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

Monk lifted one hand and snapped thumb and forefinger.

“Now do it again with little words,” he requested.

Johnny had once held the chair of natural science research in a famous university where he had been
known as a professor who stunned most of his students with his big words, and he still had the habit. He
never used a small word when he could think of a large one.

“A green thing was floating in the air above the body,” said Johnny. “I shot. The bullet went through it,
breaking the window. Then the thing floated out through the window and away.”

Monk said unsmilingly, “I always did think those big words would drive you crazy.”

Johnny pointed at the odd-looking marks scratched on the wall beside Hadim's body.

“The man obviously inscribed these when he felt demise imminent,” he said. “He used the tip of his knife.”

Monk bent over, looked and said, “They don't mean anything. He just dug the wall with his knife as he
was flopping around.”

“Those marks,” said Johnny, “are words, or word signs, rather, of Tananese, an obscure language with
an Arabic derivative, spoken in certain parts of outer Mongolia.”

“What do they say?” asked Monk.

And Johnny, who probably knew as many ancient languages, written and spoken, as any half dozen of
the ordinary so-called experts on the subject, drew a paper and pencil from his pocket and reproduced
thereon the characters which the wall bore, here and there correcting a stroke which Hadim, in his dying
agony, had made with slight error. Then Johnny wrote the English translation under the word signs. He
passed it to Monk and Ham. They read:

MANY LIVES WILL BE SPARED IF HE OF MOUNTAINS WHO CHARMS EVIL SPIRITS
WILL GO TO FISH THAT SMOKES ON WATER WHERE THE KHAN SHAR AND JOAN—

“It ends there,” said Johnny. “You can see the name 'Joan' is scratched out in the nearest thing an Asiatic
could come to English letters.”

Ham, the dapper lawyer, fumbled absently with his slim black cane, and in doing so, separated the handle
slightly from the rest of the cane, revealing that there was a long, slender blade of razor-sharp steel
housed in the cane body.

“That sounds silly,” he said. “What does it mean?”

Monk suddenly banged a fist on a knee, something he could do without stooping.

“Remember that radio we got a few days ago?” he demanded. “The message was signed, 'Joan
Lyndell.'“