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

"Pipe down!" said a strange voice.
Monk peered, trying to make out the features of the speaker. He got a slap in the face for his pains.
"Where's Ham?" Monk gulped.
Considering that during the last hour he had stated at least a dozen times that he intended to tear Ham limb from limb, Monk's anxiety was inconsistent.
"Shut up!" said the man with the gun.
Men appeared on the schooner. They had been hiding behind the deckhouse and dinghy. The men climbed onto the dock.
"Search this clunk!" ordered Monk's captor.
"Sure, Batavia," one man said.
Monk swelled indignantly as he was searched, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
"Now," Batavia told Monk, "you get on the boat."
Monk climbed down on the boat and entered the cabin.
"Ham!" the homely chemist yelled.
Ham was lying on a bunk, motionless. Monk leaped to him, clutched the dapper lawyer's wrist, and was relieved to discover pulse. Ham was alive! More than that, he was in the act of regaining consciousness, it appeared, for he squirmed, blinked open his eyes and focused them on Monk. As soon as he had organized himself, Ham began to scowl.
"What's the idea," he snarled, "sneaking up behind and banging me on the head?"
"Listen, Blackstone," Monk said, "I didn't bang you—"
Batavia came over, gouged Monk with the gun muzzle and said, "Sit down and shut up!"
Monk sat down on the transom seat near the girl.
Miami Davis was tied hand and foot. She was trembling, but she made no sound because of the adhesive tape which crisscrossed her lips.
Batavia moved toward the companionway, his slicker rustling.
"I'll see if I can get hold of the chief," he said to his men. "Gotta find out what to do with these three."
Batavia climbed the companionway and went out.
Monk said, "What I want to know is about them ghosts—"
A man came over and showed Monk another gun. "Listen, you gimlet-eyed baboon, you're on the spot! Keep that ugly trap shut!"
Monk subsided.
Rain washed the cabin roof, sluiced along the decks, and the wind slapped the halliards against the mast. Little waves gurgled like running water along the hull.
BATAVIA came back a little while later. He was scowling.
"We croak 'em later," he said. "I couldn't get hold of the chief."
Monk frowned at the girl, Miami Davis.
"When you talked to Doc," he accused, "you left out some stuff."
The young woman nodded. Her mouth seemed to be too tight with strain to let words come out.
Monk said, "That was a mistake. Now we're in a jameroo."
Batavia took a fid out of a rack. The fid was a steel rod a foot long, half an inch in diameter at one end and tapering to a needle point. The fid was used to separate the strands of rope while splicing.
Batavia waved the fid under Monk's nose. "Another blat out of you, and I'll peg your tongue down with this fid!"
"Why don'tcha let us loose?" Monk asked hopefully.
"Brother," Batavia said, "you've been unlucky. You got messin' around with somethin' too big for you."
"Too big?"
Batavia poked Monk in the chest with the sharp end of the fid.
"You're just a beetle," he said, "that got in front of the wrong steam roller."
Batavia then gave a number of orders.
"We'll get rid of their car first thing," he said.
A man muttered, "Ain't Doc Savage liable to trace these two guys?"
"We're going to make some preparation for Doc Savage!" Batavia said.
Batavia had a craggy face. All angles of his face were sharp; the nose was also, and so was his jaw; his eyes had a piercing intentness, and his ears were pointed. He was either darkly tanned, or of Latin extraction. Beside his fondness for grays in dress, he had one other principal character tag: This other was his cigars.
Batavia's cigars were thin, hardly half ordinary thickness, and about two inches longer than the usual cigar. The ends were equipped with cork tips.
Batavia removed the Cellophane wrapping from one of his cigars, put it in his mouth and tried to light it with one of the modern flameless type of lighters designed for lighting cigarettes alone. The lighter didn't fire the cigar immediately.
"Damn this gadget!" Batavia complained.
He finally got his cigar going. Then he took a five-yard roll of one-inch adhesive tape out of his slicker pocket. Strips of this tape, he crisscrossed over the mouths of Monk and Ham.
"Adenoids!" Monk croaked wildly just before the tape was slapped on his lips.
Bad adenoid cases will suffocate to death if gagged.
Monk then pretended to be unable to breathe through his nostrils. He faked suffocation. He flounced around, made whistling noises through his nose, blew out his cheeks, did his best to make his face go purple.