Читать книгу Murder Melody - Kenneth Robeson - Страница 5

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FROM behind a small flat island the twin motors of an amphibian plane burst into the dawn. However, the word dawn in this case was a clear misnomer.

Dawn might have been arriving to the eastward, northward or southward. But in the bowl of Burrard Inlet under the barrier of the ragged mountains to the north of Vancouver harbor, there was no change from the blackness of the night.

As a matter of fact, with the approach of daylight time, the murk over the harbor thickened. It had settled into a combination of thick ocean mist and thicker bituminous coal smoke.

London boasts some of its famous fogs are dense enough to be cut with a knife. Vancouver is the one city on the North American continent where a similar condition often prevails.

At times, the mingling of mist and smoke is so opaque and dirty, it has been termed by the inhabitants a "smog." This smog obliterates every object at the distance of a few feet.

So it was on the early morning following the mysterious earthquakes. The curtain blanketed all of the inner harbor. It spread its greasy denseness through The Narrows and far out over the Bay of Georgia.

Whistles of ferries hooted their warnings. Moving ocean vessels boomed with menace. Bells clanged in many tones aboard anchored ships.

At the regular municipal airport, the early morning passenger planes were cancelled. The hardiest pilots had no desire to tempt fate by trying to feel their way out over the encircling mountains.

Doc Savage was not held by any such timidity. He was making ready to lift his streamlined amphibian from the hidden bay behind the island where he had landed the previous evening. This choice of anchorage had kept him free from the annoying queries of newspapermen. He was free for a few hours from registering with the Provincial authorities and detailing the purpose of his visit.

Doc could not yet have explained his purpose. The startling events of the past few hours had not made it any clearer.

"I don't quite see how we're going to land anywhere near the Canadian-Pacific wharf," observed Johnny, as the plane skimmed around the shadowy island and gathered speed.

"Perhaps it will not be necessary," advised Doc. "It is possible we shall find what we are seeking while in the air. When we get up, Johnny, keep the lantern turned on."

"You think then we may find the body up there, Doc?"

"If I have judged the air currents correctly, this southwest wind creates a whirl and a dead spot this side of the mountains," said Doc. "We probably will find it comparatively calm at only about a thousand feet."

A FEW minutes later, the bronze man's judgment was justified. Banking over the bay, flying solely by special radio amplified sound-finder, the streamlined amphibian had ceased pitching. Doc held the plane at this height. The sound-finder gave back the echo of their own vibrating motors from the mountains surrounding them.

From the city airport came occasional reports:

"All pilots use emergencies--Nanaimo field clear--we have no ceiling here--warning--no ceiling."

Which was sufficient assurance no other plane would be playing about over Vancouver harbor this morning. Yet their amphibian had been in the air less than five minutes when Doc's keen ears picked up a distinct and peculiar vibration.

This was not the definite sound of an airplane's motor. Rather there came an intermittent interference with their radio directional finder. This cut into the sound amplifier until even Doc became unsure of his distances from the mountains.

At the same time the compasses and altimeter were visibly affected. Compass needles took on a peculiar tendency to wander off at impossible tangents.

Had Doc Savage been any less than the amazing flier he was, the amphibian might have plunged into the high promontory above The Narrows or into the sheer mountains across Burrard Inlet. The gyro compass was off by many points.

Faults in the instruments extended to the motors. Each of the roaring twins took turns in coughing protest. Doc's quick sense for the unusual traced the trouble instantly. The gas lines were clear. The failure was in the ignition system.

Several times, the amphibian swooped down. It dived dangerously close to the surface of the harbor. Here the smog was the densest.

The bronze man moved a lever. This operated two special walls. These were slatted much the same as the heating shutters on an automobile engine. With the walls closed, the motors settled down to a steady rhythm. These walls completely insulated the engines.

The cabin was as nearly soundproof as any plane could be made. Doc's usual quiet voice carried distinctly.

"We are combating something like Hertzian waves," he said to Johnny, who was sitting beside him. "We may be accidentally in the path of some powerful magnetic ray, but I am inclined to believe the interference is intentional."

"Then this message about the Canadian-Pacific wharf must be a trap," commented Johnny. "You've never seen this woman who seems to be called Lanta. Perhaps she is only the tool of some powerful organization that has set out to get you, Doc."

Doc slowly shook his head, saying nothing audibly. His knowledge of character as evinced in writing had never failed. He was convinced the writer of the golden message calling him to the Pacific coast had been sincere.

The melody murder in Stanley Park indicated opposing forces. The dead messenger who had been loyal to the last gasp represented one of these forces. It was clear he had been loyal to Lanta.

Johnny was grasping a contrivance which resembled an old time magic lantern. This had a round projector with a switch on the side. It was this device Doc had referred to as the "lantern."

Johnny moved the switch and played it from side to side. He could have held it immovable and covered much territory with the swinging of the amphibian plane. His effort might have appeared to be useless.

