"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 039 - The Seven Agate Devils" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Pell frowned. "Oh, yes. Camphor Wraith."

"What?" Monk howled.

"Camphor Wraith. Strange, eh? Obviously a faked name."

"Doc!" Monk roared. "That stuff at the airport—the stuff that got on your flying suit—it had a camphor smell!"

"Camphor Wraith," Doc Savage repeated, slowly. "The name might have significance."

"It is all utterly baffling to me," Montgomery Medwig Pell murmured, weakly.

Doc Savage suggested, "Perhaps the package you put in the bank vault will help explain."

Pell heaved up out of his creaking chair. "An excellent thought!"

Monk frowned at him, said, "You sound kinda relieved?"

"I can assure you," Pell murmured, "that I shall be very glad to get this affair off my hands. And that will be as
soon as I transfer the package to you."

Doc Savage led the way out of the office into the hallway. Since the others were slow in following—Monk and
Pell were still a bit dazed—the bronze man waited for a moment. His flake-gold eyes roved the corridor,
searching everywhere. Doc had long ago found it necessary to make alertness habitual.

The bronze man’s eyes steadied on a crack in the hallway ceiling.
A PECULIAR line, that crack. It was very long, wandering from a spot near Pell’s door, across the hall ceiling,
and down to the top of a door opposite the attorney’s office.

Monk, Ham and Pell came out into the hallway. Doc Savage accompanied them to the elevator. They all rode
down silently.

In the cheap and gaudy lobby of the building, Doc Savage spoke.

"Wait here," he directed.

The others looked blank. Monk began, "But what—"

Doc Savage was already gone, mounting the stairway which zigzagged upward near the elevator shaft. The
bronze man climbed swiftly until he reached the level of lawyer Pell’s office. He did not step boldly into the
corridor, but paused, out of sight.

A bronze hand went into an inside pocket, and came out with an object that resembled a fountain pen. A tug
at one end of this caused it to elongate, telescope fashion. There were detachable caps at each end. The
ingenious contrivance became a telescope, microscope, or periscope, merely by altering the lenses.

Doc Savage employed it as a periscope, to examine the hallway. The periscope showed the figure of a burly
man coming out of the door opposite Pell’s office—the door to which Doc had noticed ran the rather unusual
ceiling crack. There was furtiveness in the burly fellow’s manner. He ran to a window at the end of the
corridor, glancing frequently over his shoulder, but not discovering the periscope.