"044 (B077) - The South Pole Terror (1936-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

DOC SAVAGE headed the plane toward New York City, flying very high up in the stratosphere. He kept the motor silencers cut in. He had reasons for the precautions.
The air had begun to seethe with radio reports. Listening to them plunged Doc Savage's party into a thoughtful silence. When Habeas and Chemistry staged a brief fight, neither Monk nor Ham interfered or insulted each other. They were deep in gloom.
Coast guard and news planes had reached the Regis. The radio operator had been found dead at his key. News that amazed the world was being flashed, and it could not help but make those in authority start wondering about Doc Savage
The radio reportsЧthe S O SЧearlier had named Doc Savage as responsible for what was happening to the Regis. There was nothing to show the liner's operator had not done the sending, and the fellow was dead.
Dying testimony is invariably accepted by the public as the truth. Otherwise level-headed persons will regard as truth the mumbling of a dying man, although the victim may not have the slightest idea he is dying, and may well be trying to incriminate an enemy who is actually innocent.
"We're gonna have to answer a lot of questions," Monk muttered.
"Which will rather cramp our style," Ham agreed.
At almost thirty thousand feet, Doc Savage cut the motors and the plane drifted downward like a sighing ghost. The riding lights were extinguished.
Doc took binoculars and watched the Hudson River water front in the vicinity of the Hidalgo Trading Co., which was a combination warehouse, hangar and boathouse. The police, of course, knew that the bronze man maintained the place.
The warehouse was equipped with a remarkable set of alarms. A marauder did not have to break into the place to set off the system. Any one merely lurking near by would actuate capacity-balanced relays and give notice. The system was connected to a wire which caused an electric sign on a building some blocks distant to illuminate.
This sign was lighted now.
Doc Savage landed well up the Hudson, beached the seaplane, lashed it to a sapling, and headed for the downtown section of Manhattan with their prisoner.
The captive began to struggle, tried to shout. Monk, grinning fiercely, used a fist, and the man collapsed. They hailed a taxicab. It was dark where the cab stopped.
"Our buddy has passed out," Monk explained.
They kept their faces shaded riding downtown, and got out near the homely Monk's experimental chemical laboratory in the Wall Street sector.
MONK'S laboratory was something of a marvel of its kind. It was more complete even than the one which had been destroyed by the explosion at Doc's headquarters, as far as chemical equipment exclusively went. It was situated in a penthouse atop a financial skyscraper.
Monk's living quarters were adjacent to the laboratory. Monk went in for luxury and modernistic extremes. Everything was bright metal, glass or gaudy leather. Habeas Corpus, the pig, had a room of his own, equipped with a chemically purified and perfumed mud wallow.
Ham sneered nastily, as he always did, at the gaudy flash of Monk's place.
"The product of an animal mind," he sniffed.
Monk only grinned, and thought of times when he had made some choice and relieving remarks about Ham's overly dignified bachelor suite in a Park Avenue club so ritzy that even the bellboys were ex-dukes.
Doc went in to the laboratory. He had been there before, knew the distribution of chemicals. He began concocting mixtures.
"We'll need some electrical apparatus," he said. "Monk, you rig it up. Ham, you keep the prisoner in another room, so he will not know what we are doing."
Ham hauled the captive away. The fellow had not yet regained consciousness.
Half an hour later, Doc Savage walked in and confronted the captive, now conscious. Doc carried a hypo needle. He calmly used it.
"What're you giving him?" Ham asked.
Doc Savage replied in Mayan, the ancient tongue, which he and his aides had learned long ago on a fantastic adventure into Central American jungles, and which they used to communicate with each other when not wishing to be understood by others present. Outside of themselves, there was probably not half a dozen men in the so-called civilized world who spoke the tongue.
"A drug which will loosen his self-control and make his mind more susceptible to outside suggestions," Doc Savage said, answering Ham's question. Doc spoke Mayan.
They waited. After a bit, the man began to squirm. He apparently had become scared. Doc glanced at Monk and Ham, and nodded.
"You've got to talk!" Doc Savage rapped, grimly.
The prisoner rolled his eyes. His lips shook back from his teeth in a snarl that had difficulty jelling.
"Hell with you!" he said.
DOC SAVAGE produced a roll of adhesive tape, tore off short lengths and taped one of the man's eyes shut. Then Doc held a large, sharp knife in front of the fellow's other eye.
"When you change your mind, say so," directed the bronze man, and brought the knife down.
The fellow's eye closed involuntarily.
Doc worked fast. He flipped the knife aside, grabbed a chunk of ice which Monk had ready and worried the ice against the victim's eye. Ice passing over human flesh causes a sensation closely akin to a knife cutting.
Monk had an electrical contact ready. Doc slapped this against the man's eye. Tape already attached served to secure it to his face. Monk poured some warm water on the man's face.
The electrical contact delivered a steady, shocking pain that was realistic. The warm water felt like blood.
The man screamed. He floundered. They held him. He screeched so hard that spray flew through his teeth.
"This place is soundproof," Monk said.
"Which is lucky," Ham added, calmly.
Habeas, the pig, came in, grunting loudly, to investigate the screaming of the victim.
"Habeas," Monk said, "how would you like to eat this guy's eyes? O. K. Here!"
Monk then made lip-smacking sounds that were a very good imitation of a pig eating.
The man on the floor heaved. He acted as if he were about to have a fit.
"I think Habeas would like his ear," Monk said.
They used the ice, the warm water, and another electric shocking electrode to make the fellow think he had lost an ear. Had his mind been entirely rational, he might have known otherwise. But the drug had him dazed.
"I guess he ain't gonna talk," Monk said.
The prisoner only cursed.
"Like the ear, Habeas?" Monk asked. "Grunt if you did."
Making a visible signal, Monk caused his pet pig to grunt loudly.