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

"Aren't you afraid of staying in here?" Monk asked the man. He was a timid-looking young man, quite pale and lean and soft. The very picture of a timid soul.
"Beg pardon?" the man said. He sounded frightened, nervous, embarrassed.
"This is Butch," said Montague Ogden.
"Butch, eh?" Monk said, and tried not to grin at the timid soul. Montague Ogden remarked, "Butch, we have come after the devil statue."
"Oh," Butch said. He looked scared. "Oh! I haven't - that is - well, it's over there, but - "
"Never mind," Montague Ogden told him. "We'll take it with us. You can go ahead with your work, Butch."
Montague Ogden picked up the devil statue.
The statue was about what Monk expected to see, being not much over a foot high, rather fat, and made of brass that was tarnished, or bronze, wearing some sort of ceremonial robe, and holding a sword in one hand. This devil had a pronounced Chinese cast on his evil little face.
"I'll carry it," Monk said.
"But - "
"I'll carry it," Monk repeated.
Montague Ogden smiled and his, "Very well, if you wish," was the soul of politeness.
They left the den and Monk was glad to get out of sight of all the leering, staring or snarling stuffed animals. He wondered how Butch managed to stand it in there with all those man-hungry-looking trophies, and he wondered if that was what was making Butch look frightened.
"Who's Butch?" Monk asked. "What's he do, I mean?"
"His work?"
"Yes."
"Butch is my big-game hunting guide and my jujitsu instructor," Montague Ogden explained. "He also teaches me wrestling and the art of knife-throwing, in which I am interested as a hobby."
Monk laughed. He thought he was being kidded.
They went down a hall that was majestic in a futuristic modern fashion, with high walls and great pictures in gaunt plain frames, and lighting that was so subdued that it was difficult to tell from where it came.
Monk walked along thinking of the timid soul who was named Butch, and how funny it was that Ogden had jokingly said Butch was his hunting guide and instructor in the more robust manly arts. Ordinarily that would not have been funny, but after you had seen, Butch, it was quite humorous.
"We can go through this way," Montague Ogden said. "It is shorter."
He turned to the left and opened a door and went through it.
Monk was following behind Ogden and watching Ogden's back when something hit Monk's head. It hit hard, whatever it was, and there was only a slight sound, a slight grinding, just before the impact landed. It took Monk on top of the head, slightly to the right-hand side, so that there was the grisly sensation of the blow sliding down toward the right ear and taking off the whole side of his head as it went. In the middle of this awful feeling it got very black and remained that way.

Chapter II. THE GREAT MISTAKE

MONK accomplished the feat of opening his eyes, but did it with some difficulty, after which he stared at Montague Ogden. Monk had the feeling that some time had passed, and did not dare move his body for fear his head would fall off it. There was a gouging pain in the small of his back.
Soon his ears recovered their ability to hear.
"That nasty picture!" Montague Ogden was saying. "Oh, that nasty picture! I told the interior decorator when he hung it over the door that something like this would happen! I told him it would be just my luck to have the picture fall down and brain somebody sometime."
Monk tried out his voice with a groan and found his vocal chords satisfactory. "I'm brained, all right," he said.
"Oh!" gasped Ogden. "He's conscious! He has recovered!"
Monk felt a hell of a long way from complete recovery and said so. "What hit me?" he demanded.
"A picture hanging over the door fell down as you went through," explained Montague Ogden. "It was one of those freak accidents."
Monk grimaced at Ogden.
"It's a good thing you were walking ahead of me when it happened," Monk said. "Or I would have thought you beaned me.
Montague Ogden laughed deprecatingly. Doc Savage, Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were standing around Monk, looking relieved that he had recovered. Monk wondered if he had recovered, or if there was going to be complications.
The gouging pain in the small of his back was awful. He investigated and found it to be the devil statuette.
"I must have fallen on the thing," Monk complained. "I wonder how many ribs it broke."
"That the devil statue which speaks?" Doc Savage asked.
"That's it," Monk said.
Montague Ogden said uncomfortably, "Of course, you gentlemen do not for a minute believe that the statue can speak?"
Doc Savage made no comment. He suggested that Renny Renwick find the building superintendent, and obtain a hacksaw and a cold chisel and hammer, in order that they might perform a dissection on the brass devil.
Fifteen minutes later they had the devil lying in half a dozen pieces on a table, and there was obviously nothing inside it but brass.
"That is that," Doc admitted. "The thing hardly seemed to have a conversational nature."
"Of course you knew it hadn't," Montague Ogden said. Monk Mayfair explained to Ogden, "'When you've been in the kind of a business we're in for a while, you get so you don't go around taking things at face value."
Doc Savage said, "We will examine Sam Joseph now." The bronze man spent nearly an hour with Sam Joseph, doing the things a doctor does.
"According to all indications," Doc said, "the man has an advanced cerebral fibroma."
The bronze man then asked Monk to telephone the hospital and arrange for reception of the patient.
Doc told Montague Ogden, "I am going to call in other brain specialists for consultation. Do you have any particular doctors you would like to have pass an opinion?"
Ogden stared.