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

"His profession is helping other people out of trouble, Tige."
Tige drew out a twist of native "long green," then extracted a knife from a holster inside his shirt. As indicated by certain small marks, the long and razor-sharp blade had been hand-hammered from a file. He cut himself a fresh chew.
"Doc Savage be a hired fighter?" he asked. "Thot it?"
"No!" Chelton Raymond shook a vehement negative. "This man never takes money for his services."
That seemed to bewilder Tige. "He don't go fur to take no pay?" he asked incredulously.
"Doc Savage is an unusual characterЧa very famous individual," declared the other. "They tell many stories of his great strength and his remarkable knowledge. If we have time, Tige, I'll repeat some of the yarns before he arrives."
"Be he a lowlander?" Tige demanded.
Chelton Raymond shrugged. "I don't know."
"You ain't called in a furriner, be you?" Tige asked sourly. "Kain't no feller from the low country be man enough to help us."
Chelton Raymond smiled faintly at that. He had been away from the mountains and their people for many years, and contact with the wild scramble of the cities had caused the foibles and pet hates of the mountain folk to become small and trivial in his mind. It struck him as funny that the mountaineers should consider anybody not of their mountains as not worth associating with. Another time, he would have laughed.
ONE of the detectives came running toward the radio room. He was excited; he breathed rapidly as he popped through the door.
"
Did you take the bullet?" he demanded.
"
What bullet?" questioned Chelton Raymond, not comprehending.
"Slug that was fired at you, of course. The one that went through the dummy you fixed up in front of the porthole."
"No," said the blond man. "I didn't get it."
"We been huntin'." The sleuth threw out his hands, palms upward, to indicate defeat. "We can't find it."
"What?"
"There is a hole in the bulkhead, Mr. Raymond, where the bullet must have hit. It's a small hole, as if the slug wasn't much bigger'n a twenty-two. But there ain't no lead in the hole."
Chelton Raymond came forward suddenly and grasped a handful of the detective's coat front. "Are you sure?" he gasped.
"As sure as I stand here," the detective said earnestly.
Chelton Raymond released his grip and stepped back. He gazed thoughtfully at the floor, at his rubber-soled shoes, then roamed his glance up until he and Tige were exchanging steady, blank looks.
"Hell!" he said. "Not so good."
"'Pears like this spook shoots spook bullets," grunted Tige.
"Spook?" said the detective. "There ain't no such animal."
"So I always thought," Chelton Raymond agreed.
"Mought be," corrected Tige. "If thot be the Squeakin' Goblin, he's sure enough a spook, 'cause my great-grand-daddy shot the Squeakin' Goblin plumb dead comin' on eighty year ago."
The sleuth clapped fists on his hips, arms akimbo. "Say, what're you guys givin' me?"
"Did you," Chelton Raymond asked dryly, "get a good look at that figure in the coonskin cap?"
"Did I? You said it. I was holdin' the flashlight that first picked him out."
"How did he strike you?"
"WellЧ" The detective reached up absently and loosened his collar. "I didn't care much for him. If he didn't have the face of a corpse, I never saw one."
Chelton Raymond nodded vehemently, as if he had seen as much watching from the boat with his binoculars. "You don't watch the newspapers very close, do you?" he asked.
"I read the big stuff," retorted the sleuth.
"This wouldn't be big stuff," the blond man told him slowly. "It would be a small story on an inside page, about a mountain feud in Kentucky. There wouldn't be much. You see, the mountaineers do not talk to outsiders, to lowland men, as they call them. They regard such as foreigners. Many mountain feud killings never come to the attention of the local sheriff, much less to the newspapers outside."
"So what?" grunted the detective.
"So you haven't read those short newspapers items, and that explains why you don't know that a phantomlike figure such as we saw tonight, clad in deerskins and a coonskin cap and with a long rifle, has killed several mountaineers in Kentucky within the last two months."
"Several!" Tige snorted. "More'n thot!"
Chelton Raymond eyed Tige. "How many people has the Squeaking Goblin killed in the last few weeks, Tige?"
"Ain't sure a' the exact number," said Tige, "but hit's more'n twenty."
"
WELL forЧ" The detective gulped, swallowed. "Twenty!"
Tige nodded soberly. "Ain't be no less'n thot."
"Twenty! Hell's bells! And that hasn't been in the newspapers?"
"Why should we-all 'uns peddle our troubles to lowlanders?" Tige growled.
Chelton Raymond put in dryly to the detective, "So you see why Tige and myself called in the Coastal Detective Agency."
"YeahЧfor protection."
"Exactly. This Squeaking GoblinЧthis phantom, appeared and on two different occasions took shots at me. Once, the bulletproof window of my car saved me. The second time, the shot was directed at a mirror in my home, the sniper evidently being fooled by my reflection. I sent for Tige."
Tige nodded. "Raymonds stick by Raymonds, so I come a-runnin'."