"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 160 - Colors For Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

that Cuba vacation, expenses paid, and nothing would happen. They must have told Walter that would fix
everything. Keep the girl quiet, and everything will be all right. No more trouble, no more thorns, and
roses in the sky.

Sickened, she thought: they've used Walter, involved him until now I can't do anything normal about it.
Go to the police was the normal thing. But she couldn't. Walter, the big trustful mutt, had let himself be
too horribly involved. She understood Walter; she knew he was not, really, a participant. But the police,
she was sure, would not be very understanding about murder.

She had not, from the beginning, trusted Walter's new job, much of the apprehension springing from the
effect that Arthur Pogany had on her. Pogany somehow disturbed her. He was as appetizing, mentally, as
a snake. He was a long man and eccentric; Pogany wore tweeds and his hobby was whales, the kind of
whales that swam in the sea; and the way he looked and what he did somehow had a bad effect on her.
It was something she sensed underneath, and, when she had tried to tell Walter how she felt about
Pogany, Walter naturally laughed. Walter would, because Walter never looked inside people for things.

Arthur Pogany was Walter's employer. The work Walter was doing for Pogany, construction of some
kind, was a great secret; too great a secret for Della, because she doubted Walter's explanation that it
was a matter which must be kept from business competitors. She didn't doubt Walter's sincerity, only
believed that he had been deceived.

She had met Mr. Riis twice before he died; both times he had been with Walter, and Walter had liked
him. Mr. Riis was also working for Arthur Pogany on the same hush-hush job. Try as she would, she
could not remember his first name: perhaps she had not heard it. A nice little guy, somewhat like Walter
because he seemed to like people readily. A man with a little, squawky voice like a papa duck.

She remembered, and it made frightened, grabbing feelings inside her, how terror had rattled like rocks in
Mr. Riis' voice when he called on the phone, wanting Walter, who hadn't been there. Mr. Riis had
sounded as if he had also wanted his life, wanted the comforting hand of God. His voice, the awful quality
in it, had left her with the weirdest feeling after Mr. Riis had hung up.

The next morning, which was this morning, a newsboy delivering papers in a residential district had found
Mr. Riis' body lying on a vacant lot, and found Mr. Riis' head lying a few feet distant.

Della stared down at her hands.

“Stewardess!” she gasped.

But the stewardess was aft somewhere. Della half arose, then remembered there was a little button
beside the seat, and that you probably got the stewardess by pushing that. She pushed it. The stewardess
came.

“Yes, Miss Nelson?”

“That telephone—the radiophone, I mean. How do you place a call? I want to place one.”

“Just give me the number you wish called, and I'll take care of it . . . I'll bring the instrument when the call
is ready.”

“It's a man named Savage. Doc Savage. In New York. I don't know the number.”