"056 (B028) - Repel (The Deadly Dwarf) (1937-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Buddy Baldwin grinned. "Let's see if you're a false alarm."
The two went down a companionway which had teak treads and chromium handrails and tramped through a passage dark with mahogany, deep with silk pile carpets. There had been no ventilator funnels on deck. The Fifth Wind didn't need them. She was air-conditioned.
Buddy Baldwin stopped before a door. He looked at Snowball Eagan. "You pretty well muscled?"
"Pretty."
"Then take off your coat and shirt. And when we go in, suck your belly in and make your chest and arm muscles stick out. Like this." Buddy Baldwin showed a rather startling set of ligaments.
"Why?"
"Notice our sailors?"
"They're a bunch of dang giants."
"That's the idea."
Snowball Eagan snarled, "If there's an idea, I don't see it!"
"The chief," said Buddy Baldwin, "likes big men."
Snowball Eagan moistened his lips. A strange expression came on his face and stayed. "I see," he said. He swallowed again.
They went in.
THE furniture in the room was big. Every piece must have been specially made. But the creature who stood in the place made the furniture look like doll stuff. He was about the color of a bottle cork that had been in a fire. One finger was off his left hand, and part of one ear was cut from his head. Something with an edge had left a gray gristle connection between his right eye and his mouth, and the eye did not look right. His chest was big enough to make his elbows stick out when he hung his arms. His mouth was open and there was no tongue in it.
He was the biggest human thing Snowball Eagan had ever seen.
"We want to see the chief, Nero," Buddy Baldwin said.
The monster opened his mouth and made the best noise he could without a tongue. He pointed at a door.
It was a big door, large even for the dark monster, Nero. It had a big knob which Buddy Baldwin had to take with both hands to turn.
Snowball Eagan had started to sweat, and had sunk his head in his shoulders a little, as does a man who walks under something he thinks may fall. They went in.
There was a giant bed, giant chairs, a giant bookcase with the smallest book in it an encyclopedia. One waded in the rug. The bed had been slept in, but there was nobody in it now.
Off to one side was a child's crib. It was an elaborate thing, with carvings and gilt inlays, and here and there rows of pearl studding.
When Snowball Eagan was a little closer his mouth opened and shut, for he knew the gilt was real solid gold bars and the pearls genuine. Snowball, as he called himself now, was an expert on such things.
Buddy Baldwin had his stomach in and his shoulders hunched forward and his arms crooked, with all the muscles sticking out all they could. Snowball Eagan did that, too, and they stopped beside the crib.
The crib was about four feet long. The man who occupied it had plenty of room.
MOST midgets have something wrong with their appearance. Their legs are stumpy, or their bodies too long, or their faces too round, or their shoulders too broad. This one was different.
He was a little gem of a man.
Given three feet and a hundred and twenty pounds, he would have had a good chance of becoming a matinee god. His head was not too big, his shoulders not too bulky, and his legs were small, sinewy and perfect. His face had that utter handsomeness which pen-and-ink artists give their heroes in the love story magazine drawings.
He wore little bathing trunks and a little bathrobe, smoked a little cigar in a little holder, and a toy glass on a rack at the side held a toy drink in which leaned a toy swizzle stick.
Buddy Baldwin, speaking unnaturally because he was still trying to hold his muscles ridged out, said, "Chief, this bird with me is Stage Chinkins, known right now as Snowball Eagan."
The little gem of a man did not offer to shake hands. He drew on his cigar and squirted the lower part of his crib full of rich blue smoke.
"What's on your mind, Snowball Eagan?" he asked.
He had a perfect little voice.
Snowball Eagan coughed to get the fingers of awe loose from his throat. He was not tough, did not bluster. He sounded as if he were about to get down on his knees.
"I think I've got something that will interest you," he said. "You have heard of Doc Savage, the man of bronze. Wherever you find him, you usually find something big. Doc Savage is here in Fan Coral. He's investigating something mysterious that came out of that volcano."
Snowball Eagan paused. The tiny man, Cadwiller Olden, did not speak. Eagan swallowed and went on.
"Me and my buddy, Bert Banner, started to find out what Doc Savage was after," he said. "We figured it must be big stuff, because this bronze guy has a rep. But Bert got mashed under a big rock. There's somethin' queer about how that happened. I didn't see it. I only know Savage brought in Bert's body. Maybe he killed Bert, but I don't think so, on account of I've heard that Savage never kills anybody."
He hesitated again, finished, "With Bert out, I'm afraid of it. I thought I'd tip you off."
Cadwiller Olden took a sip from the drink. "Do you know just what Doc Savage is after?"
"No."
"Then why are you going to all this trouble?"
"I know Savage's rep. I needed a stake. Where Savage is monkeying around, things get big. Anything he's after would be worth plenty of jack."
"You are evidently not fully acquainted with this Doc Savage's career," said Cadwiller Olden calmly. "Strangely enough, the size of a thing does not seem to gauge its importance to him. He once spent two weeks working on the eyes of a blind apple peddler in Chicago. He made the peddler see, then turned around and ignored an offer of a quarter of a million to do a plastic surgery job on a rich old guy who wanted a young-looking face. You cannot tell about the bronze man."
Snowball Eagan wet his lips again. "Well, I thought there might be a lot of shekels rattling around in this somewhere. I had a hunch."
"Your hunches seem good," Cadwiller Olden said quietly.
"Eh?"
"I'll tell you why we're here. Why I have my entire organization here, working under cover. We are after the same thing Doc Savage is after."
Surprise knocked Snowball Eagan's mouth open.
Cadwiller Olden said, "The thing we're after is probably worth more dollars than you or I or Rockefeller ever dreamed about."
Chapter 7. THE SECOND BAD BALDWIN
SNOWBALL EAGAN'S mouth stayed open. He was like a man who had found his pocket picked. But he did not bluster. He bowed, not very gracefully, but a bow.