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

So it was on the early morning following the mysterious earthquakes. The curtain blanketed all of the inner harbor. It spread its greasy denseness through The Narrows and far out over the Bay of Georgia.
Whistles of ferries hooted their warnings. Moving ocean vessels boomed with menace. Bells clanged in many tones aboard anchored ships.
At the regular municipal airport, the early morning passenger planes were cancelled. The hardiest pilots had no desire to tempt fate by trying to feel their way out over the encircling mountains.
Doc Savage was not held by any such timidity. He was making ready to lift his streamlined amphibian from the hidden bay behind the island where he had landed the previous evening. This choice of anchorage had kept him free from the annoying queries of newspapermen. He was free for a few hours from registering with the Provincial authorities and detailing the purpose of his visit.
Doc could not yet have explained his purpose. The startling events of the past few hours had not made it any clearer.
"I don't quite see how we're going to land anywhere near the Canadian-Pacific wharf," observed Johnny, as the plane skimmed around the shadowy island and gathered speed.
"Perhaps it will not be necessary," advised Doc. "It is possible we shall find what we are seeking while in the air. When we get up, Johnny, keep the lantern turned on."
"You think then we may find the body up there, Doc?"
"If I have judged the air currents correctly, this southwest wind creates a whirl and a dead spot this side of the mountains," said Doc. "We probably will find it comparatively calm at only about a thousand feet."
A FEW minutes later, the bronze man's judgment was justified. Banking over the bay, flying solely by special radio amplified sound-finder, the streamlined amphibian had ceased pitching. Doc held the plane at this height. The sound-finder gave back the echo of their own vibrating motors from the mountains surrounding them.
From the city airport came occasional reports:
"All pilots use emergenciesЧNanaimo field clearЧwe have no ceiling hereЧwarningЧno ceiling."
Which was sufficient assurance no other plane would be playing about over Vancouver harbor this morning. Yet their amphibian had been in the air less than five minutes when Doc's keen ears picked up a distinct and peculiar vibration.
This was not the definite sound of an airplane's motor. Rather there came an intermittent interference with their radio directional finder. This cut into the sound amplifier until even Doc became unsure of his distances from the mountains.
At the same time the compasses and altimeter were visibly affected. Compass needles took on a peculiar tendency to wander off at impossible tangents.
Had Doc Savage been any less than the amazing flier he was, the amphibian might have plunged into the high promontory above The Narrows or into the sheer mountains across Burrard Inlet. The gyro compass was off by many points.
Faults in the instruments extended to the motors. Each of the roaring twins took turns in coughing protest. Doc's quick sense for the unusual traced the trouble instantly. The gas lines were clear. The failure was in the ignition system.
Several times, the amphibian swooped down. It dived dangerously close to the surface of the harbor. Here the smog was the densest.
The bronze man moved a lever. This operated two special walls. These were slatted much the same as the heating shutters on an automobile engine. With the walls closed, the motors settled down to a steady rhythm. These walls completely insulated the engines.
The cabin was as nearly soundproof as any plane could be made. Doc's usual quiet voice carried distinctly.
"We are combating something like Hertzian waves," he said to Johnny, who was sitting beside him. "We may be accidentally in the path of some powerful magnetic ray, but I am inclined to believe the interference is intentional."
"Then this message about the Canadian-Pacific wharf must be a trap," commented Johnny. "You've never seen this woman who seems to be called Lanta. Perhaps she is only the tool of some powerful organization that has set out to get you, Doc."
Doc slowly shook his head, saying nothing audibly. His knowledge of character as evinced in writing had never failed. He was convinced the writer of the golden message calling him to the Pacific coast had been sincere.
The melody murder in Stanley Park indicated opposing forces. The dead messenger who had been loyal to the last gasp represented one of these forces. It was clear he had been loyal to Lanta.
Johnny was grasping a contrivance which resembled an old time magic lantern. This had a round projector with a switch on the side. It was this device Doc had referred to as the "lantern."
