"050 (B033) - The Terror in the Navy (1937-04) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Lieutenant Toy Sent a message to Doc Savage," said one of the sailors. "We weren't able to stop the message or even get a look at it."
"This message went to whom?" the voice asked.
"Doc Savage. Ever hear of him?"
The "Chief" swore.
"I've heard entirely too much about him! How was this message sent?"
"Radio. It'll reach New York as a regular commercial message."
"Thanks," said the distant speaker. "We've got to do things fast."
He hung up.
Chapter 3. CAUTIOUS CROOKS
THE man in New York did not replace the telephone on its stand after hanging up. He held the instrument close to his chest and thought deeply.
It was night, and the man was in bed.
He reached over and touched a tiny jack-switch concealed under the telephone stand. This apparently connected the telephone with a private wire. The man jiggled the hook.
"Yeah, chief?" said a sleepy voice.
"We have received what is sometimes called a bad break," said the man in bed.
"Yeah?"
"You have the file of information which we gathered about Doc Savage?"
"Yeah," said the sleepy voice, not so sleepy now. "But I still don't see why we went to the trouble of finding out so much about Doc Savage."
"Doc Savage is logically the one man we have most to fear," reminded the man in bed. "In short, we learned everything we could about him because he might menace our plans. I thought it would be a wise move. Now I know."
"You mean that Doc Savage has an inkling of what we're going to do?"
"Lieutenant Toy sent a radiogram to Doc Savage before heЧahЧbefore Toy met a mysterious fate, as the newspapers will put it. That is the bad break I mentioned. We've got to stop that message before it reaches Doc Savage."
"Was it a radiogram?"
"Yes."
"Leave it to me!" said the man on the other end of the wire, and listened until he heard his chief hang up. Then the fellow put the receiver on the hook and began to remove his pajamas.
He was a long, snaky man with an almost animal growth of black hair on his chest and up and down his back. It is a popular theory that eyes have to be small to be mean. This man's eyes were bigЧand mean.
When he had dressed, he glanced about the close and rather untidy room, took two nasty-looking flat pistols in holsters off a wall hook, fastened them under his coat, and walked to the door. He passed into another close and untidy room, in which six men lay on cots.
One of the men on the cots opened an eye and said, "What a conscience you must have! Don't it ever let you sleep?"
"Get dressed!" The snaky, hairy man shook the others. "Get dressed, you DavidsЧwe're gonna sally forth after a Goliath!"
HALF an hour later, they were tying shoestrings and ties and yawning, as their car moved through downtown Manhattan. The snaky, hairy man was talking, explaining. When he finished, one of the others addressed him by what seemed to be his nickname.
"Fuzzy," said the man, "this Doc Savage is big-time poison."
"Keep your shirt on," said the hairy "Fuzzy." "We'll do this so Savage will never know a thing about it."
The driver stopped the sedan, and they all looked out. They saw a giant office building which hurled itself upward until it was lost against the cloudy night sky.
Fuzzy pointed a limber, hairy finger almost straight up into the night.
"Top floor," he said. "Eighty-six stories up. Sort of an eagle's nest."
They got out and went into the giant buildingЧit was admittedly the most imposing in New York City. An elevator let them out two flights below Doc Savage's floor, and they climbed stairs, so as not to be seen.
On the last flight of steps, Fuzzy waved the others back.
"Kind of erase yourselves," he directed. "Let me look the ground over."
Fuzzy then ran up the final flight of stairs. There was a door which seemed to be made of bronze. Letters on it were so unobtrusive as to be almost difficult to locate.
Clark Savage, Jr.
There was no knob on the door, no handle; it seemed to be just a slab of bronze. Fuzzy happened to know it was a slab of armor steel, bronze-plated.
Repeated pressings of the button beside the door got no answer, and Fuzzy went back to his men.
"Coast clear," he grinned. "The bronze guy ain't in."
"How we gonna get into that place?" asked the pessimist. "It's more burglar-proof than a bank vault."
Fuzzy held out a hand to one of the men. "Gimme that package I gave you to carry."
The packet which the man handed over was the size of a pocket match box. Fuzzy tapped it with a finger.
"This holds a piece of radioactive metal," he said. "Watch what happens."
He walked toward the door of Doc Savage's office. The door opened mysteriously.
"Hah!" said Fuzzy, pleased. "What'd I tell you? There's a sensitive electroscope hidden beside the door. When a piece of radioactive metal is brought near it, the electroscope causes a relay to close and that makes a machine open the door."
He walked through the door.
"You guys wait outside," he directed.
THE room in which hirsute, serpentine Fuzzy found himself seemed to be a reception room. Principal items of furniture were an enormous safe, a number of comfortable-appearing chairs, and a rather remarkable-looking inlaid table.