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

Long Tom had a rather quarrelsome voice.
"I'm packing," he said. "An electrical outfit made me a fat offer to go to South America and superintend some construction. I stand to make fifty thousand out of it."
"Then you would not be interested in some excitement?" Doc queried.
"What kind?" Long Tom countered. The radio loudspeaker did not improve the natural sourness of his voice.
"Rama Tura, the jewel maker, has something up his sleeve," Doc said.
"Of course he has," Long Tom snorted. "But let him trim the suckers. He's only going after the rich ones."
"Rama Tura's men just seized Monk and Ham," Doc said. "There is also a matter of a woman to whom something mysterious and terrible happened, who kept calling my name, and who has now disappeared rather queerly."
"This electrical concern offered me fifty thousand and a bonus," Long Tom said.
"All right," Doc said. "Take it."
"I will not," Long Tom said contrarily. "Where'll I meet you?"
"Rama Tura's apartment," Doc Savage said, and gave the address.
Where Rama Tura resided was no secret. The matter of the two men killed in the attempted jewel robbery had spread that over the newspapers.
The subdued lobby of the Hotel Vincent, in which Rama Tura had been residing, was quiet and only partially saturated with pale light when Doc Savage drove past. The bronze man parked in a spot where he could keep a watch on the place, and waited for Long Tom to appear.
A newsboy passed, crying his wares. Doc bought a late edition.
There was no mention of the excitement at Rama Tura's latest jewel-making sщance, which was not surprising, since it had occurred only a few minutes ago. He glanced over the paper. Two items caught his attention.
Except for a difference in names and addresses, they might have been identical.
Two men had been murdered. Both murders had been committed by robbers. Knives had been the death weapons in each case. Both victims had been fairly wealthy. Both men had been avid amateur photographers.
DOC SAVAGE got out of his roadster, went to a telephone and called the detective agency which had charge of issuing the tickets to Rama Tura's jewel-making sщances. The agency was a perfectly honest one.
He requested the night operative on duty to check the list of persons to whom cards had been issued for Rama Tura's previous night's performance.
Both murdered men were on the list of ticket recipients.
There was no definite proof, but it was possible that Rama Tura had taken measures to see that the pictures of his performance were never developed.
Doc Savage went back to his roadster. Long Tom should have arrived by now. He was not in evidence.
Long Tom's car was equipped with a radio. Doc, adjusting his own receiver, carefully, got the carrier wave length of Long Tom's transmitter distinctly. Evidently it was switched on. It did not sound far away.
Doc tried repeatedly, but did not raise Long Tom. Something, it seemed, had happened to the electrical wizard.
Doc Savage walked into the Hotel Vincent, strode across the dim, empty lobby, and noted that the clerk seemed to be asleep with head on the desk. Doc did not address him, but walked around and shook him.
The clerk was evidently drugged. He was slightly disheveled, as if he had been held, and there was a prick on his arm where a hypo needle had probably entered.
DOC made, with a pen, certain strange-looking marks on the desk blotter. These were hieroglyphics of the ancient Mayans, and could be read by very few men in the civilized world. Long Tom could read them, having acquired the ability during the course of a certain Central American adventure.
Long Tom, should he arrive, would be certain to see the symbols and know Doc was upstairs.
Scrutiny of the registration cards told Doc the floor of Rama Tura's suite. The bronze man went to an elevator. The operator was slumbering insideЧdrugged. Doc ran the cage up himself.
There was no sound outside the door of Rama Tura's suite. Doc tried the knob, found it unlocked, and walked in. The lights were burning. There was flame in the fireplace, rather low. The ashes looked unnatural. Doc went over.
Documents had been burned recently in the fireplace, and the ashes mashed into millions of indecipherable fragments. No hope of learning anything there.
Doc went on into the other rooms. Dresser drawers were upset on the floor. Coat hangers were strewn about opened closet doors. Everywhere were these signs of a hasty departure.
A wastebasket held newspapers, wrapping papers, bits of cordЧand a crumpled ball of white cloth. Doc got the cloth. It was a hospital frock, and bore the name of the hospital from which the mysterious woman of the blue finger nails had escaped.
There was a damp spot on the gown, on one arm, and it gave off a strong scent of toilet water.
In the bathroom, a bottle of toilet water had been broken, and was still wet on the floor.
Doc Savage studied this fairly conclusive proof that the mysterious woman had been in the suite recently, then made another round of the place, found nothing of interest, and went downstairs.
The Hotel Vincent telephone operator occupied a small room by herself, and was evidently not a very energetic young woman, because she was placidly reading, unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
After a little argument, Doc got a look at her call charge slips. Since every call made by a guest was charged for at ten cents each, a record was kept.
One call had been made from Rama Tura's suite that night. It was timed less than an hour previously. Doc studied the number, made his small, fantastic trilling sound briefly, while the operator gaped wonderingly, then called the same number himself.
He got the office of a transcontinental air line. There happened to be an alert young man on the desk, and he distinctly remembered a call at the time Doc mentioned.
It had been made by a voice with a distinctly foreign accent, and the inquirer had desired to know whether the plane due in from San Francisco at midnight carried as a passenger one, Kadir Lingh.
"Naturally, we do not give out such information," said the young man at the air line office.
Doc Savage made his identity known, and requested speech with an official of the concern who happened to know his voice.
"What about this Kadir Lingh?" he asked, when he was sure of getting the information.
"Kadir Lingh is aboard the midnight plane," Doc was told. "Not only that, but we have a request from the American government to show him every courtesy. It seems that Kadir Lingh is the ruler of some country in the Orient."
"He is the Nizam of Jondore," Doc Savage replied. "Jondore happens to be a province, under British protectorate, with a population only a little smaller than the United States. Should something happen to Jondore, it is pretty logical to think the same thing would happen to the rest of the Far East."
"What makes you say that?" the other asked curiously.
Doc Savage hung up without answering.
NO one around the Hotel Vincent knew anything about the exodus of Rama Tura's retinue, so Doc Savage left the place.
The bronze man's roadster was fitted with spare equipment for almost any emergency, including a length of electric wire and a trouble lamp.