"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 179 - The Green Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Doc Savage said hurriedly, “Before you two start on one of those dog fights, let's get back on the subject
of the slightly warm green rock. There is one more demonstration I should like to make. I've made it
before, but a recheck won't do any harm.”

The big bronze man led the way out into the hall, Monk and Ham trailing him with puzzled expressions.
The regular building elevators did not rise to this floor, so Doc took the stairway down to the eighty-fifth
floor, rang for an elevator, and when it arrived, empty except for the attendant, he handed the operator
the green stone.

“What about it, Mr. Savage?” asked the surprised operator. “Somebody lose it, or something?”

“We only want some information,” Doc told him. “Does it feel warm to you?”

“Not particularly,” replied the elevator man.

“Not warm, as if perhaps someone had been holding it in his hand for some time?” Doc asked.

“No. On the contrary, I'd say it feels a bit cool, and certainly no warmer than room temperature, Mr.
Savage.”

“Thank you,” Doc said. “That is all we wanted to know.”

Monk and Ham carried blank looks back upstairs. “What the devil?” Monk muttered.

“This rock,” Doc said, “feels warm to us, but it doesn't feel warm to anyone else whom I've tried. And
I've tried several.”

“By Jove!” Ham said. “A rock which bestows its personality only on certain individuals, eh?”

“About the oddest rock,” Doc told him, “that I've ever run across. I don't know what we have here, but I
think it's something quite weird.”



Chapter III
AT two o'clock, Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks went downstairs to the restaurant in the building for a
bite of lunch. It was an elaborate place with a lot of blue glass, blue leather and chrome, and a manager
who wore striped trousers and cutaway. The latter looked alarmed at their appearance, and hustled them
to a booth where, if they began shouting at each other in the inevitable row, the fewest customers would
discreetly summon a waiter and suggest calling an officer.

“You sharp-nosed, overdressed, eavesdropping shyster,” Monk said to Ham, by way of preliminary.
“You had the intercom turned up full force so you could hear what I was telling Doc, and you know you
did. Some day I'm going to take me a stroll across your face.”

Ham sneered at him. “You keep tampering with me, and I'll influence you worse than your friend did.”

“What friend?”