No light proceeded from the lantern lens. Yet there was one of the most powerful rays known to science sweeping the smoggy space all about the plane. This was an ultraviolet light. Because of its invisibility it was known as "black light."

Doc held the plane in rising and descending spirals in what he knew to be the area of slowly whirling dead air under the mountains. For a time nothing appeared. Then the three men saw what they had been seeking.

"Gosh!" gasped Monk in an awed voice which indicated the furry hair with which his body was covered must be rising on end. "Lookit! There's the dead man!"

"I had hoped we would be able to trace it," stated Doc.

MONK could well be excused for his feeling of awe. The black light lantern had revealed what appeared to be a flying green ghost. Only the apparition had no movement of its own. Rather the inert form of the corpse floated slowly past the plane, with its arms and legs projecting with grotesque stiffness.

Rigor mortis had set in. Every feature and contour of the dead man glowed with vivid green. This was the effect of the ultra-violet ray from Johnny's lantern. The black light had the quality of thus creating fluorescent reaction on certain chemicals. These chemical combinations were to be found in common Vaseline or aspirin. It was used by Doc Savage in two chief forms.

One of these was a chalk with which his men could write invisibly. Only the black light would bring out such writing. The other form was the grayish vapor with which he had bathed the corpse on the bench in Stanley Park.

These chemical particles now adhered to the floating dead man. Johnny's lantern revealed this, even in the smog, while the body was close.

"Well I'll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny. "Now that we see it, what can we do about it, Doc?"

The bronze man smiled a little.

"It being obvious we have no means of picking it out of the air, we'll continue to watch it as far as possible," he advised. "I judge there are those who will be interested in removing the corpse. It would create much speculation and inquiry if it happened to be still floating around when this murk clears up."

Though Doc had a wizard's hands on the controls, keeping the corpse within the black light was difficult. They lost view of it several times. The fourth time it floated slowly past the circling plane, the southwest wind stiffened over the harbor.

Immediately the smog began lifting. The rising sun displayed its warming rays. These produced some surface vision across Burrard Inlet. The calm water of the harbor smoked with dissipating mist. Hooting ferries and booming ocean vessels could be seen.

All boats were moving at slow speed. Squat, awkward ferries with double-end propellers were crossing between North Vancouver, a popular residence suburb, and the business city of Vancouver.

"Something's wrong down there besides the fog," announced Johnny. "Those ferries are apparently having trouble with their steering apparatus."

"Yeah," chimed in Monk. "Looks like a couple of them got stuck in the mud."

"The depth of Burrard Inlet varies from one hundred to three hundred feet," said Doc. "It has an all rock bottom. They are having engine trouble."

THE whistles of the ferries hooted wildly. They seemed like human voices in a panic. Doc and his men could see clearly down along a strip covering the dangerous Narrows. The southwest wind blowing against a swiftly ebbing tide was piling up high white waves in the bottle-neck.

A small ferry propelled by gasoline motors was floundering in the rough water of The Narrows. Its motors had stopped. As Doc and his men glimpsed it, the small craft was caught in the suck of the vicious tide rip. Bobbing like a cork, it danced out toward the Bay of Georgia.

Far out in English Bay, beyond the other watery expanse, the hoarse, booming whistles of laboring freighters were sounding.

Doc lifted the amphibian again into the higher smog. The space all around was filled with trembling vibration. It might have been another plane, but none appeared. Doc reached over and clicked a switch.

This switch was on what seemed to be an elongated black box with a window of dark glass. Blurred figures appeared instantly in this darkened square. The bronze man increased the power of the light.

This device was Doc's special television receiver. It was capable of picking up the scene where any televisor, or vision broadcaster, might be in operation. The man of bronze had made a quick deduction.

If the strange force now opposing him was so far advanced as to have conquered magnetic and gravitational elements, then television must also be present. His theory was instantly confirmed. It was an amazing scene which leaped into the television receiver.

This receiver was operated on a cathode ray tube which reproduced a surface similar to the retina of the human eye.

The scene which for seconds held Johnny and Monk speechless, was accompanied by a liquid voice. In the center of the glass appeared the slim figure of a girl. She was of average size, but the perfection of her form and the fitting of her clinging garments gave her the appearance of a miniature woman.

The face was delicately patrician. Her nose was small and straight. Even in the television, the skin had an alabaster texture. Widely spaced eyes seemed to be appealing to the men in Doc's plane.

"Howlin' calamities!" shrilled Monk. "It's a girl an' she can see us!"

Certainly it was indicated the girl was either staring at them, or some freakish force of television made it appear that way. The girl's eyes were large. The pupils were round and black.

At the instant she appeared the girl's lips moved in speech:

"Clark Savage, look out for the Zoromen. I have been betrayed by spies among my own crew. You are in danger from Zoro. He wants to take you alive."

