"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-12 The Fantastic Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

The other guard bent close over the edge of the hole. Pat shrank back. All at once, the pulse throbbed violently in her wrists and in her blue eyes sprang a look of desperate hope. She was recognizing this guard. He was another member of the expedition that had disappeared with Johnny.

"Aren't you -- " she started to suggest.

"Al Fredrickton, first mate," he supplied.

"But you -- that whip!"

"I have to whip to keep from being whipped," he whispered, savagely. "I'm on top to-day. To-morrow they may yank the collar off my neck and pitch me in a hole. I'm just as much a prisoner as these poor devils digging."

"But what is it all about?" Pat questioned.

"I don't know any more about it than you do. I only know that men dig and die."

"Dig and die!" she echoed, starkly. "What about Johnny?"

"He was taken to the palace. He may be alive. Listen: 33 Redbeach Road, Long Island. Can you remember that?"

"33 Redbeach Road -- I've got it."

"Boris Ramadanoff, at that address."

"I've got it. What about it?"

The man's breath came faster. "You're our only hope," he rasped. "They'll take you to the palace. Try to contact Johnny. Tell him the name and address. There's a powerful short-wave radio sending set at the palace. Johnny must get a message to Doc Savage. Tell Doc Savage to contact Boris Ramadanoff."

"Yes, but what good will that do?"

"Ramadanoff can tell Doc Savage all he needs to know to effect our rescue. Ramadanoff is the brother of the big shot here on the island. They quarreled, the two brothers. And Boris left for New York."

"How did you find out all this?"

"After our ship followed in the false harbor lights and was wrecked, we were taken prisoners. The steward and I were retained to work in the palace kitchen. The steward heard the brothers quarreling. He learned Boris's new address and passed it on to me."

"Where is the steward?" Pat asked.

"Dead!" said the man. "They suspected he knew something. They killed him."

Pat shuddered. "Life isn't worth much here, is it?"


SOMETHING happened the next moment to demonstrate anew the fiendish ruthlessness of the sinister genius in control of this island.

A drumming beat sounded against the ground and a huge horse, ridden hard, snorted to a stiff-legged stop in front of the line of working pits. The horse was a quivering black shadow under the wan starlight, and the rider was a shadow proportionately huge and black.

With virulent curses, the rider urged the plunging horse in among the cowering overseers. He leaned far out of his saddle, cracking heads right and left with a fearful instrument -- a knout, fashioned somewhat on the order of those used in Imperial Russia. Again and again the knout descended, its woven leather thongs, reinforced with wire and hardened by a rosin treatment, biting down deeply and forcing agonized yells.

One of the guards showed fight. He dodged the blow of the knout, flung in close against the plunging horse and reached up to pull the horseman from the saddle. The man in the saddle only laughed a raw ghoulish clacking, pulled a revolver from holster and shot the guard dead.