"032 (B032) - Dust of Death (1935-10) - Harold Davis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Long Tom gave it up, not having expected the story to be believed anyway, and fell to eyeing General Vigo. He had heard of dictators, political iron men, and had seen some. This was the first one who had looked the part.
General Vigo stopped his gobble and rumbled in surprisingly good English, "You are a spy. You are wasting your time to deny it."
Long Tom frowned at the world's ugliest man. "What happens to spies over here?"
"They are shot," General Vigo boomed promptly.
"Do they get a chance to defend themselves?" the electrical wizard countered.
"That depends on me," General Vigo laughed. "Sometimes, yes, if I get up on what you call the right side of the bed. Otherwise, no. We just go ahead and shoot them."
"How soon do you shoot them?" Long Tom asked.
General Vigo shrugged. "In your case, ten minutes."
Long Tom batted both eyes rapidly. He was quite positive General Vigo was not kidding him. The General looked very serious at the moment. Long Tom moistened his lips.
"Can you get a cablegram to New York?" he asked.
"Si si," said General Vigo in answer, and added, "Sure."
"Take a tip," Long Tom suggested. "Cable Doc Savage before you cut loose on me."
General Vigo looked like a man who has just discovered himself standing over a quicksand bed.
"Doc Savage?" he growled. "What do you mean, seёor?"
"Ask Doc Savage to describe his aide Long Tom Roberts to you," Long Tom suggested. "Take a good look at me when you get the description."
General Vigo thought that over. That he had heard of Doc Savage, it was plain.
"You are one of Doc Savage's men?" General Vigo demanded.
"Right," Long Tom told him.
"What do you do down here, seёor?"
Long Tom told him, making the recital as complete as he possibly could. He began with the moment when news of Ace Jackson's being in an Alcala hospital had come to him on the hydro-electric project far to the south.
Long Tom finished his recital, "And I have a hunch this mysterious power they call the Inca in Gray is behind my troubles."
General Vigo's face froze. For perhaps a score of seconds, he gave an excellent imitation of a man who had turned suddenly to stone. Then he turned slowly to Long Tom.
"Inca in Gray?" he said slowly and distinctly.
"Yes," said Long Tom. "Inca in GrayЧ"
"What do you know of the Inca in Gray?" General Vigo roared unexpectedly.
"Nothing," gulped Long Tom, startled. "You see IЧ"
General Vigo leaped to the mouth of the dugout, shouted, waved his arms. Soldiers came running. He bellowed orders at them in Spanish.
"This man has been found to be a spy!" he roared, "Take him to headquarters! He will be shot at once!"
LONG TOM had often boasted that he had a poker face, but it did not function very well now. He was already very low physically. His feelings showed on his face. The result was rather hideous.
Long Tom was taken well behind the lines, and was loaded into a motor van. This bumped and jarred and rumbled over a bad road, and probably no road at all, for a long time.
Because bouncing about on the van bottom was extremely uncomfortable, Long Tom managed to get to his feet, and this gave him a vantage point from which he could look out of the rear of the van. His impression that the truck was traversing what amounted to no road at all was correct. Scrawny jungle was reeling past. The van stirred up a great deal of evil looking gray dust. Long Tom almost shivered. The dust looked exactly like the dust of death which had been on the murdered man in the Alcala hospital.
Thatched huts began to appear on either side of the van. They were entering a village. The thatched huts gave way to mud or adobe structures. Then there was a scattering of stone buildings.
The van stopped. Long Tom was booted out. The soldiers were not handling him any too gently.
A figure appeared before themЧthe ugliest man in the world, again. To arrive so soon, General Vigo must have come ahead of them in a fast car.
Rage stiffened Long Tom's frail-looking frame. He made a jaw at General Vigo.
"You're putting your neck out, you old bull-head," Long Tom advised him.
"What does that meanЧputting my neck out?" General Vigo demanded.
"It means likely a head chopping," Long Tom assured him. "In other words you're asking for it."
"Hah!" General Vigo struck an attitude, his idea of the one which Napoleon is generally supposed to have originated. He gobbled a laugh.
"Me, you would threaten?" he rumbled. "Me, General Vigo, you would scare? Hah! I am not afraid. Me, I can whip the world!"
"You been trying to whip Santa Amoza for four years," Long Tom said dryly.
Long Tom fully expected that to throw General Vigo into a rage. It did nothing of the sort, made General Vigo grin from ear to ear.
"A wise seёor, eh," chuckled the dictator of Delezon. "I could like you. It is too bad I must shoot you."
Long Tom growled, "If you will get in touch with Doc SavageЧ"
General Vigo roared at his soldiers and waved an arm. The uniformed men picked Long Tom up, stalked with him toward a high adobe wall.
THE PROSPECTIVE shooting of a spy is a spectacle calculated to grip the attention of every one in the vicinity. This probably accounted for the fact of no one noticing the peculiar actions of one man observing the tableau.
This observer was not much to look at. He had a pocked face, was undersized, but, somehow, there was an air of evil about him. He was careful to get in no one's way and attract no attention, but this man kept a very close watch on what was happening to Long Tom.
General Vigo led the execution squad with the victim directly to the adobe stockade. This was very high and the walls seemed to be thick. There were embrasures to permit the mounting of machine guns along the top. It was obviously a fort.
The entrance through the wall was narrow, to make defense easier, and the aperture was closed by a door of heavy timbers. This opened. Long Tom was shoved through.
The stockade interior was occupied by numerous large buildings, most of them with barred windows. Long Tom was not given much time to look around. They hauled him across the court and he found himself standing before a wall.