"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 105 - The Invisible-Box Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

teaching, chuckling as if he had something devilish in mind.

The frantic girl arrived suddenly. She began beating on the door and screaming!

Like that. Suddenly. One moment Doc was tinkering with nutrient media and Ham was teaching his
chimp to tie strings and there was an amiable silence. Then the screeching; the pounding of fists on the
door.

Ham bolted to his feet. Chemistry, the chimp, made a brown streak to safety under the nearest desk. In
the lab, Doc Savage put the slide of nutrient media in a temperature-controlled vacuum case as if nothing
had happened.

The girl’s words were mostly garbled.

But she was telling someone to, "Get away from me!"

Ham Brooks had been associated with Doc Savage long enough to know better than to take chances.
He leaped to an inlaid desk, jammed a finger against an inlay which was a concealed button and caused a
sheet of bulletproof glass, as clear as any plate glass, to drop between himself and the door. He punched
another button which opened the door.

Wasted precaution. The girl was actually in trouble. If not, it was a very real imitation because the man
who was fighting her seemed to be doing his best to get his knife into her throat! The knife had a blade
the size of a razor, somewhat the same shape.

Had he been a larger man, the girl’s yelling and struggling would have ended by now. He was not large.
The two were, in fact, about a match in strength, and the girl had hold of the knife arm with both hands.
Ham leaped forward. In his chivalrous haste, he forgot all about just lowering the glass panel. He got his
nose flattened. He went around the glass, pain twisting his face, and charged.

The small man saw Ham coming. He dropped his knife, so the girl would release his arm. She did so.
The man ran. Ham galloped after him.

The man realized he would be overtaken. As soon as he understood that, he whirled, drawing a gun. It
was an automatic, huge and flat, with dark bulk.

He aimed the gun at Ham and fired. And part of the top came off his head, not off Ham’s head.



THE girl—she was not bad to look at, at first glance, and she improved on acquaintance—made a
mewing sound and closed her eyes from the bottom up. She fell loosely and lay on the floor, beside the
knife.

Doc Savage came out of the reception room into the hall. He took one glance. Then he went back inside
the reception room, leaped to the inlaid desk and pressed several curlicues of inlay which were buttons.

As a result of the buttons he pressed, all elevators in the building stopped, the stairways were flooded
with a gas—not tear gas, but one that would produce unconsciousness through its ability to be absorbed
by the skin pores—and the armed elevator starters in the ornate lobby received a warning flash of signal