"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 026 - The Spook Legion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

the voice.

“This is Doc Savage speaking from New York City,” the voice said. “A telegram to me was filed from
your office tonight, was it not?”
So gripping was the unusual voice that Leo Bell had to swallow twice to loosen his own vocal cords.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Will you describe the sender, please,” Doc Savage requested over the telephone.

“I c-can't,” Leo Bell stuttered. It was the first time he had stuttered in years.

“Why not?” queried the unusual voice.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the appearance of the message then came out. Doc Savage
heard it through without comment, then advised, “There is probably no A, N. Onymous listed in your
directory.”

Leo Bell looked in the directory.

“No,” he said. “There is not.”

“The name was the result of a trick writing of the word 'anonymous',” Doc pointed out. “The dictionary
defines an anonymous work as one of unknown authorship, which seems to fit this case. Was there an
address of sender given on the message?”

“There was.”

“What was it?”

“1440 Powder Road,” said Leo Bell, after consulting the message.

“There is no such address in Boston,” Doc Savage said, and hung up.

Leo blinked dazedly after the connection was broken, wondering how Doc Savage had known the
address was a fake—and it was indeed false. Leo ascertained a moment later, upon consulting the street
directory. There was no such number on Powder Road.

Leo wondered vaguely if Doc Savage did not know as much about Boston as he did about the different
branches of science. Leo would have been surprised.

The two employees in the telegraph office discussed the happening through the remainder of their tour of
duty. It seemed as if something smacking of high adventure had touched them briefly, and they rather
liked the manner in which it spiced their humdrum lives.

They would have liked more of it. But this was, fortunately, or unfortunately, as near as they were to
come to the chain of horror and mystery which followed the sending of the strange message.

The affair really got under way the next day at noon.