Читать книгу The Majii: A Doc Savage Adventure - J. Allan Dunn - Страница 9

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The afternoon of the day following, two men were bending over the Ranee. One was small, gray, wearing all-white clothes. The other was a lumpish man with a kindly, doggish face.

The woman lay in a rather bare room, spotlessly clean, all remarkably white in color. Her bed was high off the floor. She pitched from time to time.

The men seemed to be administering stimulants in an endeavor to make her speak. They bent forward as the woman made some vocal noises.

“Doc Savage.” Only the two words were distinguishable, and a moment later, she said them again, “Doc Savage.”

The small grayish man straightened.

“You have sent for him?” he asked the other.

The plump man nodded. “By telephone. He is on his way.”

They exchanged nods, and when the woman did not speak again, they drew aside, as if it were possible for their voices to disturb her.

“It is strange, this case,” one said.

The other grunted. “She’s calling for the right fellow to find out what is really wrong with her.”

The small grayish man smiled at his companion. “You had a part in his education, did you not?”

The plump man nodded. He was head of the institution, one of the largest hospitals devoted to psychiatric work in the city, possibly the world.

“Doc Savage studied under me,” he admitted. “But that was years ago. The man has far outstripped me—outstripped any one I know, for that matter. He is a mental wizard.”

An orderly appeared with word, “Doc Savage has arrived.”

“Ever seen him?” the plump man asked the grayish one.

“No.”

“Get set for a surprise then. He is one man who looks his part.”

The man who entered the room shortly afterward seemed of gigantic size when he was in the door, but there was the remarkable illusion of growing smaller as he advanced.

This was due to the symmetry of a remarkable muscular development, an even construction which seemed to make him a man of ordinary size until he was near an object to which his stature might be compared.

Even more unusual was the man’s skin, finely textured and of a bronze color. His eyes ran a close third in the summary of his unique characteristics—they were like pools of flake gold, never still.

He was a man who by his appearance alone would stand out instantly in a multitude. Yet his clothing was quiet, showing not the slightest suspicion of showmanship.

“There is something wrong?” asked the newcomer in a voice of warmth and modulation.

“This woman, Doctor Savage.” The plump man pointed. “She has spoken your name a few times.”

Both the lumpish man and the small gray man launched into a detailed account of their observations of the case. The woman had been brought in the night before from Temple Nava, where she had collapsed in the middle of a tirade against the mysterious Rama Tura, who was getting columns of newspaper publicity by making diamonds out of less-valuable things.

The woman had at first been thought to suffer from an ordinary fainting spell, but then it had been discovered that she did not respond to the usual reactions and stimulants.

“There seems to be nothing organically wrong,” the lumpish man explained. “To tell the truth, it has me baffled.”

From that point, the discussion went entirely technical, entering terminology which would have been utterly Greek to an unversed listener.

“I will examine her,” Doc Savage said.

Exactly one hour and twenty-eight minutes later, he was finishing a microscopic analysis of spinal fluid, doing the work in the finely equipped laboratory which was a part of the hospital.

The bronze man had as observers some half a dozen men, specialists in that line, who were seizing an opportunity to observe a master at work.

Completing his own examination, Doc Savage permitted each of the spectators to scrutinize the extraction.

“You have seen this and the other tests,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

“Practically normal,” one said.

“Exactly,” the bronze man agreed. “According to all conventional tests, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the woman.”

One began, “Her heart and respiration—”

“Symptoms,” Doc told him. “She breathes slowly because she is not moving, and her heart beat is accelerated a trifle due to her mental state.”

“Then you think——”

“Her trouble is entirely mental,” Doc said. “At least, the seat of it is in her brain.”

“A mental disorder——”

“Not in the conventional sense,” Doc replied. “Our tests would have shown that. It is something else.”

The bronze man moved away from the microscope.

“This woman was brought from Temple Nava, I understand,” he said. “She repeated my name, so I was called. Is that right.”

“Correct,” he was told.

“Has any one tried to see her?”

“No one.”

“I see.”

A moment later, a small sound became audible, a low, mellow trilling, the pulsations of which ran eerily up and down the musical scale and seemed to come from no definite spot.

Some of those present showed surprise. They did not know that this was the sound of Doc Savage, a small unconscious thing which he did in moments of mental stress.

“You have some thought?” asked one who had heard the sound before—it was the lumpish man—and knew what it meant.

“I have,” the bronze man admitted. “It is rather fantastic, but it is possible.”

“Do you mind explaining?” he was asked.

“The thing is hardly in keeping with medical theory,” the bronze man said slowly. “It is only a theory, a rather wild one, based on studies which I once made in the Orient. If it is true, it is a thing rather hideous to contemplate.”

The listeners looked disappointed.

“We will examine the woman again,” Doc said.

They went into the remarkably white bedroom which had held the woman.

The male interne who had been attending the patient lay on the floor. It was plain to be seen that he had been knocked over the head.

The woman was gone.

