"038 (B045) - The Man Who Smiled No More (1936-04) - Laurence Donovan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

But Perrin walked over and peered closely into the fish tank. Doc stood beside him. The fish flashed in myriad colors around what appeared to be one of those ornamental underwater castles to be found in large fish bowls.
Doc said suddenly, "We'll have to await results. However, before daylight sets in, I want to visit your watchman at Bellevue. Immediately I'll come to your office. I would like to go over the scene of the robbery."
When Perrin had departed, Doc Savage returned to his laboratory. His movements seemed as irrelevant to the matter in hand as had his apparent determination to interest the excited lapidary in his tropical fish.
Doc reached into the fish tank. The bronze hand and his forearm were magnified for a moment in the clear water. He did not seem to fear for any poison the fish might transmit. Some of the spined variety brushed the smooth bronze skin. They left no mark.
Doc lifted out the small underwater castle. It came apart in his hands. Inside was a small black box. From this Doc extracted a black plate. He slid a photographic negative into a developing bath.
A few minutes later, the man of bronze exposed a print to a dim red light. It did not look as if he had much of a picture. Something might have gone wrong. All that appeared on the plate was a pair of eyes. The rest of the face was a gray blur.
But the eyes were greatly magnified.
Doc slipped the print and the plate into a steel filing cabinet. He seemed very well satisfied with what he had accomplished.
A FEW hours later, Doc Savage's interview with Harris Hooper Perrin was a very strange one, in the light of Perrin's pronounced views a short time before in getting back his diamonds. For now, he refused Doc all information necessary about the stolen gems.
At first, Doc was puzzled, but a direct gaze into the eyes of the lapidary told Doc the secret of the change in character. For Perrin, too, had the look of Smiling Tony, of Simon Stevens, of Henry Hawkins, the night watchman.
In the mechanical way of those afflicted with this unknown physical disability, Perrin answered a few of the questions put to him by the man of bronze. Doc gained from him the list giving descriptions of the stolen diamonds. This Doc imprinted on his mind. The stones were African diamonds, forty in number.
But the names of the owners, Doc could not get Perrin to reveal.
After this unfortunate interview, Doc left the office of the lapidary and returned to his headquarters office. By telephone, he got in touch with the estate of Simon Stevens, at Southampton, Long Island. The millionaire's son, James Stevens, replied.
Doc inquired as to the condition of the shipping magnate, then said, "I've sent the noted Doctor Madren to see your father."
Chapter V. THREAT IN THE NIGHT
DOC SAVAGE had failed to make contact with Monk. Though it was the middle of the night when Doc had called his cottage in the Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, the homely chemist was having troubles of his own.
Rather, the troubles rightly belonged to a pig. This representative of the porcine species was an Arabian hog, but he didn't look it. No piney woods razor-back could have touched the hog, Habeas Corpus, when it came to looks.
Habeas Corpus was four long legs, two long ears and a pair of mean, but intelligent eyes. His body wasn't much of anything but a repository for food. The hog's appetite was enormous.
At the moment Doc Savage had called Monk's cottage, there was considerable disturbance in the darkness of a swampy pond at the foot of a hill. Ducks were quacking in terror. Hundreds of ducks. They were scattered over more than two acres of muddy water.
Habeas Corpus had been having the time of his life since Monk had moved to the cottage on Shinnecock Point near Ponquogue. The pig had discovered the duck farm. It contained hundreds of the birds and they were easy prey.
"Dag-gonit!" squealed a voice in the darkness of the muddy duck pond. "Dang your measly hide, Habeas! You come outta among them ducks or I'm goin' to turn you over to Ham! That's what I'll do to you!"
The squealing voice could have come only from Monk. Though he was covered with red hair as stiff as rusty finishing nails, and his weight was around two hundred and fifty pounds, Monk had the voice of a child. Also he had a low, sloping forehead, gristly eyebrows and arms that hung below his knees.
STANDING in the muddy pond up to his waist, Monk was a horrific object. His threat to turn Habeas Corpus over to "Ham" might have been understood by the pig.
