"012 (B043) - The Man Who Shook The Earth (1934-02) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Doc lifted a hand in a gesture of greeting to Monk. The hand was muscled until it looked as if it had been wrapped with steel wire, then painted with bronze. However, the fingers were long, regardless of their obviously incredible strength.
"Let's go up," Doc said. His voice was as remarkable as it had been when Monk heard it over the phone. Not loud, it nevertheless carried to the recesses of the lobby.
An express elevator, its progress a hiss of speed, rushed them to the eighty-sixth floor.
"The guy is gone," Monk explained. "I got that from an elevator operator."
Saying nothing, Doc approached the office door. An uncanny thing happenedЧthe door opened at his approach.
There was no living thing near it.
MONK hastily peered into the office. He was completely at a loss to understand the business of the door opening. The room beyond was as he had left it. Apparently, nothing was disturbed.
Monk squinted at the outer door, seeking to figure out what made it swing ajar when Doc had approached it. He shook his head. Then he walked around the office, trying the safe door, the locker, and the doors into the inner rooms. All were locked.
"It don't look like the guy bothered anything," he said in his small voice. "That's funny. Why should he pay me five hundred dollars, just to get into the office?"
Doc walked toward the door into the inner chambers.
Monk's hair threatened to stand on end at what happened. The solidly locked doorЧMonk was mortally certain it was lockedЧquickly opened itself as Doc came near. After the bronze man had passed through, the door closed.
Rushing over, Monk grasped the knob. He exerted all his strength. Monk could take a horseshoe in his big hairy hands and bend it into the shape of a pretzel. This door, however, resisted him.
With a sheepish grin on his homely face, Monk absently fitted the end of his little finger into the hole in his earlobe. Monk was highly intelligent in spite of his apish look. He was trying to figure out what made the doors open when Doc came near them. Doc had perfected many remarkable devices, but this was a new one. For all of Monk's canniness, he was stumped.
The door opened in the same magic fashion as before, and Doc Savage reappeared. He carried a black composition tube which resembled a cylindrical phonograph record.
Monk grinned. He knew what the record was. It was part of a device which was hooked to the telephone and recorded all conversations. This apparatus monitored Doc's phone wire continuously. When one record became filled, another one shifted automatically into place.
"Nothing but the telephone seems to have been touched," Doc said.
Monk peered at the telephone. He considered himself a detective of fair ability. He was certain the instrument was placed exactly as it had always been. He did not doubt that it had been used, though. Doc rarely made a mistake.
Going to the telephone, Monk peered at it from several angles. He sniffed. Then he got it. There was a faint tang of smoker's breath about the mouthpiece. Neither Doc nor any of his five men smoked; and no one else used this instrument.
Monk had missed the smoke scent on his first round of the room. Doc, however, had caught it. Doc's nostrils had been trained to an animal sensitivity in smell perception.
Doc switched on the mechanism which played back the record. The pick-up was amplified and reproduced through a loud-speaker. It was like listening to a bit of drama from a radio.
"Hello," said a voice from the loudspeaker. "Doc Savage speaking."
"Huh!" Monk gulped. "Why, the liar! That's the guy who told me his name was Velvet!"
Doc Savage requested silence with a lifted hand.
"This is John Acre," said a slow, wheezing voice from the reproducing instrument. "I sent you several radiograms from the boat. I wonder if you have received any of them."
"Yes," said Velvet. "They referred to various mysterious earthquakes."
"Good!" exclaimed John Acre. "Then you know how important it is that I see you. I just landed from the steamer Junio ."
"You wish to see me at once?" asked Velvet.
"Immediately, Mr. Savage. May I come to your office?"
"Not to my office," said Velvet. "Come to the Midas Club, on Park Avenue."
"Very well, Mr. Savage," agreed John Acre.
A sharp click ended the conversation. The recording had stopped automatically as soon as the receivers were hung up.
"For the love of mud!" Monk ejaculated. "Did you hear that, DocЧthe Midas Club! That's Ham's hang-out."
THERE was a good reason for Monk's surprise. The Midas Club was the residence of one member of Doc's group of five remarkable aids. The man who lived there was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. He was the law expert of Doc's squad.
"Why should Velvet decoy this John Acre to Ham's place?" Monk pondered.
Doc made no reply. His bronze features showed no excitement. That did not mean he was unconcerned. For years, Doc had schooled himself in self-control. Now, it was only on the rarest of occasions that he showed any emotion.
"John Acre said he had sent you some messages," Monk continued, eyeing Doc. "Did you get any?"
"No," Doc said. "And I have never heard of John Acre, either."
"The meeting being arranged at Ham's apartment is the strangest part of the whole thing," Monk grumbled. "Do you reckon that shyster lawyer is mixed up in something that he ain't letting us in on?"
When Monk mentioned "Ham," he used the same tone he would have used to speak of a horned devil. It gave the idea that Monk would cheerfully have cut Ham's throat. Monk and Ham's association was one long quarrel. Rarely did an hour pass but that one offered a biting remark to the other. They seemed continually on the point of slaughtering one another.
But this was only good-natured horseplay. If necessary, one would cheerfully give his life for the other.
"We'll go up to Ham's place and look into this strange meeting," Doc decided.
They walked toward the doorЧand again Monk's little eyes threatened to shoot out of their pits of gristle.
Doc had made no gesture. He had not touched his clothing. The door, however, had jumped wide open as they drew near.
"How do you do that, Doc?" Monk demanded.
"It's trained," Doc said.
Monk snorted. He looked back as they went down the corridor. The door closed itself when they were a few feet distant. Monk snorted again. The thing had him baffled.
Doc Savage went to the last panel in the long row of elevator doors. To Monk's bafflement, this door also opened at Doc's approach. They stepped into a cage. The door closed. The floor seemed to drop from under their feet.
The mechanism of this particular elevator had been designed by Doc himself. It operated at a speed far too uncomfortable for ordinary passenger traffic. For almost sixty stories, Monk and Doc barely had their feet on the floor. Then the cage slowed so abruptly that Monk was forced to all fours. Doc, thanks to tremendous leg muscles, kept his feet.
Monk grinned widely. He always got a kick out of riding this super-speed lift.
They did not step out into the lobby of the skyscraper, but into a narrow, concrete-walled tunnel. They strode down this. It admitted them to Doc Savage's garage in the skyscraper basement.