"028 (B088) - The Roar Devil (1935-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Once, where he had stumbled and fallen, there was a print which showed he was carrying a submachine gun. The mark left by the drum magazine was unmistakable.
The girl was eyeing the marks when the roaring sound came.
THERE must have been some intangible forewarning before the sound came, for a jaybird in a nearby tree had a sudden, frightened spasm. The jay screeched and beat madly among the treetops, as if evading some nameless and unseen horror. Experts concede that nature's creatures, birds and animals and the like, frequently sense dangers which humans miss, and possibly this accounted for the jay's animation in the warm spring sunshine.
Then came the roar. It was very faint at inception, almost inaudible, then it became as a locust swarm, and the locusts, invisible, expanded to titanic proportions, so that eardrums ached and heads nearly split from the clamor.
All through the woods, birds beat above the tree-tops in frightened haste, and down in the brush, rabbits, chucks, squirrels and an occasional deer broke cover.
Of all in the woodland, only the girl seemed to behave in a normal manner. She stood perfectly still and looked at the frightened wild life. Then she lifted hands and touched her ears. Her features were puzzled.
Then, with wild suddenness, she raced out from among the trees, sought the center of a clearing and flung herself prone. She was motionless there. It was as if she awaited some incredible happening.
But nothing occurred, except that the fantastic roaring died as mysteriously as it had arisen, leaving only the uproar of the birds.
The girl waited a long time. When she finally arose, her features - she was remarkably attractive in a satisfying way - wore a puzzled expression, as if she had expected something that had not happened, and was disappointed.
She continued following the footprints of the man. It was not long before she saw him.
He was a man small in stature but exceedingly plump, and he had gray hair, a neat gray beard. He wore a gray suit, a gray beret, and the impression was of a rotund little fellow, a peaceful dove of a man.
He held a submachine gun with both hands, and he seemed frightened; puzzled. He drove nervous glances about.
"Dove Zachies!" the girl murmured, and lifted her light rifle.
Her rifle was a costly target weapon, equipped with a mount for a telescope sight. She clipped the telescope in place and drew a deliberate bead on the man with the submachine gun. She held her position for a time, then lowered the gun.
"He must be taken alive," she told herself, almost inaudibly. That was the order."
The plump gray man, "Dove" Zachies, moved on through the woods, and the girl trailed him, her manner one of infinite caution.
Dove Zachies was obviously familiar with the region, for he made directly for certain vantage points which gave him a view of his surroundings. His object seemed to be to make sure no one was about.
Zachies held a general course to the westward, and shortly came upon a cabin of some size. The cabin windows were open, but the door closed.
Zachies knocked upon the door. There was no answer, and he knocked twice more, then tried the knob. The door was not locked, and he entered, his machine gun alert.
Something less than five minutes later, he popped outdoors. He had received a shock. It showed on his face. He was terrified.
He scuttled into the woods as if terribly afraid of being seen, or being overtaken by some dire calamity.
From her concealment behind bushes, the girl stared after him. Curiosity on her features, but no fear. Suddenly, as if she intended to inspect the cabin, then overtake Dove Zachies, she ran forward. Entering the cabin, she kept the .22 rifle alert.
She came into a large room, with a fireplace at one end, a table in the middle, and on each side a wall of bookshelves. The shelves were laden with plain-looking volumes which bore dry, profound titles. She glanced at the back of one. Its title read:
BOSTANTI'S PAPERS ON THE
ELECTROKINETICS OF
VOLATILIZATION
The girl made a face and glanced at others. They were all heavy scientific tomes, many being merely binders in which scientific pamphlets had been inserted.
The cabin had more than one room. The girl advanced to a door, shoved it open with the muzzle of her rifle, and started to enter.
She jerked into a sort of frozen motionlessness and stared at the living dead man in the room.
LIVING and at the same time dead, was the only thing which adequately described the man's appearance. He was a comparatively young man - no more than twenty-five - and he was freckled, had somewhat coarse features. He was in khaki trousers and an undershirt, with a rubber apron about his middle.
One end of a rope was tied to one of the young man's ankles. The rope was some fifteen feet long, and the other end was tied to a roof beam. A child with moderately strong fingers could have untied the young man. But he had obviously been there for days. He looked gaunt, starved, pitiful.
He was standing slackly erect. If he saw the competent young woman with the rifle, he gave no sign. He did not even look at her.
"You!" the girl said sharply. "What's the gag?"
The starved-looking young man swayed slowly, erratically. He was like a mechanical robot with some of his cogs and levers out of order. He was trying to turn around, but he fell down.
"It's a good act!" the girl said dryly.
Then her eyes became wide. The young man had fallen on a piece of glass, and it had cut his hand, so that crimson was sheeting slowly over the floor; but he gave no sign of feeling or knowing.
The girl whipped a glance over the room. It had been a laboratory, but its contents had been ravaged. Apparatus was broken. Empty stands and pedestals indicated much of it had been carried off bodily. There were ax marks on some of the tables, in some of the coils of the gutted electrical paraphernalia. Some one had systematically wrecked the place.
The young woman lunged to the starved man, tore off his undershirt and tied it about his cut hand. She felt of his skin. He was almost as cold as the dead. She shuddered, then shook him.
"Snap out of it!" she urged. "Who are you? What's wrong with you?"
He made blubbering sounds that were quite horrible.
She tried again, shaking him and demanding, "What is your connection with Dove Zachies?"
Dove Zachies, in the door where he had appeared so silently that the girl had not heard, said, "I hope that you will let me assure you that he has no connection whatever."

Chapter II. CALAMITY

THE girl had laid her rifle on the floor. She reached for it instinctively, then withdrew her hands when she saw the submachine gun Zachies had trained upon her.
Zachies looked even more peaceful and dovelilke at close range.
"I started back to my car and ran across the tracks you left in trailing me," he told the girl. He had a smooth, cooing manner of delivering his words. "Wasn't I lucky?"
Zachies advanced, put a foot on her gun, grasped the barrel and smashed the light weapon, ruining it. Then he scrutinized the girl curiously.
"I've seen you," he said grimly. "Been trailing me the last few days, ain't you - have you not?" He made the grammatical correction as an afterthought.