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

"Damn Velma Crale!" he said quite distinctly. "I wonder why the hell she was ever born?"
Derek Flammen alighted from the taxi in front of his hotel, paid the driver, smiled at the doorman, smiled at the elevator operator, and unlocked the door to his suite with a key which he had been carrying. The suite was dark. He stepped in and turned on the light, somewhat absent-mindedly.
"You may as well hold that pose!" said a crisp, throaty voice.
Derek Flammen did anything but hold the pose. His hand was still on the light button. He doused the lights. Simultaneously, he jumped to one side. He crouched there.
Came a swish! A hard blow hit Flammen's right shoulder. He grunted, struck wildly in the darkness, hit nothing, and changed his position.
Almost instantly, he was struck another blow. He swore. He changed his position a third time. The interior of the room was as black as a bats' cave.
Yet the attacker found him again, unerringly. This time, Flammen was all but stunned by a smash to the side of his head.
Flammen snarled. He had suddenly discovered why the other could see him. His hands. There was a glowing substance on one of them. A phosphorescent stuff, obviously. He glanced at the door and saw where he had gotten it from. Off the inner knob!
"You might as well give up!" advised a voice in the darkness. "Otherwise, I shall start shooting."
"What is the meaning of this?" barked Derek Flammen.
The lights came on.
Derek Flammen stared, blinking, at the single other person in the room.
"Velma Crale!" he gulped.
VELMA CRALE had frequently been called the female Amazon of the twentieth century, because of the feats which she had performed. She did not look the part.
She was a small girl who looked as harmless as a mouse, and who had, just now, about the same coloring. Her arms did not bulge with muscles, despite the manner in which she had been whacking Derek Flammen about. Her features were regular, but not outstanding.
Velma Crale, just now, did not look like a heart smasher over whom two dignified Englishmen had fought a duel, and for whom an Indian nabob had renounced a province and twenty-two wives. This was because Velma Crale had dyed her hair to a nondescript hue, and was wearing no make-up, besides wearing some very plain clothes.
Velma Crale, when she had on her war paint, was really something to look at. What was more effective, she had glamour, personality, and a nice quota of brains.
Velma Crale was, incidentally, noted for her lack of interest in men. Thus far, her heart had been a rock on which luckless admirers had dashed themselves unavailingly.
She waved the big pistol which she held, and with which she had been clubbing Derek Flammen.
"I've shot men before!" she said, meaningly.
This was true. She had, singlehanded, fought off a war party of cannibals on an occasion when her plane was forced down in a New Guinea jungle.
Derek Flammen wet his lips. He kept his eyes on the gun's muzzle. The girl seemed to be considering her next move. They stood thus for some moments.
During those moments, something happened that neither of the two in the room noticed. The window raised a fraction of an inch. This was especially remarkable since the window opened on the side of the hotel which was sheer for twenty stories down and ten upward.
Derek Flammen sighed loudly.
"You are not going to get away with this!" he growled.
Velma Crale sniffed. It was the same kind of a sniff she would give a toothless dog who made out as if he were going to bite.
"You are as conceited as all men," she said, scathingly. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Not with that gun, you wouldn't be!" Flammen grumbled.
Velma Crale smiled nastily. Then she did a thing which was indicative of the spirit which had earned her reputation.
She tossed her loaded gun on the bed. Then she walked toward Derek Flammen with her fists up. Flammen looked delighted, lunged for her. His delight vanished. She hit him in the right eye, pulled some hair out of his head, and kicked him in the midriff, all before he could help himself.
The next instant, Derek Flammen was flat on his face, the remarkable young woman seated on his back, holding him with a neat jujitsu hold which dealt awful agony.
"I'm not afraid of anything that wears pants," said Velma Crale.
SHE searched Derek Flammen, relieved him of a pocketknife and a large, straight-stemmed pipe. She tied his hands and ankles with bedsheets from the bedroom.
Stepping back, she examined the pipe. The inlaid stem interested her. She pointed it at the wall and tried pressing various bits of the inlay.
She got a small zing! of a noise. Something hit the wall, and she went over to examine itЧa tiny dart.
"Poisoned, I'll bet!" she snapped, and glared at Derek Flammen.
The latter said nothing, but he did not appear to be in a comfortable state of mind.
Velma Crale stamped over and glared at him.
"Where is Thurston H. Wardhouse?" she asked.
"I never heard of such a man!" snapped Derek Flammen.
"Of course not!" Velma Crale laughed, harshly. "But Thurston H. Wardhouse is sailing from Southampton on the liner Regis to-night, and when I get my hands on him, plenty is going to happen!"
Derek Flammen kept silent. But he became slightly pale.
"I've been doing plenty of sleuthing around," advised Velma Crale. "I know the whole story. I know just how many millions are at stake."
Derek Flammen swallowed, plainly with some effort, but still did not speak.
"When your crowd tried to run a whizzer on me, you tackled the wrong person!" snapped the young woman. "I'm going to run you ragged! I'm going to do myself a lot of good in this. And Thurston H. Wardhouse is going to help me. You didn't know that, did you?"
Derek Flammen seemed about to choke.
The window had not opened more than the fraction of an inch which it had risen earlier.
There came a knock on the door.
Velma Crale got her gun from the bed and sidled over to the door.
"What is it?" she asked.