"023 (B009) - The Mystic Mullah (1935-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE MYSTIC MULLAH



A DOC SAVAGE ADVENTURE



by Kenneth Robeson



(Originally published in "Doc Savage" magazine January 1935. Bantam Books reprint November 1965)







Chapter 1



THE BROKEN NECK





IT was a drizzling gray evening full of moaning ghosts. The rain came down in occasional flurries, but most of the time it remained suspended in the air as mist that the newspapers next day were to call "the thickest fog within memory." Harbor traffic was almost at a standstill, and only those boat captains who were foolhardy, or those pressed by absolute necessity, were abroad. The foghorns of the boats were the moaning ghosts.



One ghost was especially persistent. It had the particular strident voice peculiar to tugboat whistles, and it came up through the Narrows from the open sea at a clip that put cold chills on the spines of boatmen who knew how thick that fog was.



There was something scared, something imperative, and maybe something a bit mad about the tooting of that tugboat. A coast guard cutter became interested and nosed over to investigate. Coast guardsmen will go out in anything.



The cutter skipper nosed in close, saw that the tug was the Whale of Gotham, and that there was a picture of a spouting whale painted on the bows. Then, after the manner of coast guard skippers with tugboat captains, the cutter commandant swore a blue streak.



"What's the idea of tearing in here like an express train?" he finished.