"123 (B113a) - The Talking Devil (1943-05) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Rotary Harrison was astonished. He was going to New York, as a matter of truth, on what he believed in his heart would be a fruitless attempt to raise money. He had to have the money, because without it the whole structure of his oil enterprises would collapse.
"Why am I going to New York, do they think?" he asked the prisoner.
"To see Doc Savage. To tell him what you know."
Rotary hid his amazement. "So they think that," he said.
He had nearly asked who Doc Savage was, but he caught himself in time. And now, probing in his mind, he decided who Doc Savage must be. He had heard of a rather mysterious man with headquarters in New York by that name. For some reason or other, Rotary recalled, many men in the oil fields had heard of Savage, but he did not know exactly why. He did remember that crooks were supposed to be afraid of Savage, if that meant anything.
Rotary listened to the prisoner talk. The man was getting sickly worried as he watched the hard look on Rotary's face.
He was really a small fry, the prisoner explained. Just a hired hand. He had been dishonorably discharged from the army for assaulting an officer, had served a term in Leavenworth, and had lately been released from prison. He was under bond in a theft case in Missouri, and had sought to pick himself up a bit of lawyer money by taking on this job. A friend, another crook, had recommended him for the job. He had been ordered to seize Rotary and Sis, and hold or kill them, whichever was convenient.
"I don't even know who the head guys are," he insisted.
"But you know some of the small fry?"
"Yes. That Butch, and three or four others."
Rotary asked ominously, "What about Doc Savage?"
The man knew something about that. Evidently he and Butch, or someone else, had talked about it.
"They have a big scheme whereby Doc Savage is going to be made to take the blame for the whole thing," the prisoner explained.
"Why pick on Savage?"
The man said, "That's the first question that occurred to me, too. But Savage is made for the part. He is a mysterious figure. Then, there's all these brain operations he has performed, and the men who disappear after he gets his hands on them."
"Men who disappear when Savage gets hold of them?" Rotary echoed, and his surprise got in his voice.
"Crooks."
THE thing as a whole did not make much sense to Rotary Harrison.
He didn't have the real explanation behind it all, he felt.
He was convinced, though, that this hireling he had captured did not know the real answer.
Rotary sank in the seat beside Sis. He told her, pretty much as the prisoner had given it, what he had learned. "Make sense to you?" he finished.
Sis was thoughtful. "Looks to me as if our trouble is just part and parcel of a great mess of trouble that's cooking for a lot of folks," she decided.
"Sis," said Rotary, "this makes me look at our own trouble in a new light."
"Just how?"
"This is our situation: Six months ago we borrowed a mess of money from a New York outfit owned by a man named Montague Ogden. But Ogden himself didn't handle the deal. It was handled by Sam Joseph, who was Ogden's office manager, and seemed to run everything for Ogden."
Rotary Harrison made a grim jaw for a moment.
"Our deal with Sam Joseph was witnessed by Duster Jones," he continued. "The deal included an agreement that the loan was to be renewed on our request in six months, and it was a written agreement. Duster Jones witnessed it. We had a copy, and Sam Joseph had a copy."
His scowl darkened.
"Now Sam Joseph wires us there was no such agreement," he growled. "Our copy of it disappeared - stolen probably. And poor Duster Jones, the only man who could prove there was an agreement for me, is killed. That means this Sam Joseph can demand full payment of the loan in three weeks. I haven't got the money. I have got no more chance than a rabbit of getting it. He'll foreclose, ruin me, and grab control of my company. As soon as word gets around I can't meet my obligation - and he'll see that the word gets around - the stock of my company will go to hell for cheap."
Sis was also grim.
She said, "Dad, I wonder if they could have killed Duster Jones because he witnessed that agreement."
"Probably," Rotary agreed.
"What about this Doc Savage, the man they're trying to hang it all onto?" Sis asked.
"He might want to know what's goin' on," Rotary said. "So we better hightail it into New York and give him the news."
Rotary went back and tied the prisoner in a somewhat more comfortable position. He talked with the man for some time and the fellow poured out all he knew with frightened eagerness, but it was nothing more than he had already said.
"Ever hear of a man named Sam Joseph?" Rotary demanded.
The prisoner had.
"He the big boss?" Rotary asked.
The other didn't know. The killer named Butch had just mentioned Sam Joseph, but the prisoner couldn't remember in what connection.
In order to fly over the Missouri River and frighten the prisoner, they had flown south from the route laid out for them as a permissible course by the army authorities. Sis turned the plane north and got on the course again. It was the regular airways route, Kansas City to Chicago, part of the distance.
Rotary consulted the map. "Here's a place named Millard," he said. "There's a civil airways radio station there."
He got out a notebook and scribbled on it, tore out the page on which he had written, and folded it around a five-dollar bill. Then he tied them both around a monkey wrench with a piece of string.
Rotary said, "0. K., fly low over the radio station. Make the engine sound as if we're in trouble."
Sis followed instructions. A man, probably an operator, came out and stood watching them.
Rotary tossed the paper and the bill, tied to the monkey wrench, overside. The man below began walking toward the falling object.
"What was the idea?" Sis asked.
"Just a piece of insurance," Rotary explained. "Cautious in my old age. That's me."
IT could not have been more than three minutes later when a plane came piling out of a cloud a little ahead of them. It was fast. It bored toward them.
"Look," Sis gasped. "That's the same plane that followed us from Tulsa to Kansas City!"
"This is the regular route the army assigns to civilian planes," Rotary said grimly. "So he just flew up here and waited around for us. Where's that rifle?"