"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 023 - The Mystic Mullah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

It was a story that satisfied even the coast guardsman, so he sheered off and betook himself away in the
fog. And that set the tugboat captain to chuckling.

A voice at the tugboat captain's elbow spoke an English that was entirely too perfect.

“Why did you tell him that?” it asked. “We have no dying man aboard.”

The tug master jumped as if a transatlantic liner had shoved out of the fog at full speed. He turned, an
angry exclamation on his tongue, for he did not like to be startled, especially in this fog, with his nerves
already on edge. But he held his counsel, for the man at his elbow did not look like one who would take
a tongue-lashing; and furthermore, it would be bad policy to insult a man who is paying a tremendous
sum for the services of your tugboat.

The man had a big hooked nose and a beard that was small and pointed. His skin was a yellow-brown,
dry and wrinkled, and did not appeal to the eye. He wore strange garments.

The tugboat skipper had done his life's traveling in New York harbor, so he did not know that the long,
flowing white mantle which reached down from the hook-nosed man's head was an abah, or that his
embroidered cloak was a jubbah, or that the queer-looking trousers were shirwals. Only one who had
traveled in Central Asia would know what the garments were called.

On the hook-nosed man's forehead was a strange design, an affair of lines which might have been
construed as a likeness of a serpent coiled around a jewel, as if protecting it. The lines looked as if they
were put on with ink, but actually they were tattooed into the skin with a fluid that one of the master
sorcerers of Asia had insisted was composed partially of the dried blood of Genghis Khan, the original.

To the tugboat captain, the mark looked like a dirty smear; and had he known its true significance, he
might have fallen off the bridge of his grimy craft. For it was the Sacred Seal of the Khan Nadir Shar,
Son of Divinity, Destined Master of Ten Thousand Lances, Khan of Tanan, Ruler of Outer Mongolia.
Maybe the tug skipper would not have known what all of that meant. Probably not.

It meant that the hook-nosed man, Khan Shar, was a king, absolute ruler of the city of Tanan, beyond
Outer Mongolia, and monarch over the surrounding provinces.

“Advise me when we tie up at the dock,” requested Khan Shar in his too-perfect English.

“Sure,” said the skipper.

“This dock you have selected—it is secluded?” asked the Khan.

The skipper rolled his tobacco quid in his jaws. The man made him nervous.

“It's an out-of-the-way dock,” he said.

“Excellent!” said the Khan, and left the tugboat bridge, or more properly, the pilot house.



THE tugboat captain rolled his eyes and directed tobacco juice at the feet of one of his two deckhands,