"061 (B050) - Devil on the Moon (1938-03) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The young man led them into an adjacent room. Here stood radio transmitting and receiving equipment which was obviously powerful and modern. A placard over the equipment bore a set of call letters such as are assigned to amateur radio stations.
The young man threw switches and adjusted knobs, then picked up a hand microphone.
"Calling CQ!" he said into the mike. "Station X9BJG in the hills of Virginia is calling CQ! Hello CQ!"
"Hello, X9BJG," came out of the receiver loudspeaker. "Station X21AR hooking up with X9BJG. You getting me, old man?"
Behemoth took his cigar out of his mouth. His interest was almost childish.
"Greetings and salutations, X21AR," said the young man at the farmhouse. "Boy, you're putting through a nice signal this morning. QSA five, R nine!"
This was the accepted technique by which a radio amateur operator let any other ham know that he wanted to start a conversation. But the young man here in the farmhouse did not move his receiving dial in search of a reply; instead, he set the dial at a specific point—obviously he was expecting an answer on a definite wave length.
This technical conversation continued for minutes; then the young operator in the farmhouse winked at Lurgent.
"Look, old man, my modulating circuit seems to have a bug in it," he said into his microphone. "If you hear funny noises you'll know what it is. Stand by a minute, will you, then give me a report."
He opened a large suitcase which proved to be full of apparatus, and connected this to his transmitter, then plugged his microphone into the new apparatus and began to talk.
"Lurgent is here with something important to report," he said. "I'll put him on the air."
Lurgent looked doubtful. "You sure nobody will overhear that?"
The young man pointed at the apparatus. "That's a scrambler. On the air there's just a roaring noise like a feedback in the oscillator. The other station picks it up and unscrambles it. Nobody will understand you"—he laughed—"except X21AR."
Lurgent pointed at Behemoth. "You get out!" He jerked his jaw at the others. "You too! This conversation won't suffer for privacy."
Behemoth was obviously reluctant, but he followed the others outside, and they closed the door, then stood there, the men lighting cigarettes and Behemoth puffing his inevitable cigar. They could hear no word of what was being said over the radio.
One of the men spoke idly to Behemoth. "I'd be careful about crossing Lurgent, big boy. He's not just one of the small-time straw bosses."
Behemoth grinned amiably. "Say, I'm a new man in this outfit. Fact is, I've only been in the gang since the day before yesterday. Up in New York, I heard through some connections of mine that a bird named Lurgent had some work for a few right guys. He was only hirin' birds who had hitched in the navy in Europe, and had served some time in submarines. So I come to see Lurgent, and he asks me some questions, and I show him some newspaper clips of my tough record, and he hires me."
Behemoth paused to sigh deeply and shake his head. "Lurgent brings us all south, and says we're heading for Norfolk to pull a job to-morrow. He don't say what the job is, but he acts kind of mysterious. And then, all of a sudden, as if he had got word something had gone wrong, Lurgent brings us up here and we wait near that Spanish Plantation, and we see a funny light in the sky which seems to land near that inlet. We go over there, and we run into crazy talk about a man from the moon, and such stuff."
Behemoth shrugged his huge shoulders. "You know, all this has got me plumb fizzy-giggled."
"Eh?"
"Fizzy-giggled," Behemoth explained. "Man, when I'm that way, I really don't know whether I'm goin' or comin'! Look, pal, do you know what any of this crazy business is about?"
"Just that Lurgent was tryin' to stop the green man from reachin' that girl."
"Why?"
"How should I know? I haven't been with this crew longer than you have. Lurgent hired me in New York too."
"You an ex-navy man?"
"Sure. Submarines. But I'm no more on this than you are."
Behemoth heaved in a great sigh. "Me, I'm goin' to do my best to find out what's going on here."
A FEW moments later Lurgent appeared, his face grim, and gave Behemoth a fierce glare.
"Orders are to kill that girl," he said.
Behemoth blinked.
"What's the idea?" he wanted to know.
"We've got to wipe out every trace of what's happened to-night," Lurgent retorted. "That's orders. Get the girl."
Behemoth looked disappointed. "Daggone it. I guess I'll have to tell the rest of the story."
"What story?"
"That girl," Behemoth muttered, "is one of Doc Savage's helpers."
"You're crazy as—" Lurgent launched forward suddenly and seized fistfuls of Behemoth's shirt. "What!"
"This girl talked to me," Behemoth said. "She told quite a story. Have you ever heard of Patricia Savage?"
"Patricia Savage?" Lurgent crashed a fist into his palm. "Crawling snakes! Is this girl Pat Savage?"
Behemoth took his cigar out of his mouth, looked at it and seemed very pleased with himself.
"Sure," he said. "Now we've got bait."
"What?"
"Use your head!" Behemoth said. "We let this girl overhear enough to make her believe that our big boss will meet us at a certain spot at a certain time. Then we let her go. She takes word of the meeting to Doc Savage. He comes to grab the chief. We're ready for Doc. It's a trap, see?"
Lurgent licked his lips. "What provoked all that brainwork, Behemoth?"
Behemoth said, "I'm ambitious—maybe."
Lurgent thought that over and finally threw his hands up in defeat. "Come on into the radio room."
Wearing his proudest expression, Behemoth went in and seated himself before the radio transmitter. He seemed nervous and unaccustomed to the microphone at first and made the mistake of holding it too close to his mouth and shouting, until the operator hurriedly moved the microphone about a foot and cautioned Behemoth to use an ordinary tone. Behemoth then told the microphone about the same story he had given Lurgent.
Then the operator threw a switch and a strange, hollow voice came out of the speaker.
"You have an excellent plan, Behemoth," it said. "Examining my record here, I find that you are a new man in our organization. I like this early ingenuity that you are displaying."
Behemoth winked triumphantly at Lurgent, who glared.
Then the voice over the radio outlined a deft and brilliant plan.