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

"You're not telling me I got hit on the head for nothing?"
DOC SAVAGE walked into the corridor. Despite his size, he seemed remarkably light on his feet. He touched the corridor wall, and an apparently solid section opened, showing a recess large enough to hold a man.
Pat stepped into the niche and perceived there were obscure peepholes from which could be seen, not only the corridor, but the reception room, and library.
"You weren't in here when those men came?" she demanded.
"And when you got your clip on the head."
"But why?" Pat gasped.
Doc escorted her around and into the headquarters reception room.
"Notice the electric sign advertising beer in the sky beyond the window," he suggested. "Do not stare noticeably at it, however."
"Oh!" said Pat, understanding. "A balloon! Telescopes! How long has this been going on?"
"For days," the bronze man replied.
"Who are they? What are they up to?"
"That," Doc Savage said, "is what we have decided it is time to find out."
Pat said cheerfully, "You figure something is getting ready to happen?"
"Possibly."
"Big?"
"That balloon cost a few thousand dollars," the bronze man reminded. "Whatever is about to happen must be big before any one would spend that much money just to get information on me."
"Good!" said Pat. "Great! Swell! I like excitement, big excitement."
Doc said quietly, "You are not going to get involved in thisЧwhatever it isЧand possibly get killed. Out you go."
"I won't!" Pat snapped. "I won't go!"
But she did go. She made indignant noises as Doc propelled her out and shut the door and locked it.
There were small lights of appreciation in the bronze man's flake-gold eyes as he went into the library. Pat was his cousin and she had many of his own qualities, not the least being her love for excitement. It was a rare week that passed without her asking to be let in on something.
Doc refused as often as he could. Too dangerous. But Pat was hard to discourage.
Doc swung a bookcase away from the wall, disclosing a niche which held a machine.
The machine was the bronze man's telephonic monitor. Attached to the telephone lines, it recorded all conversations with immense fidelity of tone.
DOC played the record back. It gave him the text of the radiogram sent by Lieutenant Bowen Toy from the destroyer which had met such a mysterious fateЧthe message directing Doc to go to the apartment of Captain Blackstone Toy in the Parkview Hotel.
Doc played the record back again. He wanted to fix Fuzzy's voice in his memory, so that he would know it if he heard it in the future.
The bronze man's private speed elevator lowered him to the garage in the skyscraper basement. Few persons knew of the garage.
The car he chose was a convertible coupщ, discreetly dark, with a wheel base longer than usual. The top was down, the windows up. Glass in the windows was of the type known as bulletproof. The steel boot into which the top recessed came up high enough at the back to decrease the chances of being shot from behind.
The convertible coupщ was equipped with a two-way radio, and the bronze man switched it on.
"Renny, Long Tom, Johnny!" Doc called into the microphone.
Doc Savage had five aids, men as remarkable, almost, as himself. The names he had just called belonged to three of the aids.
"Holy cow!" rumbled an answering voice out of the loud-speaker. "Don't you ever sleep, Doc?"
"Anything new, Renny?" Doc asked.
"Nope," said big-voiced "Renny."
"Be with you in a few minutes," Doc told him.
"So we're gonna do something about this at last!" Renny rumbled happily.
Doc drove toward the water front, and passed a newspaper plant from which late editions were being loaded. The bronze man stopped, got a paper and studied the page black with headlines.
NAVY PLANE CARRIER WRECKED!
CRASHES STEAMER!
The wreck of the aircraft carrier had occurred only a short time previously, near Norfolk, Virginia.
In an adjacent column was another expressive headline.
NAVAL EXPERTS BLAME
MYSTERY FORCE FOR FIVE
DESTROYER AND PLANE
CARRIER WRECKS.
Navy officials hinted to-night that some mysterious and unexplained influence caused the five destroyers and the plane carrier to run off their courses to disaster.
That was all of that angle of the story. Evidently navy officials had been afraid about hinting. It was enough of an inference, however, coupled with what was to follow, to set the entire country agog within the next twenty-four hours.
Doc Savage folded the paper slowly, his bronze features expressionless, and drove on.
RENNY gave the impression of being a walking pair of fists. His hands were tremendous, each almost half a gallon of bone and gristle with the consistency of flint. He had a long face, and habitually wore the expression of a man going to the funeral of a good friend.
Renny was Colonel John Renwick, who loved two things: trouble and engineering. As an engineer, he was world-famed.