"Doc Savage Adventure 1934-04 The Monsters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

Bruno Hen swallowed uneasily, squirming. A flush darkened his swarthy skin. He seemed on the point of answering.

"Maybe it don't amount to nothin', after all," he mumbled. "But if somethin' happens to me -- hire the detective."

"I'll do that," MacBride agreed.

Bruno Hen took his departure, ignoring the slow questions which Carl MacBride asked. The breed carried a flashlight, and kept this blazing steadily as he made his way through the timber. He washed the beam about continuously, seeming to be in deathly fear of some habitant of the darkness.

From the door of his cabin, big Carl MacBride watched the retreating breed. He shook his ponderous head slowly.

"Somethin' is sure wrong with that guy," he grunted. He fingered the roll of money thoughtfully. "Bruno Hen kinda acts like he'd seen the devil."

With that last statement, Carl MacBride came far nearer the truth than he dreamed.


HAVING REACHED his shack, Bruno Hen locked himself in. He tore up parts of the floor and spiked the rough plank across the windows. Loading his rifle, he placed it on the table alongside a fresh box of cartridges. He charged both barrels of his shotgun, and arranged a little mound of shells. Loading his revolver, he belted it on.

He did not sleep at all that night; he scarcely sat down. Around and around the hut he paced nervously, stopping frequently to peer outside through the cracks.

There was a brilliant moon. In the surrounding timber there were no stirrlngs except for the undulating of tree boughs before a gentle breeze. Out of the far distance came sometimes the squawling uproar of fighting lynxes; a lonely wolf howled mournfully. The odor of pine came with the breeze.

This peace of the woodland night seemed to soothe Bruno Hen not at all.

Strangely, the breed did not leave his cabin at all the following day. Literally hundreds of times, he peered outside as if in deadly expectation. It was apparent that he had seen something -- probably on the night before he visited Carl MacBride -- which had frightened him. The more he thought of what he had seen, the more terrified he seemed to become.

Toward noon, he slept a little. He did not sleep that night. The following day, Carl MacBride came over.

"Wondered how you was comin'," MacBride said. Bruno Hen peered out at his neighbor through his barred window. He did not invite MacBride in. In fact, he said nothing.

MacBride, big and slow moving, ambled around the shack. He noted that the place had been turned into a fortress.

"Afraid of somebody?" he asked.

The breed scowled. "You git! Tend to your own business."

Not taken back, MacBride grinned pleasantly. "I've got your money, if you want it back."

"Keep that money. If somethin' happens to me, you hire the best detective in the world, like I told you."

"I been readin' in a magazine about a feller that makes a business of helpin' other people out of trouble," MacBride offered. "Maybe he'd do."

"What's his name?"

"Doc Savage."

Bruno Hen recalled the flattering references which he had heard the circus side show barkers make to Doc Savage. A muscular Hercules and a mental marvel, they had termed Doc Savage.

"He'll do," growled the breed.