Читать книгу The Golden Peril: A Doc Savage Adventure - Harold A. Davis - Страница 8

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Doc Savage stood motionless, his eyes riveted on the message in his hand. Abruptly he turned, strode into the office.

Long Tom, his mushroom complexion a blank, followed him. Doc’s silence had indicated there was something peculiar about that message. What it was the bronze man had seen, Long Tom didn’t know. And he knew that he wouldn’t find out until Doc had proved himself right or wrong.

The bronze giant went quickly to the laboratory. First, he treated the message and the envelope with his own development of Flemming’s solution. He put it on an automatic drier and then dipped it in a square container of dye.

Long Tom knew Doc was using the most modern method of developing fingerprints. Prints undetectable under ordinary methods stood out like bold landmarks with this new treatment.

Doc placed the paper under an ultraviolet lamp. The body of the papers fluoresced with a brilliant, blue-green luminosity. Only two fingerprints were on it. They stood out stark and black.

“Those are mine,” the bronze man clipped. “There is no other print on either the envelope or the message. And the boy did not have any gloves.”

“Then——” Long Tom began.

“The message was switched.” Doc said flatly. “Whatever did happen to that gold shipment, someone is trying to keep us from finding out.”

Long Tom opened his mouth to speak. He stopped. A low whine and a swish of air told him that the private, high-speed elevator was soaring up from the basement garage.

No one but Doc and his aids were supposed to know the existence of that private lift. It could shoot upward, as if flung by a catapult, and dropped like a plummet. It took both experience and fortitude to ride in it at all.

No one else was supposed to know of it—but attacks on the bronze man and his aids came always from places least expected. Neither Doc nor Long Tom said a word.

They heard the automatic doors open. Then there was a crash of glass; a heavy body fell on the floor. Low, angry mutterings reached their ears; then there was silence. The only sound that came was a stealthy shuffling of footsteps.

Long Tom reached quickly into a desk drawer and took out a weapon that looked like an oversized pistol. It was equipped with a large ammo drum. It was one of Doc’s superfiring machine-pistols, twice as fast and deadlier than a machine-gun.

Doc Savage did not move a muscle. His bronze face was expressionless.

Slowly, Long Tom approached the door to the corridor. Then he stopped; his jaw dropped, and a look of supreme disgust spread over his face.

He saw the immense back of the closest thing to a gorilla that could come in human form. Long, red-tufted arms dangled almost to the floor. The huge human swayed from side to side. A nubbin of a head was almost completely sunk in the huge shoulders. More red, simian hair came out from the head and neck.

A baffled, childlike muttering came from the huge man as he backed up. In front of him, one hand raised behind him, the other extended confidently with a vicious-looking sword, was an immaculately clad and dapper figure. With a handkerchief peeking from his breast pocket at just the proper angle, a spotless, pearl-gray hat on his head, the man danced forward with the agility of a fencer.

In spite of his slender, foppish attire, he gave every indication that he was about to commit a highly pleasurable murder.

“I’ll tear that danged sword cane to pieces,” the hairy one complained, in a voice that would have better befitted an immature youth, “then I’ll tear you apart, you animated writ of hocus-pocus!”

“Try it, you hairy vacuum!” Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks advised the apelike one. “Destroy my choice presents, will you? I’ll run this through your gullet and hang you up on the wall!”

“Cut it!” Long Tom’s voice rapped out. “Things are happening.”

The apelike one turned around. It was odd to see a face like his look so plaintive. It was probably one of the homeliest faces in existence. His little eyes were nearly invisible, so deeply were they sunk in their pits of gristle.

This was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, probably one of the greatest living chemists in the world. He was a Houdini of the test tubes. His friends knew him as “Monk.” No other name would have been fitting.

“That danged shyster bought a statue of an ape and had my name engraved on it,” he complained. “Then he had the crust to make me a present of it. I smashed it right here. And I’m going to grind him into hamburger!”

Then Monk saw the body of the messenger boy. His expression changed. “Trouble,” he exclaimed. “Do you suppose——”

The dapper figure, better known as “Ham,” sheathed his sword cane with one quick motion. Together, they whirled and darted into the office.

Monk and Ham quarreled continually. No insult was quite enough for one to heap on the other. But either would have gladly given his life to save the other. And both would have died for Doc Savage.

Almost running, the two raced to the room where Doc Savage stood waiting for them. Monk breathed an inaudible sigh of relief at the sight of the bronze man.

Ham was less demonstrative. One of the shrewdest legal lights that ever came from Harvard, he was trained to hide his feelings.

Doc Savage smiled slightly. He had seen the tableau in the hallway from where he had stood inside. An intricate system of mirrors enabled him to watch almost every part of his domain from any other point, while hidden microphones enabled him to listen to the conversation.

“I am afraid great danger may be threatening Hidalgo,” he said softly.

A howl of rage and excitement burst from Monk. He fairly danced up and down.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go!” he bellowed plaintively.

“Still thinking of that good-looking princess down there?” Ham asked sarcastically.

Monk blushed.

“We all know that without Hidalgo we couldn’t carry on the work we’ve sworn to do,” Doc went on calmly. “And not only that, but we owe a debt to both the citizens of the republic and the Mayans to protect them from trouble.”

“Well, then——” Monk blinked.

“I have accepted another task,” Doc explained quietly.

For an instant there was silence. Yet that silence was indicative of the respect his aids held for their bronze chief. Their looks were not questioning. They waited merely for orders.

In crisp tones, Doc explained to Monk and Ham what had happened, what Baron Vardon had told them.

