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

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Monk admonished the young woman.
"I am," said Sandy Yell. "You'd never guess."
"Trying to trick us like that," Monk continued. "Tsk, tsk!"
Sandy Yell sighed deeply. "What I want to know is how you happen to know every word of the telephone conversation I had with the chief?"
"You asked the waitress in the airport lunch room for a telephone," Monk told her. "Doc had his eye on you, just as a matter of course. He can read lips. You weren't too far away. So he knew you wanted a telephone."
"That does not explain how you eavesdropped on my telephone conversation?"
"Hold your hat," Monk told her patiently. "In this car, Doc carries some of his gadgets. One of these is a contraption which can pick up conversation going over a telephone wire. We do not have to tap the wire. We just drive the car near the phone circuit, if there is only one as there was in this case, and turn a switch on our radio. Our telephone eavesdropping contraption is a part of the car radio receiver. Listen."
Monk turned a switch and a bedlam of voices, male and female, came from the radio loud-speaker under the dashboard. The voices were too numerous and jumbled to understand. The homely chemist pointed at a telephone cable suspended alongside the street where they were driving.
"Voices coming from there," he said. "There's a lot of wires. If we wanted to talk off any one, we'd have to attach a wire to our contraption, then carry it close to the phone circuit we wanted to eavesdrop on. Understand how it is done?"
"Much too well," said the blond girl.
Monk surveyed her albescent beauty admiringly. It was plain from the homely chemist's expression that he considered Sandy Yell about the most hugable bit of femininity that had come his way recently. And Monk was something of a connoisseur.
"You're too sweet a girl to be mixed up in something like this," Monk told the young woman. "Hadn't you better confess everything and help us get it straightened out?"
Sandy Yell asked, calmly, "Since when can you tell what is in a package by looking at the wrapper?"
"She's right!" Ham said shortly.
"Who asked your opinion?" the girl snapped.
"Yeah, you shyster!" Monk growled. "Who pulled your strings?"
Doc Savage said, "We will call the telephone company and get the location of the phone which the girl called."
THE telephone authorities said the telephone was at 617 National Avenue in Norwalk, Connecticut, and that address was, somewhat ironically, the local lunatic asylum.
"Of all the danged things!" murmured Monk.
The asylum was not a large one, nor did it look particularly prosperous. Discreet inquiry brought out that it was not privately owned, but was maintained out of public funds. There was only one telephone line into the place, and Doc Savage located that.
To the telephone line, the bronze man attached certain instruments. When he had finished with adjusting rheostats and resistance coils, he had a Wheatstone effect which measured accurately the resistance of the telephone wire.
Doc Savage told Ham, "Go to a telephone and call the asylum and ask for the head nurse, and after you get the head nurse, hang up."
Ham departed. Doc was an interested eavesdropper on the call.
A muffled, strange voice answered the call, and Ham asked for the head nurse.
"Just a minute," said the queer, nasal voice.
A pause. Doc watched the instruments of the bridge.
"Hello, hello," said a new voice. "This is the asylum speaking."
Ham asked for the head nurse, got her and hung up. He came back. "Well?"
"Very simple," Doc told him. "The wire is cut. A voice answers, and if the call is for the asylum, the institution is then connected."
"Just where is the circuit cut?" Ham wanted to know.
"Without knowing the normal resistance and capacity of the circuit, it is extremely difficult to tell with accuracy," Doc said. "But we should not take long in finding it."
They did not take long. The search narrowed down to a rambling, decrepit-looking brick building. This bore a sign across the front:
NATIONAL WINERIES, INC.
"Now what?" Monk wanted to know when they had surveyed the vicinity and noted nothing suspicious.
"Feel like some action?" Doc asked.
Monk grinned his biggest. "I don't feel like nothing else but!"
Sandy Yell snapped, "You had better be careful! You are barging into something a lot larger than you dream!"
"Tell us all about it," Monk invited. "Maybe you can scare us out of rushing the place."
"Phooey to you," she sniffed. "Go ahead and get yourselves mopped up."
They had not ventured close enough to the winery building, which seemed to be abandoned, to attract attention. Doc now guided the sedan into the street which fronted the aged structure. The speed was about thirty miles an hour.
"Get down," Doc directed.
Monk and Ham sank out of sight on the floorboards, hauling Sandy Yell down with them.
"I got another idea," said Monk, and produced a string and began to tie the girl's wrists.
She fought, biting and clawing, and her remarkably blond hair got down in her eyes. She made hissing sounds, but did not swear or call them names.
Then Doc crashed the sedan into the building.
THE winery door was large, no doubt originally designed to permit entrance of wine trucks. And while it was a moderately solid door, it had never been expected to withstand the impact of the sedan, which had a frame almost as heavy as railroad rails and a body of armor plate as thick as that which encased some army tanks.
The door caved; the sedan went into the winery building, the heavy bumper nudging a roof pillar, and a part of the roof came down. Dust boiled.
Ham had opened the sedan doors an instant before the impact, so that they would not be cramped shut. He and Doc dived out. Monk followed, leaving the girl lashed to the foot rail. She could free herself, but it would take minutes.
Doc had a small object ready in his hand when he came out of the sedan. He flipped the thing away from him. A tiny flare. It ignited, filled all the gloomy confines of the wine shed with brilliant, white light.
There seemed to be only one man in the shed. He was retreating, and the unexpected brilliance of the flare blinded him somewhat, as Doc had intended. The fellow bumped into one of the roof supports.