"063 (B064) - The Motion Menace (1938-05) - Ryerson Johnson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE MOTION MENACE
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

Chapter I. MEN WITH BEARDS
THE strange rumor that circulated when the China Rocket crashed did not get the attention it should have.
When aviation was new, airplane company press agents got the habit of breathing hints of sabotage every time there was a crack-up. Nothing definite. Just vagueness about Communists, terrorists, or some other nebulous enemy.
The idea was for these whisperings to prevent the public getting the thought that maybe airplanes were not as safe as they might be. This sort of thing eventually stopped, but the memory remained in the public mind as old stuff.
The China Rocket was a luxury clipper from San Francisco to Shanghai, China. Two pilots and a radio operator. Hot meals. Pretty hostesses whose smiles would take your mind off air-sickness and the size of the Pacific Ocean, or who would hand you a paper bag if that didn't work.
Divers had to be used to get what was left of the China Rocket out of Hangchau Bay, just south of Shanghai. Fortunately, Europeans who had seen it happen could point out the spot. The observers just happened to be an American movie actor and his party aboard a small yacht. The story they told was so queer they were asked to repeat it quite a few times.
The China Rocket had come to a dead stop in the sky. Very suddenly. All its motors had halted. Then the plane had fallen into Hangchau Bay. That was the eyewitnesses' tale.
Authorities and newspapermen accounted for this remarkably unbelievable story with two explanations which they considered probable: The observers had either made it up to grab some publicity, or they had all been drunk. But some one had a more acceptable suggestion: An insane passenger had grabbed the controls.
Details of the extremely modern construction of the plane were reprinted in America and Europe.
It did not appear in print that Clark Savage, Jr., better known as Doc Savage, had designed the plane. Or, rather, the ship was an exact duplicate in shape and streamlining of two ships which Doc Savage had built for himself. Doc Savage was not an individual who got in print when it could be avoided.
This point, missed by all but one person, happened to explain why the China Rocket crashed.
A YOUNG lady was the one who did not miss the point. She went down to breakfast in the coffee shop of a Shanghai hotel the next morning, bought a newspaper as a matter of course, and naturally saw the story of the China Rocket, and pictures of the ill-fated ship. She looked sharply at the pictures.
The young lady was tall, but her figure did not have a very good shape. Her hair was blond, but the stringy kind of blond that does not interest any one. Horn-rimmed colored spectacles didn't help her looks any.
Her clothes were padded to give her a bad form, her hair was dyed, and the awful glasses hid the color of her eyes. None of this was very easily detected. Actually, she was a stunning beauty.
The dumpy-looking young woman hastily turned pages until she found another airplane picture. The legend under it said:
Miss Enola Emmel, of New York, lands her plane in Shanghai, bound on Orient tour.
The plane was outwardly a duplicate of the unlucky China Rocket.
The manager of the hotel happened to pass. He said, "I hope everything is satisfactory, Miss Emmel." He was an American, and the hotel was American-owned and managed.
The young lady who was on the register as Miss Enola Emmel said, "Yes, thank you," rather absently.
She was thinking. She turned back to the plane-wreck news, and her expression became grim. She got up and looked around until she found a telephone booth. It was a modern booth, just like those in New York hotel lobbies.
The girl called a number in New York City by transpacific telephone. The connection required about ten minutes.
A remarkable voice answered the telephone in New York. A male voice with depth, timbre and control. Not a radio announcer on any network had a voice the equal of it.
"This is Pat," the young woman in China said. "Listen, Doc, have you read about the China Rocket?"
"Naturally," said the unusual voice.
"A hunch just struck me, Doc. You knowЧ"
"Pat," said the voice, "you are supposed to be taking a vacation. You claimed you were tired of running that beauty shop and ladies' gymnasium, where you charge such outrageous prices. You borrowed one of my planes, had it shipped to the Philippines, and started flying it yourself on a tour of the Orient. You disguised yourself. You insisted you were going to have one vacation where no one would bother you. Go ahead and take it."
The young woman said, "What I need is diversion, more than a vacation. I think I've found some excitement."
"It is to be hoped not." The New York voice sounded weary.
"I think whoever crashed the China Rocket was after me!"
The response this got from the New York end of the long wire was strange. It was not an exclamation, grunt or whistle. It was a fantastic sound. Probably the nearest description was trilling. It rose and fell, eerie, but without tune. It was such a sound as might have been made by a small breeze.
THE young woman waited until the trilling sank into nothingness, then said, "My plane looked exactly like the China Rocket. I left Manila at the same time, but stopped off in South China to see if I could find any trace of Captain Cutting Wizer."
"You really went to China to find Captain Wizer, did you not?"
"Yes. He is an expert on electromagnetic dermatological science. When he visited New York some months ago, he made me a little contraption that cures blackheads like nobody's business. I want to hire him to build more apparatus. But I can't find him. Nobody knows where he went. Anyway, that could have no connection with this. No one knows me here in Shanghai."
"Are you using your own name?"
"Of course not. I'm Miss Enola Emmel, an air tourist."
"Took the words 'lemme alone' and turned them around. Not especially good."
"I thought," Pat said, "it was right snitzy."
The man in New York asked, "Why should any one try to kill you, Pat?"
"Now you've got me. I cannot think of an enemy in the world."
There was a brief silence.
"The people on the boat who saw the China Rocket crash told a rather strange story, Pat. That is, their description of how the China Rocket crashed. It came to a sudden, dead stop in the air, they said, so you will recall. Of course, that is impossible. Planes do not come to sudden, dead stops in mid-air."
"Yes, Doc. It struck me as wacky, too."
"It might be advisable to look into the matter."
Pat said cheerfully, "I'll meet you on Hangchau Bay where the plane crashed."
"You will not!"
"Please, Doc, I mustЧ"