinity. As they reached the street, it could be noticed that Montgomery Medwig Pell was glancing about almost continuously, peering into the murk of the dimly lighted streets.
"You lose something?" Monk asked him.
"My town car—the one you drove from the airport. We can use that instead of a taxi."
They got the car from behind Pell's office building, and, with Montgomery Medwig Pell himself at the wheel, drove through streets that were at first quiet, then, as they neared the main business district, noisier.
"The Martel Hotel," Doc Savage directed.
It was to the Martel that Doc had ordered their equipment and baggage taken. The Martel was not a large hostelry, but was among the better ones in the city. Not that its equipment was luxurious. The quality of the Martel was due to its management, which happened to look the patrons over closely to keep out touts and gamblers and like gentry.