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

Monk felt an odd sensation. He found himself wanting to answer the query. He wished to do it as much
as he had wanted to do anything in his life. He would have given literally anything he possessed if he
could have come out with a frank, friendly answer. But there was a slight hitch. He had never heard of
anything called Keew, and as far as he knew Doc Savage had had no contacts from such a place.
“Gosh, I'm sorry,” Monk said. “I'm so awfully sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm deeply ashamed, but I can't tell
you a single thing because I don't know.”

Monk realized that although he wanted to answer the man's question the worst way, he didn't want to tell
a lie. In fact, a lie would have been repugnant, a circumstance that was not always the case with Monk.
He was a man who believed a little lie at the right time did no harm.

The recipient of the information was disappointed. His feeling of sadness was intense. Monk found he
was disappointed and felt badly, too.

“What,” asked the blond man, “about the small green stone?”

“Search me,” Monk replied. “I don't know what you're talking—” Then he remembered. “Gosh, I'm
sorry again, but it slipped my mind. You mean the little rock that came in the mail from South America?”

The man felt badly over this news. Monk sympathized with him intensely. Then the man became enraged,
and Monk felt enraged, too.

The rage was what did it. Monk snapped out of the spell when he became angry. Rage was an inclusive
emotion. It broke the thin man's influence over Monk, granted that “influence” was a very inadequate
word to apply to Monk's tizzy.

“What you been doin' to me, you washed-out scoundrel?” Monk howled. This was more words than he
had used in some time before a fight, and then he knocked the blond man down.

The man managed to fall expertly, bound to his feet, and start to expostulate, “Really, my good friend,
you—” He evidently concluded it was not feasible to convince Monk he was a good friend, so he turned
and ran.

Monk pursued the fellow. As Monk had observed earlier, he was totally unfamiliar with the city and its
ways. He did not, for instance, know that some of the buildings on this street—it was Forty-fifth Street
between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas—had arcades which extended through to the
next streets to the south and north, thence made very good quick avenues of flight. These were also
honeycombed with niches which would make good refuge. This man ran straight and openly, making no
attempt to hide.

Fast, too. Monk was no terrapin on his feet, but he found himself extending. And not gaining too much.
However, full of confidence, he put his head back and stretched out.

Then the weirdness came back into it. The man he was chasing began to shout anxiously. He started
telling Monk what good friends they were, and how amiably they should be getting along. His voice,
while labored from the effects of the race, was plainly understandable.

When Monk found himself believing they were going to stop this and be friends, he turned around and
ran about equally fast in the opposite direction. Later, when he looked back, he saw his late adversary
nowhere in sight.