Читать книгу Devil on the Moon: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5
ОглавлениеBLUE GLASS ROD
The neon sign said:
DIXIE INN
The inn building was new, large, built of brick; a substantial structure, and as homey-looking as an English farmhouse.
Lin Pretti was staying at the Dixie Inn.
Behemoth, when he reached the hotel, proceeded to talk with the doorman. Eventually a five-dollar bill changed hands, as well as a story about Lin Pretti being a married woman whose husband had hired a detective to trail her.
Behemoth’s story now had a second installment. In this second part, Behemoth was an honest detective. Lin Pretti had dropped a ten-dollar bill. Behemoth had found it, and he wanted to return it without revealing his identity. Would the doorman take the bill up to the girl? The doorman would.
Behemoth walked to the rear of the hotel and proceeded to accomplish a remarkable feat. The bricks in the wall were of a coarse type, with deep grooves between them. Using an incredible strength in his fingertips, and employing his bare feet—he first removed shoes and socks—Behemoth climbed the wall.
Soon he was clinging outside Lin Pretti’s window.
The girl had two suitcases on the bed, was stuffing them with clothing.
Outside the window, Behemoth clung with the apparent ease of a grotesque bat.
When there was a knock on her door, the girl started violently. Then she whipped to the writing desk. An inkwell stood there. She drew something from a pocket of her frock and dropped it into the inkwell.
Lin Pretti then went to the door, opened it, and was handed the ten-dollar bill by the doorman.
Behemoth got the window up silently while she was standing half outside in the hall, talking with the doorman in an effort to learn who had given him the bill.
Lin Pretti backed into the room, closed the door and locked it. Then she stood, looking puzzled, and was that way when Behemoth seized her.
The struggle was short, and Behemoth’s furry hand over the girl’s mouth kept it silent. Convinced finally of the hopelessness of struggling, the young woman quieted. Behemoth removed his hand carefully from her mouth.
“Where’s that blue glass jigger?” Behemoth demanded.
“You—you—” Nervousness almost strangled Lin Pretti. “I can’t imagine what you are talking about!”
Behemoth shrugged, used a sheet from the hotel bed to bind and gag the young woman. There were two blankets on the bed and he knotted these together, then made one end of the improvised rope fast under the girl’s arms.
Leaving her, Behemoth went to the inkwell. He extracted the blue glass cylinder with a pen, then dried it on the blotter, being careful not to stain his fingers.
He spent some moments examining it curiously, then went into the bathroom, searched and found a roll of ordinary adhesive tape, tore off a strip and proceeded to fasten the blue capsule to his body, just below the armpit, a spot where it was not likely to be damaged. After buttoning his shirt, he lowered the girl from the window and followed her.
Behemoth carried the girl over his shoulder, her weight seeming to mean little to him, and trotted into the night. The distance to the Spanish Plantation was not great. Behemoth traversed the entire stretch at an easy run but avoided the roadhouse and crossed over the hill to the lake. There was a quality almost ghostly about the silence with which he skirted the shore of the lake until he encountered Lurgent and the others.
Behemoth looked around. “Where’s that young fellow—Bob Thomas?”
Lurgent shrugged; his words demonstrated that he was an excellent liar. “Couple of the boys took him away,” he said. “They’ll keep him in a safe place and turn him loose after this all blows over.”
Behemoth was silent for so long that Lurgent’s hand drifted nervously toward his gun pocket. But Behemoth only grunted and lowered the girl.
Lurgent growled, “Did you get the blue thing?”
“She must have hidden it,” Behemoth explained blandly. “She wouldn’t tell me where it was.”
“What about Vesterate?”
“No sign of him.”
“I’ll talk to the girl,” Lurgent growled.
Lurgent seized Lin Pretti’s wrist and bent it cruelly, while two men held the girl and a third kept a cap jammed over her mouth so that her sounds of agony would not be too loud.
“Don’t think you’ll get anything out of her that way,” Behemoth remonstrated.
Lurgent turned, seemed on the point of snarling something, then reconsidered. “Maybe you’re right. We’ll keep her with us a while.”
“Sure. Good idea.”
“The green man—Vesterate—worries me.” Lurgent picked at his teeth with a fingernail. “Look, Behemoth, go back to that hotel and see if Vesterate shows up. Try to find him.”
“Where’ll I meet you?”
“Join us at that tourist camp.”
“Are you taking the girl there?”
“No. That wouldn’t be safe. I’ll take her to another place.”
Nodding as if satisfied, Behemoth ambled off. He made some noise this time, and Lurgent’s men heard him progress well up the hill before the sounds he was making were no longer audible.
“We better be skipping with the girl,” a man suggested.
Lurgent made a growling sound. “If you think the girl stays alive, you’re crazy!”
“Huh?”
“I’m a kind guy at heart,” Lurgent said dryly. “I was sparing Behemoth’s feelings. We’ll tie the girl, then, throw her in the inlet—with her ex-boy friend.”
The men squirmed uneasily at this callous talk of killing the girl.
“Listen, Lurgent, is that necessary to ...”
“Her actions proved just what she is. You know the orders, when we get hold of one of her kind.”
The other shuddered.
They found a large rock that was misshapen enough to be tied to the girl with no likelihood of slipping free. They lashed it to her ankles, then carried the young woman to the edge of the inlet.
Two of the men, one on each side, held the girl, and Lurgent said, “All together! One, two—swing her!”
The young woman struck the surface feet first. After she disappeared, one very large bubble came up along with other bubbles that were smaller. The men hurried away as if they did not want to see the bubbles.
