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

seemed almost to be racing with him, had died as swiftly as it had come. The
blast had been accompanied by an expanding phosphorescent glowing of steely blue
light.
As the fugitive from his own apparent terror reached the spot where he had
concealed his roadster, darkness again had enwrapped the silence that was of
itself, by contrast, terrific. Over all of the marsh, the air had taken on an
icy chill.
The dank, sulphuric odor of death permeated the country for many miles.
Shuddering, the man leaped into the roadster. He glanced only once at the place
where the old log house had squatted evilly in the marsh.
Only blackness, emptiness was there. There was no light of any sort. Not even
the deeper, bulking shadow that had been the house.
Something like hatred twisted the manТs thin face. His lips slavered and his
eyes burned. Then he turned the old roadster and sent it leaping away over the
rutty side road toward the main highway.

Chapter 3. THE CANAL OF DEATH
THE mysterious watcher had ample time to get far from the scene of the explosion
before State police were aroused to investigate. The narrow lane to the old log
house was some ten miles from the city of Newark.
Some time, therefore, elapsed before the tearing jolt of the blast had been
definitely traced. But cars of the State police were blocking the marsh side
road when Doc Savage drove into it.
"Holy cow! What a job!" growled Renny. "Look, Doc! ItТs a canal, straight as if
it was laid out with instruments and this was intended for a feed reservoir!"
Renny saw everything from an engineerТs point of view.
"It does seem to have remarkable symmetry," replied the man of bronze. "ItТs the
first explosion I ever came upon that seemed to have been done to a geometrical
pattern."
"HowlinТ calamities!" muttered squat Monk, his homely, apelike features showing
puzzlement. "ItТs about the completest mess I ever bumped into!"
"CompleteТs the word, all right," assented Long Tom. "And it looks as if it
wiped out some high-class electrical machinery. Look here, Doc!"
They were then beside a deep, rounded crater. It could be seen from a few
remaining foundation stones imbedded in the earth that this had been the site of
a house. But underneath it the ground had been scooped out as if by the swing of
a giant shovel.
On three sides of the cavernous hole in the spot where the house had stood, the
explosive force had apparently lifted directly upward. An ordinary powder blast,
if of sufficient strength and buried deeply, could have done this.
But Doc was coming to some startling conclusions, as he glanced along the fourth
side of the explosion crater. Instead of spreading in a mushroom burst, the
blast had been definitely directional.
Passing up, for the moment, the smashed electrical equipment Long Tom had
pointed out, Doc led the others away from the blastТs place of origin. They saw
the explosive force had moved laterally along the ground, cutting through the
marsh by reason of the road having curved in a wide bend more than two miles in
extent.
The great ditch that had been cut was as evenly grooved along its sagging banks
as if a steam shovel had heaved out the soggy mud. Where the house had been,