"067 (B083) - The Red Terrors (1938-09) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The steamer searched the vicinity for hours, without finding a trace of Doctor Collendar or his assailant.
Chapter III. THE BRONZE MAN
CLARK "DOC" SAVAGE, JR., had heard of Doctor Collendar.
However, Doc Savage did not pay particular attention to the newspaper clipping concerning Doctor Collendar's peculiar death. That is, he did not give it personal attention. He came upon the clipping among many others which one or another of his five assistants had thought deserving of his attention and had placed on his desk.
Doc Savage passed the clipping to "Renny". Renny was Colonel John Renwick, a man with a pair of incredibly big fists, a voice equally as big, an unfailingly sad expression, and a reputation as one of the world's greatest engineers. Renny was one of Doc's five aids.
"Might have our Cape Town operative to question those on the Southern Wind concerning the disappearance of this Doctor Collendar," Doc Savage said.
Renny scrutinized the clipping.
"That shout about a red thing is kinda interesting," he said, sounding like a big bear in a small cave.
Renny then cabled the Cape Town operative, but nothing substantial came of that. Not that the Cape Town operative wasn't efficient. He was. All Doc Savage's operatives, scattered in the far corners of the earth, were efficient.
All these highly efficient operatives of Doc Savage had one very peculiar thing in common: Each one could remember back just so far in his life, and no farther. There was not one of them who could recall any incident in his youth. More peculiar, none of these operatives could remember a period when he or she had been a desperate criminal.
The operatives were "graduates" of Doc Savage's unique "College" for curing criminalsЧan institution where the patient first underwent a remarkable brain operation which wiped out all memory of the past.
After the operation, the former criminals were educated to hate crime and to like being upright citizens. Many of the "graduates" became operative in the information-gathering agency which Doc Savage had created to aid him in his life's work.
Doc Savage's life's work was unusual.
His work was righting wrongs and thwarting evildoers in all parts of the world. He did not hire out his services. He never took a case unless a wrong was being done, and unless it appeared that the regularly constituted law authority was unable to cope with the malefactor.
Within a very few years, Doc Savage and his group of five scientific assistants had built up a world-wide reputation. Doc Savage had also become something of a mystery name. He was sometimes called "The Man of Bronze". The world knew he was a combination of scientific genius, muscular marvel and mental wizard. But not much else was known.
Newspaper reports concerning Doc Savage were usually so fantastically garbled that even the public didn't believe them.
The newspapers found it practically impossible to get any interviews with Doc Savage. The bronze man avoided publicity. The newspapers resented this.
At the time Doctor Collendar disappeared, the newspapers were resenting it more than usual.
A PLATOON of reporters and cameramen cornered "Long Tom" and "Johnny", two of Doc Savage's group of five colleagues, in the lobby of a skyscraper, on the eighty-sixth floor of which the bronze man had his huge laboratory-library headquarters.
"We want a statement from Doc," said one of the reporters, "about the cure for cancer which he just invented."
"Doc hasn't invented any cure for cancer," Long Tom said.
Long Tom was Major Thomas J. Roberts, and he wasn't long. His height was average, and his general physical condition appeared to be much below average. He looked, in fact, like a hospital case of anemia.
This was deceptive, because Long Tom had never been ill, and he could whip ninety per cent of the men he met on the street. He was an electrical expert.
"Don't kid me!" said the reporter loudly. "Doc Savage just treated twenty-four cases of cancer and cured them!"
"Yes," Long Tom said, "but he treated a twenty-fifth case and didn't cure it."
"It looks like a pretty dang good average to me," stated the newspaperman.
"Doc gave you fellows one statement," Long Tom said, "in which he said he didn't want newspapers to arouse a lot of false hopes among cancer sufferers. Doc said the twenty-four cures he effected could be duplicated by any specialist." Long Tom frowned. "We're getting tired of these wild newspaper stories you print about Doc. This cancer business is typical. You came right out and said he had discovered a cure."
"Mistakes wouldn't happen," snapped the newshawk, "if Doc Savage would take us into his confidence."
"And let you publish stories about what he does?"
"Exactly."
"If he did that," Long Tom said, "he wouldn't live six months."
"Why not?"
"Because his enemies would learn all about his methods from reading your newspaper stories, and they'd get him sure."
"Doc has a lot of enemies, eh?"
"Everybody who is doing something wrong," said Long Tom, "is a potential enemy of Doc Savage."
"Who is Doc Savage's most outstanding enemy at present?" asked a newspaperman, fishing for a story.
Long Tom considered.
"I believe his prominent foe at the moment is a Mr. Lucifer," he said.
"Where does Mr. Lucifer live?"
"I believe in a place known as Tartarus."
The newshawk grew excited. "Look, what'd this Mr. Lucifer do that was wrong? WhatЧ"
"He's kiddin' you, Hank," interrupted another reporter.
"Eh?"
"Lucifer is the devil," said the reporter, "and Tartarus is another name for hell."
The first reporter glared indignantly.
"I resent such treatment!" he shouted. "We want an interview!"
At this point, Johnny spoke,
"An amphigourish pedantical pedagoguery," Johnny said calmly.
Johnny was William Harper Littlejohn, who was often described as being two men high and less than half a man wide. He carried a monocle magnifier which he never put in his eye, and he was an eminent archaeologist and geologist, and an eminent user of big words.
The newspapermen looked at Johnny.