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

"ButЧ"
"It's mine!" The girl snatched the object.
Lawn shrugged, looked puzzled. He walked back and devoted his energies to watching Doc Savage.
Miami Davis went to the bronze man. She had a pale, desperate expression.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but I lied to you."
Doc looked at her.
"You what?" he asked.
"I lied to you," the girl said. "I wasn't even in this storehouse. I didn't have any giggling fit. It's all a lie. A big lie."
Chapter IV. WAR OVER A WATCH
THE men gathered around the girl and stared at her in astonishment. The cops frowned, Birmingham Lawn looked amazed, and Doc Savage's metallic features remained composed.
The girl looked at them wildly.
"Don't you understand?" she gasped. "I didn't tell you the truth! Nothing that I told you was the truth!"
A cop shook his head skeptically.
"Then how come you went to Doc Savage with the yarn?" he asked.
The girl laughed; she seemed to get the laugh out with the greatest difficulty.
"Why wouldn't I want to see Doc Savage?" she demanded. "He's famous. I've read about him. I justЧwell, I wanted to see him. That's all."
The cop began, "Now, lookЧ"
The girl whirled and raced wildly to the storehouse door and flung through the drizzling rain, not looking back, flight her only object.
As the girl fled, she held, clenched in her right hand, the object which she had taken from Birmingham Lawn.
The policemen started to chase the girl.
"Let her go!" Doc Savage said.
"ButЧ"
"Let her go," the bronze man repeated, but didn't elaborate his instructions.
The cops stared at Doc, apparently wondering what his object might be.
The bronze man turned to Birmingham Lawn. "You gave the girl something?" he asked Lawn.
"YouЧyou saw it?" Lawn seemed startled.
"Yes."
"IЧit was a small article I found," Lawn explained.
"What was it?"
"It was a girl's wrist watch. I picked it up off the floor."
"Woman's watch?"
Lawn nodded. "It was back there in the corner where someone must have dropped it."
"And it excited the young woman?" Doc demanded.
"It did seem to," Lawn admitted.
"What do you make of it?" Doc asked him.
"Me? IЧIЧwhyЧwhy should I make anything of it?"
The bronze man did not comment, and this seemed to confuse Birmingham Lawn.
A policeman jammed his clenched fists on his hips angrily. "That girl was lyin'!" the cop said. "She was lyin' like nobody's business!"
"Obviously," Doc agreed.
"Somebody tried to stop her gettin' to you, remember? When she changed her story, she forgot that!"
Doc Savage went out to his car, got in and switched on the radio. It was not an ordinary radio; it was a short-wave transceiver. He picked up the microphone.
"Monk!" he said into the mike.
A small, squeaky voice answered. "Yes, Doc?" it said.
"You are following the girl who just fled from the storehouse?" the bronze man asked.
"We sure are," said the squeaky voice. "Me and Ham both."
"Keep on her trail," Doc Savage directed. "Let me know where she goes."
"What's up, Doc?" the squeaky voice asked.
"We're not sure yet, Monk," Doc explained. "But it is something strange. This girl, was frightened into flight by the fact that a woman's wrist watch was found in the storehouse."
That ended the radio conversation.
"MONK," known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks were two gentlemen so remarkable that people frequently followed them on the streets to stare at them.