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

"You cannot, either," snapped the veiled woman. "And you are going to stop it! Otherwise, I am going to put Doc Savage and the police both upon your trail. I am going to tell them what is behind your actions."
"And what is behind it?" Rama Tura queried.
The woman swallowed. She seemed to brace herself.
"The Majii," she said.
Rama Tura looked very much as if he had been struck.
"So you have fathomed it," he mumbled hoarsely.
That, in turn, had a profound effect on the Ranee, for it was obvious now that her early conception had been only a grisly suspicion, but that Rama Tura's words had convinced her that she had guessed the sinister truth.
"Seize him!" she shrilled at her two companions. "If he is put out of the way now, it will save countless lives!"
Rama Tura sat bolt upright in his bed. His body was a pitiful string of bones. His chest resembled a gnarled, thin brown root. He was entirely hideous to the eye.
"I fear," he said, "that I shall have to demonstrate."
HE sat perfectly still after that, and if at first he had been unwholesome, a brown, lecherous harridan, he was more so now, seeming to emanate an aura of the indescribable.
There came into the room the feeling of a tomb, the very real yet somewhat impossible sensation which comes upon those who stand in the presence of those that no longer live.
The Ranee struggled visibly against the feeling.
"Old buzzard!" she snapped. "You have practiced these tricks all of your life. Of course you are good at them!"
Rama Tura said nothing. His eyes had not moved. His mouth had not closed.
Suddenly, there appeared in the far side of the room an incredible thing, a monster of shapelessness, a fantastic ogre of a thing.
The Ranee, her two guards, stared at it. The light from the bedlamp hardly reached that far, and they could not make out the exact identity of the thing, except that it was a creature possessing eyes, and so large that it might have difficulty getting entirely into the room.
The air in the room began to change, to take on a definite odor, vague, repulsive, a bit warm, as if it might be the breath of the horror which had appeared so weirdly and was watching them.
"It is my servant," the death-faced Rama Tura said tonelessly. "It is here for a purpose."
The Ranee continued to stare.
"It is my guard," said the man in the bed again, referring to the thing in the door. "It is lent to me by my master, the Majii. It does strange things to men."
As if in verification to his words, both the guards now did an incredible an unbelievable thing. They presented their own guns to their own heads and calmly committed suicide. A single long breath could have been drawn between the time the first hit the floor and the other followed him.
The Ranee made a hissing sound of horror, spun and ran wildly. She did not go toward the door and the thing she could see there, but toward another door, and tore it open wildly, finding beyond a sitting room, a luxurious parlor of a place.
She plunged on and slammed against another door, which was unlocked and let her, luckily, out into the corridor, from which a passing elevator cage carried her, silent and quivering, to the street.
The night swallowed her.
Chapter III. CHOSEN OF THE MAJII
THE newspapers made a big splurge next morning. The headlines said:
THIEVES ATTACK RAMA TURA
Raid on Quarters of Mysterious Mystic
Results in Death of Pair
Two alleged robbers were killed in the hotel apartment of Rama Tura, man of amazing powers, last night. According to Rama Tura, the slaying followed a terrific hand-to-hand fight with three assailants, one a woman, who escaped.
This story was corroborated by Rama Tura's servant, and the hotel clerk, who was himself forced to guide the thieves to Rama Tura's quarters.
There was more of it, a detailed resumщ of the banditry efforts as told by Rama Tura, and it was a convincing yarn, perfectly logical.
The motive, according to Rama Tura, had been a desire on the part of the thieves to force him to reveal how he made jewels out of worthless pebbles and bits of glass.
In the center of the front page of one newspaper was a box, editorial in nature, discussing the mysterious Rama Tura, and his powers. It was headed:
WHAT IS HE?
Rama Tura came to the United States from the Orient, from a wild mountain province called Jondore.
Rama Tura takes pebbles and makes diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Jewel experts say they are genuine beyond doubt. They back their judgment by purchasing the stones.
One third of the selling price of these stones goes to American charity. Two thirds goes to a fund for charity administration in Jondore, Rama Tura's native land. Rama Tura himself takes no money.
What manner of being is this Rama Tura? Is he a faker? This paper had three of the greatest jewel experts pass on Rama Tura's products as genuine.
How does Rama Tura make his jewels? If he uses fakery, the most intense skeptics are baffled.
Rama Tura claims to be a disciple of the Majii. The Majii was a horrendous war chief who lived thirty centuries ago and conquered much of the Oriental world of that day. The Majii was a magician who could bring himself to life after being killed on the field of battle. He could slay thousands with a stare. He was cruel.
The Majii is believed by historians to be only a myth.
But Rama Turn is no myth. Just what is he?
Some other newspapers carried yarns along the same vein, elaborating on the queer personality of Rama Tura, and one even went over the strange fact that Rama Tura apparently had actually been brought from Jondore to the United States in a coffin.
One paper further stated that Rama Tura slept in his coffin, and was said to come alive only on special occasions, but the police disproved this by stating that Rama Tura had been in his bed when the thieves walked in on him.
Another journal hooked the robbery in with the slaughter in the subway, pointing out that the two thieves killed in Rama Tura's apartment were of the same nationality as some of those killed in the subway, namely Jondoreans.
The police hinted there might have been a quarrel prior to the robbery, but failed to indicate how such a thing might have come about.
Several newspapers bore quiet advertisements that afternoon.
RAMA TURA WILL APPEAR TONIGHT