"Doc Savage Adventure 1934-03 Meteor Menace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

The hair on his nubbin of a head, as coarse as rusty shingle nails, and of about the same hue, seemed an extension of his shaggy eyebrows. This gave one the impression of a skull with no room provided for brains.

The girl looking on did not yet know it, but this apish giant was Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair, one of the world's greatest chemists, former lieutenant colonel in the U. S. army, and at present one of a group of five men associated with Doc Savage in his worldwide adventures.

The anthropoid-like Monk carried a large box under an arm. One end of this was fitted with a screened ventilating hole. From the box came grunting sounds.

Monk was leering at his companion.

The other was a perfectly dressed wasp of a man, by far the most impeccably clad personage in the crowd of two hundred thousand or so. He had a prominent nose, bright eyes, and the large, mobile mouth of a trained orator.

In both hands he gripped a slender, black cane. With this, he seemed about to strike the human ape before him.

"You fuzzy accident!" he snarled. "You hairy missing link!"

Some of the dapper gentleman's colleagues in New York might have been shocked at his performance, for he was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, considered one of the most astute lawyers Harvard had ever turned out.

He was also commonly called "Ham," and was one of Doc Savage's group of five men.

Ham's cane, which was harmless enough to the eye, was actually a sword cane.

Ham was also - he probably would have died rather than admit it - the best friend of the apish Monk. He would have freely sacrificed his own life for Monk's well-being, should that be necessary. Monk would also do the same for Ham.

An observer would have sworn the pair were perpetually on the point of slaughtering each other.

"You bobble of nature!" Ham continued vitriolically. "You overgrown, bob-tailed jungle denizen."

Monk leered blissfully at Ham. From the box under the apish chemist's arm came a series of piggy grunts and shrilling squeals.

"You only brought that blasted pig along to get in my hair," Ham growled.

"Where d'you get that stuff, you loud-dressin' shyster?" Monk grunted. "I'll take Habeas Corpus wherever I daggone - "

Monk swallowed the rest. His pleasantly ugly face became somewhat blank. His little eyes glistened in their pits of gristle.

A vision whom Monk would have taken oath was the prettiest girl in the world, had confronted them.


"CAN you gentlemen tell me where Doc Savage may be found?" asked the young woman.

Monk and Ham stared, tongue-tied. The girl's beauty had taken the wind from their sails.

"Darn it!" the young woman said disgustedly, apparently addressing herself. "I thought you looked like men who could speak English. I guess you cannot."

Monk and Ham hastily ceased staring, and registered some embarrassment.

"I hope you will overlook the bad manners of my hairy friend, here," Ham told the beauty politely. "Monk used to be the wild man in a circus, and he got the habit of looking at everybody as if he wanted to eat them."

"He's a liar, miss," Monk put in hastily. "He's got a wife and thirteen children. His offspring are all half-witted, like their father."

Instead of smiling at what Monk and Ham intended to he humor that would break the ice, the young lady seemed distressed. When she spoke, there was brittle fear in her voice.