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

"Opinion based on what?" queried his honor.
"On logic," snapped the other. "The roarings are queer. So are the earth shakings, earthquakes, or whatever they are."
"They are not earthquakes," some one pointed out loudly. "Seismographs in other States do not register them. An earthquake would register. These don't."
THE conversation was lapsing into a rehashing of the situation, with no new angles being brought out. His honor tried the telephone again, and was informed that an hour or more might elapse before the long-distance wires were repaired. More than one break had been found.
The hospital internes had gone with the two queerly afflicted engineers. Men with urgent business to attend to began drifting out of the hall.
The Municipal Office Building was a large structure, and flanking it at the rear was one of the town's numerous hotels. This hostelry was neither large nor pretentious. There was a courtyard between it and the Municipal Office Building. No one ever frequented this court.
Possibly the deserted court was the reason why a tiny wire, stretching from a hotel window to the roof of the Municipal Office Building, had escaped discovery. However, it was a very fine wire, no larger than a hair.
Shades were drawn over the hotel window into which the wire led. They were thick shades, and it was gloomy in the room. It would have taxed an observer to catch more than a faint glint of light from a telephonic headset as it was removed from a head and deposited on the floor.
The headset, with an amplifier box near by, the wire across the court, and a microphone cleverly concealed inside the municipal building comprised a very modern eavesdropping device.
The secret listener to the conference in the Municipal Office Building now left the hotel room, walked boldly through the hotel lobby and out into the afternoon sunlight.
It was the young woman who had trailed and captured Dove Zachies. She was smiling, unconcerned, as she made her way to the telephone office and tried to get long-distance connections to New York. The wires were still out.
The young woman made her way to a small private garage on the outskirts of Powertown. She entered, locked the door behind her, and opened the rumble seat of the large coupщ which the garage held. She brought out boxes and wires, began to hook them together and set them up.
It was a radio telephone set, one in which portability had been sacrificed somewhat for power. She began calling, "Mear, Mear, Mear!" repeatedly, until a thin, dry-sounding voice answered.
"This is V. Venable Mear speaking," the voice said. "I am in New York."
"Retta Kenn reporting," said the young woman. "I have seized Dove Zachies and his usual shadow, Stupe Davin - "
"Why did you not use the telephone?" demanded the somewhat creaking voice of V. Venable Mear.
"Wires out," said the girl. "I left Zachies bound securely and gagged at the cabin of a man named Flagler D'Aughtell, along with a man who seems to be Mort Collins, the assistant of D'Aughtell. Stupe Davin I left in the heavy bushes by the road near the cabin - "
"What was Dove Zachies doing at D'Aughtell's cabin?" V. Venable Mear demanded sharply.
"Looking" said the girl. "Just looking around, as far as I could tell."
"We will take care of this Zachies matter later," advised Mear. "What else have you learned?"
"I just tuned in on the city fathers," reported the young woman. "They are puzzled and worried."
'"That is not news," snorted Mear.
"But this is," informed Retta Kenn. "They are going to call on Doc Savage to solve the mystery."
"What!" exploded V. Venable Mear. "Are you sure?"
"Positively," replied the young woman. "The telephone wires are down now, but as soon as they are repaired, Doc Savage will be started on the trail of the Roar Devil and all of the rest of it."
"Oh, oh!" gasped V. Venable Mear.
"You said it, Retta Kenn agreed. "When the bronze man - "
"Who?"
"The bronze man," exclaimed the girl. "They call Doc Savage that. When he tackles this, things are going to happen."
"Yes," V. Venable Mear agreed, "the Doc Savage angle is something new."

Chapter IV. THE PERIL PUZZLE

DOC SAVAGE was in his office-laboratory on the eighty-sixth floor of a mid-town New York City skyscraper.
The bronze man was attired in an all-enveloping garment of gray rubberized fabric, and his head was encased in what resembled a diver's helmet made of glass. Clad in this hermetically sealed outfit, he was manipulating retorts and stills in which chemicals boiled and precipitated, and from which clouds of evil-looking vapor arose. The laboratory door was closed tightly and locked.
A buzzer whined a loud, shrill note. The bronze man ignored it. The vapor from his chemicals had settled over his glass hood, and occasionally he paused to wipe it away to permit clearer vision. At such times, his features were distinguishable.
Several things were noteworthy about his visage. His skin was fine-textured and of a somewhat unique bronze hue. His hair, straight and fitting like a metal skullcap, was of a bronze slightly darker than his skin. A woman would have called his face remarkably handsome. A man would have noticed the tremendous sinews in his neck and the smooth muscularity about his jaws.
Most striking of all, perhaps, were his eyes. They were like pools of small gold flakes stirred by an uneasy, tiny wind. They were startling, compelling eyes, and they seemed never at ease.
The buzzer whined again. The bronze man lowered the heat of an electric still, then walked to a large instrument panel and threw a switch. On the panel was a square of frosted glass.
The frosted glass lighted up not unlike a small motion picture screen, showing a view of the corridor in front of the elevators.
Doc Savage studied the screen, which merely showed the reflection of the corridor as carried by an arrangement of mirrors and tubes.
Into the atmosphere of the laboratory there came a queer, exotic sound. It was undulating, not unmusical, and it ran up and down the scale without adhering to any particular tune. It was not a whistle, nor yet was it a vocal noise. A listener might have called it a trilling note, if he thought of any description at all.
It was the sound of Doc Savage, small unconscious thing which he made in moments of mental stress.
THERE was a man in the corridor. He was on his hands and knees, and now he reached up and, with what seemed infinite difficulty, pressed the buzzer button again.
The man was sagging in a little lake of scarlet. He coughed, and a red spray flew threw his teeth. He was a stocky man, and he was very pale.
Doc Savage left the laboratory hurriedly. But he was careful to lock the door behind him, and once in the library with its thousands of scientific volumes, he turned on a strong electric fan and stood a moment in its blast
He had been experimenting with poison gases, trying to develop a counter-gas which would render them harmless, and enough of the vapors might cling to recesses of his weird garment to kill one who came close.
Satisfied that the fan blast had removed any lethal wisps, he went on into the reception room with its furnishings of deep leather chairs, massive inlaid table and huge safe.
The corridor door behaved in surprising fashion as he approached it. While he was still ten feet from it, the panel, which bore no trace of a knob or lock, opened. It was actuated by a device which a fairly competent electrician could have explained - an electroscope equipped with contacts and wired to relays and a hidden lock in the door. A bit of radioactive metal which the bronze man carried actuated the device.
The man in the corridor was disclosed. The fellow still crouched on all fours. He looked up. His eyes were unnaturally bright.