"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 037 - The Metal Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

He heard a car engine start up. The machine went away fast.



DOC turned back to the taxi in which he had come. The driver was scared. He got out and ran for dear
life in the opposite direction. So Doc drove the cab in pursuit of the fleeing car, and did not get to first
base, which was not his fault, but the fault of a careless motorist who had failed to put on chains to run on
the sleet.
The cab skidded uncontrollably. Doc SavageтАЩs driving ability, which was considerable, did not help
enough.

He did not find the car he was seeking, for the cab lost its front wheels against the curb in an effort to
avoid a smash.

Doc went back and examined the machine gun. It was a foreign military weapon. Small chance of it ever
being traced.

Doc searched the house in which the two men had said he would find the big man with a black beard.
There was no such man; and no others in the house. Probably there had never been such a man.

Searching the two victims, Doc Savage found the cablegram which had been dictated by the whispering
leader over the telephone, the one which had been sent to Louis Tester, in Panama, Canal Zone. They
had been careless and had not destroyed it.

Doc Savage lost no time in getting to a telephone and trying for a land-line-radio hookup to the airport in
Panama. He wanted to get hold of Louis Tester.

But Louis Tester had landed, refueled and gone on North. Louis Tester was headed for the trap.

Doc Savage hurriedly got a telephone connection to Havana, Cuba. He spoke, when he had his party,
ancient Mayan, a language which few outside his five aids and himself spoke. He talked for some time.

Doc SavageтАЩs regular bronze features were emotionless as he headed back toward his skyscraper a├лrie.
Whatever was involved in this mysterious affair must be tremendous.

The "Metal Master"! That was it, whatever it was.

Doc Savage knew something was wrong the moment he entered the lobby of his building. He ran to the
elevators. The three attendants were inside.

They were not dead. But their heads had been thoroughly battered, probably with blackjacks. Not one
was conscious. Doc ran his private elevator up to the eighty-sixth floor. He went through reception room
and library into the laboratory. There, he stood still for some moments.

His strange, fantastic trilling noise came into existence and traced its eerie tremor for some moments. It
was smaller, more exotic than usual, and after it faded away into nothingness, the echo of it seemed to
persist, as the strains of enthralling music sometimes seem to hang in the air afterward.

The laboratory walls were of steelтАФor had been. A bit of the steel had melted down on the tiled floor.