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

"Perfectly, master," came the answer.
One of the gang who had staged the fight turned over a telegraph blank. It was the one which bore the message Long Tom had written.
The hooded one chuckled when he saw this.
"You left in its place the one I gave you?" he asked.
"We did," said the other.
"It is well," the cloaked one said. "Had we merely stolen the message the cable attendants might have missed it."
"We did excellent work," bragged one of the fighters.
"True," said the cloaked one. "Your work is not done."
The other seemed surprised, and made a question with his eyebrows.
"Long Tom Roberts is now to be gotten out of the way," the cloaked one clipped shortly.
LONG TOM had finally found himself a hotel
"My luggage get here, seёor?" he demanded of the clerk.
The clerk smiled, all but bumped his forehead on the desk in a bow, and passed over Long Tom's room key.
Long Tom located the stairway and climbed to a hall which was dark after the brilliance of the sunlight outside. It took him a moment or two to locate the room that his key called for. He unlocked it and, his eyes still somewhat blinded, he swung the door open.
Two men had been busy over Long Tom's open suitcase. They leaped to their feet. Knives came into their hands with grim suddenness.
Long Tom was afraid of no man with a knife. Anyway, there was a chair between himself and the pair. He could grab it, use it for a weapon.
But he did not reach the chair. The two over the suitcase had been there as bait to hold his attention. There was another man standing just inside the door. That fellow went forward, swinging an arm club fashion. His hand held a gun, held it by the butt. For nobody but a fool clubs with the butt of a gun.
The two, who had been over the suitcase, caught the electrical wizard's unconscious form so that it would not make noise in falling.
A strange figure in a cloak now appeared, coming from somewhere outside. This individual examined Long Tom closely, making sure that he was senseless.
"Bring a trunk," the cloaked one ordered. "We are going to take him away."
"Is it safe, O Inca in Gray?" one asked.
"Keep your suggestions to yourselves," uttered their fantastic looking chief. "Get this Long Tom Roberts to the place at the edge of the city where I shall meet you."
Chapter 4. THE PERIL IN NEW YORK
IN THE QUIET pre-evening activity of New York, rather peculiar sounds could be heard. They were on the eighty-sixth floor of a building which was probably the most pretentious skyscraper in the city.
"Oink!"
The sound came with distinct regularity. "Oink! Oink!"
Two men sat in the eighty-sixth floor office from which the sounds came. One of them looked angry. He was a rather slender man, especially thin at the waist. But the thing about him that stood out was his garments. They were sartorial perfection. A typical sample of what was gaining for the wearer a reputation as perhaps the nation's best dresser.
"Oink!"
came the sound. "Oink!"
The second man in the room kept his face straight with some difficulty. This man looked rather pleasantly like an ape in unkempt civilized clothing. He would undoubtedly weigh in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds.
The apish man was making the sound, doing it systematically and with painstaking care.
"Oink!"
he tried again. "Oink! Oink!"
The dapper man blew up. He gesticulated with a slender black cane which he had been holding across his knee.
"Monk," he gritted, "just one more of those noises and I'm going to trim your toenails off right next to your ears."
"Now, Ham," the apish Monk murmured, "you should control that temper."
Ham got up and did something with his cane so that it became evident that harbored therein was a blade of fine steel which looked razor sharp.
"You've been making those hog noises to devil me he," said grimly. "You are hunting trouble and you are certainly going to get accommodated."
Neither of these men looked quite what he was. The man with sartorially perfect raiment, "Ham," was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, pride of the Harvard Law School alumni. The simian one, "Monk," was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, admittedly one of the greatest industrial chemists.
These twoЧlike Long Tom of the South American happeningsЧwere members of Doc Savage's group of five aides. The spot where they conducted their quarrel was the anteroom of Doc Savage's headquarters.
Monk squared off belligerently and picked up a chair as a defense against the sword cane, but before anything happened, a voice spoke from the doorway.
"Something seems to have happened to Long Tom in South America," the voice said.
THAT VOICE was remarkable, not that it was loud or that it seemed to strive to be particularly emphatic. But it had a suppressed quality that induced thoughts of a mighty machine, murmuring under low throttle.
Monk and Ham both whirled to stare at Doc Savage as he came into the room.
Doc Savage held a cablegram in one hand. The hand was distinctive for two things. The tendons on the back were amazing. The hand had an unusual bronze color. The size of the hand was mentionable also, but was not especially striking because the rest of the man's size was in proportion.
An individual whose appearance was in keeping with his fabulous reputation was this man, Doc Savage. He would stand out in a multitude. There was more to it than his appearance. His eyes for instanceЧthey were like pools of flake gold, stirred always by tiny winds. And there was also his hair, the hue a slightly darker bronze than his skin and straight, rather remarkably like a metallic skullcap.
Doc Savage offered the cablegram. Monk and Ham read it.
DOC SAVAGE
NEW YORK
IN ALCALA SANTA AMOZA VISITING FRIEND ACE JACKSON STOP MAY SPEND SOME TIME HERE STOP EVERYTHING QUIET