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

Hoppel began to pant at once. He panted with his mouth wide open—great, whooping pants which carried a distance.
"Poy, am I exhausting!" he panted.
They came in sight of the plane in which Doc and his aides had flown down from New York.
"I wondered where I was going!" Hoppel puffed. "Follow—cars—eh?"
"No," Doc said.
"Huh?"
"The boat," Doc told him. "We never saw the cars. How could we locate them on the road? Traffic is heavy around here."
The plane shook as Hoppel plopped his big weight into the cabin. The ship hardly vibrated as Doc got aboard, although the bronze man was probably heavier than Hoppel, even if he did not appear to be. Doc knew how to handle his weight.
The three big motors began to hiss through the silencer vents, and the propellers became almost transparent discs. Doc got the anchor up.
Seaplanes are notoriously hard to maneuver on the water. This one was equipped with brakelike scoops which, with the yank of a lever, could be projected to engage the water on either side, thus adding to the turning ability of the ship.
Doc got the plane turned, levered the scoops in, and came back on the throttles. The airship trembled, eased up into the air.
Hoppel must have flown before, as what modern person has not. He gave the take-off little attention, but kept his big nose mashed against the cabin window. He was watching the cabin cruiser. Doc banked the plane toward the fleeing yacht.
The cruiser was heading south down the Potomac. She had gotten up, by now, what must be about her full speed. The bows were riding on top; the stern was deep, and the wake crawled up behind in a great pursuing wave that threatened at any moment to come aboard. In the center, directly behind the stern, the propellers hurled up a great, steady spout of foam and spray.
Hoppel expressed it. "She has got a fire on her tail, don't it look?"
She had a machine gun on her foredeck, too, it became apparent. It was a small hand machine gun of the submachine type, and the ammo drums were sprinkled with tracer bullets. A bad weapon. Its slugs began to rattle on the cabin of the plane.
"I am brave same as devil," said Hoppel. "What you say we run away?"
Doc did not tell him that the cabin was bulletproof, that the motors were shielded, and that the most inflammable bullet could be fired into the gas tanks without danger of conflagration. The bronze man was watching a bomb sight. When he had it right, he touched a lever, and a single tapering aлrial bomb arched downward.
It struck ahead of the cabin cruiser, and the water climbed up in a great mountain which caused the boat to rock and reel sickeningly.
In the rear of the plane was mounted a loud-speaker horn of the type used to broadcast aлrial advertisements. Doc spoke into the mike which actuated this speaker, through a power amplifier.
"You will stop the boat!" he directed. "Then each of you will come on deck, throw down your guns and jump overboard! Such of you as cannot swim may wear life preservers when you go over!"
The words from the great loudspeaker were like small thunder.
THE men on the deck of the power boat ran madly inside. In a moment, not a man was in sight. The boat began to slacken speed; it was plain that the engines were in reverse to hasten the stop.
"Poy, Oh poy!" chuckled Hoppel. "Did dem feller scare us, vice versa!"
The cabin cruiser came to a complete halt, rocking a little on the waves stirred up by the bomb. It was a gem of mahogany and chromium.
"She cost me forty thousand," said Hoppel.
Doc Savage sent the plane back not far above the surface, flake gold eyes fixed on the cruiser. He seemed to fly unconsciously.
"You had better begin to worry about your boat," he told Hoppel.
"No?"
"Notice the boat topping. It is already under the water."
Hoppel stared. He emitted a squawl of pain that must have been heard in Washington.
"Sinking!" he howled. "She is going up! First mine house, and now mine boat!"
He looked as if he were about to cry.
"That boat, she is eye of mine apple!"
The boat sank. The sinking was about as sudden as was possible for a boat of fifty feet. It disappeared, and water boiled and many bubbles came up.
No men appeared.
A deck chair floated, then some oars, driftwood, a life preserver or two, some cushions. A greasy film of oil covered the surface. Fully five minutes elapsed.
Still no men.
Doc Savage landed the plane on the water and taxied warily toward the spot.
"Maybe we have a trick," Hoppel suggested.
Doc said nothing, but cut the motors so that the plane drifted over the spot where the yacht had gone down. The bronze man knew about how deep the water would be in this part of the Potomac. He dived.
The water was fairly clear. He had no trouble finding the sunken yacht. The boat lay on her side, and there was a great, gaping hole in the bottom amidships. Doc swam toward the hole. His eyes began to burn.
The burning in his eyes increased. He turned swiftly and swam to the top.
"What did we find?" Hoppel howled out of the plane's cabin.
"The water is saturated with an acid which ate a hole in the bottom of the boat," Doc said. "It is the same acid which was found in a freight car inside the walls of a penitentiary, and again, in an underground wine cellar chamber."
"I don't understand," said Hoppel.
"A number of people do not understand," Doc told him, and dived again.
His eyes burned when he went down, so he came up and waited. There was a strong tidal current which made it but a question of time until the acid would be washed away. The time interval was fifteen minutes, experiment developed, and after that, Doc went down without feeling the acid in his eyes.
THE cabin cruiser lay in a scant three fathoms, a depth at which there was only a mild pressure. Doc was careful not to touch the edges of the hole in the hull which the acid had made, for some of the stuff might have stuck there. His tiny generator-operated flashlight would function under water, and he put it in use.
There was a hard sand bottom here. The water was rather clear. Oil streamers were climbing up out of the engine room. Wooden furniture and cushions were up against the topmost sides of the cabin. Some tinned cookies had gotten out of the container and, water-soaked, dissolved into doughy clouds when touched.
There was not a man aboard the cabin cruiser.