"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 163 - The Exploding Lake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Presently they got some soup into Juan, and he fell over in a stupor of exhaustion. They put him to bed,
and the hotel proprietor, naturally wondering whether he was going to get paid for food and meal, looked
in Juan's pockets. He learned the man was Juan Russel—and the name of Juan Russel, prospector,
metallurgical research man, was known here.

Talk went through the village, as it naturally would. The talk became garbled—the things Juan had
mumbled drunkenly mixed themselves up ludicrously—but eventually it reached the ears of a man who
wore a blue shirt, and who was staying at the Casa Negros, the Black House, a rooming-house which
was genteel in spite of its name.

“Juan Russel, eh?” this man said. “What did you say he saw? . . . Spontaneous disintegration. . . . The
beginning of the end of the universe, you say. . . . Crazy? Oh, sure he's crazy. I wouldn't know.” He
beckoned Señora Coliz, the proprietress. “Vino blanca,” he ordered. “By the way, I shall leave early,
Señora. Very early. I will pay you now, so I need not awaken you when I leave.”

He went out presently and filled the tank of his car with gas.

He left about two o'clock in the morning, headed in the general direction of Buenos Aires.



JUAN RUSSEL, somewhat refreshed—although very tight of tongue—left in a rented automobile about
eight o'clock the following morning. He left behind him in the village the impression that he was about the
most terrified man who had ever visited the place.

Around noon, Juan reached his first fair-sized town. It had telephonic connection—of a poor sort—with
another town, and then another town, and eventually with Buenos Aires. Juan placed a call. He got the
next town, and was informed he could not talk to Buenos Aires—or to New York, which was where he
wanted to talk. Line down.

“Listen,” Juan said desperately. “Listen, Operator. If the lines are repaired, get me—I mean, get hold of
Doc Savage, in New York City. Tell him it is Juan Russel calling him on a terrible, an infinitely terrible
matter. Tell him to be available for my call, which I will attempt to place. I am heading on toward Buenos
Aires, any place I can find a telephone line. Tell Doc Savage that.” He was extremely earnest. “El Señor
Doc Savage, Ciudad Nueva York. Estados Unidos. . . . Si, si.” He made the operator repeat it. “That
is correct. Doc Savage is very well known in New York. They will be able to find him by name alone.”

Juan Russel got going again in search of a telephone. He was, those who happened to notice him agreed,
about the most terrified man who had ever been through that village, too.



JUAN RUSSEL had met Doc Savage once, several years ago, while attending a special meeting of
metallurgists in New York City. There had been a notice on the convention bulletin board:

CLARK SAVAGE, JR., WILL SPEAK TUESDAY AT 2 PM ON “THE MOLECULAR
STRUCTURE OF SEVERAL LESSER KNOWN METALS.”

Juan had heard vaguely of Doc Savage before, but he had been surprised to find the lecture hall crowded