"071 (B066) - Mad Mesa (1939-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

A few yards away, just out of earshot, lay Heek and the waitress. They were bound and gagged.
Doc said, "There is no need of letting the waitress and Heek overhear plans."
"I'll say not," Monk agreed vehemently. "And we gotta hang onto that waitress. Boy, would she have a story to sell Dr. Joiner now. Whoever the guy is, he'd pay plenty to know we're alive."
Renny chuckled. "I wonder what they'd do to Heek if they found out how Doc got his ropes loose, then knocked Heek senseless when he climbed in the truck," he whispered. He added: "But then, the other three were more to blame than Heek. They didn't know what had happened. They thought it was Heek talkin' when Doc imitated Heek's voice, and volunteered to drive the truck into the crack in that burnin' coalfield. They stood there as trustful as babes while Doc faked gettin' the truck stuck, so we could climb out."
The big-fisted engineer chuckled again. "Holy cow! What a case of creeps they got when Doc faked the last cries of Heek burnin' to death."
Renny's whisper was almost as bullthroated as his voice.
"If you don't want 'em to hear you over in Kentucky," Long Tom breathed, "you'd better tune down."
Doc Savage interrupted to summarize the situation.
"We have done some rushing around, and nearly got ourselves killed," he said. "But we have actually accomplished little."
"Me, I've accomplished something," Monk muttered. "I've dang well proved to my satisfaction that somethin' mysterious is goin' on. Also, that the brains behind it dang well don't overlook any bets. Also that we'd dang well better be careful."
"Maybe you've dang well got some idea what we'd better do next?" the dapper Ham suggested to the homely chemist.
Doc Savage spoke, quiet-voiced.
"Suppose we split," Doc said, "You five trail those three men waiting in the depot. Find Tom Idle's sister, and do whatever else you can."
"What about you, Doc?"
"I'll put Heek and the waitress in college," Doc Savage explained. "Then I'll fly to the Utah State Penitentiary and look into the mystery of how a man named Tom Idle could turn into an outlaw named Hondo Weatherbee."
"We'll keep in touch with each other by radio, as usual?"
"Right."
DOC SAVAGE and his men had referred to the "college" casually. No one else would have been prosaic about the place. But then, very few knew the "college" existed. The newspapers didn't, certainly. Or they would have broken out the type they used for war, earthquakes and the World Series.
The "college" was a cluster of grim, graystone buildings located in the unpopulated mountainous area of upstate New York, and it was surrounded by several different, high man-proof fences bearing signs that said:
WARNING
GERM RESEARCH INSTITUTION
—YOU MAY CATCH A DISEASE—
KEEP OUT
The warning signs were mildly misleading, for the disease that was treated was not contagious, not by germs. The disease was crime. Such criminals as Doc Savage captured were taken to the place, where they underwent delicate brain operations at the hands of specialists whom Doc Savage himself had trained. The operations wiped out all the patient's memory of the past.
Permanent mental amnesia was created surgically. After this, the patients were trained to hate crime, and were taught trades at which they could earn honest livings. Finally, they were discharged, specialists in some profession, with no knowledge of having been criminals in the past.
As far as the outside world was concerned, existence of the "college" was a secret.
Doc Savage landed his plane—he had taken the small plane, let his associates use the large one—at the "college" while it was still dark. There was a lighted landing field, and after Doc set his ship down, several quiet and efficient young men helped unload Heek and the waitress.
"The girl," Doc said, "will go through in the usual way."
The waitress was not much of a criminal, and she had received such a scare that she would probably reform. But the course of training would benefit her, so Doc was putting her through the place.
"We'll use truth serum on the man, first," Doc announced.
The administration of the truth serum was a success. Sometimes it wasn't. The stuff was given as a gas, the same way a surgeon uses an anaesthetic, and its effect was to stupefy the victim so that he could not consciously refrain from answering incriminating questions.
About Heek, Doc learned:
Heek was a local Ohio hooligan, with a record of two prison terms. Eleven years ago, however, Heek had taken an Idaho vacation to permit the police to forget him, and while in Idaho he had associated himself with an outlaw gang dominated by a man named Jan Hile and another man named Hondo Weatherbee.
Pickings in the wild and woolly West had been thin, however, and Heek had returned to Ohio, where he'd led a typical crook's life—in jail and out, hiding from police, double-crossed by fellow crooks, and suffering from disease—until as recently as yesterday. Yesterday, who should appear but Heek's old Idaho outlaw acquaintance, Jan Hile, who at once hired Heek to take part in the murder of the Doc Savage group and the waitress.
About the mystery, Doc learned:
Nothing. Heek didn't know what was afoot. The total of his knowledge was that he had been hired to commit a murder by an old-time outlaw associate named Jan Hile.
Jan Hile, of course, was the same man as Dr. Joiner.
Having expended six hours in obtaining this negligible information, Doc Savage was not enthusiastic about the progress.
"Go ahead with the treatment," the bronze man said.
So the specialists took Heek into the operation room and prepared to make him forever forget that he had been a crook.
Doc Savage left by plane.
GREAT SALT LAKE glistened in the afternoon sun as Doc Savage slanted his plane down the side of the last black mountain. The salt flats, the same flats which displaced Daytona Beach as the rendezvous of speed demons trying to set world automobile records, were an expanse as flat as a marble table-top. Altogether, it was a very bright, cheerful afternoon as Doc put the plane down between the red-and-white striped poles that bordered the Salt Lake City airport.
He did not alight at once. He used the plane's powerful short-wave radio.
"Monk," he said.
"Yes, Doc," Monk's small squeaky voice answered over the radio.
"Where are you?"
"We're on a westbound passenger train that just pulled out of Marceline, Missouri," Monk explained. "Our three guys are in the car in front. They still don't dream they're being followed. I've got this portable radio in a drawing room."
"Tom Idle's sister?" Doc asked.
"Somewhere ahead, the three men are going to meet someone who is holding the girl. What progress have you made, Doc?"
"Practically none."