Читать книгу The Golden Peril: A Doc Savage Adventure - Harold A. Davis - Страница 9
ОглавлениеINTO A TRAP
Doc stepped quickly past the body on the floor, leaped to a door at one side of the room. He flung it open and found only an empty bathroom. He looked at the room’s one large window, pulled back the shades.
Outside was a narrow airshaft court, scarcely twenty feet square. Another door gave onto the bedroom of the suite. Apparently no one was there.
Monk waddled about the room like some huge anthropoid, sniffing on a trail. The hairy man’s eyes lighted on a great wardrobe trunk in one corner of the room. It was a bigger trunk than he had ever seen before. He moved toward it.
And the trunk erupted!
From a horizontal slit near the top of the trunk, a long, thin muzzle was jabbed. It swept the entire room.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!
The machine-gun roared in a staccato crescendo of death; .45 caliber slugs sliced through the room like a solid metal knife, just above waist height.
That terrific blast should have killed everyone in the room. It didn’t. The killer within the trunk thought at first he was dreaming. That dream slowly turned into an awful nightmare.
Growling, long arms outstretched, Monk walked straight into the hail of lead like an avenging Juggernaut. Fingers that could bend a silver dollar double gripped the edges of the trunk. The muzzle of the gun swung squarely toward his stomach.
With a bellow of rage, Monk tore the top of the trunk open. A mean, ratty face was there. But there was a horror and disbelief on it, now. The killer forgot all about his Tommy gun. Here was a man who absorbed Tommy slugs as casually as he would take a shower!
The killer screamed, leaped from his little fortress. Red eyes darted back and forth. Doc and Ham were between him and the door. Monk took one step forward, a look on his face that would have made a tiger shrink.
The thug’s voice ended in a gurgle. He ran blindly, crashed into a window. The sill struck him just above the knees. Before he could stop he had soared on out into space. A cry that was scarcely human came from his lips. That cry ended abruptly as he hit the bottom of the airshaft, twelve stories below.
There was a moment of silence. Then a low, grating voice broke in.
“I will shoot for the head, my friends,” it said. “I know you wear union suits of chain metal that will defy machine-gun slugs. But the bones in your head are not that strong.”
The three men whirled. There in the doorway crouched the musical-appearing fellow who had been shouting for his mail in the lobby downstairs.
There was no artistic expression on his face now. The wig of long hair was pushed askew on his forehead. A mirthless grin was on his face. A businesslike machine-gun had emerged from the violin case.
That gun swung up, head high; a grimy finger tightened on the trigger.
And then Doc Savage moved. He moved like chain lightning. Like a bronze flash he dived across the room. His arms swept out.
The bronze man had been too far away to try and nail the gunner. He didn’t try. His arms scooped up Ham and Monk, lifted each as if they were little children. In the same fraction of an instant he swung, head low, head away from the killer.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!
Slugs bounced off Doc’s back as he covered the length of the room in two quick leaps. Crouched, holding his aids so their heads were out of the direct line of fire, he was safe for the moment from the deadly bullets.
But the room was small. It was an easy matter for the killer to maneuver into a better firing position.
And he did. But it didn’t do him any good.
Without slackening his stride, his two aids held firmly, Doc Savage leaped through the window. On the concrete, far below them, lay the crushed body of the first killer.
The homely face of Monk wore an expression of blissful unconcern as he felt himself catapulted into the airshaft. Ham, likewise looked as if he were thinking about some abstruse point of law that he might argue before the Supreme Court. Both of Doc’s hands were occupied holding Monk and Ham. He doubled up like a contortionist in the air. His teeth closed on a tiny button on his vest. Then his head snapped erect. There was a swish, a sudden tugging, and their plunging drop was checked to a gentle fall.
Monk looked up above them critically. It was the first time he had seen this experiment. He had often thought of the possibilities of a special parachute built for an airshaft. There was no reason, he had figured, why one of the proper size and shape couldn’t be just as effective in a short drop as the plunger in a pump. There was little space for the fugitive air to escape.
But Monk had only thought about such a parachute. It had remained for Doc Savage to construct one.
They drifted gently to the bottom. The gangster up above could have shot them during the last few seconds of the fall. But when he first looked out the window, he was too amazed to move. By the time he poked his gun over the sill, there was nothing but an expanse of silk for a target.
Doc and his aids on arriving at the bottom dived through a doorway into the cellar of the hotel.
“That parachute was good, but I don’t think you gave it a real test, Doc,” Monk argued as they reached the street.
“What do you mean?” Ham asked suspiciously.
“Why your head is so full of hot air, we could ’a’ floated down, just hanging on to you,” Monk chuckled gleefully.
Ham whirled, waved his sword cane angrily. “We shouldn’t have taken you, anyway!” he yelped. “An ape like you should have been made to climb down!”
Monk chuckled. Things were back to normal. He became serious. “That seems to wash up Long Tom’s theory that the baron was in on this,” he grunted. “That is, unless he was double-crossed.”
“We still must do what the baron asked,” Doc Savage said quietly. “I gave my promise. You and Ham go to the hangar. Fuel the plane for a three thousand mile non-stop flight. I need several things from the office, and will bring Long Tom.”
“We head for Switzerland?” Ham asked.
“We take the danger trail,” the bronze man promised.
