"074 (B039) - World's Fair Goblin (1939-04) - William G Bogart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

WORLD'S FAIR GOBLIN
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson


Chapter I. THE MEN THE GOBLIN GOT
MAYBE there is nothing to superstition. Maybe it just happened to be the thirteenth day of the World's Fair in New York City. The Fair management spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for publicity to let the universe know that this World's Fair was big, bigger, biggest. It covered more acres of ground, offered more means of amusement, had more scientific exhibits. It was worthy of that worn-out wordЧcolossal.
To give some idea:
Doc SavageЧscientific man of mystery, muscular marvel, also reported to be an amazing person in other waysЧwas to give a series of demonstrations of ultramodern surgical skill. Ordinarily, such an event would have been printed on the front pages of the newspapers in the United States, and cabled abroad. But this time, it was just a part of the World's Fair daily program.
Incidentally, Doc Savage's first surgical demonstration by mere chance happened to be scheduled for the thirteenth day after the opening of the Fair, which was the day the goblin walked.
Additionally, the Doc Savage demonstration was given before a convention of surgeons and doctors exclusively, which disappointed a lot of people who had heard that the lifework of Doc Savage was really righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in various parts of the earth, a career that had led the Man of Bronze, as he was sometimes called, into some fantastic adventures.
The public had heard that Doc Savage did fantastic things, and it would have liked to see a demonstration of some fantastic feats. But Doc Savage had a great dislike for publicity, and he never cut capers for the public's entertainment.
However, the goblin getting loose was not the first mysterious thing that happened.
Two men had disappeared. That was the initial mystery.
On another day prior to this thirteenth day after the opening of the World's Fair, two hundred thousand visitors paid admission. Exactly two hundred thousand. And exactly two less than that came out.
They had automatic mechanical checking turnstiles at all the gates, and a head gatekeeper whose job was collecting the figures. The head gatekeeper saw from the readings that two less people came out than went in. He decided one of the mechanical contraptions had made a mistake. He was wrong.
Two people went into the Fair grounds and never came outЧand it wasn't any mistake of any mechanical contraption.
The goblin got them.
THE white-haired man in the long rubber apron, when he appeared, acted as if the goblins were after him, too.
The white-haired man was Professor Martin Uppercue, reported to be one of the world's greatest scientists. His specialty was electrotherapeuticsЧhe had discovered some remarkable things about how diseases of the human body would react to electrical treatment.
He was a small man, thin, with thick white hair on top of a large head. He made you think of the type of musician slangily called a "long-haired boy."
There was nothing long-haired or old-fashioned about his scientific discoveries. He was fifty years ahead of his time, maybe a hundred. Men of science knew Uppercue as a quiet-mannered, soft-voiced person with keenly bright-blue eyes and a sedate deportment. Especially sedate. He was always dignified.
There was nothing sedate about the way Professor Martin Uppercue came out of his laboratory. Nor dignified, either.
Professor Uppercue's laboratory was situated near the center of the Fair Grounds close to the huge ball of a structure called the Perisphere. It was only a few yards from the laboratory to the landscaped gardens along the Court of Communications. Professor Uppercue dashed wildly into this garden, which was crowded with people.
The natural first thought was that Professor Uppercue was chasing something.
As soon as they saw his face, they knew he was not chasing anything. His face showed terror. His eyes popped until they looked like small saucers stuck, bottoms out, on his face.
He ran headlong, knocking astounded people out of his way. There was blood on his face, quite a bit of it. His mouth was also open, open like the mouth of a dog that has been backed into a corner and is being whipped.
Professor Uppercue wheeled his head in different directions as he ran. He seemed to be looking everywhere, hoping, it was suddenly apparent, for a place to which to flee. He was carrying two articles.
One object that he carried seemed to be his laboratory apron. It was a long rubber apron and he had it in his left hand.
The second item was carried in his right hand, and it was more unusual. It was a cylinder, apparently made of aluminum. It was about three inches in diameter and as long as an average man's arm, and capped at each end.
He kept running, and glaring about in search of some place to run to.
There did not seem to be anything chasing him.
The crowd made the natural mistake. They decided that Professor Martin Uppercue had gone insane. So an effort was commenced to seize the madman.
The attempt to seize Professor Uppercue failed, but it did accomplish two things.
A man snatched Professor Uppercue's rubber apron, and kept it, and later turned it over to the proper authorities, and it proved very important.
Secondly, they learned something about that aluminumlike cylinder that Professor Uppercue carried. He whacked different people over the head with itЧthe thing was light, and did not greatly damage the recipients of the blows. But several persons were able to testify that a whispering sound came from inside the cylinder.
The sound from inside the cylinder was generally described as a whisper. One man testified it was more like the scuffling of a shoe across a bare floor.
Professor Uppercue got away and ran. He clutched the mysterious aluminumlike tube with both arms.
THE flamboyant heart of the Fair Grounds had been called the Theme Center. Here was locked the great spherical Perisphere that was like a mammoth white tennis ball two hundred feet in diameter, from around its base shooting upward great sprays of water that made it appear the huge ball of steel was floating on a fountain, and circling these fountains was a white, circular promenade bordered by heavy shrubs and foliage.
Professor Uppercue dived into this expensively landscaped brush patch.
There were two impressive structures in this Theme Center. One, of course, was the globular PerisphereЧthe two-hundred-foot white tennis ball of a thing. The other impressive item was the Trylon, a spike of steel seven hundred feet high coming to a needle point at the top. The minds that conceived the theme of the Fair had been unable to imagine anything more modernistic than this ball-shaped Perisphere and the needle-shaped Trylon, and the two were connected by a rising rampЧa wide sidewalk that spiraled up under the base of the massive ball of steel.
When Professor Uppercue next was seen, he was streaking along this ramp.
He now seemed hardly able to run. He was an elderly man, unused to much physical activity, and the wild running already had him near exhaustion. Once he banked into the side banister of the rising ramp, but he kept going. He was headed for the point where the elevated structure entered one side of the towering Trylon.
The Fair policeЧthe Fair cops wore neat uniforms similar to the New York State troopersЧand members of the crowd now set out in pursuit of Professor Uppercue. The crazed scientistЧand the impression that everyone now held was that the scientist was insaneЧhad a head start.
A number of people distinctly saw Professor Uppercue disappear into the Trylon.
A few moments later the police and more fleet-footed members of the crowd arrived at the Trylon. Everyone was wheezing from the terrific race up the incline. Puffing pursuers crowded into the Trylon.
There was gloom about them, strange modernistic semitwilight. Stretching upward until it disappeared in the needle point several hundred feet above their heads, was the silent network of steel girders which supported the great Trylon. The spot where the pursuers stood was a platform built approximately a hundred feet above the spire's three-sided base.
"Where'd he go?" a man yelled.
They had all become aware of a strange soundЧnoise as if several carpenters had gone to work simultaneously sawing boards.
"Where'd he go!"