"123 (B113a) - The Talking Devil (1943-05) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE TALKING DEVIL
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson


Chapter 1. THE DEVIL AND COMPANY

RENNY Renwick, the engineer, and Long Tom Roberts, the electrical expert, were on hand to meet Doc Savage when he brought his plane down on the Hudson River. Doc taxied the craft, managing it expertly on the wind-whipped river surface, into the big hangar which was disguised as a warehouse on the river front, almost in the shadow of New York's midtown skyscrapers. Renny and Long Tom were a little breathless as they met Doc Savage.
"It's a devil," said Renny.
"It talks," said Long Tom.
"A little statuette of a satan, or a devil, not much more than a foot high," Renny said. "It is made out of bronze or brass or some similar metal."
"It has a deep voice," Long Tom said.
"But only one man hears it talk."
"One man. Nobody else."
"His name is Joseph. Sam Joseph."
"The man who hears it, we mean," Long Tom explained.
Doc Savage listened to them patiently. Patience was one of Doc Savage's accomplishments, being one of the things that had been hammered into him as a part of the strange training which he had received in his youth - when, at diaper age, he had been placed in the hands of scientists to be subjected, over a course of almost twenty years, to an intensive program which was intended to fit him for one specific and rather strange career. Unlike many persons given an arbitrary training before they were old enough to know what it was all about, or speak for themselves, he had elected to follow the career for which he had been trained. It was an unusual career. It consisted, literally, of making other people's business his own. Or at least their troubles.
For some time now, Doc Savage had been taking it on himself to right wrongs and punish evildoers, traveling to the far corners of the earth to do so. He had five associates who worked with him. Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were two members of this group of five.
"A devil," Doc Savage said, getting it straight. "And it talks. But only one man can hear it.,'
"That's right," Long Tom said. "Sam Joseph."
"There are more details," Renny said.
"But they won't make it sound less silly," Long Tom declared. Renny took Doc's arm. "Come on," he said. "We will take you to talk to Montague Ogden."
"Who is Montague Ogden?"
"He hasn't any connection at all with the devil, or so he claims," said Renny Renwick. "But he is the employer of Sam Joseph, the man who has been hearing the devil speak."
THE impressive Ogden building was new, just barely prewar, and the lobby was all black and gold and apparently designed by an architect who had fallen on his head when small. But it was utterly expensive. The elevators were gold and black and also utterly expensive, and the elevator operators were girls with shapes that also looked expensive.
"I would like to have the money it cost to think about building this place," said Renny Renwick, who was an engineer and knew what it had cost.
"I would rather have the elevator operators," said Monk Mayfair. Monk was a remarkably homely fellow with a remarkable eye for a well-turned ankle.
The elevator let them out in a corridor which was ankle-deep in rich carpet. Office building halls are ordinarily not even carpeted.
"What kind of a place is this?" remarked Monk.
"Wait," said Renny Renwick, "until you see the master of the establishment."
They walked into a reception room that might have been lifted from a spectacular motion picture. The carpet was even deeper, the colors even richer, the furniture more extreme. The blonde at the desk looked as if she had been manufactured with a magazine cover in mind.
"Mr. Ogden," she told them, bells in her voice, "is expecting you.
Then they walked into a log cabin. Or so it would have seemed, had not the big glass windows offered views of some of the financial district's more impressive buildings. Everything was rustic, extremely rustic, even to the logs blazing in the fieldstone fireplace and the two large dogs lying on the hearth. The dogs lifted their heads and barked.
"I am Montague Ogden," the man behind the desk said. He sounded as if he was accustomed to the name meaning something.
He was smooth. That was the first impression you got of him. As smooth as a polished rock. He was forty-five or fifty years old, well-preserved, and he was dressed in country tweeds and moccasins, so that he blended with his log-cabin inner office.
The general effect of Montague Ogden was a little ridiculous. Unless, of course, you were impressed by the obvious evidences of money.
There were conversational preliminaries, introductions mostly. Then Montague Ogden got around to making what he evidently intended to be the outstanding statement of the conference.
"I am a very wealthy man," he said.
DOC Savage, with just a trace of the general feeling of distaste that the overly flamboyant office building, this office suite and the spectacle effect of the man himself had aroused, said, "At the moment we are more interested in a man named Sam Joseph, who is said to be hearing a small statue of the devil speak aloud to him."
"Exactly," said Montague Ogden. "Exactly."
"I understand you can supply details."
"Exactly,"said Montague Ogden. "I am a very wealthy man, and I want nothing spared to straighten out poor Sam. Poor Sam is my office manager, my trusted employee. He is even, I may say, more than that. He is the real working head, the manager, of my rather wide enterprises. I owe Sam a great deal. Sam is paid an excellent salary, it is true, but his value to me extends far beyond that. Sam is. . . is. . . " He groped for words, found them. "Sam is like a part of my own heart," he finished.
Doc Savage asked quietly, "What do you mean by straightening out poor Sam?"
Montague Ogden blinked. He had blue eyes, very pale-blue eyes.
"Why, find out his trouble," he said.
"Just what has happened?" Doc Savage asked patiently.
Ogden spread his hands with the palms up. "Poor Sam has this statue of a devil - "
"Where did he get it?"
"I gave it to him," Montague Ogden said. "I frankly admit that."
"Where did you get the statue?" Doc asked.