Читать книгу Dust of Death: A Doc Savage Adventure - Harold A. Davis - Страница 4
ОглавлениеTHE GRAY DEAD
Alcala, capital of Santa Amoza, had the outward aspects of a backward city and a poor one. It was neither. Santa Amoza was a country rich in natural resources—nitrates and oil among others—and before the war a flood of exports had poured out of Alcala, the seaport, and a flood of gold had poured in. Alcala had been a rich field for American salesmen.
The government hospital was a typical example of just how modern Alcala was. The building was huge, white and of fine stone. The interior was also white and sanitary, modern to the extreme.
Long Tom Roberts was following a stern-faced male nurse down a hall and into a big room, where a man lay on a white cot.
The man on the cot was a mummy in bandages, except for his hands and his face. He had an interesting face. At some time or other his nose had made forcible contact with an object harder than its tissue and bone. The nose gave the man a face remindful of the countenance of an English bulldog. Inside the bandages the man’s frame was probably angular and capable.
The bandaged man did not see Long Tom at first.
Long Tom grinned and said: “All wrapped up for shipping.”
The bandaged man turned over. His blue eyes all but came out of his head. He tried to bound out of the cot and fell on the floor.
“Long Tom!” he howled. “You old corpse, you old rascal, you sonuvagun!”
“Ace Jackson,” Long Tom chuckled.
Long Tom helped him back on the cot, and they grinned and mauled each other a little, shouting things which did not make much sense.
“Ace Jackson,” Long Tom chuckled. “Same old Kiwi. Haven’t seen you since you were flying a Spad, back in the Great War.”
“Same here,” chortled “Ace” Jackson. “Swell of you to drop in to see me, you pint of dynamite.”
“I was down in Argentina on a hydro-electric project,” Long Tom explained. “Buzzed up here as soon as I heard that you had tried to do a bit of flying without wings. What’s the idea? Been flying so long you thought you had sprouted wings?”
Ace Jackson looked suddenly grim and did not answer.
Long Tom stepped back and eyed the bandaged aviator curiously.
“It must have taken some sky battler to bring you down,” he said dryly. “Did they gang you? I’ll swear no one man could outfly you.”
“The Inca in Gray may not be a man—I think sometimes,” Ace Jackson said slowly and distinctly.
For the first time, Long Tom became aware there was a girl in the room. She was tall, dark haired. And her complexion had the utter fairness of the pure Castilian. She came forward when she saw that Long Tom had perceived her.
Long Tom had the sudden feeling that he was looking upon the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.
Ace Jackson made introductions.
“This is Señorita Anita Carcetas, daughter of the president of this republic,” he said. “Anita, I want you to meet Major Thomas J. Roberts, better known as Long Tom, electrical wizard extraordinary. And a lug who would rather fight than eat. And he loves his food. Where there’s trouble you’ll find Long Tom, and he’s a pal of mine.”
“I have not been so dazzled since I saw my first sunrise,” Long Tom said gallantly.
His eyes told him things. These two were violently in love.
The girl was patting pillows, adjusting coverlets and bandages and otherwise making Ace Jackson comfortable. She was getting such a big kick out of it that Long Tom let her continue for a while. Then he spoke.
“You said something a moment ago,” he reminded Ace Jackson.
The wounded flyer looked around the girl at him. “Eh?” he queried.
“The Inca in Gray,” Long Tom explained.
Over Ace Jackson’s face came an expression as if he had just met, face to face, a bitter and detested enemy.
“I guess it’s a man,” he muttered. “Sometimes, though, that don’t seem so sure.”
“Riddle me again,” Long Tom suggested. “I like guessing games.”
A thought struck Ace Jackson with all the visible effect of a physical blow. He reared up on the hospital cot, heedless of the girl’s admonishing gasp.
“Gimme straight dope on something,” he requested.
“Sure,” Long Tom said.
“Did Doc Savage send you to Santa Amoza?” Ace Jackson asked pointedly.
Long Tom’s answer was prompt.
“I came here solely to see an old pal, who had cracked up. And for no other reason,” he said. “Now what is this ranting about an Inca in Gray? Is it a secret?”
Ace Jackson sat up rigidly on the cot.
“You won’t believe this,” he clipped. “But I’ll give it to you, anyway.”
“Go ahead,” Long Tom invited. “I’m rather gullible.”
“The Inca in Gray is responsible for this war!” Ace Jackson leaned back as if he had gotten something heavy off his chest.
Long Tom squinted at the bandaged aviator.
“I suppose this Inca in Gray is the nickname of some general of Delezon, the country Santa Amoza is fighting,” Long Tom suggested.
“You don’t get me right,” Ace Jackson corrected. “The Inca in Gray is something—something horrible. No one knows whether he is from Delezon, or what.”
