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

"Shall I call them?" Doc asked.
"Go ahead."
Doc called.
MONK, Ham and Sandy Yell appeared and began walking across the grounds toward the line of deadly sprinklers.
"I shall turn the sprinklers off for the time being," said the young man, walking to what appeared to be a radiator valve and giving it a twist without interrupting his flow of speech, "and the chemical spray will be out of the way so that they will not get into it, and they will be safe, providing they keep to the sidewalk, and providing their shoes have no holes in the soles, which I trust will be the case, since your aides are reportedly wealthy men, and one, the fellow called Ham, is noted for his immaculate attire— hands up!"
The last was for Monk, Ham and the girl, who had come close to the house.
Verbose Max Landerstett stood in the doorway and showed them his gun for emphasis. After considering a bit, they came in.
Sandy Yell stared intently at the young man with the dark patches under his eyes.
"Max," she said evenly, "I did not bring them here."
"Shut up," said Max. "I know you didn't."
Monk and Ham eyed Doc Savage, then fell to staring at the revolver which Max Landerstett held.
"We came here hunting Sigmund Hoppel," Monk volunteered, wondering if the information would gain anything.
The wordy Max Lenderstett smiled with a forced brightness at them. "And hunting Igor De Faust, too, I trust?"
"Huh?" Monk gulped. "Well, we'd like to see him, too!"
"An ambition I can enable you to fulfill," said Max Landerstett.
Chapter 10. TWO BEFUDDLED MEN
THE prisoners—Doc, Monk and Ham—were now disarmed, first being lined against a wall so that they could be searched without too much opportunity to snatch at weapons. The blond, Sandy Yell, did the searching, while Max Landerstett stood back with his revolver. Sandy and the wordy young man worked together with only an occasional nod or a word of communication.
When she had finished searching Ham, the young lady calmly gave the dapper lawyer's shins a vicious kick.
"That," she said, "is for all the nice things you said about me, you clothes horse!"
Ham lowered his arms, either to retaliate or grab his agonizing shins.
"No, no!" exploded Max warningly. "Be careful, for I should not want to have to shoot you at this point, and, anyway, you must become accustomed to Sandy's eccentricities for if you do not realize now, you will realize later that she can be depended on to give back with interest whatever—"
"If you ever die," Sandy told her associate, "it will be from overtalk. What do we do with these men?"
Max Landerstett motioned with his revolver, indicating that the prisoners should walk toward another wing of the house. They did so without comment, and as the party moved along, Max spoke, addressing the girl.
"You talked to them just how much, my dear?"
"I talked to them not at all, and I'm not your dear," said Sandy Yell. "Listen, you know me well enough to know I can keep my mouth shut."
"Consider me reprimanded," Max grinned at her. "How much do they know?"
"Doc Savage has ideas," Sandy replied. "I don't think he knows what is behind it all."
"I'm damned glad of that!"
The young woman frowned at Max Landerstett.
"Did I hear you say you had Hoppel and De Faust?" she asked.
"You did."
"Aren't you kind of rushing things?"
"You mean," said Landerstett, "haven't I, in a manner of speaking, rather taken the bull by the tail, and if that is your question, that answer is that I am doing, and have been doing, my level best to do so, and I might even go farther and venture to say that I have apparently succeeded to some—"
"Much too great an extent!" snapped Sandy Yell. "Have you got everything or not? Cut out the words!"
"I've got Hoppel and De Faust and nothing or nobody else," said the wordy young man. "I might also say that I have Doc Savage, here, and his two aides, but I have a suspicion the bronze man can free himself, or thinks he can, at any time he desires, although for the life of me I cannot see—"
Sandy Yell looked at Monk and shrugged. "Max's father was a sideshow barker and you can't tell me there's nothing to heredity."
Max Landerstett opened a door a crack, shoved his gun into the aperture and made his voice ugly.
"You two guys get back and behave yourselves!" he gritted. Then, to Doc Savage, "In with you and your two shadows, and I still say I'll be darned if I can see how you are going to get away, considering that you are without weapons, and this room is so solidly constructed that I have a suspicion it was intended all along for a prison, although how the builders knew when this house must have been constructed, forty or fifty years ago, that they were going to need a— "
He shut the door behind Doc, Monk and Ham.
Monk looked at two other men who were already in the room.
"The Messieurs Hoppel and De Faust, if I may be permitted a guess," he said.
THERE was no trouble about recognizing Igor De Faust. A slender man of average height, and he had yellow hair. Very yellow hair. His eyebrows were yellow, and his yellow beard, although not more than a day's growth, gave him the look of a man who had yellow jaundice. He had utterly blue eyes.
"That actor," said Monk, "done a good job on De Faust. A darn good job."
Igor De Faust gave them a black stare "Actor—job— "
"The actor who was hired to make up like you and fog it off to Mexico in hopes of drawing Doc on a wild goose chase that would keep him away from things here."
De Faust blinked and swallowed. "Mexico—goose chase—things here that—"
"Yeah," Monk said, somewhat vaguely. "Yeah."
Monk looked at the other man and said, "Hoppel, I think you've got a swell place here."
Sigmund Hoppel grinned handsomely. "Denks, please. Coming from you, dat makes her a compliment, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair."
He did the pronunciation of the military title very nicely.