"031 (B060) - The Majii (1935-09) - Lester Dent.palmdoc.pdbTXT" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE MAJII
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson


Chapter I. MAKER OF JEWELS
"I AM about to, be killed," the woman said.
The taxi driver whom she addressed had been half asleep behind the wheel of his parked cab, but the text of the woman's speech was not conducive to further slumber. He sat up straight.
The woman asked, "Have you ever heard of Doc Savage?"
"Who ain't?" growled the driver. "Say, what kind of a gagЧ"
"You will take us to Doc Savage," directed the woman. "And hurry."
The driver looked beyond the woman, after which his mouth fell open and his cigarette dropped off his lip and began to burn his coat front. The woman was veiled, but it was not that which shocked the hackman and scared him.
It was the four men behind the woman. They were four very tall men who had heads like cocoanuts in color, and who wore four of the most resplendent uniforms that the taxi driver had ever seen. Each of the four carried a modern automatic military rifle which was not much less than a portable machine gun.
"Well," snapped the woman. "Have you a tongue?"
"Sure." The driver swallowed twice. "I'll take you to Doc Savage." Then, under his breath, "Ain't this a crackpot world!"
The woman spoke one ripping sentence which was absolutely unintelligible to the driver, but seemed to mean much to the four men with the uniforms and the rifles.
They all got in. The woman received much deference. She had bundled herself in a voluminous, shapeless cloak, but she had a nice ankle.
The cigarette burned through the hackman's trousers, scorched him and he jumped violentlyЧthen all but fainted, for, with a speed born of much practice, one of the brown men snapped up his rifle.
The woman cried out. Wildness, haste in her voice told the taximan the brown one was about to shoot. But she was in time. The automatic rifle lowered.
The driver found himself some blocks away, going in the wrong direction, before he got over his fright. He corrected his direction. The woman spoke to him.
"Is Doc Savage in New York?" she asked.
"Don't know," the driver said hoarsely. "He goes all over the world."
The cab was headed for a nest of buildings in the center of Manhattan, out of which towered one of the tallest skyscrapers in the metropolis.
"What," asked the woman, "does New York think of Doc Savage?"
"He's quite a guy," said the driver. "He helps people out of trouble. Does it for the excitement."
"Then he should be interested in saving my life, as well as others, including, very possibly, his own," the woman said.
"Yeah, I guess so," said the driver. He had already decided that the woman was some kind of nut.
The woman said no more, and the driver gave attention to his piloting, reflecting at the same time that the woman, while she spoke distinct and understandable English, had a pronounced foreign accent, but of what nation, the driver could not tell, he being no linguist.
They were down in the garment sector now, and the streets were comparatively deserted at this hour.
"Stop!" the woman commanded suddenly.
Her voice was shrill, tense. The driver swerved his machine in to the curb, then stared at his cargo as they unloaded hurriedly and scampered into a subway entrance. They disappeared.
The hackman had not been paid, but he only stared, for the truth was that he felt a relief at getting rid of his fares, for they were potential trouble, he felt.
But a low, coarse voice rumbled in the driver's ear in a manner to halt his feeling of relief.
"Where'd she go, buddy?" the voice demanded.
THE driver's head jerked around, and he saw that there was another taxi in the street behind him, with at least three men inside. The cab must have been following.
The man who had asked the question had a thick body and a hard mannerЧthe manner of a man accustomed to treating other people as they do not want to be treated.
"Where'd they go?" the man growled. "Where were you takin' 'em?"
He twisted back his coat lapel to show something that the driver did not see distinctly but which he took to be a detective's badge.
"Doc Savage's office," gulped the driver, who had no love for trouble.
The thick-bodied man looked as if he had indigestion at the information, and he grimaced, seeming on the point of saying several things, none of them pleasant. Then he looked up and down the street furtively.
He dipped a hand in his pocket, brought it out palm down, but with a dollar bill held between the extended fingers. He passed the bill in to the driver, but when the latter reached for it, the hand slashed suddenly for the fellow's throat.
Awful horror came on the driver's face, and he threshed about, making gargling sounds, while a red flood bubbled and cascaded down his chest.
The thick-bodied man ran back to his waiting taxi, carefully wiping and pocketing the queer razor-blade affair with which he had cut the throat. He got into his machine.
"South," he said. "Give it all you got."
The driver was obviously no regular hackman. He looked as tough as the three in the rear.
"Well?" he said over his shoulder.
"The Ranee is heading for Doc Savage," said the thick-bodied man who had killed the taxi driver.
There was utter silence while the cab lunged along the gloomy streets, and inside it there was all of the cheer of a hearse interior.
"It ain't too late to get out of this thing," said one of the men. "We can grab a plane or a boat or something."
"Lingh may be able to handle Doc Savage," snapped the thick man.