If Doc could have seen the electrical wizard right then, he would have realized that danger had already arrived for Long Tom.
Behind the impersonal, mushroom-complexioned face of Long Tom, was hidden real sympathy for those in need. That sympathy had gotten him into trouble before. But he couldn’t help being the soul of generosity. He could never resist the plaintive pleading of beggars.
If some one had knocked on the door of the office laboratory, he might have been suspicious. But Long Tom was standing in the hallway just after the coroner’s men had taken away the body of the dead messenger boy.
An aged and infirm step came down the stairs that led from the observation tower of the skyscraper. That was not unusual. It was one way that peddlers could get down through the building and canvass the offices.
The man was white-haired. His face was pinched and drawn, as if life had dealt harshly with him. He might have had a family to support, and selling pencils is not usually considered a quick way to riches.
The pencils were in a square box. Around them was a band blazoning a well-known make.
“Please, mister,” the ancient said haltingly, “couldn’t you use a few pencils?”
Long Tom hesitated, thrust his hand into a pocket. Then he remembered his wallet was in his coat pocket back in the office. He didn’t have any change.
“Just a minute,” he said, and opened the door.
It was only two steps to where his coat was hanging. Long Tom was a little surprised to see that the man had followed him in. But there was still that apologetic, suppliant look on his face. Long Tom reached out to take some of the pencils.
Pfffft!
A hissing sound came from a dozen little nozzles. Every pencil was a tiny hose from which came a jet of teargas. Long Tom staggered back, blinded. Too late he realized he had been tricked.
The bent old man straightened. Sharp orders tumbled from his lips. There was a rush of feet from outside. A dozen dark figures swarmed through the door.
Long Tom, blinded though he was, plunged forward. The men quickly understood that his unhealthy appearance was no catalogue of his fighting ability. Three men went down, moaned on the floor.
But twelve against one are too many, particularly when that one cannot see. Long Tom’s sight was slowly returning, but even that wasn’t enough.
He flung two foes from him, staggered back. Four more gangsters bored in. The electrical wizard was driven back against a wall. Then a mighty fist sent him sagging to the floor. He landed on his back, hands outstretched. One slammed against the desk’s baseboard.
Groggy and helpless, he was bound hand and foot and gagged.
The phone jangled sharply.
The white-haired man who was no longer old seized it. At first he imitated Long Tom’s voice. It was a surprisingly good imitation. Then his voice dropped back to normal.
“O. K.,” he rapped. “He’s got away with a lot of things. I don’t see how he got out of the hotel. But he can’t get out of this trap. We’ll fill him so full of lead they can use him for an anchor.”
The man clicked the receiver back on the hook and turned to the gangsters.
“The bronze man is in the elevator,” he rasped. “Go to the stations appointed. Shoot for the head only!”
There came the sound of the high-speed elevator. Its meteoric ascension forced air whistling through the cracks of the door.
The elevator outside clicked to a stop. The automatic doors opened. Footsteps came toward the door. The white-haired leader glanced quickly at Long Tom, smiled in satisfaction.
Long Tom’s expression showed he had recognized that tread.
The footsteps reached the door. Guns were pointing that way from all directions.
The door swung open. Long Tom held his breath. The white-haired man stopped smiling.
For the footsteps walked right into the center of the room. But no one was there!
Hair rose on the necks of the gangsters. Eyes seemed almost to pop from their heads. Some moistened dry lips. Others could only gape stupidly.
And the sounds went on!
The chair behind Doc’s huge desk scraped back. There was a sighing, as if a huge bulk had dropped into the soft leather cushion. The seat of the chair sank.
Sweat was pouring now from a dozen faces. One gangster whipped a little paper from a pocket, sniffed the powdered contents up his nostrils. But the drug didn’t seem to have any effect. He was still scared to death.
The white-haired man broke the spell with an effort. “Shoot, you idiots!” he screamed. “Shoot at that chair!”
The roaring of the guns sounded like a stepped-up Niagara. Acrid smoke filled the air. The chair behind the desk seemed to disintegrate. Lead literally tore it apart.
The silence that followed that burst of firing was like that in a courtroom following a verdict of death. Long Tom lay wide-eyed and motionless.
Then there was a low cough. It came from right above the shattered chair!
Then a memo pad on the big desk was riffled back.
“Long Tom,” came Doc’s voice from the chair, “when these persons have gone, I would like to talk to you about our plans.”
The gangsters stood frozen. If they had been frightened before, now they were actually oozing fear. Their features were chalk-white, their entire bodies shaking.
Through the door to the library came the shrill voice of Monk.
“You danged shyster!” he shouted. “As soon as we clean out this nest of gangsters, I’m going to take you apart, injunction by injunction!”
“Ha!” Ham’s voice came sarcastically. “You’re not any tougher than those twelve babies out there.”
Two pairs of footsteps clattered into the room. But no one was visible.
One of the coke-fiend gangsters let out a scream.
“I’ve got ’em, I’ve got ’em!” he yelled. “Lemme go! I’m goin’ straight to Bellevue!”
He dropped his Tommy gun and dived toward the door. It was the signal for a stampede. Overtensed nerves could stand no more. Rat-faced figures fought each other to get to the hallway, the white-haired leader among them. In the space of seconds, the office was cleared.
Then the elevator doors opened again. Doc Savage stepped out.
