"065 (B056) - The Giggling Ghosts (1938-07) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"DocЧwho?" she asked.
"Doc Savage."
The girl frowned, trying to remember, then said, "There was a story in the newspapers a while back about a man named Doc Savage who had discovered something new about atoms or molecules or some such thing. But why shouldЧor do you mean he treatsЧcrazy people? Well, I'm not crazy!"
The cop waited until she stopped giggling.
"You've got me wrong," the officer said. "This guy's a scientist, but that ain't his main racket. He puts in most of his time going around helping people out of trouble. And the more unusual the trouble they're in, the better he likes it."
"I don't understand," the girl said.
"It's his hobby, or something. Helping people. I know it sounds crazy, but this Doc Savage is a good man to see about this giggling ghost business."
The girl giggled while she thought that over.
"It won't be much trouble," the girl said, "to see this Doc Savage."
"No," the cop said, "it won't be much trouble."
They were both wrong.
THE girl drove across the George Washington Bridge into New York City, guided her car to the uptown business district, and parked her car near a very tall building.
The elevator starter in the big building said, "So you want to see Doc Savage?"
The girl nodded, and she was ushered to an express elevator.
A man hurried and got in the elevator with her.
The man was tall, thick-bodied, and wore an expensive gray hat with a snap brim, fuzzy gray sports oxfords, and gray gloves of high quality. He also wore a yellow slicker.
Miami DavisЧshe was not giggling as much nowЧnoticed what the man wore. She did not see the man's face, because he kept it averted.
The elevator climbed up its shaft.
Suddenly the man in the slicker yelled, "Operator! The girl is gonna hit youЧ"
Then the man himself hit the operator. He knocked the fellow senseless with a blow from behind, a skull blow with a blackjack which he had whipped from a pocket. The operator could not have seen who had hit him.
Because of what the man had yelled, the operator would think that the girl had struck him.
The man who had slugged the operator showed cigarette-stained teeth in a vicious grin.
"He'll think you slugged 'im," he told the girl. "That won't do you any good."
He bent over, lifted one of his trousers legs, and removed a double barreled derringer from a clip holster fastened, garterlike, below his knee. He pointed the derringer at the girl.
"This wouldn't do you any good, either!" he said.
Chapter II. CHANGED MINDS
THE GIRL stared at the derringer.
The gun was not much longer than the middle finger of the man who held it, and the barrels were one above the other so that looking into their maws was like looking at a fat black colon. She could have inserted her little fingers in either barrel without much difficulty. She could see the bullets, like lead-colored bald heads.
"This thing"Чthe man moved the derringerЧ"will do as much damage as any other gun."
The girl moved, pressed herself into a corner of the elevator, and went through swallowing motions several times.
The man said, "When we get back to the lobby, we say the elevator operator fainted, see? Then you walk out with me." He gestured again with the gun. "Make any cracks, sis, and they'll be your epitaph!"
The girl tried to swallow again.
The man folded his newspaper carefully and tucked it in a pocket so it wouldn't be left lying around for fingerprints. He stepped to the elevator controls. When the operator had dropped after being slugged, he had instinctively shifted the control lever to the center, so that the cage had come to a stop.
The man set the control at, "Down." He seemed confident. He leaned against the side of the cage, cocking an eye on the girl, whistling idly as he waited. Abruptly his confidence got a puncture.
"What the devil?" he gulped.
The elevator was not going down. It was going up. Up! The man doubled over, stared at the controls. The handle was on "Down." But the cage was going up.
The man yanked at the handle, thinking control markings might be reversedЧbut the cage kept going up. The controls now seemed to have absolutely no effect on the elevator.
The man's mind leaped instantly to the conclusion that he was in a fantastic trap. He made snarling noises, even fired his derringer at the elevator controls, but accomplished nothing except to deafen himself and the girl.
His eyes, searching for escape, found the safety escape hatch in the top of the cage. He jumped at that until he got it open. With a great deal of grunting, kicking and snarling, he managed to pull himself through the hatch at the top of the slowly rising cage.
The girl let him go.
The man crouched on top of the cage; there was no stable footing. He clutched at a cable to steady himself, but the cable was moving, and he cursed.
The elevator was rising very slowly, although it was an express lift, and expresses in this building normally traveled at high speed. Obviously there was some kind of emergency mechanism in operation.
The skyscraper was served by a battery of elevators, all operating side by side. There was no division between the shaftsЧonly the vertical steel tracks on which the cages operated.
The man peered upward, saw another cage descending in the adjacent shaft. He made a lightning decision to take a long chance; he jumped for the top of the other cage as it passed. And he made it!
THE elevator in which Miami Davis was left alone with the senseless operator continued its snail-like progress upward.
The girl stood with her back against the cage, palms pressing against the side panels. When the elevator stopped, the girl took hold of her lower lip with her teeth and giggled a little.
For a moment there was silence.
Then, outside, a voice spoke. An unusual voice. It was a calm voice, with a remarkable tonal inflection, a quality of repressed power.
"The door will be opened in a moment," the unusual voice said. "The best thing you can do is to come out peacefully."
A moment later, the elevator door did open, and Miami Davis saw a giant bronze man.