"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 018 - The Squeaking Goblin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

He was a lean, brindled man with something of the hawk in his face. His slab of a jaw moved regularly and
the tobacco it masticated occasionally made a squishing sound.

Sumptuous, luxurious, flamboyant and befitting a king, were descriptives applying to the yacht. The craft
hardly exceeded a hundred feet in length, yet she had obviously cost as much as a less pretentious vessel
three or four times as long. The woodwork was of mahogany; upholstery was genuine and rich, and there was
a profusion of built-in trinkets—bars, indirect lights, radio speakers and the like.

Rugged, rocky, misshapen, a place where anything might happen, described the cove. It was a harsh crack
where the stony shore had been gouged by nature, and there were no trees and little vegetation to garnish the
place. Boulders were present in profusion, ranging upward to the proportions of a railroad locomotive.

The silver light sprayed by the moon made black, awesome, shapeless shadows behind the boulders,
shadows that somehow were like monsters asleep.

"That be it!" Tige breathed abruptly, "I be plumb sartin!"

"Better give the signal, huh?" asked the other man.

Tige hesitated, seemed to consider while his teeth mashed at the tobacco quid; then he shrugged.

"Yeah," he muttered. "But lemme do it."

A moment later, Tige walked out on a wing of the bridge and lighted a cigarette, letting the match flame up
like a torch in his fingers for a moment before he twirled it over the rail. The gesture was casual, a natural
one—but the match flame could have been seen from shore.

Tige strode back out of sight, dropped the cigarette on the deck and extinguished its tip with a lance of
tobacco juice sent expertly through the darkness.

Perspiration droplets, not unlike spattered grease, had come out and covered Tige’s forehead while he stood
in plain view on the bridge. He scraped some of the sweat off with a forefinger, eyed the moist and slightly
glistening digit and shuddered violently.

"Suppose they saw the signal?" asked the other.

"Damn well better have seen it, or reckon as how they’ll get fired," Tige growled.
THE cream yacht might have been a floating sepulcher, so dead was the silence which held it. Tige and his
companion waited, rifles nursed close to cheeks, eyes on the shore.

"How many times has it tried to get Chelton Raymond?" Tige asked quietly.

"Twice." The other stirred and the moonlight glistened faintly on brass uniform buttons and the shiny visor of a
yachtsman’s cap. "Thought Chelton Raymond told you?"

"He did." Tige expectorated, and did it so that there was only the noise of the liquid hitting the deck. "You
better keep down. That shiny cap bill would make a tolerable shootin’ mark."

The yacht officer ducked lower. "Thanks."