Johnny moved the switch and played it from side to side. He could have held it immovable and covered much territory with the swinging of the amphibian plane. His effort might have appeared to be useless.
No light proceeded from the lantern lens. Yet there was one of the most powerful rays known to science sweeping the smoggy space all about the plane. This was an ultraviolet light. Because of its invisibility it was known as "black light."
Doc held the plane in rising and descending spirals in what he knew to be the area of slowly whirling dead air under the mountains. For a time nothing appeared. Then the three men saw what they had been seeking.
"Gosh!" gasped Monk in an awed voice which indicated the furry hair with which his body was covered must be rising on end. "Lookit! There's the dead man!"
"I had hoped we would be able to trace it," stated Doc.
MONK could well be excused for his feeling of awe. The black light lantern had revealed what appeared to be a flying green ghost. Only the apparition had no movement of its own. Rather the inert form of the corpse floated slowly past the plane, with its arms and legs projecting with grotesque stiffness.
Rigor mortis
had set in. Every feature and contour of the dead man glowed with vivid green. This was the effect of the ultra-violet ray from Johnny's lantern. The black light had the quality of thus creating fluorescent reaction on certain chemicals. These chemical combinations were to be found in common vaseline or aspirin. It was used by Doc Savage in two chief forms.
One of these was a chalk with which his men could write invisibly. Only the black light would bring out such writing. The other form was the grayish vapor with which he had bathed the corpse on the bench in Stanley Park.
These chemical particles now adhered to the floating dead man. Johnny's lantern revealed this, even in the smog, while the body was close.
"Well I'll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny. "Now that we see it, what can we do about it, Doc?"
The bronze man smiled a little.
"It being obvious we have no means of picking it out of the air, we'll continue to watch it as far as possible," he advised. "I judge there are those who will be interested in removing the corpse. It would create much speculation and inquiry if it happened to be still floating around when this murk clears up."
Though Doc had a wizard's hands on the controls, keeping the corpse within the black light was difficult. They lost view of it several times. The fourth time it floated slowly past the circling plane, the southwest wind stiffened over the harbor.
Immediately the smog began lifting. The rising sun displayed its warming rays. These produced some surface vision across Burrard Inlet. The calm water of the harbor smoked with dissipating mist. Hooting ferries and booming ocean vessels could be seen.
All boats were moving at slow speed. Squat, awkward ferries with double-end propellers were crossing between North Vancouver, a popular residence suburb, and the business city of Vancouver.
"Something's wrong down there besides the fog," announced Johnny. "Those ferries are apparently having trouble with their steering apparatus."
"Yeah," chimed in Monk. "Looks like a couple of them got stuck in the mud."
"The depth of Burrard Inlet varies from one hundred to three hundred feet," said Doc. "It has an all rock bottom. They are having engine trouble."
THE whistles of the ferries hooted wildly. They seemed like human voices in a panic. Doc and his men could see clearly down along a strip covering the dangerous Narrows. The southwest wind blowing against a swiftly ebbing tide was piling up high white waves in the bottle-neck.
A small ferry propelled by gasoline motors was floundering in the rough water of The Narrows. Its motors had stopped. As Doc and his men glimpsed it, the small craft was caught in the suck of the vicious tide rip. Bobbing like a cork, it danced out toward the Bay of Georgia.
Far out in English Bay, beyond the other watery expanse, the hoarse, booming whistles of laboring freighters were sounding.
Doc lifted the amphibian again into the higher smog. The space all around was filled with trembling vibration. It might have been another plane, but none appeared. Doc reached over and clicked a switch.
This switch was on what seemed to be an elongated black box with a window of dark glass. Blurred figures appeared instantly in this darkened square. The bronze man increased the power of the light.
This device was Doc's special television receiver. It was capable of picking up the scene where any televisor, or vision broadcaster, might be in operation. The man of bronze had made a quick deduction.