"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 156 - Seh-Pa-Poo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

A hundred and ten, he thought. At least a hundred and ten. This was real heat. The temperature in the
air-conditioned railway coach had been around sixty-five. Better still, in the club car, there had been soft
music, cool drinks and someone with whom to carry on an intelligent conversation. What was best of all,
no one but the porter'd had the good judgment to keep it to himself.

He turned his head slightly. A few inches away, on a mesquite twig, a spindle-legged lizard was
examining him intently. The lizard looked stupid. It wouldn't make an intelligent conversationalist.

He sincerely hoped no one here in the desert would recognize him.

The man over the telephone had sounded so frightened.



THE sun in the sky was too hot for comfort, and the sky itself was absolutely blue and clear, except that
around the horizon the air was full of dancing heat waves and the peculiar little things in the way of
refraction that desert air does to the view. There was a distant mountain sitting in the sky, with only air
under it; you could see right under the mountain to the horizon beyond.

He stood up now and inspected this mountain, and decided it wasn't the one. Too far away. He turned
slowly. The desert, the real Painted Desert, lay in the other direction, and he imagined that was where he
would be going. The frightened man hadn't been very explicit about the destination. But he had said
desert.

He heard a dull moaning. He sat down quickly. The dull moaning became more emphatic and violent as it
drew near, a loud, blatant sound which seemed to contain other sounds within itself, a shrill mechanical
wail, a sucking and popping, the high hysterical laugh of a woman, the gay but slightly tired whoop of a
man's mirth. Then the automobile was past and gone down the highway.

He consulted his watch. Three-five. The frightened man should be along presently.

He moved nearer the road.

It had been a little startling to have the roaring action of the car bawl past him in the solitude of the desert.
The loneliness of the desert was a thing that quickly made itself felt.
The scared man had said wait.

He found the shade of a giant cactus and seated himself again. He waited. He was not exactly hidden, but
the protective coloring of his tan suit made it unlikely anyone passing on the highway would see him.

тАЬI'll have a station wagon,тАЭ the man had said.

Carl Peterson was the frightened man's name. Colonel Sir Carl Peterson, K.B.E., C.B., C.M.G., F.R.S.,
M.A., D. Litt, M.R.A.S., F.R.A.I. Maybe there were some more letters after Sir Carl's name. There
could be. He was quite a guy.

Not, he thought wryly, a man who should scare easily.

His curiosity had been eating large holes in his composure. Which, of course, did no good.