Ace Jackson sat up on the cot again. He leveled a gauze-wrapped arm at Long Tom.
“I’ll give you one example,” he said. “At one time the Santa Amoza army apparently had Delezon licked. We had broken through their lines in a big drive, and were marching across the desert toward their capital. Then, one night, every officer of consequence in the expeditionary force died, mysteriously. It was the work of the Inca in Gray.”
“Sounds to me like the work of an espionage agent,” Long Tom corrected.
Ace Jackson shook his head. “This Inca in Gray has done horrible things; murder, butcherings, things deliberately calculated to stir our nation into a frenzy. Our enemy, Delezon, would hardly do that. General Fernanez Vigo, commanding the enemy force, is a straight shooter, even if he is hell on wheels in a fight.”
Long Tom grunted. “I still say espionage.”
“I’ll give you another example,” Ace Jackson said. “There was——”
Entrancing Señorita Anita Carcetas interrupted.
“Let me give you the example of Señor Ace Jackson,” she said.
Ace Jackson scowled at his bandages. “I look like a swell example.”
The girl went on as if she had not been interrupted.
“Ace Jackson is commander of our Santa Amoza air force,” she explained. “He learned that a fever was sweeping a certain mountain tribe of natives. Serum was needed to save them. Ace Jackson volunteered to fly this serum to the spot to save these people.”
“Am I blushing,” Ace Jackson muttered.
“The Inca in Gray tried to kill Ace Jackson,” the girl finished. “Our enemy, General Vigo, would not have tried that. The fever epidemic is as much in his country as in ours.”
Long Tom shook his head. “This doesn’t sound reasonable.”
“I know it,” Ace Jackson growled.
“Just who is this Inca in Gray?” Long Tom demanded.
“Mystery,” Ace Jackson retorted. “Nobody knows. He is just a name that you hear whispered.”
Señorita Anita Carcetas looked at Long Tom, but spoke to Ace Jackson, saying, “Ace, you might tell Long Tom what we were talking about this morning.”
Long Tom interposed: “How did this Inca in Gray get you, Ace?”
“You know I never go up without going over my plane,” Ace Jackson said. “I did this time not ten minutes before taking off. But a wing came off just the same. My parachute had been tampered with. It split, but evidently not as much as they had hoped. I got broke up some.”
Long Tom nodded, “Now, what is this thing you were talking about?”
Ace Jackson opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. A door of the room had opened. A male nurse, the same one who had guided Long Tom, entered, carrying a glass of milk and some food on a tray. The nurse seemed very weary, as if he had worked long and hard hours. Perhaps that explained the small accident which now befell him. An accident innocent of itself, but one which was to have grisly consequences.
He stumbled. Milk and viands landed on Long Tom’s coat.
“Thousand pardons, señor,” the nurse gasped contritely, seizing a towel and mopping at the mess he had made. The towel did not help much.
“Forget it,” Long Tom said.
“No, no, señor, I will clean it,” the male nurse gasped. “Only a few moments will be required.”
Long Tom grinned and removed his coat.
“Sure, sure,” he smiled, “if it’ll make you happy.”
The nurse took the coat, still bubbling over with apologies—possibly the presence of the president’s daughter had helped unnerve him—and, backing to the door, used one hand behind him to open it. He stood there bowing again and again, half in the room and half out.
No one noticed that the arm over which he had draped Long Tom’s coat was extended into the corridor while the rest of his person was in the hospital room.
“I am so sorry, señor,” he told Long Tom again.
“Forget it,” Long Tom repeated. “Accidents happen.”
The nurse backed into the corridor and shut the door.
Señorita Anita Carcetas said: “Poor fellow, he is doubtless overworked.”
Long Tom asked Ace Jackson: “Now, what were you about to tell——”
A sound came from the corridor outside the door, an unpleasant sound, obviously a body falling. And there was one shriek, brief but hideous, in a man’s voice.
Long Tom swung to the door and wrenched it open. Señorita Anita Carcetas made a shrill sound, expressive of utter horror. Ace Jackson got out of his cot, could not stand, and slumped to the floor.
Long Tom looked up and down the corridor. No one was in sight. Then the electrical wizard bent over the body of the man on the hallway floor.
The man on the floor was on his back, dead, with his eyes open and a terrible agony reflected in their still depths. It was the nurse. Long Tom’s soiled coat was still draped over his arm.
But it was the dead man’s face that held Long Tom’s gaze. The face was gray, almost white. Long Tom looked more closely to ascertain what made the dead man’s face gray.
What looked like gray dust coated the fellow’s features.
Long Tom fanned with his hand close to the visage of the corpse and the gray stuff was stirred like dust in a little cloud.
“Get away from it!” Ace Jackson screamed.
