"050 (B033) - The Terror in the Navy (1937-04) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)
"No harm," Doc said.
"We've known Doc was being watched several days," Monk explained. "Doc had three men watching the balloon. The other two of us were posted downstairs. The last two was myself and a guy who don't count, named Ham. Anyway, we trailed that guy Fuzzy. We've been on his trail all the time."
"Oh!" said India Allison admiringly.
Doc said, "We will talk to Von Zidney."
"But what about the guard?" the girl asked anxiously.
"We can sort of collaborate on him," Monk suggested.
They advancedЧand were almost immediately passed by a newsboy. He was a gray-haired newsboy, well fed, with an unlined face.
"Paper?" he called. "Read all about the mysterious naval disasters."
Doc Savage stood looking after the departing newsboy.
"What's wrong?" Monk asked.
"That newsboy was in front of the Parkview Hotel!" Doc said.
The newsboy walked around a corner out of sight.
"He's kinda old to be hawking newspapers!" Monk grunted. "I'll go round him up."
Monk went around the corner where the elderly newsboy had vanished, and was out of sight three or four minutes. He came back with empty hands and a puzzled look.
"Gone!" Monk grunted. "Funny, huh?"
Monk now whistled softly. There was a stir in the bushes near by, and an animal of remarkable appearance came out of the shrubbery and across the sidewalk. It had elephantine ears, legs of great length, and a snout built for inquiry into remote places. A pig.
"Habeas CorpusЧmy pal," Monk explained, indicating the pig.
Doc said, "We had better see Von Zidney without delay. First, we will have to take care of the guard."
THE guard had a straw hat pulled over his long nose, and had donned overalls and canvas sneakers, together with the look which a man who doesn't like work wears when he has to work. He was pushing a lawn mower to which was attached a basket to catch the grass.
The basket held the man's sawed-off shotgun, where he could fall upon it without delay.
The man stopped pushing his mowing machine when Monk appeared from the direction of the street. Monk carried his own coat rolled under his arm.
"Gotta de old clothes to sell, meester?" asked Monk, almost unintelligibly.
"Get the hell offn this place!" yelled the grass mower.
Monk, wearing a big idiotic grin at which he was particularly adept, ambled closer.
But by this time Doc Savage had come out of the lawn shrubbery with the silence of a ghost and had put his trained, corded bronze hands upon the man at the mowing machine.
The man never made a sound loud enough to frighten birds out of the near-by bushes before he became senseless from a peculiar pressure which Doc Savage exerted on his spinal nerve centers.
"That," Monk told India Allison, "is what me and Doc call collaboration."
"I think you're wonderful!" the young woman murmured, and Monk beamed like a cat that had discovered cream in his whiskers.
"Stay here," Doc said, "and watch the prisoner."
"Sure," Monk agreed, grinning at India Allison.
Doc walked toward the house. India Allison stayed behind.
MONK shook the prisoner, got no response, and thus assured that the fellow was senseless, gave his attention to the young woman.
India Allison was looking Monk over, apparently with approval. She smiled radiantly.
"You're terribly strong, aren't you?" she asked.
They were not making modest men the day Monk was created.
"Sure, I'm strong," he grinned. "Did you ever see these circus strong men take horseshoes and straighten them out?"
"Oh!" gasped India Allison. "Can you do that?"
"I invented the trick," Monk said.
India Allison pointed at the house. "Look! Isn't that something moving?"
Monk looked. "I don't seeЧ"
He did not finish, for the simple reason that a good slice of the earth seemed to make sudden contact with the back of his head.
The intense blackness of unconsciousness enveloped him as he fell, and he was trying, trying to call out for Doc Savage, and failing. He wanted to tell Doc never to trust any woman, that this young female, with her sweet face and her nice way of looking so flatteringly at a man, had hit him over the head.
He did not feel the shock as he hit the lawn.
DOC SAVAGE reached the house, listened, and heard nothing to indicate a human presence. He went into the big ugliness of the house and walked in gloomy silence, looking for some sign of life, and determining before long that there was none.
He used his atomizer. Brown deposit was brought out darkly by the reagent on a side door, indicating the presence of a hand not more than five minutes previously. Doc Savage passed through the door and studied the ground.
Doc Savage did unusual things and was obviously a unique personage, but in truth he was much more remarkable an individual than any one suspected. His senses; his faculties, were developed to an almost superhuman degree, thanks to a full two hours of exercises which he had taken each day since childhood.
Doc had learned trailing and tracking from some of the world's masters, and it was not difficult for him to see that one man had come to the side door of the house, and two had gone away. Doc followed the trail of the two. A bent blade of grass, one among hundreds, disturbed dust on the leaves of bushes, dew drops spattered and smeared, showed him the way.
The two men had gotten into a car on a side Street. A fresh drop or two of oil from the car was on the paving.
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