"051 (B034) - Mad Eyes (1937-05) - Laurence Donovan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
THE young woman was plumply rounded out. She did not seem quite the type to have a fiery temper. But sparks were snapping in her black eyes. Her voice was edged with anger.
"Hurry up, funny face, and pry me loose from these thorns!" the girl demanded of Monk. "It's a wonder I'm alive! Oh! You're one of Doc Savage's men! Well, I'm not a bit surprised!"
Monk's long arms lifted a hundred and fifty pounds of fairly good-looking woman from the bushes. He set her on her feet between the rails of one of the tracks.
"You don't mean to tell me you were in that wrecked car?" said Ham. "You don't look as if you were hurt much."
"That car?" exclaimed the young woman. "You think I was in that? I couldn't have been, the way it looks. But I must have come here some way! After Doc Savage started looking at me, I knew something was wrong!"
The girl's black eyes flashed at Ham. She had smooth, black hair and a white forehead. Her mouth was round and small and very red.
"I knew it!" exploded Monk. "I told you, Ham! Doc's in trouble! Where'd you come from, miss, and howЧ"
"Don't try to kid me!" snapped the young woman. "Both of you belong to Doc Savage, so you must have been with him! Sure, that's it! You were there when he held up the laboratories and put me in a trance with his whirlwind eyes!"
"Hold everything just a minute," suggested Ham. "Let's begin at the beginning. You're saying Doc Savage hypnotized you or something like that? I presume then you came from the Spargrove Laboratories. You claim you didn't know you were in that wrecked car?"
"You heard me telling you I don't remember anything after Doc Savage looked at me in that funny way he has," declared the young woman. "Anyway, I'm Jane Davidson, and I've been helping Professor Spargrove at his laboratory."
"I don't care who you are!" howled Monk. "I want to know if Doc was in that smashed car!"
"How many times do I have to say I don't know?" rapped Jane Davidson. "I may have been in the car! Probably I was! But I don't remember anything after Doc Savage looked at me! Besides that, I was called to the laboratories to help Professor Spargrove with some kind of meeting for Doc Savage andЧ"
"I believe you, Miss Davidson," interrupted Ham. "You've got Doc all wrong, but I guess you think you're telling the truth. Monk, put Miss Davidson in our car. I'm having a look around. She couldn't have come here alone."
"I won't go with you in any car!" snapped Jane Davidson.
Sheets of rain whipped down on gusts of wind. The track inspector grinned a little.
"Maybe I could give you a lift, miss," he suggested.
"On that thing?" said the girl, looking at the rain-swept gasoline engine. "I should say not!"
JANE DAVIDSON appeared to be an extremely contrary young woman. She suddenly changed her mind. And from the loose folds of her coat she produced a stubby-looking automatic.
"All right!" she stated. "I'll go with you in the car!"
She walked along the tracks toward the highway crossing. Monk ambled beside her. Though the ugly chemist was worried about what might have happened to Doc, he was wearing a crooked grin.
Monk liked young women with spirit.
"Daggonit!" he said plaintively. "You don't have to wave that pistol! We were on our way to meet Doc! We'll take good care of you!"
"You certainly will!" announced Jane Davidson grimly. "And if something's gone wrong at the laboratories, I'm sure Doc Savage knows about it!"
The track inspector's one-lunged gasoline car chugged away. The railroad man was going to the nearest point where he could report the crossing smash. He acted as if he were glad to get away from the place and the company.
Ham, meanwhile, climbed the steep bank above the railroad. He used his flashlight around the place where the girl had been tangled in the thorny bushes. The only evidence of her having been there was a scrap of her dress hanging on a branch.
"It's confounded crazy," murmured Ham. "There are her tracks in the mud after Monk lifted her out, but there are none coming up. So she must have been thrown out of that car."
Ham saw Jane Davidson and Monk walk into the headlight beams of their own car still standing on the highway. At that instant, the lawyer became conscious of a peculiar note on the wind.
The sound was like the wind had suddenly blown across taut, melodious strings. It was eerie, something like a tune, yet having no clear melody. It seemed to proceed from a point back of some near-by rocks.
"Doc!" exclaimed Ham. "That sounds like him, and yet it isn't exactly the same!"
In moments of stress, danger or concentration, Doc Savage nearly always emitted a weird trilling. The sound was a part of the bronze giant.
But something warned Ham to proceed with caution. The lawyer whipped a few yards toward the rocks in the darkness. As he moved, the smooth, black cane he carried separated. In his right hand played a gleaming, pointed sword blade.
The sword cane was Ham's favorite weapon. The point of the blade was covered with an anaesthetic drug. The lawyer needed only to touch an enemy to render him instantly unconscious.
Ham slipped between two large rocks. The trilling sound had not been repeated. Rain slapped into the lawyer's eyes. He could see only a few feet ahead. But by concentrating on one point, he was sure he had seen a shadow move.
"Doc!" Ham called out softly. "You in there?"
A husky, whispering laugh came from close behind Ham. Something like a human foot crunched on the rocks. The lawyer whipped around, bringing the sword blade into play.
Ham was aware he had been tricked. He was surrounded by what seemed only swiftly moving shadows in the drenching rain. He thrust at one of these with his sword. To his astonishment, the keen-pointed blade passed directly through one of the shadows.
The bright steel jammed into a rock. The blade snapped. Something made a hissing noise in the rain. Ham was forced to drop both his cane and the broken blade. A soft, hairy noose of some kind had dropped over his head and tightened around his throat.
The noose cut off Ham's breath. He attempted to let out a yell. Somehow, he got his fingers under the cord. But he could not free enough breath to utter a warning.
Again there came a hoarse, whispering laugh. This was more like the wind than a human voice. A coarse, sacklike affair descended over Ham's head. Kicking and threshing around, the lawyer was pulled to the ground.
The inside of the sack had a sweetish smell. In a few seconds, Ham lay still.
MONK looked up at the hill above the railroad. He could not see where Ham had disappeared. He called out several times.
"Now I've got to go an' find that daggoned dumb shyster," growled Monk. "You get in the car an' keep dry."
Jane Davidson started to climb into the car. She still held her stubby automatic. An unearthly squeal came from the car's rear seat. It was followed by a coughing grunt of rage.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Jane Davidson. "I might have known there was some trick!"
She backed hastily into Monk's arms. The ferocious, small eyes of Chemistry, the tailless baboon, were shining at her, as well as those of Habeas Corpus.
"They won't hurt you," assured Monk. "That's Habeas Corpus, my pig, and Chemistry, Ham's pet baboon."
For the first time, Jane Davidson seemed shaken.
"IЧI guess I'll wait out here," she said. "I've been in enough trouble to-night without mixing up with a menagerie."
Monk quieted Habeas Corpus. He dragged the pig out by one ear.