Suddenly the girl's face filled the whole space of the television window. It was as if she were floating directly into their plane. Monk made a choking noise in his throat. Then the girl's voice cried:

"They are coming! I am Lanta of the--"

The television glass blurred in a tangle of figures. The hard, shining faces of men replaced that of the girl. Hoarse voices were scrambled in the radio receiver. Doc's window went black.

"Gosh!" squealed Monk. "He's back again! Lookit!"

JOHNNY'S lantern, forgotten during the interval of the girl's dramatic appearance before them, had picked up the floating corpse. Visibility was better now in the higher smog. The dead man was not floating so steadily. He was slowly falling toward the harbor.

All space around the amphibian became filled with a throbbing pulsation. It was as if an earthquake had moved its locality from the ground to the air. That was it. The space of the smog was being shaken. Doc knew this could not come from any airplane motor.

The higher sun broke the greasy mist into fragmented clouds.

"There they are, Doc!" exclaimed Johnny. "The others! Look! They're dropping, too!"

Out of one of the smoggy clouds appeared three raincoated men. Their bodies were rigidly upright, as if they were walking through some gummy element instead of being supported by only the insubstantial air. But they were swiftly descending toward the surface of the harbor above the rushing wave-tossed water of The Narrows.

The corpse of the murdered Turlos, if that was his name, was not far from the other suspended figures. The body still glowed a ghastly green under Johnny's swinging black light. What effect these apparently supernatural men were having on persons who might be observing them from the boats below could only be conjectured.

But at this moment, the passengers of the ferries had their own worries. Two of the North Vancouver boats drifted into each other. There was a grinding collision.

Doc was scanning every inch of the smoggy clouds as he kept the stream-lined amphibian on half throttle and seemed to be lazily circling around the harbor. But though the pulsation continued with an increasing beat, nothing visible rewarded his keen vision.

All four floating figures were being drawn to the surface of The Narrows. The force doing this was invisible. The vibrations affecting the plane abruptly ceased. Doc and his men saw the bodies disappear. Then where they had been was nothing tangible.

A mighty geyser spouted. This was almost in the middle of The Narrows. Here the tide was a treacherous, swirling trap. It offered no clearness for observation from above. The sudden fountain leaped more than a hundred feet into the air. A powerful side rush of the waters made mere ripples of the usual waves of The Narrows.

"Howlin' calamities!" piped Monk. "I don't believe in them sea serpents! But somethin' got 'em!"

Doc interposed calmly. He was holding the amphibian in a tight spiral over the turmoil of the sea below.

"This is astounding," he said. "It seemed as if there must have been something in the air. But the waves move as if from another quake."

The blue water continued to be disturbed. It was like some giant hand might have slapped the surface repeatedly. Doc was watching the jutting rocks of the high cliff. These did not appear to be shaken.

The waves continued their wild lashing.

Doc was forced to bank the plane sharply and take on altitude. As he returned, the corpse and the three live men who had been in the air close to The Narrows had disappeared. Johnny looked at the slash of still-dancing currents ripping under the promontory point of Stanley Park.

"I believe we have just looked upon what is commonly known as retributive justice," he remarked solemnly. "The killers wouldn't have a chance in that whirlpool."

"Perhaps," Doc stated, "but I would say retribution has been somewhat delayed. Watch those fishing boats."

Doc was bringing the nose of the amphibian down. He pointed for a quiet space of water near an old abandoned lumber mill. This was safely out of the tidal channel, but close to The Narrows on the harbor side.

JOHNNY and Monk followed Doc's direction. Directly opposite Stanley Park Point on The Narrows was the broad sand-and-gravel bar marking the mouth of a creek. This stream was known as Capilano Creek, emerging from a deep mountain canyon of the same name.

Though in the dry summer season there was little water in this creek, it was one of the favorite spawning streams for spring salmon. The big fish came in from the ocean in schools of thousands. Until the rains came to flood the creek in Capilano Canyon, the salmon played in English Bay and The Narrows. Instinct brought them to their birthplace. They waited for the rains.

At the side of The Narrows next to the canyon creek bar, many fishermen had anchored their small boats just beyond the dangerous channel. They caught the salmon by trailing flash spoons down the current.

Johnny and Monk saw a score of these small boats being tossed aside. They seemed to be lifted by a giant hand. Fishermen spilled into the shallow water. Johnny was trying to fix the origin of the disaster. The first great waves had subsided.

Then he noted this was a new disturbance. As the fishermen floundered toward the shore, a new earthquake started. Rocks were bounding from the side walls of the canyon. The bar extending into The Narrows heaved and cracked. Doc's plane was slapped by a succession of choppy waves that threatened to capsize it. Only its clever streamlining prevented the amphibian from overturning.

On the highway paralleling the shore an automobile hurtled into the air and turned over three times. The new quake was splitting the road concrete into uprearing slabs.