"Doc Savage Adventure 1945-01 The Hate Genius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

DOC Savage wheeled. The news was so much different from anything he had expected. He almost laughed, yet he wasn't pleased.

"Lord!" he said. "Oh, Lord!"

Explanations and alibis poured out of Monk and Ham. "She was in London," Monk said. "She came over on a war correspondent's clearance she had wangled out of some magazine. They wouldn't -- the military people wouldn't -- let her go across and see action, so you can guess what Pat did. She told everybody from Eisenhower on down what she thought of them. So they jerked her credentials, except for a one-way pass back to New York. Pat refused to return to New York, so she was stranded in London."

Ham said, "We hid from her, Doc. Honest we did. But she vamped some somebody in the Intelligence office into giving her our address. So she found us. She found us a few hours before we got your message to come to Lisbon."

Monk spread his hands. "You know what happened. She found out you had assigned us a job -- and came along."

"Why did you tell her about the cablegram?" Doc demanded.

"We didn't. She found it out. She's a mind-reader."

Ham said defensively, "She has never seen the cable. We destroyed it before she got her hands on it."

Doc frowned at them. "How on earth did she get from England to Portugal in times like these when she didn't have credentials."

"I don't know, but I think she let them think she was returning to New York by plane, and got herself routed through Lisbon."

"Anyway, she's here?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"I'll get her," Monk said sheepishly. "She's got a room down the hall."

"Wait a minute," Doc said. He went into the bedroom of the suite, threw up a window he found there, and examined a convenient fire escape. "Come on," he said. "We're going to skip without seeing Pat."


MONK grinned. "I wish I could be around to hear what she has to say about it."

"Better get our clothes," Ham said. "Or are we coming back here?"

"Grab what you'll need," Doc said.

Ham and Monk did some hasty scooping of garments into a handbag, and Ham climbed out on the fire escape. Monk followed him, then Doc.

They went down two floors and there was a clattering uproar and a crash as a champagne bottle fell off a window sill, hit the areaway below and broke.

"Blazes!" Monk said. "Somebody had a thread stretched across -- "

Pat Savage put her head out of a window above and said, "That's right, Monk. A thread. And guess who put it there."



II