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

“Hadim!” called the girl.

The door opened and a lean man with a long, brown face came in. He was dressed in a flowing jubbah
and shirwals that fitted his legs tightly, and he carried his left arm stiffly, as if not wishing to disturb the
long knife which the deckhand had seen up that sleeve.
This Hadim did not present an appealing picture, for someone had made a pass at him with a sword or a
knife in the past, and had come just close enough to groove his face with a permanent scar from forehead
to chin. He bowed deeply to the girl.

“Yes, Miss Joan,” he said.

“You will leave at once, Hadim,” said the girl “You know what you are to do, the message you are to
deliver. And you know how much depends upon our finding this man.”

“Yes, Miss Joan,” said Hadim. “My four brothers, my father and mother and my sisters have died when
touched by the green soul of the Mystic Mullah. Need I more to remind me?”

“You will die if you make a mistake,” said the girl. “And if we do not reach this man we have come to
see, many more may follow you. Just how many, there is no telling.” She extended her automatic. “Better
take this.”

Hadim tapped his sleeve. “I know better how to use this.”

Joan directed, “Have the man get in touch with us.”

Hadim murmured, “Aye, and this man's name—”

“Doc Savage,” said Joan. “Hurry. We must find him, or learn where he is.”



THERE was rawness in the fog, a damp chill, and the vapor had long since washed the moon and stars
out of the sky and had put the dank water-front streets in the grip of the clammy mist from the sea.

Hadim embraced the soupy fog as one at home in his element, and he took to the shabby, narrow
water-front thoroughfares without hesitation. He did, however, walk in the middle of the street—until
almost run down by a prowling taxicab. Hadim looked the hack over carefully, after the driver stopped
to see if he had done any damage. The driver had an honest face, so Hadim used his cab to go uptown.

Hadim, let out at his destination, stared up at the building which he was to enter, and stark amazement sat
upon his scarred, brown face. This building was the pride of native New Yorkers. To Hadim, it was an
architectural wonder such as he had not dreamed existed. It was a modernistic structure, somewhere
near a hundred stories in height, and was a blinding exhibition of white stone and shining metal.

“What a lot of camels would be needed to haul the stones for this house,” Hadim murmured.

Then he went inside, asked questions, made a few mistakes, but eventually got in an elevator which let
him out, after a frightsome ride upward, on the eighty-sixth floor. The corridor was as impressive as the
building exterior.