"046 (B052) - The Vanisher (1936-12) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Which first?"
"The telephone."
The waitress pointed to a corner. "There it is."
Sandy Yell noted that the telephone was not visible through the windows from where Doc Savage and his two aides stood. She called a number.
The voice which answered was strange. There was something wrong with it. The words were delivered slowly and with the utmost care, and even then they were barely understandable.
"You insane devil!" said Sandy Yell, hoarsely.
"You did as you were ordered and attracted Doc Savage's suspicion?" asked the queer voice.
"Killing that penitentiary guard was no accident, as you claimed," Sandy Yell said grimly. "I know that now."
Something in the nature of a mangled chuckle came over the wire. "It is reported that a blond young woman shot at Doc Savage with a gun concealed in a camera, then fled."
"You devil!" gritted the blond girl. "You almost tricked me into murder!"
The mangled chuckle came over the wire again. "That was necessary."
Sandy Yell said, hoarsely, "If I had shot Doc Savage, they would have hung me!"
"Do you think I would have taken that chance with so valuable and willing an assistant as yourself?" the strange voice asked derisively. "Doc Savage always wears that bulletproof vest. I knew he would not be harmed."
The girl rapped. "Willing? You don't need to rub it in!"
"You do not by chance, think you don't have to take my orders?"
The girl's reply was slow. "No," she said. "I wouldn't kid myself."
The hardly understandable voice took on a somewhat placating tone and asked, "Is Doc Savage going to Mexico?"
"Looks as if he were. He is going to chase this Igor De Faust, who—"
"Who is a down-and-out actor made up to look like the genuine Igor De Faust," said the voice over the telephone, "and who knows nothing of the nationwide importance of this affair."
"Suppose," said Sandy Yell, "you tell me what is back of this?"
"There is an old proverb that no poison is as deadly as knowledge of the wrong sort." The other hung up.
THE person with the strange voice removed a hand from lean lips after the conversation with Sandy Yell ended. It was the hand over the mouth which had lent the voice its strangeness.
In order to speak at all coherently through the nostrils, innumerable hours must have been spent in practice. But it was an effective voice disguise.
The room was dark. It was also damp and smelled like the inside of a jug which had been corked for a long time. The occupant of the room shuffled over, opened a door and a little light came in.
The person had a humped back and was stooped. The clothing was carefully chosen to make shapeless the wearer.
The face was particularly striking. It was a wad of wrinkles, much too red and healthy-looking, and white hair hung down from the forehead and hid the ears, if any.
This unique monstrosity shuffled into an adjacent room, which was illuminated by a single small electric bulb. The room was long, had a concrete floor, cement block walls, and was absolutely bare of furniture.
Stretched in a neat row on the floor were twenty men. The convicts who had vanished so mysteriously from the State penitentiary. They seemed to be asleep.
The humpbacked personage explored inside shapeless clothing with a hand that was encased in a rubber glove and brought out a small oilskin sack with a drawstring top. The sack seemed to hold big black pills which resembled small lumps of coal. One of these was inserted into the mouth of each sleeping convict.
TEN minutes later, all the convicts were awake and looking somewhat dazed. They stared at each other. They glared at the cement walls. The latter must have looked like home.
"I knew we'd land back in the cells!" McGinnis groaned.
"And in solitary!" echoed another.
"Do not get excited, McGinnis," the humpback said, calmly. "You are not in prison. You are, in fact, at a point more than fifty miles from the penitentiary and in a different State."
"Yeah? How'd we get here?"
"That," said the humpback, "is something I hope will be a mystery for a long time."
"What're we here for?" demanded the baffled McGinnis.
"You are starting a year's strange warfare for me in return for freeing you from prison."
The befuddled convicts considered this. Several took their heads in their hands while they thought, or perhaps the gesture was due to bad headaches.
"Mean you took us out of the big house to get yourself a mob?" demanded McGinnis.
"Something like that."
"And I suppose that now we've got to rob banks, murder and give you the loot?"
The hideous-looking humpback was silent while turning slowly to the entire collection of convicts.
"You think I want you to rob for me?" asked the humpback.
This got enough nods to indicate a consensus of opinion.
"You are wrong!" snapped the camelbacked creature. "I want you to work to wipe out a great wrong!"
"Then what the hell do you want us to do?" asked a man who had gained the reputation of one of the greatest living experts on deadly poisons.
"You are going to fight the organization which sent you to prison!" growled the humpback. "We are going to smash it!"
A convict peered closely at the deformed one, then muttered, "Man or woman, whatever you are, you're crazy! It can't be done!"
The reflection on the humpback's mental balance got only an odd laugh from the queer creature.
"Due to a slight misfortune in getting you out of the penitentiary, we must lie low for a few days," remarked the humpback. "We were, as you may recall, sighted by one of the pen guards as we entered the freight car. I shot this fellow. Shot him in a hasty moment, I admit.