"036 (B027) - Mystery Under the Sea (1936-02) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

There were a few grains of sand in the cuff of the still-damp trousers. Doc Savage examined these under a pocket magnifier.
"North shore of Long Island Sound," he said, as if to himself.
That would not have surprised a trained geologist. Sands from different localities frequently have as distinct a personality as have finger prints.
On the dead man's shirt, the left shoulder, there was a reddish brown smear, which the water had not entirely washed away. Doc added lenses to his magnifier, increasing its power, and scrutinized the stain.
"Copper bottom paint off a ship," he concluded.
Next he got a clean metal pan and, not without some difficulty, managed to wring a few drops of water from the man's clothing. He carried the pan across the building.
The interior of this building, which outwardly resembled an old warehouse, was of enormous size. The walls were thick. The roof as nearly bombproof as it could be made. The place housed a remarkable assortment of vehicles for travel in the air, on the water, and under the water. There were several planes, ranging from a huge speed ship to a small autogiro; there was a dirigible of unusual design; there were speed boats; and off to one side in a drydock of its own stood a small submarine.
From a locker, Doc Savage took a metal case and opened it. An array of chemicals and chemical equipment, ingeniously compact, was disclosed. This assortment, an unbelievably complete portable laboratory, belonged to the homely Monk, and he invariably took it along on expeditions.
With a skill born of much study, Doc Savage set to work analyzing his water sample. It was not easy, but neither was it impossible. Water in the vicinity of Manhattan contains a certain type of pollution, and this diminishes with distance from the metropolis. Before long, Doc Savage knew approximately where the water had come from.
"The neighborhood of Paradise Beach," he decided.
That was the extent of the clue. The bronze man left the body in the "iron doctor," padlocked the hatch.
Shortly afterward, he was back in the skyscraper laboratory. He listened. There was no sound.
"Monk!" he called. Then: "Ham!"
No answer.
The bronze man whipped across the laboratory, through the library, and stopped on the anteroom threshold. He remained there poised and made for a moment a small, peculiar sound, which was among the strangest of his characteristics. This note, a vague, eerie trilling, was indefinable as the vagaries of a wind in a denuded forest, rose and fell. It had a quality of ventriloquism, for one looking at the bronze man could not have told that he made the sound. It was doubtful if Doc Savage himself realized he was authoring the fantastic note. He made the sound only in moments of intense mental excitement.
Monk lay spread-eagled on the anteroom floor, flat on his face. And there was the stillness of the dead about his apish body.
Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
Part of the rug was gone.
The expensive panel of weaving had been cut with a sharp knife and a segment, roughly circular in shape, removed. No trace of this could be seen.
The missing section bore such printing as the mutilated man had managed to accomplish with his foot before he collapsed.
The door gaped open, and Doc Savage went to it. Half through, he found a form sprawled on the shiny tiling of the corridor floor. The victim was senseless, apparently having been knocked out by a blow over the head.
It was dapper Ham, and he had fallen atop his innocent-looking black cane. Doc Savage carried him into the reception room.
Monk proved upon examination, merely to be unconscious, likewise from a head blow, and Doc started administering to him, to Ham, to bring them out of their forcibly induced slumbers.
Monk, the toughest of the pair, revived first. Lost in a mental fog, he mumbled words.
"Justa dumb shyster, Ham," he squeaked faintly. "Sailors' pants are big at the bottoms becauseЧ"
He broke off, sat up suddenly, blinked several times, said abruptly in a rational voice, "Man, have I got bells in my head!"
"What happened?" Doc asked him.
Monk jabbed a hairy, contemptuous thumb at Ham, who was beginning to stir. "It was the shyster's fault. He brought some woman and a guy with her. TheyЧ"
"It's a lie!" Ham said, without opening his eyes. "It was Monk's fault. He should have been on the lookout."
"Lookout!" Monk squawled. "You brought them inЧ"
"And they promptly knocked me senseless," Ham finished. "I met them down in the lobby, while I was trying to trace that fellow with the burned mouth. They said they had some important information, so I brought them up."
"It was the woman," Monk growled. "She had two guns. She tried to push one through that swell dinner I just ate. Then she popped me over the ear with the other one. I kinda lost interest."
"They obviously tricked me into bringing them up," Ham admitted without pride.
Doc Savage indicated the missing section of the rug. "How did they know about that?"
Ham puckered his forehead, as if trying to think of the best way of admitting an indiscretion.
Homely Monk snorted, "The girl was a knockout. Boy, did she have what it takes! I'll bet Ham told her all about what had happened."
"Shut up, you ape!" Ham snapped. "She said the man with the burned mouth was her brother, and wanted to know what had happened to him. She was sobbing and carrying on, and it kind of got under my skin."
"So you told her about it," Monk jeered.
"I did!" Ham yelled, angrily. "And you would have done the same thing, you missing link! She was so pretty and so grief-strickenЧ"
"You know just as much about women as you know about sailors' pants," Monk told him, unkindly.
HAM contemplated Monk, as if he would greatly relish separating the homely chemist from his gnarled ears.
"I made a mistake," he admitted, grudgingly. "Those two tricked me into getting them in here, and knocked us out. Then they stole part of the rug, so that we would not have a chance to figure out what the poor devil was trying to print there."
Monk scowled at Ham, as if the latter had committed some crime which could never be forgiven.
"That means the message was important," the simian chemist pointed out. "It's gone. And I think there was enough of it that we could have translated the thing. You couldn't read it right off, of course, butЧ"
"We will see about that," Doc Savage interposed.
The bronze man now moved the massive inlaid table into the center of the room and stood upon it, from which point he could reach the ceiling. This was decorated in modernistic fashion, with trim triangles and discs of shiny metals and colored glass. Under his manipulation, what had appeared to be an ordinary glass plate came away and proved itself a part of a motion picture camera, which was recessed into the ceiling.
"A few moments will be required to develop this," he said, and took the film magazine into the laboratory.
After he had been working a few minutes, Doc called to Ham, "Telephone Paradise Beach on Long Island Sound and see if you can learn anything about a strange visitor."
Ham consumed two headache pills. Then he used the telephone.
"The fellow appeared at Paradise Beach," he said when he finished. "He swam in from the Sound, knocked out two guards and fled. A moment later, a motor boat landed a group of masked men who pursued him. No one at Paradise seems to know more than that."