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

Fuzzy ignored everything in the room, and went into a library which held thousands of tomes.
Libraries are traditionally gloomy places, but this one was not. The windows along one side were so large that the wall seemed almost solidly of glass.
Fuzzy looked at the windows and grinned. It was by watching through these that a great deal had been learned about Doc Savage. The method employed had been ingenious, and Fuzzy was particularly proud of it because he had thought it up himself.
He picked up a telephone and called the office of the concern handling radio messages.
He asked, "Has a message come for Doc Savage, signed by Lieutenant Bowen Toy? This is Doc Savage's headquarters. . . . No? Will you telephone the message as soon as it arrives? Do not send it by messenger. Telephone it. Thank you."
Fuzzy hung up and gave every sign of being ready to wait as long as necessary. He wandered over to the window.
In the night sky, some distance away, blazed an electric sign advertising a little-known variety of beer. In fact, the variety of beer did not even exist!
The sign was held in the air by a balloon, which was in turn moored to a barge in the Hudson River.
Fuzzy waved both arms. The electric sign on the balloon promptly blinked. Fuzzy grinned. His men, with extremely powerful astronomical telescopes trained on Doc Savage's office, had recognized their straw boss.
Some time elapsed before the telephone rang. Fuzzy sprang to the receiver, lifted it, said, "Doc Savage's headquarters!"
"This is the radio office with a message," the voice said.
The voice read Lieutenant Bowen Toy's message.
"Thank you," said Fuzzy. "Do not bother to send a copy by mail, or by messenger. It won't be necessary."
"Very well," replied the radio office clerk. "We will not."
Fuzzy hung up, went out, let the trick outer door close behind him, and shoved his chest out triumphantly at his men.
"That fixes it!" he said. "Doc Savage will never know a message was sent to him!"
They walked toward the stairs.
A young woman came up the stairs. She pointed on old-fashioned six-shooter at themЧa six-shooter with a barrel so big that any man present could have put his little finger in the barrel with ease.
"They gave me this thing to cut my teeth on!" the girl said, jiggling the six-shooter in her hand.
THE men goggled.
The young woman would have gotten a monopoly of male attention anywhere. She was tall and had every curve necessary to make an exquisitely moulded feminine form. Her features were what the old literary masters would have called finely chiseled, with an outdoor skin.
One remarkable quality was the unusual bronze hue of her hair and the almost matching color of her eyes. Or perhaps her eyes tended more to golden.
Her frock and accessoriesЧit was a silver and white evening creationЧwere the ultra in fashion.
Fuzzy gulped, "Who're you?"
"Patricia Savage," the woman said. "Oh, you've never heard of me, probably. Doc Savage is my cousin. I have a beauty establishment uptown where I charge outrageous prices, and the customers like it."
Fuzzy swallowed. The mouth of the six-shooter seemed incredibly big.
"UhЧwellЧuh," he mumbled.
"You gentlemen look like a bunch of crooks to me," Pat said brightly. "And why were you pussy-footing around? While you think up some lies to answer, you can back into Doc's office, with your hands in the air."
A man appeared silently on the stairs behind Pat Savage. He threw a gun which he held. It hit the back of Pat's head.
Fuzzy, the others, lunged forward. Pat was dazed. She tried to get her gun up. Fuzzy kicked it out of her hand.
Another man drew an automatic pistol.
"Let her have it?" he wanted to know.
"And get Doc Savage on our trail for murder!" snorted Fuzzy. "Don't be like that! Here! We'll do this!"
He picked up Pat's big six-shooter, measured her, and hit her over the temple. She fell. Fuzzy dropped her big six-gun beside her.
"Amscray, as Caesar would say!" he ordered.
They went down some flights of stairs, entered an elevator, and, looking very innocent, rode down to the street.
As they got into their car on the darkened street, the man who had thrown the gun reminded every one, "It was lucky I saw this dame and hid me out while she passed me up!"
"Don't worry, you'll get your bouquets!" said Fuzzy. The men did not drive away fast enough to attract attention from any cops who might be around.
Chapter 4. THE MAN OF METAL
PATRICIA SAVAGE opened her gold eyes and with her hands tried to help herself up off the floor. She sniffed indignantly when she discovered she was sitting in a chair. She looked around.
"Oh!" she said. She sounded exasperated. "I might have known you would happen around and catch me when I wasn't at my best!"
The giant bronze man standing before her smiled faintly, which was a rare thing for him to do. Some persons had known him for years and had never seen him smile. Not that he went around looking gloomy. His amazingly regular features, almost classic in their firm handsomeness, simply had no expression at all, most of the time.
He stood near the door, and it looked doubtful if he could pass through it without ducking. Yet, when he stepped away from the door, he seemed to shrink in stature, due to the remarkable symmetry of his development. There had to be something around to which his size might be compared before his full Herculean stature was apparent.
His hair was straight, a slightly darker bronze than that of Pat Savage, and his eyes were gold, also, but of a different nature. The bronze man's orbs were like pools of flake metal, always stirred by some invisible force. They seemed also to possess a weird, compelling power.
The sinews in his neck were like hausers, the thews in the backs of his hands like round files.
"Doc Savage!" Pat exclaimed cheerfully. "You're smiling! You're actually becoming human!"
The remarkable-looking bronze man spoke. He had a voice that was arresting, not so much because of the things that were in it, but because of the feeling of things that were left out, things the voice could do if called upon.
"You happened along at an unlucky time, Pat."
Pat sniffed audibly. "I'll have you know if it hadn't been for me, you might never have known some men had raided your office!"
"Wrong," Doc Savage said quietly.