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

"I didn't know you were already mixed in this," he said. "I've always heard you were the cleverest man alive, and this bears it out. You have Doc Savage covered, and I never got an inkling. Well, that lets me out. I won't try to horn in. I won't even ask questions. I will leave the island immediately if you prefer."
Some of the fake Snowball Eagan's crook acquaintances might have swooned if they had heard that. Snowball Eagan was as tough and chiseling a rascal as the Orient had seen in generations. That he would meekly back off the field when he found another crook after the same goal was startling. Or perhaps not so startling.
Most of Snowball Eagan's ilk had heard of this strange, incredible creature, Cadwiller Olden.
Snowball Eagan did not leave. He asked permission.
"Can I go?" he inquired uneasily.
Cadwiller Olden shook his head. "Would you care to work for me on this?"
Unadulterated delight swept Snowball Eagan.
"D'you mean it?" he exploded. "Say, that'd really be somethin'! Man, oh, man! I've tried a dozen times to contact your organization, and never got to first base!"
"Eleven times you have tried, to be exact," said the small, gemlike man.
"You knew about it!"
"Every time. I have been watching you, studying your record. Your holdup of the Melbourne Imperial Bank was well executed, as was your looting of the pearl dealer's safe in Manila."
Snowball Eagan nearly choked.
"I went solo on them jobs!" he gulped. "I didn't think a soul in the world knew I pulled 'em!"
"Knowing things is convenient," Cadwiller Olden pointed out.
Snowball Eagan had been afraid of the little man when he came in. He was plainly more frightened now. But he was overjoyed, too.
"It'll sure be swell, workin' for you," he said.
He did not say working with you, as might have been expected.
The little man got out of the crib. The dressing gown which he put on was brocaded with gold. He went to a panel, and did something to it with his hands and a safe door was abruptly revealed. He took out a mass of money, done in bundles. He separated five of those bundles, put the rest back.
He handed the five bundles to Snowball Eagan.
Eagan looked at the money. His eyelids rolled back off the balls, and breath ran out of him slowly. A mark on each bundle wrapper said twenty thousand dollars.
"My organization pays off by dividend," said Cadwiller Olden. "I am declaring you in on the last dividend. It is not well for a man to be low on money, and you say you are low."
Snowball Eagan suddenly did the last thing any one who knew him would have expected. He got down on his knees and bowed his head to the man he could have thrown a score of feet with one arm.
"Chief," he said, "the ambition of my lifetime is being fulfilled."
The little gem of a man strutted slightly as he went into the other room.
CADWILLER OLDEN slipped off his clothes. All his body was perfection in miniature. He began to dress. His garments were exquisitely tailored.
He began to talk. His little voice was cultured, musical.
"Doc Savage must have done as I did, realized from the newspaper and seismograph reports what was coming out of Ethel's Mama," he said. "I did not think that any one on earth but myself would guess the truth. But they say this Doc Savage has a certain amount of ability."
He went in the other room to let the giant who had no tongue tie his tiny necktie.
Buddy Baldwin grinned at Snowball Eagan. "Buddy, you got what it takes," he whispered admiringly. "That last touch, where you got down on your knees, was swell. The chief ate it up!"
Snowball Eagan did not grin back. He licked his lips and shivered.
"I've heard things about Cadwiller Olden," he said.
"What you heard wasn't a drop," Buddy Baldwin said, suddenly grim. "Give that little fellow another ten years and he'll control the civilized world. And I'm not kiddin'!"
Cadwiller Olden came back. He was in impeccable afternoon attire, and carried a slender black cane. He flipped the cane, admired it.
"An exact duplicate, except for size, of one a gentleman named Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks carries," he said. "Quite a gentleman, Ham Brooks. We have the same tailor, although he does not know it."
He looked at Buddy Baldwin and Snowball Eagan.
"I have been keeping close tab on Doc Savage in a very simple way," he said. "The bronze man is now diving for the thing which came out of the volcano, the thing which can be more valuable, in the right hands, than the crown of England."
Snowball Eagan opened his mouth, apparently about to ask just what the mysterious object was. But he thought better of it. He was deathly afraid of this handsome, tiny man's slightest whim.
Cadwiller Olden said, "I am awaiting word from one of my valued agents. As soon as the report is in, everything is set to get Doc Savage and his assistants out of the way."
The little man looked at Snowball Eagan.
"Did you know we already have one of Doc Savage's men, a fellow they call Long Tom?" he asked.
Snowball Eagan gulped. "No!"
"We have," Cadwiller Olden smiled. "One of my agents decoyed him, with a clever story, into the hands of my men, who seized him. He—"
Noise outside. The tongueless monster came in. He made a sound startlingly like an eagle screaming, and did some kind of sign talk with his hands.
"My agent is here to report on Doc Savage," Cadwiller Olden said. "It is the same agent who trapped Long Tom."
The girl who had told Doc Savage her name was Alberta Mantle came in.
"Meet Bess Baldwin," said Buddy Baldwin, "my sister. Right now she's Alberta Mantle, a writer on scientific things."
"Geology," the girl said, and laughed.
THE girl looked at Cadwiller Olden, and her laughter stopped with a snap.
"Doc Savage is not doing so well with his diving," she said. "He and Renny went down while I stayed on the cliff with Monk and Ham and watched. Doc—"
"They do not suspect you?" the tiny man interposed.