It was nearly nightfall when Doc Savage crossed the ornate modernistic lobby of the skyscraper which housed his New York headquarters and entered, through what appeared to be a section of wall panel, his private elevator.

The conveyance lifted him with terrific speed for a time, then stopped so abruptly that the bronze man continued upward a few inches, then dropped back to the floor. He stepped out on the eighty-sixth floor, and approached a plain door which bore, in small bronze lettering:

CLARK SAVAGE, JR.

Before Doc Savage reached the door, it opened without visible aid—a mechanical phenomenon which was accomplished through the medium of radioactive discs in his pocket and a sensitive electroscope connected to relays.

The opening of the door let out sounds that resembled a miniature riot.

“You’ll eat the rest of that apple, or I’ll skin you alive!” labored a squeaky, enraged voice.

Chairs upset. Blows whacked. There were gasps, grunts, much puffing.

Doc walked in.

The combatants were circling each other warily. Each had done some damage on the other. This might have seemed strange, in view of the fact that one was slender, lean of waist, while the other was a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound colossus who might conceivably be mistaken for a bull ape.

The slender man was “Ham,” sometimes designated as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, cleverest lawyer and snappiest dresser ever turned out by Harvard.

The human ape was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, world-famed industrial chemist, better known as “Monk.”

These two were members of a group of five remarkable men who had long been associated with Doc Savage in his remarkable career of helping those in trouble and righting wrongs.

To all appearances, Monk and Ham were going through one of the more violent stages of their eternal quarrel. No one could recall one having spoken a civil word to the other, but it was only occasionally that they came to blows.

“What now?” Doc Savage asked in a tone which showed no particular interest.

“This shyster!” Monk jerked a thumb at Ham. “He tried to feed Habeas another one of them apples filled with pepper.”

“I’ll break Habeas of robbing my coat pockets!” Ham gritted.

“You’ll eat the apple yourself!” Monk assured him.

Habeas Corpus, object of the melee, was under a chair, long snout and enormous ears protruding. Habeas’s ears were so huge that it was doubtful if he could have gotten them under the chair without difficulty. Habeas was Monk’s pet pig.

Doc Savage said, “Would a little excitement interest you fellows?”

The abruptness with which Monk and Ham put aside their private quarrel was a give-away. Their scrapping was nothing more than a habitual amusement, even if it did seem that they often earnestly endeavored to murder each other.

Doc Savage explained about the woman in the hospital, repeating exactly what he had been told.

“It is strange,” Monk muttered when the bronze man finished.

“It is,” Doc agreed, “more than that. Some one did something to that woman, did something horrible. Perhaps it was done to shut her mouth. It might conceivably be done to kill her.”

“What was it?” Monk asked. Monk had a small, childlike voice which sounded ridiculous for a being of such homely bulk.

“Rather not say yet,” Doc told him. “In fact, it is doubtful if my explanation could be put clearly enough for you to exactly agree that the thing I think happened is possible.”

“Um,” said Monk.

Ham murmured. “I gather we are going to mix in this affair?”

“We are,” Doc told him. “Did you notice, until last night, various strange-looking brown men were loitering in the streets about this building?”

“Huh?” Monk exploded.

“They were,” Doc said. “I watched them for some time, secretly, but there was nothing to show that they were observing us. They disappeared last night, about an hour after the time this woman was stricken at the gem-making seance of the mysterious Rama Tura.”

Ham went over to the massive inlaid table which was a part of the reception room furniture, and picked up an innocent-looking black cane. He separated this near the handle sufficiently to show that it was in reality a sword cane.

“Brown men,” he said. “From the newspaper accounts, this Rama Tura is also a brown man.”

“Exactly,” Doc agreed.

“It begins to smell like a shenanigan of some kind,” Monk said, small-voiced.

Monk came near not getting into Rama Tura’s Temple Nava jewel-making seance that night, simply because he had garbed himself, largely to disgust Ham, as disreputably as he could.

His suit was a horrible, baggy-checkered thing which had been faded and burned by laboratory chemicals during the course of his experiments. He had not shaved.

They had secured entrance cards indirectly, through wealthy persons whom Doc Savage knew. Monk argued. Finally, he was admitted.

Ham had no trouble whatever. Ham was his usual sartorial perfection. He wore full dress, and more than one man with an eye for dress eyed him enviously. He carried his plain black sword cane.

They waited with the crowd at the elevators, and neither glanced through the door. Had they done so, they might have seen Doc Savage in the crowd of curious who were not being admitted.

The bronze man did not stand out from the crowd in his usual fashion. He wore a light, enveloping topcoat, a snap brim hat and spectacles. He walked with a stoop. There was not enough light to show the bronze color of his skin.

Doc moved away from the vicinity, and shortly afterward, was probing into the back of a large, plain roadster. When he left the machine, he had secured a metal box larger than a suitcase.

He went to the rear of the building which housed Temple Nava. As he expected, it had a freight entrance, which was deserted at this hour. The job of picking the ponderous lock delayed him some little time.

