"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 069 - The Green Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Then he was very still; breathing stopped.

His body was twisted and contorted horribly. The skin no longer was sallow. It was green, a startling
shade of green. He appeared to have been mummified, as if he had been dead for many years.



Chapter II. THE CURSE FULFILLED
THE story first broke when three men staggered out of the jungle. The world was thrilled, horrified and
more than a little unbelieving. The men’s clothing was in tatters. Their faces and bodies were swollen and
red from numerous insect bites. They were hungry, almost starving, their ribs showing plainly. Their eyes
were wide and staring. Fear was written there, as well as suffering from the hardships they had
undergone.

Kind-hearted officials gave them food, fresh clothing and medical attention. And bit by bit the story came
out.

One, who said he was Hugo Parks, acted as spokesman. Parks was a small man, with a body now more
thin than ever. But his head was huge; it dwarfed the rest of his body, gave him a peculiar appearance. It
was easy to understand why his companions called him "Brains."

These three, Parks said, were the sole survivors of a party of twenty. They had entered Brazil from
Paraguay, he insisted, and had made their way to the dread Matto Grosso section of Brazil, the "Green
Hell" section.

Parks said they were explorers. Whatever the authorities thought, they kept to themselves.

After weeks of struggling, Parks recounted, they penetrated the Green Hell section farther than any other
white men had ever gone.

And they had found a fabulous, lost city!

Newspapers grabbed onto the story. It had the element of mystery they liked. And, from their files, they
told again of other explorers who had attempted to penetrate the district and whose fate never had been
definitely learned.

There was Colonel P. H. Fawcett, the noted British explorer, who, with his son, Jack, and a companion,
had vanished in 1925. They, too, had entered the wild Matto Grosso jungle. They had been searching for
a mythical "Atlantis," a lost city and a lost race. They had never been seen alive again. Some reports said
they had been killed by hostile Indians.

Then there was Paul Redfern, the American flier, also believed lost in the same district. More recently,
one year before, another American flier, "Scotty" Falcorn, had also disappeared in the Matto Grosso
jungle. He had been hunting for Redfern.

The lost city was there, Hugo Parks said. It was inhabited by a mysterious tribe of white Indians. And it
was guarded by a strange, horrible green death——a death that left the victim mummified, contorted in
agony!
BLASTS of publicity filled the newspapers. Almost fabulous offers for first-person accounts of their