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

The humpback overtook the well-dressed man. He said something; nobody heard what, but it must have been a word to attract the other's attention, because the neatly clad man turned.
He was shot in the mouth as he turned. He was shot, as soon afterward as the humpback could pull trigger, in the right eye, the forehead, the right ear, successively. Then he fell on the sidewalk, and two more bullets scattered the contents of his skull over the sidewalk.
The humpback laid the revolver on the chest of the man just killed, then walked to a delivery truck parked near by. This truck had a completely closed rear, and it was later brought out, had been parked there for some hours.
The truck did not drive off. It just stood there. The camel-backed personage had closed the rear of the truck after getting in.
Every one who got near heard the tinkling of a music box which seemed to come from the interior of the truck.
Policemen naturally were not long in surrounding the machine, riot guns and tear gas ready. They yelled for the truck's occupant to come out.
The music box stopped. There was no other answer. The officers got up their nerve, got their guns ready, and advanced. Any one in the truck might kill a policeman or two, but would certainly be killed almost as soon. The truck was found unlocked, and when they opened it, empty.
It was, of course, quite impossible for the truck to be empty.
It wasn't, technically. There was no humpback inside. There was only a cheap music box, such as could be purchased at a number of large novelty shops.
This music box was later traced to a retail concern which admitted selling, not one box, but four dozen, to a humpbacked person. The clerks had been unable to tell whether the rather hideous camel-backed individual was a man or a woman.
By this time, the murdered man had been identified. He had looked commonplace enough, as an individual, in spite of his good clothing. Many insignificant persons wore high-class garments in Washington.
But this particular insignificant-looking man in good clothing had been hell on wheels.
He was a big shot in the U. S. Department of Investigation. A fellow who had made a remarkable record. He had been something of a dictator in the organization, a man who ran everything personally. This was unfortunate. His death left the department in poor shape to cope with what was coming.
IN the Federal murder, and the ensuing disappearance of the slayer to the accompaniment of music-box notes, every one was struck with the similarity to the amazing affair where twenty convicts had vanished from a penitentiary. This was the only instance of a mysterious vanishing with which the general public was familiar.
The affair took newspaper headlines by storm.
Doc Savage appeared and examined the scene of the slaying. He was besieged by reporters, photographers and police officers. He told little, said he was merely curious to see what he might find, and added that he had found nothing. "Not even a music box."
He did not explain what significance he believed the music box had.
A number of newspapers remarked on the coincidence of Doc Savage's appearance on the scene of the disappearances. One or two editorial writers criticized the bronze man for not telling all he knew to the police.
They did not explain how they had any means of knowing Doc had not told all he knew. They just took it for granted that he hadn't. It made a good subject to write a critical editorial about.
Editorials are more often destructive then helpful, and these were no exception. They had one effect which no one realized at the moment, since no one knew what the future held. They started the public thinking.
Doc Savage retired from the public eye, as far as any one knowing his personal whereabouts was concerned. As a matter of fact, he joined Hoppel in a Washington hotel, where Doc had a telephone connected—through the courtesy of the telephone company—with the telephone in his New York headquarters.
"Any word from Monk?" the bronze man asked.
"Yes, sir, not a word," said Hoppel. "Everybody else, she forget to call us, too. Them newspaper fellers, I should think they keep ringing down."
"This telephone is a private number," Doc explained. "No one but my five aides know it."
Hoppel raised his brows. "Five?"
"The other three are abroad at the moment," Doc replied. "In Europe, as a matter of fact."
The hotel employees knew Doc was in the hostelry, but they kept their mouths shut because they had been promised, if any of them talked, they would be discharged. Newspapermen called every Washington hotel, but failed to find Doc.
Then something else happened that caught the attention of the working press.
Several things, rather.
New York newspapermen got a telephone call. It was a terse call, placed in a distinctive voice which sounded as if some one was speaking through the nose alone. Not a journalist was able to swear honestly that he could tell whether the caller was a man or a woman.
The scribes were advised to go to the offices of a large insurance company and inquire concerning twenty million dollars' worth of government bonds, held by the company in its vaults. The newspapermen were advised to ask to examine the bonds, and to have an expert along.
They were also advised to ask for the chairman of the board of directors and to take a good look at him.
The gentlemen of the press found it easier to take a look at the chairman of the board, who was a pompous fellow with a wealth of movie dignity, than to examine the twenty million in bonds. They were laughed at the first time they asked to see the bonds. They argued, as newspapermen can, and in the course of time, got to see the bonds.
The whole twenty million dollars' worth of good government bonds were not good. They were counterfeits.
THE counterfeiting job was not good enough to fool any one who had ever seen an Uncle Sam bond, and for the life of them, the insurance people could not explain how they had taken the place of genuine bonds.
Nor was this a fraction of the sensation. The journalists looked around for the chairman of the board, the pompous chap, to ask him some more questions. He was nowhere in sight, could not be found.
An hour later, the current warden of Sing Sing Prison called up to say he had found a strange man in his penitentiary. How this man got there, the warden was unable to explain. Furthermore, the man himself was unable to explain it.
The man said he had been walking in the hallway of his office building when a man with a cane had stopped him and asked directions. While they were talking, a strange fainting spell had come upon him—and he had awakened in Sing Sing.
The man found in Sing Sing was the chairman of the board of the insurance company which had discovered twenty million in counterfeit bonds in its vaults.
The public had a hearty laugh over the affair. It looked like some titanic practical joke.
But that afternoon, newspapers connected the incident with the Federal killing—for what reason, nobody was sure. But nevertheless the two were mentioned together, and certain persons began to stop and think.
They had a night to think in.
The next morning, newspapers received another telephone call. In Washington, this time. Reporters were advised to go to the home of another well-known insurance man.
The scribes were also advised to look closely at a water glass standing on a table, or have a finger-print man do so.
The gentlemen of the press broke speed records getting to the house.
They found the well-known insurance man as dead as he might be expected to be with an antique sword out of his own library sticking through his vitals.
A finger-print expert went over a glass tumbler found on the table beside the corpse. He found prints, and compared them, as a matter of course, with a record of prints in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's files.
The prints were found to belong to a man who, as far as any one knew, had never been in the insurance man's home. The glass was checked closely and found to belong to a set of glassware which the insurance man's servants were positive had been in use for some time.
The man whose prints were on the glass was Doc Savage.
DOC SAVAGE was in his Washington hotel when newspapers hit the streets carrying the finger-print story. The bronze man went into the bathroom and looked at the glasses there.