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

Melted, it appeared, without any heat. A number of the secret compartments had been thus opened.

The one in which Doc Savage had left titian-haired, exquisite Nan Tester had been opened. She was
gone.

Chapter IV. INTO THE TRAP
THE next development in the mystery of the Metal Master, as it came to be called, occurred in Havana
harbor.

"TopsтАЩl" Hertz, who was to act a grisly part in the matter of the Metal Master, was jumping about barking
orders. He was trying to get his big two-masted schooner, Innocent, to sea in a hurry. He did a good deal of
cursing.
TopsтАЩl Hertz probably would not have been jumping about swearing had he known about Doc Savage. TopsтАЩl
became a cold customer when he was scared. TopsтАЩl had heard of Doc Savage, but as far as he knew, the
bronze man had never heard of him. On occasion, TopsтАЩl had hoped he never would.

Doc SavageтАЩs name often kept gentlemen of TopsтАЩl HertzтАЩs brand awake nights.

TopsтАЩl, in his lighter moments, gave play to a foxy humor of sorts. He had named his schooner Innocent
during one of these arch intervals. The hooker was anything but angelic.

The Innocent had been a rumrunner back in the days when that paid, and now she was doing a bit of
smuggling guns and ammunition to hopeful revolutionists in Central America and elsewhere. She was
versatile; she also ran aliens and other things, principally narcotics, which latter is as evil a profession as the
world offers.

Occasionally, the Innocent participated in a high-class murder for hire. Her forward hatch was hacked and
scarred, and the crew would tell you that fish were dressed there. Naturally, they couldnтАЩt be expected to
mention a human body or so that had been cut up on the hatch for the sharks.

Taken altogether, the Innocent and her crew formed a combination that could have taught Blackbeard a few
things.

The schooner cast off from the fuel-oil dock and drifted out of the harbor under the thrust of her Diesels, which
could, weirdly enough, hurl the vessel along at a speed that more than one coast guard cutter had failed to
match.

A mile off Morro Castle, which is at the mouth of Havana harbor, a fight broke out forward. Blows. Curses. A
man howling in pain.

"I may be a stowaway, but I object to being stowed away!" squawled a nondescript voice.

TopsтАЩl Hertz hopped nimbly forward, wearing his most ominous look.

He saw one of his sailors. The man was holding a stowaway, who had just been hauled out of a deck locker.

This stowaway was not tall, and he was thin and wan and puny-looking. His clothes were in bad shape. He
seemed hardly able to stand up, as if from some constitutional weakness. Altogether, he had very few visible
qualities to recommend him.