"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 154 - The Screaming Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE SCREAMING MAN
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
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? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine December1945




Chapter I
IT was, unfortunately, not humility, nor anything remotely related to modesty, which caused Annie
Flinders to call herself Annie Flinders. Her true and full name was Miss Angelica Carstair-Flinders,
Rhinemoor Manor, Rhinecliff-on-the-Hudson, Duchess County, N.Y., and modesty had little to do with
the change. There were not two spoonfuls of modesty in Annie Flinders, even measuring her on one of
her sweet days.

Annie's sweet days, always few, had lately become as scarce as diamonds for sale at ten cents in
ten-cent stores. Unhappy, if we put it conservatively, was Annie Flinders. She had brought this sadness
on herself—by wangling the credentials and transportation necessary to become a lady Economic
Planning Representative in the Pacific Area.

Now the truth was that Annie was no more fitted to be an Economic Planning Representative in the
Pacific Area than she was to be a ditch-digger. She was rigged for it about the way a butterfly is
equipped to shovel coal. Annie was artistic. Annie was, exactly speaking, an artiste. An artiste, says
Webster, is a performer whose work shows unusual aesthetic qualities. That was Annie, and certainly she
could never really have, in her heart, given a damn whether the United Household Appliance Company
could sell more of its super-duper refrigerators in the Philippines, or whether it should stick to pots and
pans and whisk-brooms—which was partially what an Economic Planning Representative in the Pacific
Area was supposed to find out.

Actually, Annie's Uncle Jessup, her money-making uncle, was president of United Household Appliance,
and Annie had hit him up for a job that would take her somewhere where there was, or lately had been, a
war. She didn't at the moment have the Pacific in mind, although she had been agreeable when it was
mentioned, overlooking the proportions of the Pacific Ocean, and the fact that the war had not exactly
stood still. The Pacific? Oh, goody! Marines, sailors, soldiers, excitement!