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

Long rows of glass tanks were ranged around the sides. Only these tanks appeared not to have been filled with fish. Scummy green water showed against the glass. The air was rank with the odor of decaying vegetation.
Professor Spargrove was walking up and down.
"It couldn't be! It couldn't be!" he kept repeating. "You are sure John Corbin screamed he was seeing things?"
One of the railroad men affirmed this. Professor Spargrove darted into a side room. When he came out, he was staring strangely. He seemed hardly to see the others in the room.
"It's incredible! Incredible!" the professor cried out. "The globes are gone! Yet I seeЧI seeЧIt can't be possible!"
"Well! Well! Well!" snapped Inspector Higgins. "An' what do you see?"
"You wouldn't understand," the professor said quietly, "but I see the same things John Corbin saw. Only I know what they are, and poor John Corbin did not. Some of them have a hundred heads and some have a thousand mouths. They are reaching for me with long tentacles."
"Holy mackerel!" grunted a railroad man. "Me! I'm pullin' my freight right now!"
Inspector Higgins slipped a hand into a side pocket. His Adam's apple was clearly out of control.
"I guess maybe, professor, you'd better come along with us," he suggested. "Probably the strain's been too much for you."
But Professor Spargrove leaped and struck at something in the air. Unfortunately for Inspector Higgins, his bony nose was in the path of the professor's fist. Scarlet fluid spattered over the inspector's chin.
"We've got to get them back!" screamed Professor Spargrove. "My life's work! I tell you not even Doc Savage can rob me of what I've slaved years to produce!"
"Now we're gettin' somewhere!" growled Inspector Higgins. "I bet that bronze guy knows all about this! Make a close check-up on all freight that's been moved! Ten tons of machinery can't walk out of the middle of a railroad yard without being seen!"
"THAT'S the complete check-up," announced the yardmaster half an hour later. "Nothing has been moved on this side of the yards to-night. It would also have been impossible for any one to have transferred ten tons, or even one ton, of equipment from that building to a truck on the highway without being seen."
"That puts this whole thing right back on this Doc Savage," declared Inspector Higgins. "He was here. He saw what had happened, an' then he beat it away in a blue sedan. It all checks up."
Inside his plant, Professor Spargrove was wandering from room to room. Inspector Higgins had two county policemen keeping him under surveillance. They could hear the professor talking to himself.
Occasionally, Professor Spargrove came in and stared at the tanks of green water. Each time, he resumed his crazed muttering. He did not seem to observe the policemen. The coppers kept more than a respectful distance.
Also, the policemen kept a close eye out for anything that might have a hundred heads and a thousand mouths. They wouldn't have been surprised to really find long tentacles reaching for them.
Outside, Inspector Higgins still had no trace of the missing machinery.
He repeated a telephone order to have Doc Savage picked up as soon as he could be located.
Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
COLONEL JOHN RENWICK, famous engineer, was standing his companion's hair on end. William Harper Littlejohn, noted archaeologist and geologist, was not a man to have shivers sent easily through his scalp.
But when it came to driving a big car with a fast motor over a rainy highway in the night, Colonel Renwick, otherwise known as "Renny," seemed to have no sense of either speed or safety.
"Renny," stated "Johnny," "an apparently insuperable obstacle looms in the immediate foreground. Unless you alter your present tangent, it will be the mournful case of an irresistible force colliding with an immovable object."
Renny was a giant of a man. His hands on the wheel were ponderous as small hams. His rugged face was solemn, so solemn he had the appearance of grieving greatly most of the time.
Johnny, who had once occupied a chair in a leading university, was addicted to the longest words he could manage.
"Put it in English, Johnny," rumbled big Renny. "Whatcha mean 'my present tangent?'"
Johnny was a long, bony fellow. His body looked as if it might break if he bent over suddenly.
"I mean, Renny, if you don't pull over about two inches, we're going to smack head-on into that house truck coming down the road," said Johnny quickly. "Well, I'll be superamalgamated!"
The last exclamation was drawn out by the margin of less than an inch which Renny allowed in squeezing by the huge truck. The truck driver stuck out his head. Johnny could see him swearing.
A short distance behind the truck came a small coupщ. It seemed to be trailing the truck. The faces of two men showed behind its windshield.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny, as they swung the next curve.
"It looks like Doc is having plenty of company!"
The engineer skidded his car off the concrete into the muddy shoulder of the road. Close by loomed the vault-like building of the Spargrove Laboratories. In response to a special radio summons from Doc Savage, this pair had arrived at the laboratories.
Dozens of men with lanterns and flashlights were scurrying around the building. Some were shouting orders.
INSPECTOR HIGGINS was the first to confront Renny and Johnny.
"Huh! Well! Well!" he slapped over his bouncing Adam's apple. "So you fellows belong with this Doc Savage, an' you was to meet him here? Well, I want to meet him here or any other place! He's been pulling enough crooked stuffЧ"
"Hey, Renny, wait a minute!" said Johnny hastily, grabbing at the engineer's arm. "Remember, this guy's an inspector! He's talking for the law!"
"Yeah?" thundered Renny. "An' if he makes one more crack like that, he won't be talkin'; he'll be eatin' soup through a straw! What does he mean 'Doc's crooked?'"
Johnny had been in the nick of time to save Inspector Higgins from a fist that had smashed many tough doors. The inspector hastily sidestepped.
"Well, anyway," he said, "your Doc Savage ain't here. He's been here, an' ten tons of machinery went up in thin air. The professor who runs this joint has gone cuckoo! He's seein' things!"
Johnny's skull-like countenance turned upon the inspector. His eyes brightened in their bony sockets.
"And what might Professor Spargrove have been seeing?"
They were in the long room filled with tanks of stagnant water. The air had the odor of dying vegetation.
"Well," said Inspector Higgins, "the professor was lookin' straight at them glass cases full of weeds an' he kept sayin' he was seein' somethin' like the maybes. I guess this place drives 'em all nuts. That's what started this watchman runnin' loco."
Johnny ran a long finger along his sharp nose. He looked at the tanks of dirty green water.
"Seeing the maybes?" he remarked, in a musing tone.
"Could it have been, inspector, he might have been suffering with illusionary phobia of the amoeba?"
"Havin' the what of the what?" snapped Inspector Higgins.
"Perhaps the chlorophyll or the vorticelli suddenly assumed hitherto unknown dimensional relativity and emerged from the jungle of algae to be observed about us," continued Johnny solemnly. "Did Professor Spargrove by any chance refer to hydra-headed monsters with tubular tentacles, inspector?"