“I don’t like that guy’s looks,” Long Tom gulped. “Even if he is from the League of Nations, he looked phony to me. And he went out of here just before this messenger boy came in.”

Bristles seemed to rise on the back of Monk’s neck. The chemist even preferred fighting to annoying Ham. And that was saying a lot.

“Let’s go get him!” he howled. “Any guy that would kill a kid like that——” He waved his arms and started for the door. Doc’s low voice stopped him.

“We must know more than we do now before we throw suspicion on anyone,” he admonished. “But I think we had all better call on the baron. He may have seen someone in the hall as he left here and can give us a clue to the murderer.”

Swiftly, the four went toward the corridor. As they opened the door elevators stopped at the far end of the hallway. A group of blue-clad policemen poured out.

“We heard a guy had been killed!” bellowed one in a captain’s uniform. “What is it all about?”

Long Tom stepped forward, as if to explain. A bronze hand shot out, jerked him back.

“Look out! Duck for cover!” the bronze man cried.

His warning came just in time. For strange things were happening.

To Doc’s aids, the sudden arrival of an army of cops had not seemed suspicious. They had forgotten that no such force would be sent to investigate an ordinary murder. And they had forgotten, also, that the murder of the messenger boy had not been reported. No one knew of it except themselves—and the slayer.

The bronze man had not forgotten. His crisp order came just as the man in the captain’s uniform made a grab for an object in a coat pocket. One hand went back, came forward with an overhand motion. What he threw looked like a teargas bomb.

Long Tom had already darted back inside the door. Monk and Ham instinctively grabbed handkerchiefs to place over their noses as they, too, jumped back.

But the keen, flake gold eyes of Doc Savage had seen something the others had missed.

Protruding from the body of the thing speeding through the air toward them were rows of tiny spikes. Those spikes made the object look something like a prickly pear.

Every one of those tiny spikes were a plunger. Should any one of the scores of spikes on the side of that bomb touch even the slightest projection, the plunger would set off a thermite compound that would tear a score of men to tiny bits!

And now that bomb was almost upon them, spinning and turning. The fake cops were racing backward down the hallway, evil grins of anticipation on their faces.

Doc Savage stood feet apart, one hand in the air. The thumb and middle finger were separated. It looked as if he were trying to talk the deaf and dumb language. Then those two fingers snapped onto the whistling mob with a speed that defied detection.

The fingers closed between the tiny plungers!

But the body of the bomb was slippery; it had been greased just to prevent any such miraculous catching. Doc couldn’t hold it steady. Already, it was slipping. If he reached with his other hand he would be sure to snap a spike, explode it in his fists.

So the bronze man did the only other thing he could do. He yelled a warning, hurled it from him, straight back where it had come from.

The phony cops had paused at the end of the hallway. They had stood rooted to watch the culmination of their evil work. But they didn’t stand there after Doc let out that yell.

Scrambling, screaming, falling over each other in their frantic desire to get away, they poured down the stairs.

Then the thermite bomb landed. There was a blinding flash, a searing heat and a detonation that knocked Doc and his three aids flat on the ground.

Masonry had been torn from the floor and from the sides of the hallway. The entrance to the stairs was blocked. From far down those stairs yells could still be heard, as the fake cops raced for safety like they had never run before.

Doc picked himself up and looked at his aids. They were bruised a bit, but otherwise unhurt.

“The real police will now be here shortly. Stay here and explain to them,” Doc instructed Long Tom. “Monk and Ham will come with me.”

With swift strides, the bronze man led the way to his private, high-speed elevator.

The Hotel Royale, where Baron Vardon was stopping, was one of the more pretentious of Manhattan’s hostelries. It ran more to the ornate than suited the average visitor, but it was always filled.

Monk and Ham automatically dropped back a few paces and separated as they strode through the lobby. That was a matter of habit, a practiced system. If trouble occurred, they were less vulnerable, more ready for effective action than if they were packed together.

Monk and Ham scrutinized faces closely, mentally catalogued types, ran experienced eyes up and down figures for suspicious bulges in their clothing.

Two men stood together at one side, hands thrust into their pockets. One spoke out of a corner of his mouth to the other. Both looked hard at Doc and his aids.

At the desk, a seedy, long-haired man argued violently with the hotel clerk. His shiny frock coat was green with age. Under an arm, he held a battered violin case. In a foreign accent that somehow sounded counterfeit, he loudly insisted that there must be some mail for him.

It seemed to Ham that the two shifty-eyed men in the corner glanced at him and at the violin case. But Ham couldn’t be sure. It might be his imagination.

Doc had the baron’s suite number. He didn’t bother with the clerk, but went straight to the elevator.

“Twelve,” he clipped. The lift rose.

Baron Vardon’s suite was 1208. Doc Savage knocked softly on the door. There was no reply. He knocked again. The door yielded under the slight vibration.

Monk’s bulgy muscles swelled under his coat. Ham swung his sword cane swiftly. Doc opened the door wide.

A dim table-lamp gave the only light. Curtains in the room had been drawn. But that table-lamp was sufficient.

Directly before them, on the floor, were a pair of expensively shod feet. Above the feet came well-creased trousers and a dinner jacket, then the face of Baron Vardon.

The diplomat was twisted in an unnatural position on his back. His lips were contorted into a grimace of horror.

But it was the neck that held the attention of the three who had walked into the room.

Upon that neck was the red outline of a hand. It seemed to be growing brighter every instant.

“The hand of death!” Ham gasped. “It has struck again!”