"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 048 - The Derrick Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Sam Sands was to watch the well until midnight," she said. "ItтАЩs eleven. Time you and I were relieving Sam."

Holding the rifle with his finger in the trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl took long strides and kept at
his side.

Tall, dry grass brushed their field boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the night breeze. Over in the hills
somewhere, an owl was making a racket.

They topped the small hill and before them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well derrick stood reared against
the cloudy night sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling rig was evidently a rotary.

The well was not a producer, because the breeze was coming from that direction and it carried, instead of the
smell of crude oil, the odors usually found around drilling wells.

"Reservoir" Hill stopped.

The girl waited, but when he did not move or speak, she grew impatient. "Well!"

"WeтАЩve got the wildcat shut down because our boss driller has disappeared," Reservoir Hill said, slowly.

"Well?" the girl said again, sharply.

"IтАЩve got a horrible suspicion," continued Reservoir Hill, "that weтАЩve already found our driller!"



THE girl was puzzled. She held her shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed her companion. A stray beam
of moonlight came through a crack in passing clouds to illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends of him
had been squeezed to make him big in the middle.

"What are you driving at, Reservoir?"

"Remember that gummy stuff we found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was near where we found the
clothes our driller was wearinтАЩтАФwhen heтАФwell, when he disappeared."

"That was just old lube or grease that somebody had scraped out there."

"It wasnтАЩt lube," Reservoir Hill said, shuddering.

"No?"

"I know lube oil." Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "IтАЩve worked in refineries too many years not to know grease or
lube. This stuff looks more likeтАФwellтАФ" He fell silent.

"Like what?"

Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug.

"Forget it! When they have been in the oil fields as long as I have, they sometimes got funny!"