"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 049 - The Mental Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

turning over in Amber O’Neel’s mind.

O’Neel passed one of his men and passed the word.

"There he is—still wearing that leather apron and not another stitch," he told his men, in their tongue. "The
reward still goes. I’ll even make it two outboard motors."

The lighter coming in from the cruise ship was really an old Mississippi River stern-wheeler which had
seen its days on the Father of Waters and had been sailed down here no telling how.

The native boatmen bringing her in were not doing a job that could be bragged about. The natives having
dugout canoes moored along the quay significantly got into them and paddled to the clear.

The dugout belonged mostly to strapping, black hunters from the jungle. They brought their snake hides,
leopard skins and green parrots down to sell to the tourists. They did not wear too many clothes.

The stern-wheeler angled in sidewise, swiped the quay, backed off, tried again, parted a line, and made it
on the third attempt.

Every one from the captain to the deck swiper was yelling orders about how to make fast, and the crowd
surged forward howling, "Viva Doc Savage!" and both bands struck up tunes. Two kids tried to jump
from the quay to the side-wheeler, and for a wonder, both fell in. Their mothers shrieked.

Aviator David Hutton tried to approach the place where they were landing the gangplank. He had a time
keeping from being trampled. His bare feet were walked on, hide scraped off his ribs by elbows, and his
ears deafened by "Vivas!" But he made it.

He was standing so close that only an agile jump saved his naked toes from the descending gangplank.
He tried to dash aboard the stern-wheeler, but half a hundred others had the same idea. They shoved at
policemen, and the policemen shoved back. The policemen won.

"Viva
Doc Savage!" they yelled.


DAVID HUTTON, being tall, saw a remarkable-looking apparition step from the stern-wheeler to the
gangplank. The apparition had arms fully as long and as big around as his legs. It seemed a safe bet that
the apparition could tie his shoestrings without stooping. The head was a nubbin, the eyes small and
somewhere in pits of gristle, and the mouth astonishingly huge.

The apparition raised hands and wrists on the backs of which hair looked as coarse as rusty shingle nails.
He seemed to want everybody to be quiet so he could say something.

"Viva!"
howled the crowd, and the bands got tangled up in their tunes.
The excitement was rattling David Hutton. He was an ill man, a physical wreck, and he had pushed
himself. He uttered a wild shriek which he hoped would reach the man on the gangplank, who he
supposed must be Doc Savage.
David Hutton got a look at the black face of the devil with the knife.