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

Ham brought a foot down sharply on Monk's instep. Ordinarily, Monk would have suffered in silence. This time he did not. He let out a bawl of pain that caused at least a dozen people to jump out of their comfortable chairs.
Immediately, two turbaned men of Jondore approached Monk, wearing disapproving frowns.
"Gonna try to throw me out," Monk surmised.
"Hope they do," Ham replied grimly.
But the two men of Jondore only took up a position near Monk and Ham and stood there.
Rama Tura went on with his monologue. The white lights in the place had been switched off and red ones turned on, lending a more weird atmosphere.
Rama Tura was not quite on the point of calling for imitation gems to turn into genuine stones when there was a commotion across the temple.
Four men of Jondore, turbaned, appeared, bearing a stretcher on which was a form swathed in a cloth which looked like a piece of the temple drapery. The stretcher was carried toward the exit.
"A thousand pardons," intoned Rama Tura. "It is merely one who has fainted and will be taken to a hospital."
Monk gripped Ham's arm, breathed, "Hey! They carried that from back toward the stage! Doc was back there."
"We had better look into it," Ham said grimly.
They craned their necksЧand saw something. A naked male elbow was partially visible under the drapery that covered the form on the stretcher. The skin of this elbow had a pronounced bronze tint.
"Doc!" Monk gulped.
Both the homely chemist and the dapper lawyer arose and moved toward the door. They kept hands close to their armpits, where nestled little machine pistols which were charged with so-called "mercy" bullets, slugs which produced quick unconsciousness without making more than minor wounds.
THEY were not molested. They shoved into the elevator into which the stretcher had been taken. Other than themselves and the form on the stretcher, there were only the four men of Jondore.
Monk hauled out his machine pistol and waved it carelessly.
"Get 'em up!" he told the men of Jondore.
They glared at him. But they lifted their hands.
Ham closed the elevator door, operated the controls so that the cage sank several floors, then stopped it.
"Now we'll see what has happened to Doc," he said grimly.
He whipped back the drapery.
The man on the stretcher was not Doc Savage, but a lean-faced, wolfish Jondorean, and he held in either hand a water pistol of the ordinary dime store variety.
The instant he was uncovered, he pointed one water pistol at Ham, the other at Monk, and tightened down the triggers.
Hissing streams of some pungent, burning liquid hit Monk and Ham in the face, splattered, vaporized. Too late, they jumped backward. The stuff had blinded them agonizingly.
Monk tried to use his machine pistol. It made an unearthly bullfiddle roar. But Monk was unable to see a target, and the slugs went wild. Then Monk fell down, groveling, as consciousness went from him, and Ham did the same thing a moment later.
One of the men of Jondore said dryly, in his own tongue, "it was said to us that they were foxes, but they are indeed but puppies with pointed ears."
Monk's finger, tightening by some unconscious reflex, caused his machine pistol to moan briefly, after which Monk became quite still.
Chapter V. THE CAUTIOUS FOE
THE moan of Monk's machine pistol was by no means a small sound, and it carried up the elevator shaft, and muffled somewhat, drifted into Temple Nava, where Doc Savage heard it.
The bronze man had heard the first burst of the rapid-firer, and was already on his way to investigate. The second burst hurried him.
Coat collar turned up, hat down, stooping so as not to seem so tall, Doc whipped around the fringe of the spectators, heading for the door. He did not expect to depart undetected, nor did he.
Rama Tura had sharp eyes. He saw Doc. For once, Rama Tura's dead face showed alarm. He crackled a few words in his dialect.
Turbaned men of Jondore instantly converged on Doc. Doc quickened his pace. They raced to head him off. Doc picked up a chair, shied it at the first. The man upset.
A woman screamed. The temple became a bedlam. With his fists, Doc dropped two assailants. A gun went off somewhere. A woman fell on the floor and tried to crawl under chairs, squawling at the top of her lungs, then fainted into silence.
Rama Tura was whooping in English.
"Thieves!" he screamed. "This man stole some of the jewels I have made!"
It was a lie, pure and simple, but it served the purpose of setting the detectives present, and there were several, after Doc. Some of the officers drew guns.
Doc doubled low on the floor. He had a lot of respect for the shooting of New York policemen. And they did not know his identity.
Men were ahead of Doc, and there was a long thin Oriental rug on which they stood, and the bronze man yanked this. He did not spill them, but they were very busy for a few moments keeping their balance, and the bronze man got past them.
He was in the front corridor now. He knew the general layout of these buildings, how the electrical wiring was brought up through a shaft, and branched off at each floor through power boxes.
It took him only a moment to find the box and get it open. He unscrewed fuses, jerked switches and the premises went dark.
The stairway was dark also, down to the first landing, where there was light. He did not pause there, but went on. Five flights down he paused, and thumbed an elevator call button vigorously. The cage came shortly.
On the street, there was excitement. It centered about a policeman who wallowed in a spreading puddle of red on the sidewalk. It was not necessary to ask questions. Bits of excited talk told what had happened.
Brown men had dashed out carrying two unconscious captivesЧMonk and Ham. A policemanЧthe one on the walkЧhad tried to interfere. He had been shot in his chest for his pains.
The assailants had escaped in a car with their two captives.
Doc Savage ran for the spot where he had left his roadster. It was a little more than possible that he did not have much time to lose.
THERE were five men in the group who aided Doc Savage, and each was an expert in some particular profession, at which he worked during odd times. Two of the five were absent from New York.
Colonel John "Renny" Renwick, engineer, was in Germany, attending an international association of engineers conclave. William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn, was also abroad, in Central America, heading a bit of archaeological research.
Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts was the only other of Doc's group in New York.
Doc's roadster was fitted with a short-wave radio transmitter and receiver. Long Tom Roberts, who was an electrical expert of note, would probably be in his laboratory, and would have a receiver turned on, tuned to the wave length which Doc's outfit used, as a matter of course. Doc raised Long Tom on the first call.