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

They were silent for a time, suffering from the chills. Moving their arms and legs did them little good. They had not stowed away entirely unprepared, it might have been noted. Each had a small rubber bag, which was one of the chemical heating pads frequently sold by drugstores. That these were losing their potency was evident.
"We gotta do somethin'," said the small man.
The box of a fellow nodded. He crawled to one side, taking great care to avoid noise, and peered down through a tiny opening which he had made in the dirigible's skin. He joined his companion hurriedly.
"Looks like Santa Amoza below," he grunted. "It's time we opened our keg of nails."
The small man got up hurriedly. His expression was vicious, bloodthirsty, and just a bit uneasy.
"You think this is gonna work?" he grunted.
"Sure," said the other. "It can't fail."
They crept downward.
DOC SAVAGE, plotting a Sumner line in the course of his navigation calculations, abruptly heard a slight sound. He heard it twice before giving it much attention. The noise was metallic, not a clanking, but a grinding and gritting, such as might have been made by pliers working upon metal.
Doc Savage swung a glance at the instrument panel. The dirigible was being guided by a robot pilot, a gyroscopic affair, not greatly different from those employed in big planes. The dirigible was exactly on its course.
Doc Savage abruptly decided Monk and Ham were not making the noise. Monk and Ham, in fact, were probably asleep.
The bronze man left the control room, went down a passage which was narrow, barely wide enough to permit him to pass, in fact.
Doc Savage reached the compartment which Monk and Ham used for sleeping. There were two of these, one on either side of the central passage.
The bronze man at once noted a strange fact. There were fastenings on the outside of the compartment doors. These were now secured. Monk and Ham, it appeared, were each locked in. Whether they were asleep could not be told. It was by no means silent enough for snores to be heard.
Doc Savage was looking at the barred doors when another door directly ahead of him opened. This door led into the after catwalk which ran up to the tail where the rudders and elevators were affixed.
A small man with a pinched face that would have been an excellent visage for a movie villain, stepped out. He held his hands up, empty. He looked scared, in fear of receiving immediate bodily damage.
"Wait," he shrieked. "Lemme explain."
He jerked both hands back of him and upward as if trying to indicate something above.
That was a trick. It was a bit too obvious. Doc Savage spun.
Another door down the corridor behind Doc Savage had opened. A huge man, with the body of a box and a face of no intelligence, had stepped out. This one had a revolver.
Doc Savage found himself looking into the muzzle of the gun. There had been no time to do anything.
"Just hold it," said the little man who had first appeared. He now took a gun from his clothing.
Doc held it. He stood very stiffly. However, a close observer might have noted certain large arm muscles swelling in the bronze man's coat sleeve. The sinews coiled, bundled, swelled up, strained against the coat fabric.
But the two captors were too canny. They wrenched small oxygen respiratorsЧgas mask affairsЧfrom inside their shirts and clamped them to nostrils and lips. They must have used these previously on such occasions as the dirigible had gone so high into the stratosphere as to reach air that would not sustain human life.
Doc Savage relaxed. The big muscles in his arms subsided. These two men must know a few of his tricks. In a concealed pocket in his coat sleeve Doc Savage carried tiny glass balls of an anaesthetic which produced quick unconsciousness once it was breathed, but which lost its potency after being in the air a few moments. He had been on the point of breaking the balls with his arm muscles to release the gas.
"Just one more trick," said the box of a man, "and it'll be too bad for you."
The box of a man, it was clear, was not nearly as stupid as he looked.
The two came close, but did so very carefully. Their hands snaked into Doc's pockets, ran over his person. The hands brought nothing to light.
"Huh!" grunted the box of a man. "He don't even carry a gun."
"Don't let that fool you," muttered the other.
They made gestures with a plain meaning. Doc Savage turned, walked toward the control cabin. The guns made twin pressures against his back. He reached the control room, stepped inside.
A giant fire-cracker seemed to go off on top of his head.
IT WAS ONE of the few times when the bronze man came close to being taken completely by surprise. The fact that he was so nearly deceived was probably due to the noise of the dirigible's engines. This covered most of the sounds which the box of a man made as he clubbed with his gun. Not all of them, however.
Doc moved enough to evade much of the blow's force. He went down because that is what they would expect him to do, but he did not go entirely flat. While still slightly above the floor, he seemed to explode.
Spinning, Doc Savage got one of the box man's legs. He jerked. The fellow went down; but the manner of his descent furnished a surprise.
The box man was a wizard with his strength. He was uncanny. Not only did he have terrible strength, but he knew how to do fantastic things with his hands; and he was only a little slower than chain lightning.
The box man landed full on top of Doc Savage, and his blunt, stubby fingers were instantly in the bronze man's neck, exerting horrible pressure on certain particular nerves and spinal segments. His legs went around Doc's middle in a peculiar scissors which completely stopped breathing.
Doc Savage's hand gripped the man's head, twisted it one way, then the other, so rapidly that the fellow could not get strain in it, then roared bull fashion; but the fellow's neck muscles had surprising strength.
The fellow hit Doc, a very scientific blow which brought pin points of light into the bronze man's gold flaked eyes.
Doc got hit again.
The bronze man wilted. The tenseness went out of his body and arms, and his head sank until his arms touched the floor.
The box man looked very glad and his grip did not relax. He hit again and again. Then he got Doc's throat, and for long moments he kept his position, squeezing, legs crushing. Finally, he began to relax, sensing victory, and a slow grin slit his square dumb-looking countenance.
"I guess I ain't so bad," he gloated between labored breaths.
His legs loosened and he started to lift himself from Doc Savage's limp body.
Then the bronze volcano exploded. As if he had been a mere featherweight, the box man felt himself tossed into the air, slammed down with a headlock, lifted and whirled in what is commonly known as an airplane spin, a very dangerous predicament in which to be, crashed to the floor.
Doc Savage did not stand and watch. He flashed for the small man. The latter had been an observer, a gleeful one at first, a discomfited one now. He was trying to get his gun into action.
The little gunman was canny, much more canny than it appeared on the surface, as it later developed.
The fellow dropped his gun, spun and ran. He got out of the control room, banged the door behind him.
Doc did not pursue him. There was a very good reason for that. The box man had only been resting, recovering from his dazed condition. He was on his feet, roaring, berserk. The fellow charged, closed with Doc Savage and began to use more of his innumerable tricks.
THERE HAD BEEN method in the flight of the box man's small companion; but there were no observers to note that. The lean, evil-faced fellow had climbed upward to a spot immediately above the control cabin where there was a second cubicle which held the apparatus that conditioned the air in the control rooms.