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

Doc Savage appeared.
The arm of this unusual individual had been something to command attention. His full figure was infinitely more striking. He was a giant in size, yet so perfectly proportioned, each muscle developed with such equality, that his size was evident only when compared with the dimensions of the cabin hatch.
Every line of the great frame advertised an almost incalculable strength. This aspect was made the more noticeable by the unique bronze color of his skin; it was remindful of a bronze paint coating muscles that were great metal hawsers.
The figure in the coonskin cap threw up the long muzzle-loading rifle, took deliberate aim and fired. The gun lipped small flame. There was no sound of a shotЧonly a loud, gruesome squeak.
Doc Savage was leaping ashore as the long weapon discharged. In midair he twisted; landing, he leaped far to one side. Smooth speed and enormous agility marked this dodging.
The bullet missed him, hit near the shore where the water was less than six inches deep, and dug up a tall geyser of brine. The slug did not glance, being fired at too steep an angle.
On the cliff top, Long Tom yelled angrily. He aimedЧhis big pistol whacked twice.
The electrical wizard distinctly saw both slugs hit the deerskin blouse of the riflemanЧthe hide flattened, and a little dust gushed. Yet the man in the ancient garments gave no sign of having been harmed.
"Careful!" Doc Savage called, and the whole beach volleyed with his great voice.
"Shootin' mercy bullets!" Long Tom shouted back. "Won't hurt 'im bad! Make 'im unconscious in a minute."
But the electrical wizard was too optimistic. The figure in deerskins cradled the long muzzle-loader under an arm. A leap of surprising length took him off the trail and to a ledge. He scuttled along this. Boulders shielded him some of the time.
"Watch him!" Doc Savage rapped. "He hasn't time to reload his rifle. Probably he's wearing a bulletproof vest."
The giant bronze man was coming up the cliff face. He made surprising speed, his vast leaps carrying him from ledge to ledge, a hand searchlight which he held boring steadily upon the rifleman.
High above, Long Tom discharged more mercy bullets, slugs which were mere shells containing a drug that brought unconsciousness. But the skin-clad target was a fleeting one, and now sheltered by rocks.
Long Tom, Renny and Doc converged on the quarry. They operated in concert, with no superfluous shouting.
Long Tom and Renny had worked with the big bronze man for a long time. They were two of a group of five assistants who went to the ends of the earth with Doc Savage, helping him in his strange career of assisting those in danger, of aiding the weak and punishing those whom civilized laws did not seem to be able to reach.
The gaunt figure with the long rifle fled wildly. The ledge which he traversed became narrower, the cliff above and below more steep. At the foot of the precipice the beach disappeared, and waves beat into white spume against the naked rock.
"He's gone about as far as he can," Renny boomed. "He'll have to stop in a minute. The ledge plays out!"
But the apparition in wilderness garb did not stop. Still gripping the long rifle, he sailed outward in a great leap, hit the sea and disappeared beneath the surface.
DOC and his two aides kept a sharp watch on the spot where the strange figure had vanished. Bubbles came up for a time, then ceased to rise.
From an inner pocket, Doc Savage drew what looked like a chopped-off candle. He twisted at the top of this and it began to blaze, spraying an eye-hurting glare of light. The bronze man planted the fusee atop a boulder, illuminating the sea for hundreds of feet in all directions. Then they waited.
One minute, two, then a third passed. The rifleman did not appear in the sea.
Doc Savage peeled off coat and vest, kicked free of his shoes, then arched into the water. His entrance into the brine was executed with little splash.
Some time elapsed without Doc reappearing, such a long time that Renny and Long Tom exchanged uneasy glances in the fusee glitter.
"Holy cow!" Renny rumbled gloomily. "Doc should be back on the surface by now."
Long Tom pulled at a colorless jaw. "Say, did you see the face of that bird with the rifle?"
Renny nodded. "Yeah. Looked as if he were dead." He began to tug at his coat. "I'm gonnna see what's keepin' Doc."
"Wait," Long Tom suggested. "I've seen Doc stay under the water longer than you'd think any man could hold his breath."
The unhealthy-looking electrical wizard was a prophet, for there was a turmoil in the green brine, and Doc appeared, trod water for a few seconds, breathing deeply, then glanced up at his two assistants.
"Any sign of him?" he called.
"Not a one," rumbled Renny. "He never came up."
Doc Savage charged his lungs with air, sank, was down for another almost interminable interval, and finally came up. He repeated this. Then he clambered out.
"Water about fifteen feet deep, with a sandy bottom," he advised. "Went all over it. There was no sign of the fellow."
"He must be part fish to vanish like that," Renny growled.
"Here's something else worth thinking about," Doc said thoughtfully. "Remember his rifle? Very long and heavy. A man could not swim easily with that weapon. But there was no sign of it on the bottom."
For some minutes longer they stood on the ledge, scrutinizing the sea, and the certainty came to them that no man could swim underwater a sufficient distance to get beyond the glow of the fusee, for the light was shed over a radius of fully a hundred yards.
"Drowned," Long Tom said emphatically.
Doc led the way back to the plane to get into dry clothing.
Near the craft he paused, then waded out until he stood where the brine was a foot deep, and, crouching, searched with his hands on the bottom. Using the hand searchlight, he located a pocket in the smooth underwater surface of sand. He explored this.
"The bullet from the muzzle-loading rifle hit here," he said. "I'll get it. The thing might come in handy."
He searched deeper in the sand, using the light often, and finally he stood erect.
"Strange," he said. "It seems to have vanished."
A FRACTIONAL moment after Doc Savage spoke, a strange sound came into beingЧa weird, exotic trilling note which had the fantastic quality of seeming to come from everywhere, yet from no definite spot. The exotic trilling ran up and down the musical scale, pursuing no tune, defying description, almost unreal, and yet very definitely a concrete sound.
Renny and Long Tom looked at Doc Savage. The bronze man's lips were not moving; there was nothing to show that he was making the sound. Yet they knew Doc was its source.
The note was a vague, unconscious thing which the giant man of metal made in moments of excitement and stress, or when he was moved greatly by surprise. The fact that the trilling came into being now, Renny and Long Tom knew, meant that the bronze man was profoundly stirred.
"The bullet undoubtedly hit here, and it did not richochet," Doc said slowly. "Yet it is gone."
Renny hardened his huge fists. They made vast knobs of gristle, and he knocked them together, creating a noise as brittle as concrete blocks colliding.
"A ghost bullet, eh?" he muttered.
Long Tom frowned palely. "You meant that for a wisecrack, but d'you remember that guy's face?"
"I won't forget it for a long time," Renny rumbled.