"078 (B078) - The Crimson Serpent (1939-08) - Harold Davis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Monk himself was swinging his long arms with feverish good will. He drew his bullet head down between his broad shoulders, to offer as little target as possible, and waded in.
The room was a struggling mass of fighting men. One thug, knocked end over end by Renny, slammed into Consuelo Manresa, knocking her from her chair.
Monk saw another attacker slip behind the big engineer, raise his blackjack. The hairy chemist tried to shout a warning. It was never uttered.
At almost the same instant the building fell in. Or at least that was how it felt to Monk. He went down in a wave of blackness.
MONK'S head didn't feel any too good when he finally recovered consciousness. He looked around him groggily. Renny and Ham also appeared just returning to their senses.
There was no sign of Consuelo Manresa or Doc.
"You know." Renny said soberly, "I'm just about getting fed up with being knocked around." His severe features were set tightly. One big fist massaged the top of his head. "I want to do some knocking around myself."
"W-what h-happened?" Ham gasped.
"You would have to ask!" Monk snorted disgustedly. "Letting yourself get knocked cold the first wallop and leaving the rest of us to do your fighting for you!"
The lawyer looked around, comprehension dawning swiftly. "Looks like you didn't do so well yourself," He said dryly. "Where's Doc?"
Monk gulped. Renny said nothing. From the looks of things, the gang that had attacked them had gotten Doc.
"D-did youЧI mean have you still got that camera?" Monk asked Renny.
The big engineer shook his head slowly. "I gave it to Doc only a few minutes before the fight started," he explained.
"Girl, Doc and camera all gone!" Ham said bitterly.
The lawyer went to the telephone and did some calling. He looked even more disgusted when he had finished.
"Some hotel," he rapped. "There's a convention going on, with a lot of noisy parties on every floor. Nobody paid any attention to our little fuss here."
"If Doc only got away!" Renny said wishfully.
There were at least five in the group of attackers that were convinced Doc not only hadn't got away, but wasn't going to do so.
They were sitting on a big burlap sack. The sack was in the rear-end of an innocent-appearing truck. Occasionally the sack heaved and bucked as if the occupant had no desire to stay there.
When this happened, one of the five would raise a blackjack and tap, sometimes gently, occasionally not so gently. No sound came from within the sack, but that was not surprising. The occupant was gagged.
One of the five was the big man with the cauliflowered ears who had been guarding Renny. The others called him Bouncer.
"Getting this bronze guy oughta make up for my lettin' that other mug go!" he growled.
Bouncer's features showed he had been in a rather hectic battle. One of his companions grinned. "Think this mug will be any easier to hold?"
Bouncer scowled fiercely. He reached in his pocket and took out a gun. "I got permission to use this thing, if necessary, on this one," he barked.
"What's it all about, anyway?"
Bouncer frowned and tried to look wise. It appeared the best way to hide the fact that he didn't know the answer.
"The big boss didn't want this bronze devil or his side-kicks gettin' out of Chi," he said gravely. "That's why we were holdin' the big stiff they call Renny. But this is even better. None of those other guys is going any place as long as we hold Doc Savage."
After that there was silence. The truck went for a long ways. Ahead of it was a touring car. That car held the others who had been in on the hotel raid. A pretty black-haired girl with large, dark eyes was with them. She did not appear alarmed.
FINALLY the truck went into a big garage on the outskirts of the city. The garage had been an alky loading depot during prohibition. The truck went down an incline into an underground cellar.
"You guys find out where the big guy wants this mug taken," Bouncer said.
A couple of the others looked at him questioningly, but said nothing. One man remained close to Bouncer as the others climbed stairs to rooms up above.
When they came back, Bouncer was alone. "We're to bring Savage up," one of them said.
Bouncer nodded and helped pull the burlap bag out of the truck. "You guys go ahead, I'll be along in a minute," he growled. "I got to find where Slinky went."
As soon as the others were out of sight, Bouncer went to the rear of the building. There was a bound figure there but he paid no attention to that. It was the man who had been with him a few minutes before.
He scouted around for a few minutes until he found an exit. Then he pulled a pair of earphones from his pocket and took up a comfortable position.
Words came clearly through the earphones. The voices were those of the men carrying the bound figure upstairs.
After a bit there was a solid thump as the sack and the man inside were dropped to the floor. Then came the voice of Consuelo Manresa.
"You're sure you've got Doc Savage, that he won't bother us anymore?"
Someone laughed harshly. "He'd have to be a Houdini to get out of the ropes we got on him, let alone that sack."
A peculiar expression came over Bouncer's features. His hands worked swiftly. A few minutes later the man wearing the earphones did not look like Bouncer at all.
He looked like Doc Savage.
Doc possibly could have used some of his tricks and frustrated the attack at the hotel. He didn't. He wanted to find out what it was all about.
He had spotted the real Bouncer immediately, and had seen the other was carrying a sack. It was plain then that someone was to be abducted, probably himself.
During the wild fighting, he had rolled Bouncer into the adjoining room, tied him up and put him in the sack. Then, a master of disguise, he had altered his own appearance.
Under close scrutiny he probably would have been discovered. But the flight from the hotel had been swift, and the ride in the truck had been made in semidarkness.
Voices were coming again over the earphones. At the sound of one of them, Doc's gold-flecked eyes flashed suddenly.
It was the voice of a man speaking with a thick French accent. He was addressed as "Douter." This was the man, Monk and Ham had told Doc, that Consuelo Manresa wanted them to find; was undoubtedly the man who had telephoned the mysterious warning to stay away from the Arkansas swampland.
"Everythin' et ees goin' smoothly there," Douter said. "I could no do better myself. StillЧ"
The voice broke off suddenly. Almost instantly, alarm bells sounded throughout the garage building. The door to the rear exit Doc had found closed, evidently operated by some mechanical device. Only the bronze man's quick leap put him in the clear.
Evidently someone had become curious, had wanted to look at the captive in the burlap sack. That was a hazard Doc had anticipated when he had hidden a small radio transmitter inside the sack with the real Bouncer.