"070 (B079) - The Devil Genghis (1938-12) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Fogarty-Smith never uttered a word.

They never found Fogarty-Smith's airplane.

The meteorologists turned seamsters and made a strait jacket in which Fogarty-Smith was taken to England, where he was confined to a padded cell while learned psychiatrists and doctors examined him, shook their heads, gave out statements full of technical multisyllabled onomatopocian nomenclature which didn't mean a thing.

The English believed that a man could suffer such shock and exposure that he would go insane.

The Eskimos had thought an evil spirit called a Tongak could get after a man.

One was as screwy as the other, in this case.

The mystery was moving south.


IN the south of France there is a pleasant spot known as the Riviera, a delightful stretch of seashore widely renowned as a spa, a watering place, a playground for grown-ups, a lovely section which probably is to Europeans what Florida or southern California is to those who live in the United States. If the alluring printed descriptions of the Riviera are to be believed, this balmy Valhalla combines the good qualities of both Florida and California, with some added. Here Europe goes to bask in the sun, to make love.

Park Crater was there to make love.

The sun didn't intrigue Park particularly, and certainly he didn't need it, because he always seemed to look as though he had a strikingly healthy suntan. Park had a little Latin blood in him. The Latins are reported to be great lovers. In Park's case, there wasn't any doubt.

No other lad had ever made the grade with Toni Lash.

Park Crater's business was making love. He didn't need to have any other kinds of business. A young man who had a father who'd drilled two thousand oil wells and struck oil with one thousand of them did not need to have any other business. Park Crater's father had done that.

Park Crater was so handsome that the other boys all threw rocks at him at school. Park threw just as many rocks back at them, and later practiced up until he was intercollegiate boxing champ. He was no sissy.

Park was a nice guy. He was many a mother's idea of first-class son-in-law material.

Toni Lash liked Park Crater. Whether Toni Lash's feelings went any deeper, whether she loved Park, only she knew. It was certain that no one else knew, because Toni Lash was an unfathomable person.

Toni Lash was the current mystery woman of the Riviera. The reigning sensation. She was tall, darkhaired and - well, striking was the only word. She struck the men breathless. She made the other women, especially the married ones, feel as though they were being shot at.

"Great Jehoshaphat!" gasped Park Crater when he first saw her.

Cleopatra could take a back seat. So could all the current beauties of stage, screen and society, as far as Park was concerned. When Toni Lash smiled, every man in sight felt his toes curl; and Park discovered himself getting selfish and wishing that the toe curling could be confined exclusively to himself.

"Love!" exclaimed Park. "It must be love."

Park Crater and glorious Toni Lash had been seeing a great deal of each other for about six weeks.

One night Park arrived, carrying a club, unable to speak a word, and wearing an expression of indescribable terror.

Park was using the club to fight the empty air about his head. Toni Lash, with presence of mind, tried to quiet him, calling her servants to help, and later she summoned the best doctors. They tried holding Park Crater in a bathtub full of warm water for hours, a treatment which will usually calm the most violent cases of insanity.

But it was of no appreciable benefit in this instance. Park Crater went to the best Riviera hospital, with six strong men holding his arms and legs.

Toni Lash went into seclusion in her villa. After she had grieved two days, she had a visitor.