"071 (B066) - Mad Mesa (1939-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The warden told him.
Tom Idle repeated the date under his breath. Five days had elapsed, somehow, into blankness. Only five days. Five days ago he had been in that Salt Lake City park, and he couldn't remember anything about how the ensuing interval had gone; that was just more of the incredible mystery.
"But I'm Tom Idle!" he said wildly.
The warden sighed. "I'm a patient man, Hondo, and a fair one. Nobody can say different and talk truth. What do you want me to do? What will satisfy you?"
"Have you got Hondo Weatherbee's fingerprints here?" Tom Idle asked.
"Yes."
"Compare them with mine."
The warden had Hondo Weatherbee's fingerprint card brought from the files, and he inked Tom Idle's prints onto a white paper and put it side by side with the fingerprints of the outlaw.
Even Tom Idle could see that his fingerprints and Hondo Weatherbee's were the same.
If it were possible, Tom Idle was more stunned.
BEING a young man with a perfectly normal mentality, Tom Idle realized that the best thing for him to do now was to settle back and get himself accustomed to the position in which he found himself. Rushing around screaming that he was Tom Idle, a Missouri farm boy, would not help. The mental agitation might even drive him insane.
He behaved, kept his eyes open, and tried to work out some way of helping himself.
He learned that Big Eva was afraid of him. So were most of the other convicts. Or rather, they were afraid of the man they thought was Hondo Weatherbee, which gave an idea of the kind of reprobate Hondo Weatherbee must have been. There were some tough jailbirds in that penitentiary.
He obtained but slight information about Hondo Weatherbee. The man had been a prospector at odd times when he was not in assorted penitentiaries. Eleven years ago, he had stood trial for murdering his partner, and received a life sentence.
It was a tribute to Tom Idle's character that he did not sink into a black abyss of despair. He could not, no matter how much he thought about it, understand how he had become another man serving a life sentence in a penitentiary, and the desperation of that situation might have broken his will. But Tom Idle bore up.
He took to reading a great deal.
That was how he happened to learn about Doc Savage.
TOM IDLE started reading the magazine feature about Doc Savage without much interest. But halfway through the article, he became so excited he had to stop and let off steam.
"Say!" he said. "Say, boy!"
He was seeing the first ray of hope that had come his way for days.
When he had calmed himself, he continued reading about Doc Savage.
The article stated that Doc Savage was a man who had one of the most remarkable scientific minds of the day. The item added that Doc Savage made a business of solving unusual mysteriesЧbut he did this, it was stated, only if a wrong was righted or someone was helped as a result.
Since a career of righting wrongs was an unusual one for a man to follow, the author of the magazine story went to lengths to explain that this was Savage's most spectacular activity, hence got the most attention, but that his real career was that of a scientist.
The author of the magazine article waxed enthusiastic about the "Man of Bronze," as he called Doc Savage; he wrote that the Man of Bronze was really a man of mystery, because he avoided publicity, and very little information concerning him came to the attention of the public.
Tom Idle realized that here was exactly the kind of man he needed to help him. But the author of the article made Doc Savage out to be such a combination of scientific genius, mental marvel and physical giant that Tom Idle was skeptical about such a super-person existing. The magazine item said that the name of Doc Savage was enough to strike terror into the heart of the most hardened crook.
Tom Idle decided to test this out. He made his experiment on Big Eva, who was a hardened crook if there ever were one.
"Doc Savage!" Tom Idle said unexpectedly.
The effect on Big Eva was impressive.
He dropped the pencil with which he was marking up the day on his own wall calendar across the cell. He whirled. His expression was stark.
"What about Doc Savage?" Big Eva snarled.
" Is he mixing in thisЧ" The huge, bestial crook swallowed two or three times. "But hell, he couldn't have gotten wise. There's no wayЧ"
At this point, Big Eva appeared to realize he was saying too much.
"What about Doc Savage?" he growled.
"I was just reading about him in this magazine," Tom Idle explained.
Big Eva took several large gulps of relief.
"What the hell do you mean," he exploded, "by scaring people that way?"
SEVERAL days later, Tom Idle learned about the prison grapevine. This was an important event, because indirectly it saved thousands of lives.
But in the meantime, Tom Idle had given some thought to the blurtings of Big Eva when he had been so startled.
"What did you mean," he asked, "by what you said?"
"Said when?"
"When I told you about Doc Savage," Tom Idle explained. "You seemed worried for fear he'd found out about something."
Big Eva stood up. He doubled his huge fists.
"Shut up!" he snarled. "If you ever breathe a word about that to a soul, I'll kill you!"
He meant it. Nobody could doubt that.
The prison grapevine is a furtive thing. All penitentiaries have them. This was how it functioned:
Tom Idle was served four pancakes for breakfast, ate two of them, and left two on his plate with a letter secreted between them. In the kitchen, the convict dishwasher was careful to put the two pancakes, still with the letter between them, on top of the garbage can. The driver of the garbage wagon mailed the letter.
The magazine article had not given Doc Savage's address.
But Tom Idle had a sister in Missouri. The letter was addressed to his sister. It told Tom Idle's story, and asked his sister to get Doc Savage to investigate.
The letter got off successfully, and on its way to Missouri.
But two nights later, Tom Idle talked in his sleep, mumblingly, and told about the letter he had mailed to his sister asking her to appeal to Doc Savage for aidЧand Big Eva listened in open-mouthed horror.