"048 (B074) - The Derrick Devil (1937-02) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE DERRICK DEVIL
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson


Chapter I. THE FLOWING RED DEVIL
THE man carried a .30-30 rifle in one hand and two boxes of cartridges, both open, in the other hand. He acted as if ready to drop the cartridges and use the rifle any instant.
The girl had a shotgun.
"I've got a hunch guns ain't a lot of good against this thing!" the man muttered.
"What's the matter, Reservoir?" the girl asked. "Believe in hobgoblins?"
It was too dark to tell much about them, only that the man was tall and skinny, except for his middle, which was big around, making him like a snake that had swallowed an egg. A nice snake, of course.
The girl was about the right size, and if she didn't have a good form, the darkness lied. It was impossible to tell about her coloring.
"I still maintain I saw something coming out of the casing of that wildcat well, Miss Vida," the man muttered. "Reservoir Hill may be old, but he ain't going nuts!"
The girl laughed. It was, somehow, not a very enthusiastic mirth.
"Sam Sands was to watch the well until midnight," she said. "It's eleven. Time you and I were relieving Sam."
Holding the rifle with his finger in the trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl took long strides and kept at his side.
Tall, dry grass brushed their field boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the night breeze. Over in the hills somewhere, an owl was making a racket.
They topped the small hill and before them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well derrick stood reared against the cloudy night sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling rig was evidently a rotary.
The well was not a producer, because the breeze was coming from that direction and it carried, instead of the smell of crude oil, the odors usually found around drilling wells.
"Reservoir" Hill stopped.
The girl waited, but when he did not move or speak, she grew impatient. "Well!"
"We've got the wildcat shut down because our boss driller has disappeared," Reservoir Hill said, slowly.
"Well?" the girl said again, sharply.
"I've got a horrible suspicion," continued Reservoir Hill, "that we've already found our driller!"
THE girl was puzzled. She held her shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed her companion. A stray beam of moonlight came through a crack in passing clouds to illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends of him had been squeezed to make him big in the middle.
"What are you driving at, Reservoir?"
"Remember that gummy stuff we found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was near where we found the clothes our driller was wearin'Чwhen heЧwell, when he disappeared."
"That was just old lube or grease that somebody had scraped out there."
"It wasn't lube," Reservoir Hill said, shuddering.
"No?"
"I know lube oil." Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "I've worked in refineries too many years not to know grease or lube. This stuff looks more likeЧwellЧ" He fell silent.
"Like what?"
Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug.
"Forget it! When they have been in the oil fields as long as I have, they sometimes got funny!"
The two of them walked toward the drilling rig. It was a complete outfit, even more modern on close examination. Everything was in readiness for the striking of oil, catch dams have been thrown across gullies with fresnos.
It was a steam rig, and the boiler was located far enough away that a possible unexpected outpouring of natural gas from the well would not be likely to reach the boiler fires before they could be extinguished by a supply of water which was kept close at hand. Steam was brought from the boiler to the machinery at the well by pipe.
And oil field scouts, fellows who know their business, would have said that here was a wildcat drilling outfit which knew what it was doing.
Hill stopped, inhaled until his chest was almost half as big as his stomach, and blasted a yell.
"Sam!" he howled. "Sam! Where are you?"
Echoes came gobbling back from the red oak carpeted hills.
"Tsk! Tsk!"
the girl clucked. "You must think Sam's over by Ponca City or somewhere!"
They waited. Night breeze seemed to have suddenly stopped rustling the red oak leaves, but it might have been a freak of the night.
Reservoir Hill growled, "Well! Didn't answer, did he?"
The girl had become concerned.
"Sam can't be asleep! Your yell must have made half the Indian warriors in the Osage sit up in their graves!"
They ran forward, guns ready. The man, Reservoir Hill, produced a big, shiny flashlight which gave poor light and not much of it. The light immediately found shiny substance on the ground.
Reservoir Hill stared. His throat made a rasping noise more eloquent than any other sound could have been.
"Them's Sam's clothes, ain't they?" he croaked.
THE male clothingЧhat, shirt, coat, trousers, socks, heavy oil field shoesЧlay exactly in a position they would occupy if the former wearer had lain down on his back and his body had become nonexistent.