"064 (B063) - The Submarine Mystery (1938-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

There was a period of silence, followed by banging noises on the hull. This sounded as if some one was going around silently giving the hull plates a terrific blow here and there with a hammer.
"You know what I think?" Ham gasped.
"Bullets," Doc Savage said.
"Exactly. They shot at some one with the cannon. And that some one is shooting back with rifles."
Doc Savage's metallic features were expressionless, but his feelings were evidently the same as those being shown by Monk and Ham: blank astonishment.
They heard the submarine's deck gun go off three times in rapid succession. Following this, there was another silence. The engines of the submarine stopped completely.
For approximately an hour, the submarine lay rolling in the swells. Amid clattering uproar, a boat was apparently taken out of a deck compartment and placed in the water. It went away, and came back in twenty minutes. It made two more round trips to wherever it was going.
The small boat was then swung into its deck compartment, stowed, and the submarine engines started. The sub maneuvered for a while.
There was a windy cough of a noise.
"Torpedo!" Ham barked. "They've fired a torpedo!"
"Sh-h-h!"
Monk breathed.
Monk's shushing was not necessary. He wanted to listen for the torpedo to strike. All held their breaths.
The torpedo struck. No doubt of that. The explosion was deep and booming, and almost as much of a shock as a blast.
Engines of the submarine speeded up then, and the craft began to travel at high speed, bumping into the larger swells with noticeable shocks.
Doc Savage and the other two sat silent, mentally contemplating what had happened.
"They torpedoed a ship," Monk muttered.
"But first," said Ham, "they halted it with shell-fire."
"Yeah. They went aboard, too."
"Made three trips," Ham admitted. "Then they socked a torpedo into her."
"It's kind of crazy," Monk mumbled.
"It's fantastic!" Ham exploded.
"It wouldn't be so hard to savvy," Monk explained, "if there was a war going on."
"But there's no war," Ham finished.
Doc Savage had been taking slow turns about the tiny steel cubicle, putting out a hand to brace himself against the rolling motion. Now he stopped.
"The war," he said, "is the important part, I believe, that we have overlooked."
Monk asked, "What do you mean? There ain't no war."
"But there is fighting going on," Doc reminded.
"Oh, sure. Like that Spanish trouble. And the mess in China. But they haven't declared war—" Monk suddenly stopped speaking, swallowed with difficulty, and gulped, "Blazes!"
The homely chemist ran fingers through his hair and down hard on the back of his neck. His pleasantly terrifying face worked into various shapes.
"Doc!"" he exploded. "I've got it! Fighting in Europe! Undeclared wars. Ships firing on each other. Rumors of pirate submarines. Pirate submarines! Isn't that what you mean?"
"Pirate submarines," Doc Savage said, "is worth a thought."
THE newspapers had carried, from time to time, stories about mysterious attacks on ships which were made by submarines of unidentified nationality. First attacks had occurred in the neighborhood of the Mediterranean. They had not been confined to the Mediterranean entirely, however.
Doc Savage and his two men were silent, considering the various aspects of the startling possibility they had just unearthed.
"Pirates!" Ham exclaimed. "The thing is fantastic! This is the Twentieth Century!"
"It's against my policy to agree with you," Monk told Ham. "But it does look like a fuzzy idea. Pirates went out of style with Captain Kidd."
Doc Savage pointed out some facts. "The nations of Europe," he reminded, "have been engaged in a rearmament and intrigue for a number of years. They are like neighbors who think they're going to have to fight each other, and who have been hiding shotguns and revolvers in their houses, yet trying to keep the neighbors from knowing about the guns or where they are hidden. But nobody wants to start fighting.
"Consequently, when a gun goes off by accident, everybody denies it would have happened in his house. The European nations are like that. It accounts for the air of mystery that surrounded those mysterious submarine attacks."
Monk took several large swallows of air. "Doc, you think some nation is sponsoring these pirates?"
"Not necessarily," the bronze man said. "Suppose some remarkable Twentieth Century pirate got enough men together, got submarines, and started raiding. The international situation is ideal. Suppose the pirate sank a German ship? The Germans would naturally suspect the Russians did it, because Germany is not too friendly with Russia."
The aids discussed this, and began to see how logical it was. It became more likely when Doc pointed out that the pirates of the Spanish Main used exactly the same tactics. Spain was at war with England at the time, and when the Spaniards lost a ship, they were inclined to blame the English.
"But," said Monk, "how do you account for these pirates talking Old-English lingo?"
"And where does this Duchess Portia come in?" Ham added.
"We might sleep on that part of the mystery," Doc suggested.
Doc and his aids got up the next morning, compared results of deliberations, and decided no conclusions had been reached. Things remained at this stalemate for five more days.
ON the evening of the fifth day, the submarine abruptly stopped its characteristic mad rolling, and the engines went dead. A loud rasping of chain from the bows indicated the anchor was being dropped.
"We've made port," Ham decided.
"What port?" Monk inquired unreasonably.
The door of their prison opened as much as the chain would permit.
"I have words for you gentlemen," Prince Albert said from a safe distance up the corridor.