"041 (B076) - The Black Spot (1936-07) - Laurence Donovan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

In Doc Savage's headquarters the mechanical device recorded Pat's words thus far. It also recorded a muffled gasping sound. This, too, came from Pat's throat. The instrument further put on the dictaphone record for Doc or his men a slight bumping crash.
This latter was the telephone being slapped from Pat Savage's hand.
The palm grasping Pat's mouth was smooth and cold. In her ear a voice muttered:
"If you've brought Doc Savage into this, it will be his last big adventure. As for youЧ"
Pat had no opportunity to scream. Her sudden captor discovered he had got hold of a wildcat in the darkness. Tapered toes bruised his shins. One small hand with strong fingers fastened on an ear and twisted.
The man breathed heavily and swore vilely in Pat's face. She lowered her head and tried to butt the man on the nose or chin.
"You red-headed hellion!" grated her captor. "I'll fix you for that!"
Pat always became madder when she was called redheaded. Though she couldn't breathe, she dug an elbow into the man's ribs. They crashed against a door. This led to the basement stairs. It was unlocked and it swung open.
Pat collected a number of bruises in the next two seconds. It is likely her captor gathered more. They rolled together down the stairs and landed on a concrete floor in the darkness.
Pat was half stunned. But now she was blazing mad. She had come to the "gangster party" armed with her special automatic. In keeping with the occasion, it had been loaded only with blank cartridges.
But even blanks, at close range, are hard on the eyes. Pat waited until the man let out a revealing snarl. The pistol erupted into his face. The man recoiled, swearing lustily.
Luckily for him, the automatic contained only blanks. The two flashes of hot powder were blinding. The sharp explosions brought a rush of feet in the upper hallway. Red Mahoney and a State copper with a flashlight appeared on the stairway.
Pat's assailant had fled through the rear of the basement. State policemen searched the cellar. They returned empty-handed.
"He crawled out through a back window," one reported.
Red Mahoney was fast for a big man. While Pat was watching the coppers carry on their hunt, Red set up his camera. He was grinding away as a calcium flared.
Pat had been explaining how a man had seized her in the hallway. She evaded the real reason for the attack. She said she had tried to telephone to a friend.
STATE POLICE were searching upstairs for a man who might show powder burns. None was found. A check showed there was no accurate guest list whereby a missing man could be discovered.
Red Mahoney grinned at Pat Savage.
"I lost the film of Vandersleeve upstairs," he said, mournfully. "I haven't got a thing that'sЧsay! Look at this!"
He was digging into his leather case for a new magazine. He closed the case suddenly and stepped close to Pat.
"Listen, Miss Savage," he confided. "That picture of the murder room has been put back in my case."
Mahoney scratched his head in perplexity.
"Whoever doused the lights and grabbed the film wants that picture to appear on the screen," stated Pat, wisely. "Now I wonder why?"
Red supplied the answer.
"To throw a scare into somebody, I'll bet," he said.
Pat nodded. Captain Graves was still holding Arthur Jotther. The social register guests of the "gangster party" were being checked as witnesses and released.
Pat was hoping Doc Savage had received her message.
Chapter III. THE DEATH TRAP
CLARK SAVAGE, JR., was the inconspicuous lettering in bronze. This was set on the metal door. Doc Savage's headquarters occupied the eighty-sixth floor of a towering mass of glittering metal and stone. This was one of Manhattan's greatest skyscrapers.
An elevator came up. The car made a slight hissing noise. This elevator was Doc's private car. It traveled with greater speed than the wind.
An uncouth figure stepped forth. The man's motion could only be described as ambling. Hairy hands trailed below the knees of short legs. Fat ears and the low forehead were covered with stiff reddish bristles.
The man himself might have been a huge trained ape. His broad nose sniffed. In front of the door bearing the sign, he paused to listen.
Doc's five staunch companions had formed this habit of caution. This was why they continued to survive almost incredible dangers.
The apelike individual was "Monk." The world of chemistry knew him as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. He was one of the world's leading industrial chemists. But to his companions and to his friends he was just Monk.
Monk entered Doc's reception room. Some of the world's most hunted and most dangerous criminals had been received there. In this room had been formed campaigns of adventure reaching into the uttermost parts of the world.
Sometimes a telephone message started Doc Savage and his five men upon quests strange and wide. But none had ever been stranger than that already recorded in the voice of Patricia Savage on the dictaphone record of the telephone.
Monk perceived such a record had been made. It was a rule that the first man to arrive would take the message. Usually this would then await the coming of Doc Savage.
But at the first words pouring into his furry ear, Monk twisted his ugly face into an even uglier grimace. The apelike chemist sensed danger. This apparently threatened Pat Savage. Monk's regard for Doc's beautiful cousin stirred an immediate deep emotion.
"Dang everything!" he muttered. "Some day she's goin' to get in a jam she won't get out of! An' Doc ain't even in town!"
But Doc Savage was in Manhattan. At that moment he was moving toward his headquarters. But Monk was not aware of this. He did not know where to reach the remarkable man of bronze.
"All over some buzzard of a millionaire!" piped Monk, shifting the recording needle and listening again to the bumping disruption of the circuit at the end. "An' somebody's grabbed Pat!"
He had heard the slapping commotion when the phone at the Vandersleeve mansion had been snatched from Pat's hand.
Monk thumbed through a directory of Westchester County. The location of the Vandersleeve estate was easily established. Monk went into one of the back rooms. When he returned, there was a bulge under one arm. He was equipped with an automatic superfiring pistol and various other defensive devices.
Monk then called a certain exclusive apartment residence club in upper Manhattan. The voice replying was acidly sharp with sleep and annoyance.
"I'd know that monkey squeal in any zoo!" it snapped. "And anybody else would have too many brains to wake up a man in the middle of the night. Now I'm going back to bed!"
"Listen, you slobberin' mouthpiece!" squeaked Monk. "Pat's gone an' got herself in a jam! It's a murder, four of 'em! They got Pat an'Ч"
At the exclusive club end of the telephone wire Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, known as "Ham" to his companions and friends, cut into Monk's rather jumbled words.
"How did you know she was grabbed, you raving ape?" he said, as he cooled down. "You don't know if she was murdered because she was grabbed? It doesn't make sense! How do you know that?"
"If you'd shut up long enough to listen!" howled Monk. "I know she ain't been murdered because she told me, an' I think she was only grabbed!"
Ham let out a sarcastic groan at his end of the wire.