"033 (B015) - Murder Melody (1935-11) - Laurence Donovan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

In fact, when Doc and his men wanted to converse in the presence of others, they employed a language that once was believed to have been lost with an ancient Mayan people. However, the survivors of this lost race had been discovered by the bronze man and his companions.
But Doc and his two men were instantly aware this language spoken by their three assailants was unknown to them. They had little time to study the words or phrases. The leader's warning was cut off.
MONK and Johnny were holding their breaths. Doc also had ceased to breathe. The tinkle on the gravel had been the shattering of capsules containing a powerful anaesthetic gas. It would clear away in less than a minute, but during that space of seconds, any one breathing it would be overcome. The victim would remain unconscious for more than an hour.
Doc was instantly aware the three attackers were no ordinary persons. The leader especially was smart. Somehow, he had seen or sensed what was happening. He had breathed less than his two men. The pair holding flutes were toppling forward. They were in the throes of being overcome.
The leader was between them. With an effort he got a hand on the tunic of each man. He himself was staggering, but he had pulled at two buttons. Then his hands fell away and he fumbled at a button attached to his own belt.
The men had given themselves a final push with their toes as they were falling. From across the Bay of Georgia a stiff wind had sprung up. It had seemed to come as an aftermath of the mysterious shakings of the earth. Now it was whining through the needles of the spruce and firs in the park. It lifted the three men into the air.
Johnny sprang ahead, closely followed by Monk. Monk had drawn his mercy pistol
"Lemme at 'em!" he squealed. "I don't know what it is, but they can't pull any fast one like that!"
Doc's fingers clamped firmly on Monk's wrist.
"You cannot bring them back with bullets," said the bronze man. "It is just as well. Soon we shall follow them."
Monk stared at Doc.
"Dag-gonit! Follow them!"
The apelike chemist saw no possibility of doing as the bronze man had so calmly suggested. His open mouth indicated he had no such inclination, even if it had been possible.
THERE was no doubt but that their three late attackers were unconscious now. Doc's pencil light followed their floating bodies. One man was blocked for a few seconds by the gaunt limb of a fir, but the wind caught him and his figure floated away. All three disappeared, dancing and bobbing with the vagaries of the wind.
The stiff breeze was carrying them in the night out over The Narrows. This dangerous bottle-neck of water connected the harbor of Vancouver and nearly a hundred miles of deep tidal waters in the mountains with the outside Bay of Georgia.
Except at full flood or lowest ebb, the rush of the sea through The Narrows made it one of the most perilous spots on the coast for shipping of all classes. Doc judged if anything happened to restore the three bodies to the force of gravity, the men were in an extremely ticklish position.
Monk was still muttering.
"I didn't see it, for it couldn't happen," were his words.
Johnny turned his monocle reflectively between his long fingers. His long, scholarly countenance indicated he was seeking the proper words in which to couch his opinion. He never used a short word where a longer one would serve.
He said solemnly, "We have witnessed a manifestation of practical ethereality, or the dissociation of gravitational impulse from the humanized inert mass."
"That ain't so!" howled Monk, who, with Doc's direction, had composed the gas of which the stupefying capsules were made. "There ain't any ether in that anaesthetic because I helped make it myself!"
Doc had returned to the side of the corpse.
"All three were unconscious before they departed, or immediately thereafter," he reflected aloud.
He retrieved the roll of gold leaf from the bushes. Johnny and Monk stared at it. They had not even seen Doc take it from the dead man's mouth.
When it was unrolled, the gold leaf bore the same silvery writing as the message that had summoned Doc Savage to the coast:
Be on Canadian Pacific dock at foot of Georgia Street in Vancouver at 5 a. m. today. I but follow Lanta's instructions in event I am pursued. Lanta has matter of vital importance to confide. Tell Lanta I hear the music of death. Watch Aleutians.
The message bore a signature. It was in beautiful, perfect English script of the old style. The name was "Turlos."
"So he knew he was being murdered and he carried out the order he had been given," said the bronze man. He studied the gold leaf more closely.
"Perhaps this is a trap," he said. "It may have been intended the messenger should die in this manner. Johnny, the perfection of styloscript is amazing. We are opposed by individuals of exceedingly advanced development. Perhaps it is best we should know much more before the police authorities discover too much."
DOC was, drawing a metal cylinder from under his coat. This was apparently of soft tin, about a foot in length. A short fuse was attached. The bronze man cut it even shorter. He touched a match to the fuse and dropped the cylinder near the feet of the dead man on the bench.
In a few seconds the wilderness spot was briefly illuminated by a weird blue flame. The cylinder had burst with a mushy sound. As the flame died, a thick grayish vapor enveloped the corpse.
The brisk southwest wind was dispelling this artificial mist. When the vapor was completely dissipated there was no apparent change in the body.
"Now if we could only have had time to give our departed ones the same treatment, this might have become easier," reflected Doc.
Johnny and Monk were fully aware of the qualities of the vapor which had just passed away. They watched Doc closely.
Again there was a quick, faint trembling of the earth. It was a rolling, rumbling convolution, but this time there was no acute shock. Johnny swiftly placed the portable seismograph. The needle fluctuated only a little.
After a minute, or possibly a minute and a half, the trembling ceased. The seismograph needle became stationary. Johnny studied the record. He ran a finger across his eyes.
"I believe the larger instruments will locate the center of this disturbance as being somewhere in the northern Pacific, or perhaps in the Bering Sea," he stated. "That would be more on the fault where such a temblor might be expected! That is the strata crossing from lower and middle California to the vicinity of Japan."
"Might it not be somewhere adjacent to the Aleutian Islands?" suggested Doc.
"It might be anywhere there," admitted Johnny.
Doc again gave his attention to the corpse.
"There are some devices here which would be of greatest value to us," he stated. "But I think we will have plenty of opportunity to study them later. In the meantime, if the Canadian police know nothing of this murder, we will be much less hampered."
Monk drew in his breath with a great gasp. Johnny never showed surprise at Doc's reasoned action. He understood fully.
The bronze man had buttoned the raincoat around the corpse. Turlos, if that was his name, had fulfilled his mission, though his life had paid. Doc now was adopting a plan whereby the dead Turlos might still be a valuable aid to his mistress, this Lanta whom the bronze man had yet to meet.
Doc turned the middle button on the tunic under the raincoat. He lifted the weightless body. The dead man was caught by the southwest wind. He followed his unconscious murderers in the direction of the frothing Narrows and the barrier rim of mountains.
Chapter 3. LANTA IS SEIZED
FROM behind a small flat island the twin motors of an amphibian plane burst into the dawn. However, the word dawn in this case was a clear misnomer.
Dawn might have been arriving to the eastward, northward or southward. But in the bowl of Burrard Inlet under the barrier of the ragged mountains to the north of Vancouver harbor, there was no change from the blackness of the night.
As a matter of fact, with the approach of daylight time, the murk over the harbor thickened. It had settled into a combination of thick ocean mist and thicker bituminous coal smoke.
London boasts some of its famous fogs are dense enough to be cut with a knife. Vancouver is the one city on the North American continent where a similar condition often prevails.
At times, the mingling of mist and smoke is so opaque and dirty, it has been termed by the inhabitants a "smog." This smog obliterates every object at the distance of a few feet.