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

They had to bend forward to catch his words. Ham was keeping an eye on the girl. Monk drove.
"—framed me—didn't know—even then—what for," McGinnis continued. "Organization—began to realize—all over country - damned clever—nobody suspects."
"I wish he'd be more definite, Jove I do," said Ham.
"—big thing—twenty men in one penitentiary," rambled McGinnis. "—all framed—got wise—to what was going on— failed to prove—smooth—law could not touch—"
Suddenly McGinnis stopped mumbling.
Monk said, "I wonder just what ails him?"
McGinnis did not speak again in his delirium until they were nearing Doc Savage's headquarters in downtown Manhattan. Then his words had a startling effect on Sandy Yell.
"Sigmund Hoppel's home—Washington—man named Max Landerstett," mumbled McGinnis.
The girl put both hands over her mouth but did not keep a low cry from coming out.
HALF an hour later, Ham was still pegging questions at Sandy Yell in an effort to make her reveal what had caused her to cry out.
"Come on, come on!" he insisted. "By keeping information from us, you are only making it tougher on yourself!"
If she even heard the question, she gave no visible sign. This was the attitude she had maintained throughout. The name Max Landerstett meant a great deal to her, but what, she would not say.
"Why not lay off her?" Monk growled. "After all, her reasons for wanting to keep quiet may be overwhelmingly in her favor."
"Keep that ugly face out of this!" Ham snapped.
"But she may be in such a position that she cannot talk without endangering her life, or the life of somebody else."
Ham looked doubly indignant. He pulled his innocent-looking black cane apart near the handle, and it became evident that it was a sword cane with a lean, keen blade, daubed near the tip with a sticky substance. The adhesive gob on the tip was a drug which caused a prick of the cane sword to produce a form of unconsciousness which was almost instant and lasted a considerable period.
"You," Ham accused the homely Monk, "are just showing off. Trying to make the young lady think you're quite a guy."
That this was the truth was indicated by Monk's great burst of indignation at the suggestion.
"You shyster fashion plate!" he yelled. "You and your big mouth! I think I'll pull that long, pointed tongue of yours out and tie a knot in its end!"
"Come on," Ham invited, and launched into a long and shocking account of Monk's tree-dwelling ancestors, an account which was none the less vituperative because it was couched in words which could be found in the nicest dictionary.
They were in Doc Savage's headquarters reception room, on the eighty-sixth floor of one of Gotham's most impressive skyscrapers, and the establishment was soundproof, so it was unlikely that their quarrel would attract attention.
Their voices, in fact, hardly penetrated to the laboratory, where Doc Savage was working.
The bronze man had taken the usual blood and spinal samples from the convict, and, in addition, bits of tissue, extractions from the stomach, and numerous X-ray photographs.
At present, the bronze man was engaged in burning bits of the body tissue, which he had taken at the expense of leaving a small wound, and photographing the smoke from the consumed tissue through a spectroscope, a method of analysis which was quite speedy.
The laboratory was an enormous room, comprising the major portion of the eighty-sixth floor. The reception room was small, and the only other room was the library, which was of good size.
Doc fell to using his most powerful microscope.
McGinnis, the prisoner who had been seized so oddly, sat in a metal chair. He had sat there for a long time now without saying anything whatever. Some of his unnatural color had departed and it was evident he was getting better.
His eyes, which had been closed, now opened. They were rational.
Doc came over to him. "I am going to let you go. Can you find this creature who got you out of the penitentiary?"
McGinnis hesitated.
"Yes," he said finally. "But why are you letting me go? To follow me to my boss?"
"No," Doc said. "You will not be followed, for the simple reason that it might cause the loss of your life."
"I don't get you."
"You," Doc told him, "have been inoculated with an enormous dosage of a germ which requires another germ to keep it in check, to prevent death. Inoculation with the germ could be for only one logical reason—to give some one a hold over you. In other words, you will die in the course of the next five hours, approximately, unless you receive inoculation with the counteractant germ."
McGinnis swallowed. "So the humpback wasn't bluffing!"
DOC SAVAGE said nothing, but watched McGinnis intently.
"You are right about the business of somebody getting a hold on me," McGinnis said finally.
"It is a very effective method," Doc said. "This personage literally carries your life about with him in the form of hypodermic capsules."
McGinnis shut his eyes. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
"Listen," he said abruptly, "can you fix up those counteracting germs, or whatever they are?"
"Not before you would be dead," Doc answered. "Cultures of those germs cannot possibly be produced in less than days."
McGinnis blinked slowly. "You'll let me go? You won't follow me? Why?"
Doc hesitated. "It is," he said, "against our policy to take human life. If we keep you prisoner, you will die. As a matter of fact, if we attempt to give you truth serum in an effort to persuade you to talk, death would probably result, since truth serums are somewhat hard on the human system."
McGinnis got up shakily out of the chair. "Can I go now?"
"You can."
"I won't be followed?"
"No," Doc said. "For the reason that your chief might learn of it, and flee from you, causing an interval of time to elapse which would result in your death."
McGinnis walked across the laboratory, across the library, the reception room where Monk and Ham quarreled, and to the outer door. He paused there, turned and watched Doc for a time.
"That humpback says we are working to right a great wrong," he said. "But I don't know."
Doc was silent. Monk and Ham stared, puzzled, as did pretty Syrmanthe Yell.