"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 173 - Once Over Lightly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

“No. Intuition and guesswork told me that. But I know a scared girl when I see one, and Glacia is
scared.”

“Of whom?”

“I don't know.”

“Then I presume you don't know what is behind it?”

“Look, I haven't been Girl Friday around a private detective agency for better than three years without
learning a little about human nature. Glacia is terrified. I'll stick by that. She is doubly scared now, but she
had it before her Uncle Waldo was killed. I can't cite you case and example for proof, but I do know
how it feels to sit on a volcano when it's getting ready to erupt, which is the way it has been the last
couple of days.”

“What about the deceased man, Waldo Loring?”

“Waiting. Secretive and waiting. I had the feeling he was a hunter in a jungle full of wild and dangerous
game, a hunter standing behind a tree with his rifle cocked. Waiting to shoot, but at the same time not
knowing what instant one of the wild animals might pounce on him. Last night one of them pounced.”

Doc Savage tasted his coffee. “Let's leave your intuition a little more out of it,” he suggested.

“No. Because I wouldn't have much left,” I said. “And I know my intuition. I'll bank on it.”

“Did Glacia discuss her Uncle Waldo with you?”

“Never . . . Of lately, nor before. I didn't know she had him.”

“He wasn't around previously, then?”

“No. I got the idea they'd only met recently—that is, Glacia hadn't seen him for a number of years, and
he had looked her up a few days ago at the most. Uncle Waldo had been a seafaring man, I think. He
talked like a sailor. A real one, not a phony. I would guess him as not a navy man, but a commercial
sailor, and an officer, perhaps the captain of a freighter.”

“Is that entirely guesswork?”

“Deduction, my dear Watson. I know the difference between navy and commercial jargon. Uncle Waldo
was commercial. You can spot a man used to commanding by his manner—at least I can. That meant
Uncle Waldo was an officer on a ship. And officers on passenger liners develop polite manners. Ergo, he
was a freighter captain.”

“A freighter captain waiting for something to happen to him,” Savage said dryly.

“Or waiting to make it happen to someone else, if he could get in first lick.”
“You mentioned an Indian warclub in the room occupied by yourself and Miss Glacia Loring. Was that
the instrument used on Uncle Waldo?”

“I don't know. But the warclub is gone.”