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

DOC SAVAGE, having learned disgustingly little by his role of pretended rescuer of the blinded man, drove into the city and directly to a concern which made a business of supplying ambulances for long hauls.
He delivered the blinded man to them, along with an order for a doctor, and certain instructions. Then he made a long-distance telephone call.
The sightless one would then be taken upstate, where another ambulance would meet the first, and the patient would be transferred. That was the last his old haunts would ever hear of the patient.
The fellow would go, as a matter of fact, to an institution which Doc Savage maintained in the mountains, an elaborate place, where the man's brain would be operated upon in such a delicate manner that all memory of his past would be wiped out, after which he would receive a course of training in upright citizenship, and learn a trade by which he could make a living without his eyes.
Doc Savage had maintained this unique "college" for a long time, and its existence was known to almost no one outside the specialists who worked there, and Doc's group of aides.
Even the "graduates" were delivered in such a manner that they did not know where it was. No "graduate" had ever been known to return to crooked ways.
Returning to his skyscraper headquarters, Doc Savage found that the device which recorded all telephone calls during his absence held an unpleasant and shocking message. The mechanical device on the telephone consisted of a phonographic device which said, through a loud-speaker, "This is a mechanical robot in Doc Savage's office which will record for his attention any message you care to speak," after which the communication of the caller was placed on another record.
There were really two calls of importance.
The first was from the hospital to which Doc Savage had gone to visit the woman who had disappeared, and it advised that three menЧthe two doctors and the interne who had attended the womanЧhad been found with knives sticking in their hearts.
The bronze man made his weird, small trilling sound for some moments after he heard that, and the note was as chill, as eerie as a frigid wind trickling through the frozen pillars of some polar ice field. For once, it was not pleasant to hear.
First the men who had taken pictures. Now the doctors and the interne.
Rama Tura was wiping out every one who might possibly have learned anything about him.
The second important call was in the dead voice of Rama Tura.
"Long Tom, Monk and Ham wish to send you a message," the mechanism had recorded Rama Tura as saying. "They say that they do not think you will or should accede to a certain demand which I am going to make. But first, let me prove that I have them."
Following that, Ham's voice said, "Doc, they're planningЧ" after which his voice ended suddenly, as if a hand had been slapped over his mouth. Then came Long Tom's sour voice, not speaking words, but remonstrating angrily close to the telephone transmitter. It sounded as if he were being abused.
It was apish, stupid-looking Monk who made best use of the opportunity. He spoke Mayan, and said, "See a man called Kadir LinghЧ" before he was shut off violently.
"I do not believe they had time to tell you anything of value," Rama Tura's lifeless voice continued. "It was necessary to let you know they were with me."
The voice might have been coming from a phonograph which was incapable of registering tonal differences.
"You see," Rama Tura said, "within the next twelve hours, you will receive a box. This box will be a reminder to attend to your own business. It will contain the head of one of these friends of yours."
THE bronze man's features held no visible emotion as he put the recordings aside and set the machine for future operation. That did not mean, however, that he was unconcerned.
There was a grim speed in his movements as he passed into an adjacent room, which held a scientific library of great completeness, thence into his unusual laboratory.
From a cabinet he took a vest which consisted of a light, bulletproof chain mail, to which was attached rows of small pockets, these padded so that, once the vest was donned, its presence was hardly noticeable. The pockets held innumerable gadgets which, on occasion, served for some rather strange uses.
The bronze man left his headquarters this time by descending in the speed elevator to the basement level, and stepping into a passage which led some scores of yards to a metal door that admitted into the Broadway subway tunnel. He walked, crowding aside as trains passed, to the nearest station, and from there took a taxi.
There was quiet in the vicinity of the building housing the Temple Nava. Police guards were gone from in front, although a few curious loitered quietly in the lobby, talking. No brown men of Jondore were in evidence.
Doc Savage went up to Temple Nava exactly as he had earlier in the night, using the freight elevator in the rear.
The Temple Nava had a disheveled aspect. Rama Tura apparently had not gone on with his jewel-making sщance after the excitement. Chairs were upset and scattered about.
Doc Savage moved back to the stage, alert, and climbed to where he had left the motion picture camera. It was still in the obscure hiding place, sensitive lens through the curtain.
Producing a flashlight which spiked a stream of intense white light scarcely thicker than a pencil, Doc went over the camera.
What he found did not seem to satisfy him. He clambered down, and studied the floor beneath, and examined the film of dust, microscopic in places, on the braces and struts.
Some one had climbed to the camera, other than himself.
He removed the camera with the greatest of care, not opening it, not even touching it, but wrapping it in a tapestry which he yanked from the wall.
Twenty minutes later, he had the camera under a strong X ray in his laboratory.
The film magazine was empty. Whatever had been photographed would serve no purpose, for Rama Tura or his men had obviously taken the film.
Certain of the fastenings and hand grips on the camera seemed to bear a thin coating of oil. It might have seeped from the mechanism.
Doc Savage used chemicals to analyze the oil film. It was a potent toxic and an acid in solutionЧthe acid to burn the skin and admit the poison into the system.
Touching the stuff would have been an excellent bid for death.
Doc went over the camera for finger prints, and was not surprised at finding none.
GOING back into the reception room, Doc Savage used the telephone. His first call was to the police, an inquiry as to whether any trace had been found of Kadir Lingh, ruler of Jondore, who had managed to escape the reception at the airport. There was some news.
The taxicab seized by Kadir Lingh and his bodyguard had been found in Brooklyn, deserted except for one brown man, probably a Jondorean, who had been sitting in the back seat, suffering the unavoidable after effects of a bullet through the brain.
The police official had an additional word.
"This fellow Rama Tura has dropped out of sight," he said. "We wanted to question him about that fracas at Temple Nava tonight, and about the two alleged robbers who were killed in his apartment. He has checked out of his diggings. No one has an idea where he went."
Doc gave courteous thanks and hung up.
THE recording device showed no calls during the bronze man's absence at Temple Nava, which was good evidence that Monk, Ham and Long Tom had not escaped.
Doc now proceeded to make a series of telephone calls. He got some sharp answers from persons who did not like the idea of being aroused at this hour of the night. Simple statement of his identity, however, was in each case sufficient to stem the complaints.
Monk's pet pig, Habeas Corpus, was in Doc Savage's office. During the telephoning, the porker came out of the library, where he had been staying, and stood and eyed Doc Savage intently, grunting several times in a vague way.
The shote gave every evidence of becoming concerned about Monk's continued absence. Doc interrupted his telephoning to give Habeas an apple, which the diminutive porker ignored.
From an executive of the Better Business Bureau, Doc Savage secured the information he was seeking. It is one of the purposes of Better Business Bureaus to investigate unusual enterprises and ascertain, if possible, whether they are fakes designed to gyp some one. Rama Tura and his fantastic jewel-making sщance had not escaped this one.
"It is, of course, incredible that the jewels are being made by hocus pocus," the executive of the bureau told Doc. "But the jewels produced are unquestionably genuine. Hard-headed buyers have paid enormous sums for some of them. One third of the money goes to American charity, and the other two thirds to a charity in Jondore."
"That," Doc said quickly, "is what interests me. What about this charity in Jondore?"
"It is a fund to be administered by prominent persons in Jondore," the other explained.