"Doc Savage Adventure 1949-03 Up From the Earth's Center" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"I should have," Williams muttered.

"What did you mean when you told Kroeger you were going after a Mr. Wail?"

Williams stared at his glass for a long time, as if he were afraid of the glass, and as if he were afraid of the things in his mind. "I didn't say anything like that to Kroeger," he muttered thickly.

Dr. Karl wheeled, and now he felt terror where he had been only puzzled, or perhaps it had been terror all along, and he had refused to recognize it as such. It was more heroic to be puzzled than afraid; it always is, he thought with horror. He jerked open the door of the cabin where Gilmore was, and saw the man inside lying on a bunk. "Gilmore!" Dr. Karl yelled.

But Gilmore was not dead. He rolled his head enough so that Dr. Karl saw his blank, wasted face and the pools of terror and desperation that the man's eyes had been from the time they found him on the island.

Closing and locking the door of the cabin, Dr. Karl told Kroeger, "Keep that man in there. I'm going ashore. Keep him there until I get back. And nobody else goes ashore. Nobody, understand!"

He went ashore, wrenching the little dinghy madly through the water with great oar strokes.



II


TWO small near-accidents happened to Dr. Karl Linningen during the next ten minutes. He did not at the time, he realized later, pay them the attention they deserved.

First, he almost fell out of the dinghy, which was a ridiculous thing to do, because he had been rowing small boats since he began breathing, practically. He swore briefly and bitterly about it, feeling it was a mishap due to overanxiety.

Still, if he had taken a dive into the icy water and ripping tide, he might have had a difficult go. He was not much of a swimmer, and the gulls were screaming and crying the sounds that a drowning man might have used to appeal for help.

Secondly, he was nearly run down by a car. That, too, seemed a mishap fitting his mood, the steepness and narrowness of the Lubec street, and the general confusion of things. It was a small car, quite ancient; after it was past, Dr. Karl noted that its rattle was a great thing like a whirlwind crossing a city dump, and he wondered how he could have missed such a clatter. The driver of the car? Dr. Karl tried to remember later. He thought it was a round little amiable man with large shining eyes, a little man who radiated a lovely temperament, the way a stove dispenses heat. A little guy you just naturally would like. Anyway, the old car missed Dr.
Karl and so it did not seem too important.

Eventually, he got where he was going in such a hurry.


THE old lady said, "You!" and blew out her cheeks with sudden rage, causing all her wrinkles to disappear from the lower part of her face. "Who told you my coffee was no good?" she demanded.

Dr. Karl Linningen breathed heavily. "I'd like to see Doc Savage. It's very urgent. If I can find Mr. Renwick, he could help me locate Savage, I'm sure."

"My coffee - "

"I complimented your coffee, madam."

"You what?"

"I said it was nectar, probably. Very good, no doubt. I presumed it would be good, madam, without having sampled it." Dr. Karl was not very patient.

"Now is that so?" There was no friendliness in the old woman's eye. "Who you talk about?"

"Doc Savage. Renny Renwick."

"Not know either one.