"065 (B056) - The Giggling Ghosts (1938-07) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Some of my boys are waitin' at the bridge with a speedboat," Batavia explained. "They'll pick up Hart."
"And Savage will—"
"He'll probably go on across that bridge," Batavia said.
"When he does, we're rid of him."
This terminated the telephone conversation. Batavia went outdoors to stand in the rain and listen for some sign of Doc Savage. Then he took the motorcycle around to the back, where there was a small wharf; he wheeled the cycle out on the wharf, and toppled it into the water.
"No use leavin' evidence around," he muttered.
The man who had been with Batavia was a squat fellow who wore the coat half of a suit of oilskins. He was stamping his feet and grunting, trying to get a grain of sand out of his eye.
Suddenly there was noise of a boat, and a light out on the water. The bungalow stood beside one of the sea-water tidal creeks which indented the shore of New Jersey.
The boat came to the dock off which Batavia had toppled the motorcycle.
"That you, Batavia?" a voice asked.
"Did you find Hart?" Batavia demanded.
"Yep." The fellow jerked a thumb at Hart, who stared angrily from his seat in the boat.
Batavia said, "We gotta blow from here in a hurry." He dropped down into the boat. Batavia's companion on the motorcycle ride also got in the boat.
Batavia exclaimed aloud, pointed at a strange figure in the boat. "Who's this?" he barked.
Birmingham Lawn, who sat with a gun jammed into his back, said peevishly, "I am Birmingham Lawn, and an innocent bystander in this whole disagreeable matter."
"He's the lunk who owned that storehouse," a man said. "How he got messed up in this, I don't know."
"I am an absolutely innocent bystander," Lawn insisted.
Batavia dropped on a seat in the speedboat.
"Pull her ears down!" he said.
The man running the craft pulled the gas lever down and the speedboat went away from there at a great speed.
A FEW minutes later, Batavia ordered the boat stopped, directed that the bow searchlight be extinguished. The boat then floated silently on black water with rain slopping down. A man bailed occasionally with a tomato can.
From this spot, they could watch the location of both the bungalow and bridge—a bridge where the road spanned the tidal creek. It was too dark to actually see much more than their hands before their faces. The bungalow was in the distance. The bridge was closer at hand.
Suddenly a light appeared at the bungalow. It went off and on repeatedly, and disappeared inside the house, came out, then progressed out on the dock.
"That'll be Doc Savage." Batavia muttered. "He's lookin' around. Fat lot of good it'll do him!"
Doc's distant light vanished and the bronze man's car headlights retreated in the direction of the road.
Batavia laughed shortly.
"The next ten minutes makes or breaks the whole thing!" he said grimly. "If Savage crosses that bridge—"
The speedboat got broadside to the waves and began rocking violently, and Batavia growled an order to the man in the bow to put out a small anchor. Raindrops made a steady sobbing on the water.
William Henry Hart sat very still, scowled, did not say anything at all.
Birmingham Lawn squirmed and tried to say again that he was an innocent bystander, but someone got hold of his ear, twisted it, and snarled an order, and Lawn fell into silence.
"Hey!" Batavia hissed. "Stand by to signal!"
A car was approaching the bridge, headlights pushing a great fog of luminance ahead of it. The bridge was of wood with plank banisters, and it appeared ancient. The car rolled out on the bridge.
"Put a light on the bridge!" Batavia barked.
The speedboat searchlight beam sprang at the bridge in a blinding white streak which landed on a car. Batavia strained his eyes.
"It's Doc Savage's machine!" he yelled.
He whipped out a gun and fired twice at the water—the signal.
The bridge came apart under the car. Came apart with blue-white flash, ear-splitting roar. Parts of the bridge climbed up—up—fragments that swirled around the car.
The car, armor-plate though it was, split; opened like a tin can. Water under the bridge rushed back to leave a great hole. Scores of yards in all directions, concussion knocked trees flat.
The glare of the explosion went away and left blackness, and for moments there was the sound of heavy things falling back and splashing and crashing.
"Whew!" a man in the launch muttered. "We danged near blew this neck of the woods off the map!"
"Pick up the man who fired the charge," Batavia ordered.
The launch angled over to a bank of the creek, where a man stood, the man pumping his ears with the palms of his hands to get rid of the effects of the explosion. At the man's feet lay a generator of the type used to detonate explosive.
The man got in the launch.
"That," he said, "was what I call blowin' your troubles away!"
Chapter VIII. THE EARTHQUAKE-MAKERS
THE most placid hours of the day in New York City are probably those from three o'clock in the morning until dawn. The city does not quiet down much before three o'clock in the morning, even on rainy nights.
It was after three o'clock in the morning and very dark, when Batavia rolled a large sedan to the curb, near an array of imposing stone buildings in uptown New York. The buildings were very large. A name was chiseled on the facade of one of them. The name:
METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
Batavia got out of the car, and three men followed him. All of them wore dark suits, dark-blue shirts, black hats and dark gloves.
Batavia said, "Don't waste any time!"