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

"It wouldn't do any good," he said. "Doc has a habit of keepin' things, or suspicions, to himself until he is dead sure before he tells anybody."
Johnny said, "I'm going to ask him myself."
He walked in the direction of the lava river.
"Don't get frostbitten!" Monk squeaked.
MONK unrolled his towel to inspect his dry ice. The diminished size of the cube—smoking because it was so cold instead of so hot—caused him to groan lustily. Monk's ordinary speaking voice was small, but his groan was something like a piece being torn out of the side of a circus tent. He lay back and replaced his cooling invention on his forehead.
When the earth shook and red light washed over the ground, he raised up on his elbow to glower at the top of Ethel's Mama. Monk was just in time to see something happen.
The plane with the cameraman was flying over the upper end of the lava river, near the crater's lip. The plane lifted straight upward many scores of feet. It turned end over end as it went. There was no visible reason for this occurrence.
The aircraft fluttered about regaining equilibrium. Then it sailed around, and like a hen which had been bitten unexpectedly by a harmless-looking worm, it buzzed back cautiously to investigate.
Almost the same thing as before happened to the plane. Something invisible seemed to knock it through the air. It traveled straight backward this time.
Monk scrambled erect, still holding his dry ice poultice to his head.
"Maybe Doc and the others didn't see that!" he grunted. "I better tell 'em. Come on, Habeas!"
Monk looked around, waiting.
"Habeas!" he rapped.
A remarkable-looking pig reluctantly left the shade of a rock. The shote had long thin legs and ears which a bat would have considered suitable for flying. He was Habeas Corpus, Monk's pet. If the surroundings had not been so hot, Monk would probably have been training Habeas. He spent most of his spare time educating the pet hog.
Monk started off. Habeas followed him a dozen paces and stopped.
"Habeas!" Monk squeaked. "C'mon, or I'll tie knots in your legs!"
Habeas paid no attention. He seemed interested in a clump of scrub palms.
Monk said, "Come on, Habeas, or I'll give you to Ham!"
The rusty-looking bristles on Habeas's back began to stand on end.
Monk frowned at the scrub palm cluster. "What the heck!" He started over to investigate.
A barefooted, brown man with a big revolver came out of the palm cluster.
"You fella savvy stand still!" he said fiercely.
Monk savvied. He put out his jaw. "Say, what's the big idea?"
The brown man wore denim pants, no shirt, and an ugly look. He got down to business immediately.
"You fella talk chop-chop," he said. "Why all same fella Doc Savage come 'longside Fan Coral?"
Monk squeaked, "You wanta know why Doc came here?"
"Savvy," said the other. "You bet. Me fella want know."
The man's revolver had a big barrel and a big cylinder, and the sun was just right for Monk to get a look at the round, shiny noses of the cartridges. They were impressive.
"Who sent you to ask that question?" Monk growled.
The brown man started to answer when he saw a shadow looming on the ground beside him. It was a big shadow, and it had not been there an instant before.
The shadow was all the brown man ever saw of the fate that overtook him. Fate in the shape of a giant of bronze.
THE big bronze fellow had come silently out of the jungle, and he got the gun and dropped the native with one blow, all as if it had been rehearsed a thousand times. His remarkable bronze features had not changed expression, had in no way showed that the ghostly silence with which he moved was at all unusual, or that dropping an armed native was anything out of the ordinary.
Strangely, there was enough of the unusual about the big bronze man to make it seem that the incredible was rather to be expected from him.
There was more about the bronze man than bigness. The tendons on the backs of his hands resembled round files, and the rest of his sinews looked as if they were made up of cables of the wires they brace airplane wings with.
He wore nothing above the belt, and his muscular development was fabulous, yet so symmetrical that, had he been fully clothed, and seen at a little distance, he would have appeared no more Herculean than an ordinary man.
Probably the most striking thing about the bronze giant was his eyes. They were like pools of flake gold, always stirred by some tiny force. They contained a weird quality, something compelling, hypnotic.
"Doc!" Monk exploded a relieved grunt. "How'd you happen along just then?"
"Coming to warn you," the bronze man said.
"Huh?"
"Better run for it. You saw what happened to that plane a moment ago?"
The bronze man's voice was like the rest of him—remarkable. It was a trained voice, unexcited and subdued, but somehow giving the impression that it could carry for miles if necessary.
"I was comin' to tell you about the plane when this bird jumped me," Monk explained. "Say, what—"
"Run," Doc Savage interposed quietly. "If the thing comes this way, the ledge under which the tents are pitched will probably be the safest place."
"Thing!"
Monk squeaked. "What thing?"
But the bronze man had already whipped back into the jungle. He reappeared immediately, carrying a large metal case which seemed to contain a great deal of delicate apparatus. He had evidently put this down while he crept upon Monk's captor.
The bronze man raised his voice. It was a crash of volume, as if stepped up by a power amplifier.
"Long Tom, Johnny!" he called. "Renny, Ham!"
"Coming!" came a faint shout from the direction of the lava stream.
Monk scooped up the unconscious native. "Instead of this lad askin' me questions, he's gonna answer some!"