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

"And I shall personally supervise the taking of Doc Savage," the voice finished.
"You're coming here?" Lurgent asked.
"Yes."
That ended the radio exchange.
SOMETHING like an hour later, they began the operation of setting the trap for Doc Savage. Lurgent and Behemoth, standing beside the girl, staged a conversation which they had rehearsed earlier. The exchange was rambling and natural, and the gist of it was that their leader was to arrive at this spot to consult with them a few hours hence. Proceeding with the second part of the plan, Lurgent ordered that the girl was to die immediately. Behemoth made it clear he would do the job.
"Put her in a car, and dump her over by Washington somewhere," Lurgent directed. "We don't want the body found around here."
"You bet!" agreed Behemoth.
Lifting the young woman, Behemoth carried her easily out to one of the cars and placed her in the rear seat.
Easing his huge frame behind the wheel, Behemoth drove off. He drove at a slow pace for a good reason: it enabled him to take a cellophone wrapper off one of his cigars. Then he pulled one of the buttons off his rough shirt, and used it to make marks on the cellophane—these weren't exactly marks, for the buttons left no traces visible to an unaided eye. If this note could have been read, the reader would have found:
FAKING LETTING A GIRL ESCAPE FROM ME ON ROAD BACK OF FARM. GET THERE AND MARK SPOT. TAKE GIRL AND QUESTION HER. WHAT IS BEHIND THIS THING IS STILL A MYSTERY.
For several miles, Behemoth drove. Eventually he passed a farmhouse, and beside the road near this farmhouse lay two rabbits which might have been hit by cars. Behemoth tossed the note out here.
Driving on slowly, he killed some time, then took a road to the right and slowly circled back on a side road which passed to the rear of the farmhouse where he had just dropped the note. Immediately he stopped.
It was late morning now and the air was pleasant; there were feathery clouds above and enough breeze was stirring to shake the leaves of the thick brush which grew alongside the road.
Behemoth got out, opened the rear door, seized the girl's feet and yanked. One of her slippers came off, apparently by accident, and he stumbled back with it in his hand.
The ropes on the girl's ankles seemed loose, and came free with her slipper. Instantly she leaped from the other side of the car.
Behemoth went "Whoosh!"—the nearest he could come to a shout. He stumbled around the car. The girl was scrambling across the roadside into the brush. Behemoth rushed after her, stubbed his toe, turned a somersault and crashed flat on his back in the ditch.
He lay there for a few moments, as if stunned. Then he got up and began searching for the girl, shoving through brush noisily. However, he deliberately passed up the young woman's trail when he located it. Finally he ran back to the car, got in and drove away.
Returning to the isolated farmhouse radio station, he told Lurgent, "Figure I should've been an actor."
"It went off all right?" Lurgent asked.
"Sure!"
"I'll see about that." Lurgent went over and kicked the trunk at the rear of the car. The trunk lid opened and one of Lurgent's men, who had been concealed within, got out.
"He went through with it exactly like he was told to do it," the stowaway said.
Behemoth seemed about to explode with anger, but eventually he cooled off and shrugged. "Well, the girl will go straight to Doc Savage," he said. "And when she tells Savage her story, he'll come here, and we'll fix things up nicely."
Chapter VI. THE FOX
LIN PRETTI had not gone far. In fact, seeking to escape Behemoth, she had climbed a huge tree which had small branches growing almost the whole length of its trunk, which made it easy to mount. High up in the tree was a cavity, entirely invisible from the ground, into which she was able to insert her slender form. Such an excellent hiding place, she was reluctant to desert, at least until Behemoth stopped searching.
After almost an hour, she concluded her pursuer had departed. Seeing nothing to worry her, she descended. Once on the ground, she rearranged her clothing.
"I've been lucky!" she exclaimed softly.
"Probably luckier than you deserve!" said a small childlike voice.
Lin Pretti jumped and spun. Out from behind the tree she had just descended—he must have crept up silently on the other side of the tree—appeared a remarkable-looking fellow.
The resemblance this newcomer bore to an amiable ape was striking. He was nearly as broad as tall, had an enormous mouth, small deep-set eyes and almost no forehead. He was so incredibly homely in such a pleasant fashion that Lin Pretti's first impulse was to smile.
"I've been waiting for you," the homely apparition explained.
"Oh!" ejaculated Lin Pretti.
Then her eyes rested on a strange animal which had followed the homely man. This was a pig. The shote had long thin legs, a pair of tremendously long ears, and a snout built for inquisitiveness.
A second man appeared from the brush. This stranger was slender, especially at the waist, and his clothing was almost foppishly immaculate, and of a pattern distinctly unusual, consisting of spats, striped trousers, gray lap-over vest, cutaway coat, wing collar, and Ascot tie. He carried a black sword cane.
"I don't blame you for being scared," he told Lin Pretti pleasantly, with a meaning glance at the homely man. "A number of people have had to go to bed after their first look at Monk, here."
"Ham, you overdressed shyster!" the apish Monk growled.
"You mistake-that-nature-made!" the too well-dressed man retorted.
Then the two stuck out their jaws and glared at each other.
Lin Pretti gasped, "Who are you?"
"I am Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks," said the perfectly clad man.
"Call him Ham!" snorted the homely Monk. "Everybody else does."
The violence of Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks' grimace indicated he did not care for the nickname.
"What do you want with me?" the girl asked.
"Information," Monk said. "Come on."
SHORTLY afterward, Lin Pretti found herself approaching a farmhouse—the one in front of which Behemoth had dropped his note, but she did not know that. It was painted brown, with rose bushes in the yard and an automobile standing under a tree. There was a barn in the back, and behind the barn—where its presence became known only after one entered the yard—stood two airplanes; two small, fast amphibians.
The weeds in the yard stirred, drawing Lin Pretti's attention. At first she thought she was seeing some kind of grotesque dwarf. An animal, though, when she corrected her first impression—some type of chimpanzee, or small baboon. The chimpanzee was striking because of the resemblance in miniature which it bore to the homely Monk.
"Chemistry!" called the well-dressed Ham. The animal came swinging happily toward him. "My pet," he told Lin Pretti.
Monk, not to be outdone, indicated the pig with the big ears and long legs. "That's my pet, named Habeas Corpus," he said proudly.
Chemistry and Habeas began showing their teeth in a manner which indicated they got along about as truculently as did their respective owners.
A young woman, a particularly striking young woman, greeted them when they entered the house. She was tall and exquisitely molded; her hair was of an unusual bronze hue, and her eyes were amazingly like pools of flake gold.