He closed the door carefully behind him, still carrying his metal case, and one of the freight elevators carried him up to Temple Nava. He operated the controls himself.

The freight elevator admitted Doc into a rough corridor, which in turn gave into Temple Nava. There was a guard at the door, a lean, swart man of Jondore.

He was standing where he could not see the freight elevators, and there was so much noise in Temple Nava—the jabbering of the crowd—that he had not heard the cage arrive.

Doc Savage moved through the darkness until he stood close to the look-out. Then Doc set his throat and chest muscles carefully. He had practiced ventriloquism until he was fairly adept. He also spoke the language of Jondore, which was a rather common one in the Orient.

The look-out seemed quite surprised when a guttural voice from inside the temple seemed to call, “You at the back door—over here a moment.”

The guard walked away in obedience to the summons. Doc ducked inside. When the guard returned, looking baffled, Doc Savage was on the stage which stood at one end of the temple, but which Rama Tura was not using for his present purpose. The stage was dark, deserted, with the curtains down.

Doc Savage climbed with his metal box. A few minutes later he was high off the floor, crouched precariously, cutting a round hole in the curtain.

He had tied the metal box to the perch with a stout cord, and now he opened it and drew out a small cinema camera which differed from other cameras in that it had a lens of several times the usual size.

Doc suspended this in front of the hole, lashing it there. It made almost no noise when he started it. The film magazines were very large, and would run more than an hour, taking pictures through a lens so fast that it would function in light little stronger than that given off by a candle.

Doc next cut a peephole for his own eye.

Rama Tura was just beginning the discourse that preceded his performance, using the same trend of statements, if not the same words that he had employed the previous night.

Monk and Ham—Monk had managed that—occupied adjacent seats. As was to be expected, Rama Tura’s line of talk did not register on Ham. It struck him as little better than the sales patter of a street-corner astrologer. Ham curled a lip.

“It seems to appeal to the rest of these stuffed shirts,” Monk told him in a stage whisper. “You oughta like it.”

Ham brought a foot down sharply on Monk’s instep. Ordinarily, Monk would have suffered in silence. This time he did not. He let out a bawl of pain that caused at least a dozen people to jump out of their comfortable chairs.

Immediately, two turbaned men of Jondore approached Monk, wearing disapproving frowns.

“Gonna try to throw me out,” Monk surmised.

“Hope they do,” Ham replied grimly.

But the two men of Jondore only took up a position near Monk and Ham and stood there.

Rama Tura went on with his monologue. The white lights in the place had been switched off and red ones turned on, lending a more weird atmosphere.

Rama Tura was not quite on the point of calling for imitation gems to turn into genuine stones when there was a commotion across the temple.

Four men of Jondore, turbaned, appeared, bearing a stretcher on which was a form swathed in a cloth which looked like a piece of the temple drapery. The stretcher was carried toward the exit.

“A thousand pardons,” intoned Rama Tura. “It is merely one who has fainted and will be taken to a hospital.”

Monk gripped Ham’s arm, breathed, “Hey! They carried that from back toward the stage! Doc was back there.”

“We had better look into it,” Ham said grimly.

They craned their necks—and saw something. A naked male elbow was partially visible under the drapery that covered the form on the stretcher. The skin of this elbow had a pronounced bronze tint.

“Doc!” Monk gulped.

Both the homely chemist and the dapper lawyer arose and moved toward the door. They kept hands close to their armpits, where nestled little machine pistols which were charged with so-called “mercy” bullets, slugs which produced quick unconsciousness without making more than minor wounds.

They were not molested. They shoved into the elevator into which the stretcher had been taken. Other than themselves and the form on the stretcher, there were only the four men of Jondore.

Monk hauled out his machine pistol and waved it carelessly.

“Get ’em up!” he told the men of Jondore.

They glared at him. But they lifted their hands.

Ham closed the elevator door, operated the controls so that the cage sank several floors, then stopped it.

“Now we’ll see what has happened to Doc,” he said grimly.

He whipped back the drapery.

The man on the stretcher was not Doc Savage, but a lean-faced, wolfish Jondorean, and he held in either hand a water pistol of the ordinary dime store variety.

The instant he was uncovered, he pointed one water pistol at Ham, the other at Monk, and tightened down the triggers.

Hissing streams of some pungent, burning liquid hit Monk and Ham in the face, splattered, vaporized. Too late, they jumped backward. The stuff had blinded them agonizingly.

Monk tried to use his machine pistol. It made an unearthly bullfiddle roar. But Monk was unable to see a target, and the slugs went wild. Then Monk fell down, groveling, as consciousness went from him, and Ham did the same thing a moment later.

One of the men of Jondore said dryly, in his own tongue, “it was said to us that they were foxes, but they are indeed but puppies with pointed ears.”

Monk’s finger, tightening by some unconscious reflex, caused his machine pistol to moan briefly, after which Monk became quite still.