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

KIT MERRIMORE took an express elevator to the street. The express elevators in the building were by no means slow conveyances. Yet Monk and Ham beat her to the street.
They did this by taking Doc's private speed elevator, a lift used only by the bronze man and his aids, and one which would not have been passed by the inspectors for public use simply because it operated at such a speed, that it would have been considered dangerous to individuals with weak physiques.
Monk and Ham hurried out and got in the first taxi they saw. There was a string of cabs at the curb waiting for fares.
There was also an enormous gray town car at the curb. Pedestrians turned around and stared at this car, sometimes running into each other in their absorption. It was a very striking car, streamlined to the last degree.
A round butterball of a Chinaman was behind the wheel, and a lean, dark, very muscular-looking man was in the rear.
Monk and Ham waited.
"There she is," Monk said. "Even if she does expect to be followed, she will never suspect we arrived out in the street before her."
Kit Merrimore got into the aristocratic town car. She was biting her shapely lips in rage.
"Drive up to the park, Two-bit," she told the Celestial. "I want to think."
Then she turned and looked at the dark athlete beside her.
"Lupp, everything went wrong," she said.
"Yes," said the dark "Lupp." "What? Wouldn't he sell us the airship?"
"Worse. He has been investigating that sailor, Ben Brasken. I saw some kind of a report on his desk."
Lupp sat up straight at that. Muscles around his mouth bunched.
"This is a tough break!" he said grimly. "I wonder if he knows the truth?"
"I don't know what he knows. I wasn't fool enough to ask him. What are we going to do?"
"Don't worry, I'll do plenty!" Lupp snapped.
"You had better think twice," the young woman offered. "Doc Savage is not to be taken too lightly. I was very much impressed by him."
"Savage is quite a handsome chap," Lupp said, with a trace of acid.
"Handsome men are a dime a dozen!" retorted Kit Merrimore, who should know. "And furthermore, his looks have nothing to do with it."
"Of course," Lupp agreed dryly.
"Furthermore," snapped Kit Merrimore, "if I should fall in love with Doc Savage or anybody else, it is no concern of yours!"
"Two-bit," the Oriental, said, without turning his head, "It has been said that the mightiest tigers are those whom the jackals follow most."
"What do you mean, you fat heathen?" Kit Merrimore asked.
"Two men," replied Two-bit, "are following us. I have seen them in my rear-view mirror."
Lupp growled, "I'll take care of them mighty quick!"
MONK and Ham sat back in their cab, blissfully unaware that they had been discovered by the sharp-eyed Oriental driver of the town car.
"Lawyers should all be shot," Monk stated firmly. "They're what's wrong with this country."
Ham unsheathed his sword cane and examined a sticky substance on the tip.
"I wonder if this stuff has lost its strength?" he pondered aloud, and looked at Monk speculatively.
The sticky stuff was a drug which produced unconsciousness when the sword cane pricked a victim.
"You stick with that," Monk promised, "and I'll take you by the neck and wind you up like a clock."
They continued the quarrel while their quarry led them into Central Park via the Sixth Avenue entrance. The machine carrying Monk and Ham got up to fifty miles an hour.
Then, for no reason immediately apparent, it rocked wildly, jumped the curb, turned sidewise, went completely over, and lit in about four feet of water which was in a lagoon beside the road. It was very fortunate that the cab had an all-steel body and a good one.
Monk yelled. He always yelled when he got excited. His ordinary voice was that of a child, but his yells were the bellows of a bull.
He kicked about, fought the door. The door was jammed. He batted the glass with a palm. It caved. Monk broke the rest out, and clambered out. He reached back and got Ham by the hair.
"Let's go!" Ham snarled. "I'm not dead yet!"
Monk reached for the driver. At that point, Monk was suddenly conscious of an awful stinging in his eye. They began to water. His nose hurt.
He took a gasping breath, and his lungs and throat began to sting. He bent over in an uncontrollable paroxysm of coughing.
"I'm dyin'!" he croaked.
IT was a rather sheepish-looking Monk and Ham who presented themselves at Doc Savage's headquarters. Ham was also mad. His natty morning suit—for which he had just paid the city's most exclusive tailor almost four hundred dollars—had been ruined.
The other two of Doc Savage's little group of five aids were in the skyscraper aлrie. They were "Long Tom" and "Renny."
Long Tom was an undersized, pale specimen, such a sickly appearing character indeed that undertakers could not help feeling a wave of prosperity coming when they saw him. He was actually a man who had never been ill. He was an electrical genius. His full name was Major Thomas J. Roberts.
Renny was a big, sour-faced man who led the world in two things: He was probably the greatest living engineer. And he had bigger fists than any other man. He used them for an aggravating pet diversion of knocking wooden panels out of doors at the most unexpected moments.
"Holy cow!" Renny rumbled, using a voice that was like a lion in a deep cave. "What happened?"
Monk's groan could not have been louder if he had lost an arm.
"Tear gas," he said. "It must have been the kind you squirt out of them little guns that work like fire extinguishers, only you don't pump 'em. Anyway, this dame had her car drive fast, and either she or somebody with her pumped the gas out, and our driver got it and ran off the road into a puddle and turned over."
"And ruined my clothing!" Ham snapped.
"What about the girl?" Doc asked.
"Oh, her?" Monk shrugged. "Search me. They got away."