Ham was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, the brilliant legal light of Doc Savage's group.
Ham's pet hate was the pig, Habeas Corpus. Ham's greatest ambition seemed to be to see the day when Habeas Corpus would be divided up into stringy pork chops.
Monk, in the pond, yelled again.
Habeas Corpus only grunted with delight. He had just snipped the head off another white duck.
A pair of long legs, without any body attached, seemed to come walking along the pond.
This was because a tall man was carrying an old-fashioned lantern. The oil light swung beside his legs and transformed them into gigantic shadows.
"Hey, you consarned thief!" he croaked harshly. "I hain't tellin' you ag'in! You git that thar hawg out'n thar, or I'm goin' to fill his hide full o' buckshot this time sure!"
"Dag-gonit!" squawked Monk, "I'm gettin' him out if I can catch him! Don't you do any shootin' if you know what's good for you! You hurt that hog an' I'll cut you up an' feed you to your own danged ducks! How much you want this time?"
The man with the lantern held it before his face. The face had the appearance of a badly drawn cartoon. It was long and it dished in toward the middle. The chin stuck out to a point. The head was small and bobbed on a neck that might have been designed for a water turtle.
"Reckon I hain't takin' no less'n a tenspot this time," drawled his twanging voice meanly. "You climb out'n there an' pay up or I'm pepperin' that blasted imitation of a pig!"
Monk slopped through the muddy pond. He grunted and fished out some money.
John Scroggins, the man who owned the ducks, got more than a tenspot. Habeas Corpus had poked his long snout closer, sticking up his ears. Monk saw his opportunity, dropped some bills and dived upon the pig. He secured the squealing shoat by one long ear and splashed back through the pond, toward his cottage.
"
DAG-GONE you, Habeas!" complained Monk. "This time he can keep his dead ducks, an' from now on you're stayin' home!"
For more than a week, Monk had been buying ducksЧthe ducks that Habeas Corpus had killed. The pig did not care for duck meat. Neither did Monk, much. But his housekeeper, a worthy and economical woman, had insisted the ducks must not be wasted.
Monk had quit bringing the ducks home. Some he had buried. Tonight he decided to end this duck business.
"You're bein' shut up, you dag-goned bunch of spareribs, an' you ain't gettin' out again!" he promised Habeas Corpus.
The pig grunted companionably. He didn't believe Monk. And the pig was smart. He had figured out ways of escaping from the pen Monk had contrived at this isolated cottage.
Monk ambled along awkwardly, still dragging Habeas Corpus by one ear. If the homely chemist had been informed the elusive pig had been captured by strange hands earlier in the night and later released, he would not have believed it. Yet this was true.
Habeas Corpus had been snared in the darkness. Shadowy figures had seemed to give special attention to the pig's ears. Perhaps they knew of Monk's favorite hold.
The spot Monk had selected for chemical experiments in the Shinnecock Hills was ideal. Few spots within a hundred miles of Manhattan were less populated.
The Shinnecock Hills were a series of rolling eminence covered with stunted trees. They lay on the narrow neck of land separating Great Peconic Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. The main highway of these hills passed on into Southampton, a millionaires' summer resort. From there, it went on to the famous Montauk Point.
Monk's cottage was situated on the point of land about half a mile below the duck farm. The big chemist followed a twisting, narrow path toward it. On the highest near-by hill was the only other house in that section. This was a rambling, barnlike structure. It was deserted. Its windows were closely shuttered.
The path Monk was following ascended a short distance toward the deserted house. Then it turned abruptly down the hill to the chemist's cottage. Monk reached the highest point along the path.
Here Habeas Corpus suddenly came to life. His satisfied grunts changed to quick vicious squeals. He squirmed and his ear slipped from Monk's hand.
Remarkably enough, Monk seemed to have relented in his purpose to make the pig a prisoner. The big chemist was standing still. He was staring up the hill at the deserted house. Brush crackled near by, but Monk apparently did not notice this.
Habeas Corpus rubbed his razorlike body against Monk's legs.