"064 (B063) - The Submarine Mystery (1938-06) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The farmhouse, when they pulled up to it, had a deserted look.
Doc said, "You stay in the car."
"Don't worry," China retorted, "I appreciate this car. Nice and bulletproof, you know."
Doc put an electrical-listening device against the farmhouse door before he went in. The listener was a combination of velocity mike and amplifier, and could make a fly walking on velvet sound like an elephant in a jungle. Out of the house came complete silence, and he went in.
In the house there were fight signs: upset chairs, scuffled places on the floor, a chair leg with traces of somebody's hair sticking to it. Enough glass was missing from one window to make it look as if some one had jumped out of it. Only enough blood had been spilled to make spots. The house was as empty as the listener-amplifier device had indicated.
China, too curious to remain in the car any longer, entered. She peered about doubtfully, kicked an overturned chair, poked into closets, straightened a picture, and finally noticed that she had stepped on fine particles of glass.
She indicated the glass. "Somebody broke a light bulb."
"Anaesthetic grenades we used to overcome the guards earlier," the bronze man explained.
"Oh, I remember. That was when Prince Albert thought he had left you out here, a prisoner." She eyed the glass particles.
Doc Savage appeared not to hear.
"O. K. Don't answer me, then," China said. "Let's change the subject. What are you going to do about your missing friends?"
Instead of replying to that, the bronze man went outside and made several circles of the farmhouse, scrutinizing the ground closely. Then he searched the outbuildings. He did a very thorough job of this search, leading China to make a remark.
"There's a flyspeck you missed over here," she said.
By the time he ended his search, Doc Savage had concluded that the strange gang who talked ancient English vernacular, had been around the place only a day or two. And previous to their arrival, the farm had evidently been idle for months. He did not comment on this. His silence began to irritate China.
"You put out a lot of information, don't you?" she complained.
Doc Savage went into the house, got on the telephone and called the information girl at the telephone office and got a list of the real estate agents in the neighborhood.
He did not write down the names and telephone numbersЧthere was no need of that, with the memory he had developed. One of his memory exercises was to glance at an assortment of figures, then turn around and write them on a blackboard. It was not extraordinary for him to retain a hundred digits in his mind.
Doc telephoned real estate agents until he found the one that had rented this old farm. It had been rented three days ago, cash in advance. The agent, describing the man who had rented the place, described Prince Albert.
"You're making headway fast," China said.
Chapter VIII. IRON SHARKS
DOC SAVAGE was a product of a deliberate scientific plan; he was the result of what could happen when physical instructors, psychologists and scientists all coЎperated. The scientists and the others had assumed charge of Doc at childhood, and had taken turns in his training.
The bronze man had been in their hands almost continuously. His training should have made him a kind of superhuman scientific product. It should have made him a machine. It should have taken the human qualities out of him. In one sense, all Doc Savage's training had been a flop:
He still had his emotions. The things that pleased or excited other men pleased or excited him. Some of the scientists had tried to remove that, believing that a man being trained for his unusual profession should not have ordinary emotions. They would be a handicap.
For instance, Doc Savage could get just as scared as any body. And as worried. Still, his past training had done one thing: it had fixed him up with a poker face, and he could, under almost any circumstances, show no emotion whatever.
China's repeated remarks about his lack of progress was sandpapering his nerves pretty raw.
"You," China said, "remind me of a rooster trying to scratch up a worm in a concrete street."
Doc Savage's mouth tightened, but he managed to hold onto himself.
"While you're fiddling," China continued, "these queer fellows who talk Old English are probably putting your friends Monk and Ham into sacks, tying weights to the sacks, and throwing the sacks into the river."
Doc's grip on his temper slipped. For the first time in his life, he told a lady off.
"Shut up!" he said loudly. "And sit down!"
China gazed at him in wide-eyed wonder. She righted an overturned chair and sat down on it.
"I actually believe," she gasped, "that you're almost human!"
Doc Savage did not wish to delve into any discussion to prove he was human. It wasn't important, as long as the young lady kept still.
The bronze man went back to the car and hauled out his prisoner, the fellow who had played doorman, and straightened him out on the farm floor. The captive lay loose, his eyes closed. It appeared that he had passed out again.
"I'll put him on the bed," Doc explained. "Then we will work on him and see how much truth we can get."
Doc Savage picked the man up in his arms, and carried him, somewhat as a father carries a baby, toward another room. They never made it to the room, however.
With convulsive speed, the prisoner jammed a hand into Doc Savage's pocket. The hand came out with the old horse pistol which Doc had taken from him earlier. The man pointed this monstrosity among firearms at Doc Savage.
"Thee will lower me gently!" he snarled.
After Doc lowered him gently, the man got to his feet. He included China in the menace of his gun.
"Thee"Чhe pointed the gun at the girlЧ"and thou, will betake theeselves to ye four-wheeled cart which dost run with noise."
They betook themselves outside and got in Doc's car, which was presumably what the man meant by "ye four-wheeled cart which dost run with noise." The man put them in the front seat. He got in the back.
"Now," the man said, "ye will go whence I tell ye."
Doc Savage drove out of the farmyard, and following the man's directions, turned left. Doc's features were inscrutable.
China leaned back on the cushions and shivered. The look she gave the bronze man was not approving.
"Thou," she snapped, "hast got us in a nice pickle!"
Doc Savage paid attention to his driving. He did not tell the girl that the horse pistol was not loaded, and that he had deliberately let the man grab the weapon; that he hoped the fellow would lead them somewhere, where they could escape, once they got there. There was no convenient way he could give China all this information, anyhow.
THEY passed a number of truck farms, then began to go past the small bungalows on the outskirts of the city. The herdsman in the back seat directed them to turn left again. Thereafter, Doc Savage began to suspect that they were headed for the water front district of Brooklyn.
China touched Doc Savage's arm.
"I'm sorry," she said, "that I made the crack about the pickle. I make cracks. It's a habit. You better overlook it."
"Forget it," Doc said.