"054 (B089) - Ost (The Magic Island) (1937-08) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

When the young woman came in, they all got to their feet courteously. But Ham sprang forward and, with great politeness, escorted the young woman to Doc and arranged a chair for her, elbowing aside Monk, who glared indignantly.
No one could recall Monk and Ham ever having treated each other with any civility.
She was sort of a pocket-edition girl. Not that there wasn't enough to her to make a vision who would have disturbed any man's dignity. There definitely was.
Her mink coat was cost and class, and her stockings were so sheer that a second glance was necessary to be sure she wore any. She had large brown eyes, and her hair was about the color of a pecan shell.
She carried her chin in the air, and began to act like a young woman who was accustomed to having men let her have her own way.
"I am Kittrella Merrimore," she said.
Monk and Ham exchanged the kind of glances they might have swapped if they had discovered a harmless-looking butterfly they had been handling was a deadly, venomous moth. They had heard of "Kit" Merrimore. Indeed, she had more money than any young woman should have.
Two jackleg foreign noblemen had sued her in the courts, claiming she had promised to marry them. She had started a transatlantic flight. Her pilot had tried to drown them both by diving into the sea when she refused to wed him at the end of the flight. She was what is known as dynamite.
"You have a small dirigible, I believe," Kit Merrimore told Doc Savage.
The bronze man admitted he did have. If Kit Merrimore was having any effect on him, it failed to show.
"I came to buy your airship," Kit Merrimore stated flatly.
"For what purpose?" Doc Savage inquired.
"You'll pardon me," the lady hell-raiser retorted, "but that happens to be my business."
DOC SAVAGE'S three aids waited with great interest for whatever might come.
Doc Savage said nothing after the pretty visitor advised him to keep his nose out of her affairs, which was what it amounted to.
The silence appeared to irk Kit Merrimore. She started tapping the floor angrily with an expensively custom-shod toe.
"Well," she snapped, "how much do you think your airship is worth?"
"It is not for sale," Doc replied quietly.
"Nonsense! Of course it is! How much?"
Doc Savage rested his metallic hands on the desk. The bronze skin on the hands were smooth and fine-grained, and the tendons, when movement caused them to spring out, were hard cables nearly as large as an ordinary man's fingers.
"It seems you do not understand," he said, in a deep, well-controlled voice. "The dirigible is a private craft which we had constructed especially for our own needs. And we would certainly not allow any one to use it without knowing for exactly what purpose it was intended."
Kit Merrimore's toe tapped the floor viciously.
"You talk as if you thought I was going to use it to drop bombs on women and children."
Doc used good judgement. He did not answer this invitation for a quarrel.
The young woman suddenly used a different tack. She had been studying the big bronze man, who was himself far above the average in male pulchritude. Perhaps this had something to do with it. Kit Merrimore smiled sweetly.
"Please," she said, "I really do want the airship badly."
"For what purpose?" Doc asked bluntly.
"I'm truly sorry, but I cannot tell you that," the young lady replied.
"I am equally sorry," Doc said. "You cannot have the airship."
Kit Merrimore's smile would have stopped a war.
"Please," she pleaded.
"You haven't a chance of vamping me into it," Doc said.
Kit Merrimore stamped both feet, and her eyes launched sparks.
"I demand that you sell it to me!" she hissed.
Doc shrugged wearily.
"I'll make you wish you had!" the young woman snapped. "Perhaps you don't know just who I am?"
"You are a young woman who was not spanked often enough when she was little," Doc Savage replied earnestly. "And you have too much money."
Monk and the others held their breath, mortally certain Doc was going to get hit with the first thing the young lady could get her pretty hands on.
Kit Merrimore did grab for a paper weight. Then something happened. She stiffened. She seemed to forget all about Doc and her rage.
Her eyes were fixed on the report about Ben Brasken. She could see Ben Brasken's name. She could also see the notation: "Incidents possibly worth attention," preceding the name.
She moved her brown eyes to Doc Savage. The eyes were wide, amazed, shocked.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh!"
Doc showed no emotion. He hardly ever showed any, for that matter. But his three aids were almost as astonished as the young woman.
Kit Merrimore looked up from the paper.
"So that's it!" she said.
Without another word, she spun and walked out to the place. She seemed in a hurry.
"Monk, Ham," Doc Savage said quietly, "it might be a good idea if you checked up on what she does. Trail her."
Monk and Ham went out.
"I'll be superamalgamated!" said tall, thin Johnny. "An anagrammatical eventuation."
These words were a sample of why a dictionary was necessary to understand Johnny's normal speech. Not for the world would he have stated simply that he was surprised at the puzzling turn events had taken.