"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 044 - South Pole Terror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The silver sloop was approximately fifty feet long, and she was a fine hooker with teakwood decks, jib-headed
sails with roller reefing gear and the rest of the newfangled gadgets. She was all mahogany and shiny metals
inside. She was a honey. She made sailors grin from ear to ear and murmur in admiration when they boarded
her.

The coast guardsmen were sailors. But when they went aboard the silver sloop, they turned white with horror;
some leaned over the rail and were sick.

It was an incredible thing which they found aboard the silver sloop. The thing was so horrible that no
newspaper photographers were allowed aboard after the silver sloop was towed into New London harbor.

The American public, whether they know it or not, are often preserved from sights that might turn their
stomachs or keep them awake nights.

What the coast guard found aboard the silver sloop would probably have kept a good many people from
sleeping nights. It did the coast guardsmen.

A dead man was found in the steering cockpit of the silver sloop. He was a well-known banker and
philanthropistтАФa man who had been known for his kindliness, his gentle manners.

This kindly soulтАЩs dead hand was gripping the hair of a woman whose throat he had cut from ear to ear, and
who, later investigation brought out, had been blackmailing the philanthropist for years over an episode of his
youth.

The coast guardsmen searched farther and found more horror.



THERE had been fifteen people aboard the silver sloop, a later inquiry disclosed. Fourteen of the fifteen were
found, and all fourteen were dead. There was only the one murder, however.

Close examination revealed no wound on any of the bodies, except the cut throat of the woman who had been
murdered by the man she had tormented.

At first, the coast guardsmen thought it was poison gas or something, but they found nothing to bear out that
assumption. All fifteen persons aboard the silver sloop when she had sailed were identified and they were all
either nice or famous people, wealthy for the most part. Even the crew had been decent fellows. Moreover,
while one person had died by visible means, there was a great deal of doubt about what had killed the others.

Physicians were naturally called aboard to make an examination. Detectives came, also. They learned a few
things.

All the victims had a case of fierce sunburn. But the previous day had been a scorcher for late fall, and the
sunburns escaped attention.

The shipтАЩs clock had been knocked off the hook by some one at three oтАЩclock, for it had stopped at that
point. Presumably this was three oтАЩclock the previous afternoon.

The tarlike seam compound had been squeezed out of some of the deckтАЩs seams. A journalist wrote a wild