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

Also, Doc Savage was not a man who sought publicity, and items about him were scarce, so, accordingly, their news value was greater.
Doc Savage, as a matter of fact, had antagonized some of the newspapers at various times by refusing to give out information concerning his activities. One paper in particular, the Morning Blade, a blaring tabloid which featured a stable of columnists who were unreliable sensationalists, did not have a great love for Doc Savage.
It was the Morning Blade in which the black-type editorial said:
We know all about the laws of libel and slander. Sometimes we wonder if these laws don't protect people who shouldn't be protected.
Is it libel and slander to ask some questions?
Question one: Why is this fellow Doc Savage so secretive about himself that he is known as the Man of Mystery? What has he to hide?
Question two: What does Doc Savage do with the men he seizes, the men he says are criminals. (He alone says they are criminals; isn't it the right of our courts to judge those things?) What happens to these men? They disappear. Their old friends never see them again.
Question three: What is this mysterious "college" which Doc Savage maintains, of which rumors are sometimes heard? Has it horrors to hide?
Ham Brooks came in with this in his hands, a scowl on his face, and said, "Blast them! I think we could stick them for libel and slander on the strength of that. Doc, shall we try it?"
Doc Savage shook his head, but he was thoughtful. On the big inlaid table which was one of the principal articles of furniture in the reception room of his eighty-sixth floor headquarters, lay the other metropolitan newspapers, all of which contained items about what had happened last night at Madison Square Garden.
"Ham," Doc said quietly, "it seems I made two mistakes."
"One of them when you operated on Sam Joseph?"
"Yes."
"What was the other one?"
"When I overlooked your suggestion that something might not be on the up-and-up about this thing," Doc said.
Ham grinned. "We better get to looking into it, eh?"
Doc nodded.
"We better," he said.
Another interested reader of the newspapers that day was Butch, the timid-looking soul. He read them and rubbed his hands together in glee.
He carried his newspapers and his delight to Dr. Nedden. "It's beginning to roll," Butch said. "You think we ought to have another meeting?"
Dr. Nedden was worried. He had not been sleeping well and was losing weight. He was getting peevish.
"Call a meeting?" he said, and sneered. "Are you forgetting it is the man we work for who calls the meetings?"
Butch grinned. "That's right. 0. K., then. I just got too happy over this. But it's sure rolling now, ain't h?"
Dr. Nedden looked at the newspapers, wet his lips and admitted, "It's rolling, all right."
"What are you afraid of, doctor? You look like a singed cat."
"It's trying to perpetrate a thing like this on a man like Doc Savage," muttered Dr. Nedden.
"Hell, it's so big it can't fail."
"Savage will start investigating before long."
"It'll be built up too much for him to stop it by then. And he doesn't know what is behind it. He'll never guess. The thing is so unexpected that it would be the last thing in the world he would look for."
Dr. Nedden nodded. "The murder doesn't help my sleep." he confessed.
"Murder? Oh, that." Butch laughed. "Didn't you know the Harrisons were going to be taken care of tonight?"
"More murders?"
Butch grinned. "Ever hear of fighting fire with fire, doctor?"
"Where will it be done?"
"Kansas City," Butch told him. "Our man is waiting at the airport there now."
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*Early in his career. Doc Savage recognized the need of some permanently effective, but at the same time humane method of treatment for criminals which he captured. The numbers of these criminals as time went on would he considerable. So. out of his skill as a brain surgeon, and his understanding of human psychology. Doc evolved a method of permanently curing criminals of crime. He established an institution in a remote Section of upstate New York, the mountainous area which is surprisingly one of the most deserted sections of the United States. Here he installed brain specialists which he had trained. When he sent a criminal to the "College," the routine does not vary greatly. First the "student" undergoes a brain operation which Doc perfected, and which wires out all memory of past. The criminal, having lost all vicious effects of environment, is then 'training to make a useful and comfortable living at some worthy occupation. The results of Doc's experiment have been remarkable. It was his dream. and still is. to have such a method of criminal treatment widely accepted and practiced. for he feels it is one of the few sure cures for habitual criminality. However, the treatment is far too drastic for public acceptance. It is a hundred or two hundred years ahead of its time, probably, like other things which the bronze man uses regularly.
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Chapter V. MURDER AND KANSAS CITY

R. J. HARRISON had been christened Ranzo John Harrison in his cradle, and he had come to hate the name "Ranzo" and the nickname "Randy" so thoroughly that he never told anyone his two christened names if he could help it. He was now called, and had been called for years, Rotary Harrison. Strangely enough, he did not object to Rotary. He was even proud of it.
The name came from the so-called rotary method of drilling oil wells, as opposed to the cable tool method. Rotary Harrison had been a pioneer in the mid-continent oil fields in the use of rotary drilling.
Rotary Harrison was a big man physically, a hard-hammered giant of a fellow, now a little more thin than he had once been, but with the hard, solid look of a frontiersman in his blue eyes and the same quality in his fists.
He had made and lost ten or a dozen fortunes, and they had been oilmen's fortunes. Anything less than five or ten million dollars is not considered much of a fortune in the oil business. The fortunes Rotary Harrison had made and lost had been big ones. He had another big one now, and again he was on the verge of losing it.
He was a spectacular old reprobate. His private airplanes, for example, were always the fastest and most luxurious.
The one he was flying now was a sample.
His daughter, Sister Harrison, was sitting back in the cabin.
Sis was holding a .250/3O00-caliber rifle equipped with a telescopic sight.
Sis was on the spectacular side herself, being a long blond girl who won tennis cups, prizes for riding horses in rodeos, and once, a complimentary squib from a Broadway columnist for knocking a leering stew bum into the middle of next week with a left. These were accomplishments enough, but she was also with mentality, as the saying goes, being the possessor of various scholarship keys which were not given for having oil millions, as well as two hooks and a play she had written, and clippings of many pointed letters she had sent the Tulsa World, her favorite newspaper, concerning what she thought about the oil situation, and its probable effect on the national economy. Assuredly with brains.