"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 115 - The Fiery Menace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The coroner pondered and came up with, тАЬWell, I'll make another examination.тАЭ He did so, then
straightened triumphantly. тАЬThe edges of the wound seem to be cauterized. No doubt, it was done by an
electric short circuit after the man died. Or, possibly, it was an accidental death, with the shock causing
the death and the cauterizing effect of the spark shutting off the flow of blood.тАЭ

It happened that the officer was no electrician, so he nodded. But they got an electrician on the job, and
he assured them they were drawing on their imaginations fruitlessly. There was not enough current in the
chandelier-one-hundred-and-ten-volt direct current was all that was in the circuit-to make such a burn,
and that such a burn was an impossibility, even with a powerhouse full of volts and amperes on the job.

тАЬBut there was no blood at the wound,тАЭ said the coroner.

тАЬThere was blood on his hand and running down the chandelier, wasn't there?тАЭ countered the angry
electrician. тАЬWhere'd that come from?тАЭ

The startled coroner made another investigation, in which he was joined by the police, and the net result
was totally confusing.

Where did the blood come from?



MILLIE GROSS was the woman who saw the vampire.

Millie Gross was another person of no importance in the affair, other than the passing one of contributing
a bit of information to the matter. The other two of none but passing importance, of course, being Betty
Free, who discovered the body, and Mrs. Murphy, who had been told by the man that he was hunting a
vampire.

Millie Gross really saw the vampire. But no one believed she had.

The disbelief hinged around the question of what a vampire looked like.

They dug up a dictionary and read the definition of a vampire, and the dictionary said that a vampire was
a bloodsucking ghost. This was a definition that was indefinite when applied to actual reality in the city of
New York, to say the least. The dictionary added that it was a reanimated body, believed to come from
the grave at night and wander around sucking the blood from persons asleep, causing their death. This
was not much help, because what Millie Gross saw was not a reanimated body.

Millie Gross was a тАЬmuxтАЭ operator by profession. She punched mux for an oil company that had offices
in the building, and she worked second. She gave it to the police that way. Translated into English, it
meant that she was an operator of one of those gadgets which sends printed messages over wires, and
she did this from four in the afternoon until midnight. When she was off duty at that time, she went
uptown to her room four nights a week, the other three nights going to meet her boy friend who was an
operator in a theater. She had been leaving the building a little after midnight when she saw the vampire.

Millie Gross hardly saw a reanimated body. It could have been a ghost she saw. Just possibly. And, if so,
it was a hell of a ghost-straight from Hades and still on fire.