"Robeson, Kenneth - Doc Savage 1936 09 - Cold Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

A voice started to speak from the other end.
Without preliminaries, the voice said. "YouТre Doc SavЧ"
Then it seemed as if the receiver had exploded. The voice was sliced off. No
reverberation followed. There was no lingering roll of sound, such as could have
been expected if the instrument had remained even for a few seconds in service.
"That was a powerful blast," Doc said. "The phone was torn out. The man who
tried to talk was an old man."
Doc didnТt explain further. He didnТt waste more time in speech. He had thumbed
the receiver bar. Two minutes later, he was given a trace-back on the Jersey
call.
"Blind number," he said to the others. "ItТs off the Newark-Trenton highway in a
marshy strip."
Doc moved ahead through the outer door. His three companions paused only to make
a swift collection of a few special devices they might need. The bronze man did
not seem hurried, but the others were compelled to move fast.
DocТs special elevator dropped with the speed of a rocket. It slowed with a
cushiony rebound, when it reached the bronze manТs private garage in the
basement. DocТs long low car, with its extra-powerful motor under the long hood
and its windows of bulletproof glass set in armor steel, glided toward the
Holland Tunnel.

Chapter 2. THE HOUSE IN THE MARSH
SHORTLY before the eight oТclock telephone call made by Doc Savage, a battered
old roadster turned off a paved New Jersey highway. Headlight beams laid ghostly
fingers across a foggy strip of marshland.
When he was perhaps a mile and a half from the main highway, the driver abruptly
switched off the lights. He parked the little car in concealment of bushes
beside a crooked lane.
Climbing from the car, the driver walked cautiously ahead. Dim lights made a
blur in the fog. They indicated some habitation.
Close up, this might have been seen to be an old log house. It appeared to squat
gloomily in the murky depths of the Jersey marsh. The bulk of its presence was
marked only by faint illumination from an upper window and one slanting finger
of dancing, vari-colored light emanating from what seemed a mere slit at ground
level.
From the basement, or some underground chamber, came a low throbbing. A trained
observer would have said delicate machinery of some sort was being operated.
Apparently, there was but one outside watcher. And his figure was only a furtive
shadow among other sinister shadows cast by this strange, penetrating light.
At times, the escaping light gave forth a rainbow glow.
A rutty, obscure road that was little more than a twisting trail through
overgrowths of waving swamp grass apparently was the only traffic communication
between the old house and the highway of civilization, some two miles distant.
Across the swamp a pair of telephone wires had been strung along available
trees, most of them gaunt-limbed and dead.
In the upper story of the old house there was no movement. Except for the faint
light at the one window, there was no evidence the structure was then occupied
by a living person.

THE man from the roadster apparently feared something or some one within the old