"075 (B042) - The Gold Ogre (1939-05) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"It is not at all like Thomas to go away without a word," Mary Worth said. "I am sure there must be a good reason."
Later, she said, "Please, couldn't we keep my son Don from learning his poor father had disappeared? Don is working his way at summer camp."
The summer camp authorities coцperated, so Don Worth did not learn anything about the mystery just yet.
The airport men were convinced there must be a reason, too. But what was it? They didn't know. They couldn't find any clues. No abandoned wells, or old cisterns or anything like that.
Two days passed and everybody got worried.
The police had taken up the matter, and teletyped a description of missing Thomas Worth to every place where they thought it would do any good. The police were also keeping a sharp lookout for bodies that might float up in the lake, and the State troopers were giving tramps close examinations.
The vanishing of Thomas Worth got in the newspapers in a small way. The missing man was not an important person, so the story was a mere paragraph in a few of the metropolitan papers, to which it was carried by the wire services. Probably if Thomas Worth had been a night watchman for anything but an airport, his vanishing would not even have seen print outside Crescent City. There is still something romantic about airports, and everything connected with them.
The news item about Thomas Worth landed on the desk of Doc Savage.
It did not do any good, which was too bad. Doc Savage's assistants merely kept a clipping file of anything that seemed unusual. This clipping was one among many. It merely looked like the case of a poor man who had skipped out and abandoned his family—judging from the clipping's mere statement that an airport watchman named Thomas Worth had disappeared in Crescent City.
So Doc Savage showed no interest in the Thomas Worth matter at this point. Doc Savage was a remarkable individual, a man of astounding abilities, and also a man who followed one of the strangest of careers—but he was no clairvoyant. He was not superhuman. He didn't know that Thomas Worth had met a little gold ogre of a caveman in the darkness near the Crescent City airport.
So Doc Savage just went on about his business, which was a very strange business indeed.
FOUR days later. Not midnight this time, but rather close to it. Ten minutes after eleven that night.
Mary Worth, the wife of missing Thomas Worth, heard a rasping sound on the front porch. Mary Worth had been sitting, hands clasped lightly, waiting without knowing what she was waiting for. She sprang up.
"Who is it?" she demanded nervously.
The dragging sound was repeated, followed by a low whimpering noise. It might have been one of the neighbors' dogs lying down on the porch and whining, but Mary Worth opened the door anyway.
Mary Worth immediately fainted.
The Worths could barely afford electric lights, and they had to burn twenty-five-watt and thirty-watt bulbs to save money, and these did not give much light—but enough to show Mary Worth what made her faint.
Later she regained consciousness—how much later it was, she didn't know—and she dragged what she had found on the porch into the house, without knowing how she managed that, either. It was all confused and terrible. She must have sobbed the whole time, because she realized later that her face was wet.
It was her missing husband she had found. At last he opened his eyes. He seemed to want to speak, but restrained himself, as if afraid to say what was in his mind.
Thomas Worth drank of a broth his terror-stricken wife made him; obviously he'd had nothing to eat for some time. He rested, waited for the broth to give him strength, in the meantime letting his wife bathe and dress the strange wounds on his body.
"Mary, do any of the neighbors know I have come back?"
Those were his first words.
Mary Worth shook her head. She had been too flustered to call the neighbors.
"Don't tell them," Thomas Worth said weakly, "until you hear my story. And maybe we had better not tell anyone my story."
"Not tell anyone!" Mary Worth gasped. "Why?"
Thomas Worth muttered, "Wait until you hear it, and you will understand."
He stirred a little, then groaned involuntarily. The flesh was cut deeply in circles around his wrists, and his hands were badly skinned, as if he had been bound, and had torn himself free. There were many other cuts and abrasions on his body. But the bruises were the worst. He was bruised from head to foot, not large bruises, but hideous ones; many of them had started to fester.
"What happened to you, Tom?" his wife asked with tense anxiety.
Thomas Worth lay back on the pillow, clenched his fists against the pain, and began his story.
"This will sound utterly insane, Mary, so please just sit and listen until I finish," he said. "I was making my midnight round at the airport, and I found a hideous little gold man in the darkness. He wore no clothes except a loincloth, and he carried a club. He looked like the pictures of old-time cavemen. In height, he reached only a little above my knees. The gold-colored dwarf struck me with his club and I became unconscious instantly."
Thomas Worth shut his eyes and shuddered.
"When I regained consciousness," he continued, "I was in a great stone cavern of a place. There were many of the little golden ogres present. I was a prisoner. I was tied. I don't know how many of the hideous dwarfs there were, but there must have been a lot of them, although I never saw over a dozen together in a group at any one time. They tortured me."
He saw that his bewildered wife was about to speak, and he shook his head at her.
"The gold ogres beat me with their clubs," he said. "It was horrible. They could speak English, although I could hardly understand some of them. They were going to do something horrible to me. I was to be beaten for days, first, then their medicine man was going to put some kind of terrible spell on me. I don't know what they meant by the spell."
Thomas Worth suddenly shoved himself up tensely on the cot. His face was a picture of horror.
"Mary—that wasn't all!" he gasped. "They planned something hideous! Against Crescent City. Against everybody living here! I don't know what it is! I just heard them talk."
Thomas Worth shuddered again, then turned over and buried his face in his hands,
"I escaped," he said, "before the medicine man got around to doing whatever he was going to do to me."
THE quiet of the night was very still in the modest home of Thomas and Mary Worth. The alarm clock had stopped, as it had a habit of doing, and once in a while the kitchen faucet dripped with a distinct splatter of a sound. In the neighborhood somewhere, a radio played, and a dog began barking furiously, then stopped.
Thomas Worth said, "Mary."
"Yes?"
"Now you understand why I didn't want the neighbors to hear my story."
Mary Worth nodded miserably. "They wouldn't believe it."
"Worse. They would think I was crazy."
"What about telling the police?" Mary Worth asked uneasily.
"Do you think they'll have me committed to an insane asylum?" Thomas Worth asked.
Mary Worth began to tremble; suddenly she burst into tears and buried her face in the worn cover which she had spread over her husband.
"Oh, Tom, Tom! What horrible thing is wrong? What did happen to you? Think, Tom. Think! Try to tell me what really did happen to you!"
Thomas Worth shuddered.
"See," he said. "Even you don't believe me."