Читать книгу The Living Fire Menace: A Doc Savage Adventure - Harold A. Davis - Страница 3
ОглавлениеA STRANGE WARNING
The man reeled as he tried to run. His breath came in short gasps. Time after time his head twisted to dart quick, fearful looks behind him.
Perspiration was streaming from his body. His face was a queer cherry-red, the lips puffed and scarlet bright. His feet kicked up small clouds of sand.
Overhead, the sun was beating down relentlessly. On either side were cactus and sage. And ahead, not far now, were the scattered buildings of the desert town of Sandrit.
Mumbled words came from between the puffed lips.
“I’ve got to make it! I’ve got to make it! I’ve got to get word out—get word to Doc Savage!”
At Palm Springs, only a few short miles away, beautiful movie stars were lounging around in shorts. Cooling drinks were near at hand. The thermometer was well over a hundred.
But the running man was dressed as if for a zero winter day.
Strange wrappings on his feet accounted for part of his reeling gait. Strips from an old inner tube had been bound about those feet. The strips had cut into the flesh until blood drops marked the trail, but the man did not pause.
His body seemed sheathed in many clothes. And about those clothes other strips of rubber had been bound. On his hands were heavy rubber gloves.
But it was the man’s eyes that held attention. Fear blazed from sunken orbs—deadly, unhealthy fear.
Some might have doubted that the reeling man was sane. And the words he babbled sounded like those of a man in the grip of a nightmare:
“The living fire! The death that cannot be avoided! The fire that spurts from within, that burns and destroys! A hell-fire! And it’ll get me! I cannot escape!”
The man’s heart pounded as he thought of the secret he carried—a secret he must reveal at once if he were to prevent untold calamity.
Once again his head twisted so that he looked behind him. A faint cloud of dust showed on the road over which he had just come. A big car came into view.
Frantically the man tried to run faster, his cherry-red face twisting with renewed anguish, his eyes popping.
“I’ve got to go on!” he gritted. “I’ve got to get word to Doc Savage!”
The girl in the big car did not look dangerous. She looked as if she might be one of the movie stars visiting at Palm Springs.
Long black curls framed a face that was almost perfection. Only a stub nose broke the faultless symmetry of her features. Her eyes were dark pools of bewitching enchantry. Shorts and a halter did little to hide the seductiveness of her form.
But as the girl caught sight of the reeling man ahead, her face changed subtly. An expression almost of craftiness flashed in her dark eyes; her soft lips tightened.
The man had almost reached the filling-station. The girl braked the big car, slowing it instantly until it was barely moving.
The girl glanced behind her. Something like a sigh escaped her lips as she saw the road was clear.
She reached into a side pocket of the car, even as she brought the machine to a stop at the edge of the road.
Then she had opened the door, had slid to the ground, was moving rapidly toward the filling-station where the reeling man had vanished. The sunlight flickered wickedly on the small, deadly automatic she carried in her hand.
The filling-station attendant did not see her. He was gazing open-mouthed at the strange apparition that had materialized before him.
The queerly dressed man seemed oblivious of the attendant. With glazed eyes, he rushed toward the old-fashioned-type telephone in one corner of the room.
“I’ve got to tell them! There she is! I’ve got to get word to Doc Savage—”
Hands awkward in their heavy gloves, the man spun desperately on the crank to signal the telephone operator.
“Number, please,” came a cool, crisp voice.
The frightened man’s words tore from his swollen lips.
“Get me Doc Savage’s office, in New York!” he half screamed. “Tell him this is Z-2 calling. Get Doc Savage! Get him!”
The filling-station attendant’s mouth dropped open even farther. His eyes tried to jump from his head.
“Doc Savage!” he repeated, and his voice held a note of awe.
There was frenzied fear in the stranger’s face, in the queer, pinched lines about his eyes as he waited for his call.
“Hurry!” he yelled impotently. “Hurry! I’ve got to reach Doc Savage before it’s too late!”
The telephone operator was hurrying. The name Doc Savage had done something to her, also. Her voice had an unusually excited timbre as she implored intervening stations for speed.
“Doc Savage’s office. William Harper Littlejohn speaking,” came calm, measured tones from the other end of the wire.
The telephone operator’s heart sank. “A call for Mr. Doc Savage,” she said hopefully.
“Clark Savage, Jr., is absent for the nonce. I will hear the communication.”
“Johnny! Johnny! Listen! This is Z-2!” the queerly dressed man shouted frantically into the telephone. “You’ve got to get word to Doc at once!”
He paused, subconsciously stripped one heavy glove from a hand to wipe the perspiration from his face.
“I’ve found something that’s unbelievable! The fate of the world is at stake. And there’s a plot aimed at Doc, at all of you! Listen. I’ll give you the low-down fast. I haven’t got long to live. There’s a living fire. It’s terrible! It’s—”
A pretty face pressed close to a half-opened window of the filling-station. Dark eyes gleamed with sudden anticipation.
Blam!
There was a noise like two boards smacking together sharply. A queer, burned odor filled the air.
At the other end of the wire, more than two thousand miles away, that sharp crack came clearly.
But no more words came over that wire.
