"018 (B035) - The Squeaking Goblin (1934-08) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Notable also was the rifle the figure carried. A muzzle-loader, it had an extraordinary barrel length, the barrel being thick, heavy. The weapon was obviously handmade, a rare piece.
Hardly had the flashlight outlined this fantastic form when the rifleman gave a great leap and vanished behind the boulder with a speed which defied the eye.
Half a dozen pistol and rifle slugs screamed through the space he had vacated, the lead being fired by the two men on the yacht and by the other men around the cove edge.
"Git that thar cuss!" Tige bawled from the yacht deck.
More flashlights sprayed radiance. The beams darted, searching. With its confusion of lights, the rugged cove shore became eerie in aspect. Weapons ready, the men advanced.
The rock masses through which they worked made it difficult to light every recess, so they went slowly and kept the white funnels of luminance prowling. The first excited shouts subsided, and their manners became grim, determined, deadly.
"Hit's a crafty critter!" Tige howled from the yacht. "Take a heap a' care!"
One of the men, advancing on the spot where the weird figure in ancient frontiersman's garb had been seen, swore softly.
"Listen to that hill-billy!" he grunted. "He's talkin' like that guy in the fur cap ain't human."
A circle of glaring flash beams, the men closed upon the spot where the deerskin-clad figure had stood. They fanned their lights, staring, and a few hands quivered with tension that arose from expected action. But after a few seconds the searchers swore softly in a low-voiced and dazed manner.
There was no trace of the weird figure in the coonskin cap.
WHAT'S a-happenin'?" Tige yelled. "Did that thar thing git away?"
Every man on the shore noticed that Tige was not speaking of the deerskin-garbed figure as if it were human, and that fact obviously impressed them, especially in view of the uncanny way in which the quarry had escaped.
"Looks like the guy give us the slip," called one of the group on shore, answering Tige.
After shouting, the man brushed back his coat to hook a thumb in a suspender, and a small badge was disclosed, pinned to his vest. The shield marked him as an operative for the Coastal Private Detective Agency. From time to time, badges were visible on the other men, an indication that they were all private detectives of the Coastal Agency.
"Mought as well give up a-lookin'!" Tige bellowed. "You all won't find nothin'."
"Hell!" said one of the detectives. "That bird must've left some tracks in this sand."
"You ain't agoin' t'find nary a one," forecast Tige.
The sleuths began to search, confidently at first, then with an almost stunned carefulness. There were no footprints to be found, although the sand was soft enough to allow them to sink in to their ankles.
"You-all find any?" Tige demanded.
"He must've jumped from one rock to another!" snapped a detective.
"Ya-h-h-h!" jeered Tige. "Ain't no use scratchin' around thur for the varmint. Come a-runnin'. We got tur see if the fisty cuss hit Chelton Raymond with thot thur bullet."
The sleuths hesitated, puzzled. One remarked that he had seen the shadow behind the yacht porthole upset after the loud squeak which had accompanied the flash of the coonskin-capped one's rifle. Tige overheard this statement.
"Come a-runnin'!" Tige howled urgently.
"We'd better do that," grunted a Coastal Agency man. "After all, that hill-billy and Chelton Raymond hired us to take orders."
"We were to be bodyguards, too," interjected another. "A swell job we did of that, lettin' this spook in the coonskin cap come up and take a shot at the porthole of Chelton Raymond's cabin, even after the hill-billy warns us, by lightin' that cigarette, that the thing is prowling around here."
"Horsefeathers! Now you're talking as if the thing wasn't human." The other sleuth was frankly skeptical.
"Well, it got around like a ghost, didn't it?"
They ran down to the water's edge and dragged out a small boat concealed among the boulders. Floating it, they got aboard and paddled out to the yacht.
Tige was not on deck, but the newly arrived detectives could hear loud blows from below, accompanied by an occasional expletive.
The sleuths ran below and found Tige with a fire ax, battering at the door of a stateroom. The blows had a metallic sound.
"Carn-sarned door's locked!" snapped the gaunt Tige. "'Pears like she's made a' iron."
The mountaineer delivered a great smash with the ax, with the result that the blade penetrated the sheet metal. He wrenched it free and struck again, opening a triangular aperture at which he chopped vigorously.
"'Low I kin git a hand in thar directly!" puffed Tige. "Mought be able to unlock the door."
He struck, chopped, wrenchedЧand the metal squealed and bent; then he thrust a hand through the hole he had made, groping for the knob of the spring lock.
"Here, Tige!" called a new voice. "Let me go in there first."
Tige wrenched his hand out of the hole as if he had taken a hold on something hot. He wheeled, his eyes protruding a little and his mouth sagged far open so that the little lake of tobacco juice within was revealed.
"Chelton Raymond!" he gulped. "You wasn't in this hure cabin!"
"No," said Chelton Raymond. "Damned lucky for me, eh?"
CHELTON RAYMOND was a long, thin man who looked as if he bathed frequently in peroxide. He was very blond. His hair, eyebrows, and waxed and upturned mustache were almost white, and contrasted with his tanned skin. His tan, however, did not have a weathered look, but more the velvety aspect of one who had gone deliberately and carefully about the business of having the sun darken his skin.
The man's clothes were rich of fabric, expert of cut. The frames of the spectacles perched on his sharp hook of a nose were obviously of platinum. He had an air of wealth about him.
He advanced quietly on rubber-soled shoes and reached through the rent Tige had made in the stateroom door.
"I was up forward, watching through a porthole with these." He drew a pair of binoculars from a pocket, then let them slide back. "I kept an eye on the shore after the detectives put off."
"Kaitch sight a' anythin'?" asked Tige.
"Nothing." Chelton Raymond's voice had a drawl which marked him as having spent some time in the mountains, possibly his youth, but it was seldom that he slipped into the abused English which was Tige's vocabulary.
The stateroom door swung open. Chelton Raymond entered, drew Tige inside, then motioned the private detectives and members of the yacht crew back, closing the door after them.
"So you-all fixed a jigger in the cheer to fool the fisty cuss," Tige mumbled, eyeing the chair before the porthole.
Chelton Raymond went over and examined the cleverly constructed dummy of pillows and bedclothing, coat and a yachting cap, which the chair held. Particularly, he gave attention to the head.
"Look, Tige," he suggested. "See where the bullet struck."
Tige examined the head. "Plumb swack a-tween the eyes."