"049 (B053) - The Mental Wizard (1937-03) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE MENTAL WIZARD
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson

PROLOGUE
FACTS do not lie, the old saying goes. What follows, being in general excerpts from newspapers over the past few years may, therefore, be taken for what they are worth. The full items from the newspapers will not be reprinted here, for they have filled scores of news columns and many Sunday pages; and moreover, some of them would make uninteresting reading.
But the clippings and the story they tell, considered as a whole, are more than interesting. They are absorbing to a point where there is a hint of something incredible.
These newspaper clippings deal with one of the unexplored regions of the world, of which there are still a few. Rather, the news stories deal with men who went into the region during the past few years. Never have the news stories dealt with what happened to these men after they penetrated the region. No one knows about that. No one, that is, belonging to what is called the civilized world.
Some of the men went in by foot, with native porters. They never came back. In cases, some, but rarely all, of the natives turned up at distant points, and almost invariably they had strange stories to tellЧstories so inarticulate and fantastic that they did not warrant belief from the level-headed managers of frontier trading posts who heard them.
Some of the lost men went by air, their planes equipped with the latest radio apparatus, burdened with plenty of rifles, ammunition and spare food. They have not been heard from.
Expeditions have gone in search of these men. In no case was a substantial trace found of the lost men. In an instance or two, the searchers were not heard from again.
The American Legion organization in the Panama Canal Zone recently sponsored, it is reported, a search for one of these lost men, an aviator. This aviator's name was Redfern. Many attempts have been made to find another prominent individual who was lost, Fawcett by name.
In no case has a great deal of success greeted the searchers, for the region they had to penetrate is the terrible jungle country on certain headwater branches of the Amazon River in South America.
What is there in that particular jungle which has kept so many men from coming back?
Chapter I. THE WEIRD GIRL
MIRACLES do not occur too often. El Liberator "Amber" O'Neel very nearly fell over with surprise when one happened to him. But he lost no time in taking advantage of it.
It was, incidentally, a fact that if O'Neel had known what he was letting himself in for, he would probably have crawled under the roots of the nearest mangrove and let the miracle go moaning past.
Carl O'Neel, alias Amber O'Neel, alias El LiberatorЧhe was El Liberator Amber O'Neel just nowЧwas a brave Yankee, too, which was bad, because he was also crooked, cruel, without morals, and all other kinds of a rascal.
Bravery and such qualities are a rare mixture, and a bad one. But O'Neel did not crawl under a mangrove. Instead, he bellowed enthusiastic orders.
"Quick!" he squawled, in Spanish. "Get out there in the clearing! Line up and wave your arms!"
El Liberator
Amber O'Neel had been standing at the edge of an open glade in the South American jungle, wishing that a plane would happen along. No sooner the wish, and presto! The sound of an airplane motor was approaching!
"Wave your arms, damn you!" O'Neel howled. "Get that plane down! Then see that it does not get up again!"
Amber O'Neel was in great need of a plane, because the authorities of this South American country of Colombia were looking for him to stand him against a stone wall and see if he were bulletproof. This by way of proving that it is not wise to murder and rob under the guise of being a leader of a gang of patriots trying to make Colombia a land of the free. Colombia was already enough of a land of the free to satisfy almost every one.
"Wave, damn it!" bawled O'Neel. "Wave them arms!"
If he had a plane, Amber O'Neel reflected, he could scout for groups of Colombian soldiers or police, and there would be less likelihood of his raiding a trading post when authority was too near. He chuckled. He would claim the plane was his military air force.
"Get the pilot's attention!" O'Neel yelled. "Make him think we're in distress or something!"
The plane, thought O'Neel, would make a swell get-away vehicle when the going got too tough.
O'Neel's patriots waved their arms as if their lives depended upon it. They were all for their chief, who was as swell a general as they had ever had. Of course, he flew into a rage and shot somebody now and then. But jungle life was cheap, and El Liberator O'Neel was a lad who raided where the raiding was good.
The patriots were a scurvy-looking bunch. Some were natives, jungle savages who looked as if they would be more at home drying human heads. Indeed, they had dried a few.
There were a couple of bums from up Nicaragua way, a bit of scum from Panama, Colombian riffraff. But no whites. O'Neel was white, and he didn't like more of his own color. Sometimes a white man objected to some of the things O'Neel did.
But El Liberator Amber O'Neel's rabble patriots were better trained than they looked. Six of them, indeed, were good military aviators, trained by Colombia and other South American republics at some expense.
They all waved their arms vigorously at the plane cruising overhead.
THE plane was a model ten years old, and not a pilot in a thousand would have cared about being in it while it was over this kind of jungle. The ship had been flying north, so it must have left behind an unexplored stretch of jungle where, for all any one knew, landing grounds might be a hundred miles between. No place, certainly, for a bus as old as this one.
The pilot flew like a war-time kiwiЧa kiwi being a bird with wings that can't fly. He was going to land. He wabbled down. He tried to skid air speed away, narrowly missed scraping a wing, came down hard, bounced twenty feet straight up, came down on one wing, and the plane began to fall to pieces.
O'Neel cursed wildly. "Looks like that pilot deliberately wrecked his wagon!"
The propeller tied itself into a strange knot. The planeЧwhat was left of itЧturned over on its back, and a cloud of splinters and bits of fabric settled on it, and the episode was over. That plane would never take to the air again.
Amber O'Neel produced two long-barreled, small-bore pistols from holsters next to his sides, and he handled them as if each of his hands was a right hand. In fact, that was how Amber O'Neel had gotten one of his nicknames.
He was ambidextrous, could use both hands with equal ease. He boasted about his being ambidextrous. Men who couldn't pronounce that word had taken to calling him "Amber."
Amber O'Neel ran toward the plane. He planned to shoot the occupants, if still alive, and take whatever they had. He poked his head and his guns into the interior of the ship.
For some time, he remained in exactly that position.
When he withdrew his head, he looked wide-eyed, startled. His lips made words, but not sounds.
His patriots, who had drawn near, withdrew. Amber O'Neel was fat, innocent-looking. Just a benign, chubby gentleman to the eye. To look at him, you'd trust him with your bank roll. Those who knew him didn't even want to be around him.
That look on Amber O'Neel's face scared his patriots.
Amber O'Neel showed no signs of being aware of the flurry among his lovers of libertyЧand loot. His guns hung limply in his hands. His mouth kept working, and he swallowed with a great deal of effort, as if trying to down half a banana without chewing it.
"Fever!" he exploded. "That's what it is! Blast me, I've got it, and I'm delirious!"
Then he did something that would have made an onlooker laughЧbut not to Amber O'Neel's face.
He hit himself on the head with the barrels of both guns simultaneously, just hard enough to convince himself he was awake. He looked somewhat childishly pained, then shoved his head into the plane's cabin again.
"At first, I figured I was seein' things," he said, sharply. "What's the idea of the regalia, lady?"
The fantastically garbed young woman said nothing,