"067 (B083) - The Red Terrors (1938-09) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Doctor Collendar has offices in this building," the bronze man explained. "His rent was paid, and I understand they are still open."
The lobby director said Doctor Collendar's suite was 2117. The elevator operator recognized Doc Savage and ran past the floor in his excitement. The door of 2117 was unlocked.
"Blazes!" Monk ejaculated.
The interior of Doctor Collendar's office suite looked as though it had been the scene of one of the free-for-all fights which always came at the climax of movies fifteen years ago.
Chairs were smashed, tables upset, the desk upended, a spittoon bent, and the typewriter was on the floor in a nest of its own parts.
"This makes two fights," Monk remarked. "One was in the street near the steamship pier last night."
Doc Savage went over and examined the dampness of ink stains where a bottle had upset on the rug.
"This one happened about three hours ago," the bronze man judged from the wetness of the stains.
He picked up the typewriter. After he had studied it a moment, the strange, trilling sound came into being and ran up and down the musical scale. It followed no definite tune, and it had ventriloquial quality which made its exact source difficult to determine.
Monk and Ham knew it was the small sound which Doc Savage made in moments of intense mental activity.
Doc placed the wreck of the typewriter on the desk.
"This might interest you," he said.
Monk and Ham came over to look. Astonishment took them both with a jerk.
"Blazes!" Monk grunted.
"By Jove!" Ham exclaimed.
With the point of a pen, Monk lifted a strip of rubbery red substance from a sharp edge of the typewriter. He spread this out and worried it with the pen point until he had it made into an irregularly shaped ribbon. The color of the stuff was deep scarlet.
"It's a piece of hide," Monk muttered,
" off something red!"
DOC and his aids peered at the piece of skin. Then they looked around the room some more. There were no more pieces of red hide.
"But there's bloodstains on the floor," Ham pointed out with his sword cane.
"It must have been some fight," Monk said wistfully. "I kinda wish I had been in it."
Next to quarreling with Ham and making love to a pretty girl, Monk liked a good fight best.
They went back to the piece of red hide.
"It ain't human hide," Monk announced in a queer voice. "It's got a different texture."
"Maybe it's only dyed red," Ham suggested.
Doc Savage made an examination with a powerful pocket magnifier.
"The pigmentation permeates the tissue," he remarked.
"You sound like Johnny," Monk complained. "What do you mean?"
"The skin does not seem to be dyed," Doc said.
"To sum this up," Monk said, "we know there was a fight and somebody threw a typewriter at somethin', and a piece of the somethin's hide stuck to the typewriter."
"It's a pleasure to notice you have it clear in your mind," Ham said. "As usual, you're mixed up."
Doc Savage sprinkled dark fingerprint powder on the papers on the desk and put white powder on the furniture and desk. Then he blew away surplus powder and examined the prints through a pocket magnifier.
"There are three sets of recent fingerprints," he announced.
Monk said, "I've got a photostat of Doctor Collendar's fingerprints here. Got them from our information file on the fellow."
The homely chemist handed over a standard police fingerprint card, and Doc Savage compared this with the tent prints in the office.
"Doctor Collendar was in this office during the fight," the bronze man stated. "Here are his fingerprints where he apparently picked up the typewriter to throw it."
"That accounts for one set of fingerprints," Monk said. "What about the other two?"
The telephone was loose from its wires as if it had been used as a club in the fight. Doc Savage indicated the fingerprints of the person who had wielded the instrument.
"Notice something unusual about these?"
Monk peered through the magnifying glass. "Why, heck! These fingerprints ain't got no whorls or lines. They look like they'd been made by gloves. But gloves don't leave prints!"
"Those prints," Doc Savage said, "were probably made by someone who has had a plastic surgery operation to make identification by fingerprints impossible."
"I thought the whorls and lines always grew back on the finger tips after such operations," Monk said.
"Not at once. Fingerprint identification can be prevented for a year or two by that method."
"Crooks," Monk said, "are the only people who want their fingerprints wiped out. Maybe a crook swung the telephone."
"You're very bright to-day," Ham told Monk.
"What about the third and last set of fingerprints?" Monk asked.
"The third set," Doc said, "will have to be checked."
Doc photographed the third set of prints and sent them to the Department of Justice in Washington. Word came back that the prints were not on record there. The police of New York, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Boston and other cities did not have the prints on file.
The next day, the fingerprints were found in the files of the American Union of Deep-Sea Divers. The prints belonged to a diver named Harry Day.
After he had made some inquiries about Harry Day, Monk came into Doc's headquarters looking queer.