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

"I don't see anythin' to get in a sweat about." The other man shrugged. "I think you and the boss, and everybody else, are gettin' steamed up too much about this Doc Savage."
Batavia put his fists on his hips and looked utterly disgusted.
"Those have been the last words of more than one smart cluck," he growled. "This Savage is worse than lightnin'; you can generally tell by lookin' at the sky when there's any chance of lightnin' strikin'."
The other subsided.
Batavia said, "We gotta get the girl!"
"What about this Monk and Ham?"
"We'll tie a rock to 'em, and drop 'em in the bay!" Batavia said.
While the other men got guns and flashlights, Batavia pulled up his left trousers leg and examined a skinned area on his shin. The damage had been done when he had leaped from one elevator to another in the skyscraper which housed Doc Savage's headquarters.
MONK and Ham had poked around in the ramshackle boathouse and found nothing.
So they stood for a few moments and abused each other.
"You and your imagination!" Monk piped disgustedly. "Saw a man, did you?"
"You dish-faced ape," Ham said, "I did see someone!"
They went back to their car, and peered around the corner of the building which bore the sign "Live Bait."
The girl's taxicab was driving away.
Miami Davis went down a rickety dock and stopped beside a small schooner which was held alongside the dock by springlines. She picked up an oar and whacked the deck of the schooner.
"Hey, on board!" she called.
The schooner was about fifty feet long, two-masted, a pleasure type of craft. It was gaff-rigged. Also, it was elderly, but well kept. There were patched canvas covers over the furled sails to keep out the rain, and a cockpit awning that was also patched.
The girl gave the deck another whack.
"Hart!" she cried. "Are you aboard?"
Miami Davis got on the schooner. She was evidently accustomed to boats, because she used care that her high heels did not cut the deck. She went to the cabin hatch, opened it and entered. The cabin of the schooner was neat, and arranged in a way which showed the boat-owner was no landlubber.
The girl searched the boat. She looked in a little stateroom aft, in the galley, the forecastle; then she came back and slumped down on a transom seat in the cabin.
There was no one aboard the boat.
Miami Davis had turned on the electric lights in the craft. She let these burn.
MONK and Ham had followed the girl to the boat by now. Also, they had been able to tell, from the way lights had gone on in the boat, that the girl had searched the craft.
Standing on the dock, they could see her crouched tensely on the transom seat. The two aids retired to the shore end of the dock for a conference.
"This is a goofy business!" Monk complained.
"How do you mean?" Ham asked.
"It don't make sense. Ghosts that giggle. Is that sense?"
"We haven't dug into it yet, stupid!"
Monk said, "One of us better report to Doc. He said he wanted to know where the girl went."
"Go ahead, dunce," Ham directed. "It will be a pleasure to get you out of sight."
Monk walked away, rather resembling an ambling wart in the murk. He grinned as he moved along; he was always happy when involved in some kind of mysterious excitement. To be sure, Monk didn't know what they were mixed up in. That bothered him.
When Monk reached the car, he switched on the radio receiver with which the car was equipped.
"Doc!" he said into the microphone.
"Yes, Monk?" Doc's voice answered almost at once.
Monk advised the whereabouts of the spot to which they had trailed the girl.
"Look, Doc," the homely chemist added, "what's this all about?"
"There is no way of telling, just yet," the bronze man explained.
Monk was not entirely satisfied. He rubbed his jaw, scratched his nubbin of a head, and smoothed the bristling hair down on his nape.
"What do you want us to do?" he asked.
"Keep an eye on the girl," Doc Savage said. "And eavesdrop."
"Eavesdrop?"
"Try to find out why the fact that she found a wrist watch made her take flight," Doc explained. "In case you can't learn anything by eavesdropping, you might grab the girl."
Monk grinned.
"Grabbin' that girl would be a pleasure!" he chuckled. "She's a looker, what I mean!"
That ended the radio conference.
Chapter V. THE JAMEROO
MONK closed the car doors, locked them, and went back to the dock where the schooner was tied up. He walked out on the wharf confidently, came to a patch of gloom behind a piling, about where he had left Ham, and stopped.
"Ham," he said, "Doc says—"
The bunch of shadow that the chemist had thought was Ham straightened. Monk suddenly found a gun jammed into his middle. A gun snout that made a rasping noise as it hit his belt buckle.