"072 (B059) - The Yellow Cloud (1939-02) - Evelyn Coulson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"We haven't got any ambulance, I tell you," Monk said.
The girl looked at them tensely, wondering what to do.
"We'll walk then," she said. "Get going."
They walked down the main road and turned into a side lane at the girl's command. They passed a house, and a dog came out of the yard and followed them, barking violently, but went back. It was not very dark. There was much traffic on the road they had left, but none on this lane.
They came to a spot which was lonesome.
"I better search you here," the girl said.
She went through their pockets while they held their arms high. She made a little mound of their belongings on the road, then struck a match for a light. She examined the cards, looked at the names on envelopes. She straightened, looking foolish.
"I made a mistake," she said.
THE girl did not point her gun at them any longer. She rolled it in her helmet, uncomfortably.
She explained, "When I told my story back at the airport, they thought I was crazy. I heard them say something about sending for somebody to take me to a psychopathic ward for a medical examination. A psychopathic ward is an insane asylum, isn't it?"
"Something like that," Monk said.
"I thought you were two attendants who had come to get me," the girl added. "I was determined not to go. When you came, they just said there were two men to see me and shoved me in that room, so I—well—"
Monk and Ham stood and squinted in the growing darkness, neither knowing what to say.
"We thought you were a man," Monk muttered finally.
The girl picked up the things she had taken from their pockets and began handing them back.
"You are associated with Doc Savage?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I have heard of him," she said. "Quite famous, isn't he?"
Monk asked, "What about the yellow cloud?"
The girl shuddered. "We were flying at about ten thousand feet. Chester's plane was about a mile ahead of mine—"
"Who's Chester?" Ham asked.
"Chester Palmer, my brother," the girl explained. "He was about a mile ahead. We were flying over a cloud ceiling. This cloud just seemed to jump up, yellow and grim, from the ordinary clouds below and envelop my brother's plane. It was like—hard to describe—as if a puff of yellow smoke had been blown up."
Ham asked, "Did this happen in the daytime?"
"Yes."
"Then what occurred?
The girl stuffed her flying helmet in one pocket of her laced whipcord breeches and shoved the gun into another pocket. She took out a handkerchief and began to choke it.
"I got close to the yellow thing—cloud—" she explained. "It jumped at me. That is, one whole section of the cloud just kind of spurted at me. I banked plane, barely got away. It chased me for at least fifteen miles and almost overtook me. I never saw my brother or his plane again."
"How fast did you fly," Ham asked, "when it was chasing you?"
"About two hundred and fifty miles an hour."
"And this yellow cloud kept up with you?"
"Yes."
"What was it?" Monk asked.
The girl took a long time to get an answer. "I don't know," she said.
The night had been still, but now several small frogs—or they might have been crickets—set up an orchestration in the ditch water along the edge of the lane. The dog that had pursued them came snuffling down the road, barked three times, then turned and ran back again.
"Now you know," the girl said, "why I thought you were two men who had come to take me to an insane asylum."
"Was this an army plane your brother was flying?" Monk asked suddenly.
"Oh, no. Just an ordinary three-place, open-cockpit commercial job."
Monk said, "Come over here, Ham."
The two men moved down the lane a short distance and the girl remained behind until she was out of earshot.
"It's so utterly screwy," Monk muttered.
"You're telling me!" Ham said. "But what do we do?"
Monk had something on his mind—he was thinking back. During the last two or three adventures in which Doc Savage had been involved, Monk and Ham had been unfortunate. They had fallen for feminine wiles. Three times in a row, a pretty girl associated with the enemy had made fools out of them. Doc Savage had not said much about it, but they suspected he had thought a great deal.
"You thinking about what I am?" Monk asked.
"I am thinking," Ham said, "that we had better look into this girl's story."
"That's the idea," Monk agreed. "This time, we don't fall for the first pretty face that comes along."
"You think she might be trying to pull a phony on us?"
"I don't know. Nothing about this thing so far is even believable, much less making sense."
They went back to the girl.
"I hope," Monk told her, "that you don't mind being investigated."
MONK and Ham never did quite figure out how that next thing managed to happen to them so unexpectedly. They were taken by complete surprise. Maybe it was because the girl was so pretty that they couldn't keep their minds on anything else.