Читать книгу The Black Spot - Kenneth Robeson - Страница 6

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DOC SAVAGE opened several windows. Chill night air flowed in. The carbon monoxide gas generated by the gas-and-ether death trap cleared out rapidly. Still slightly dizzied, the man of bronze began a quick search of the penthouse.

Doc darted into the room adjoining the library and lounging room. This was thickly carpeted. It was in darkness. Doc penciled his flashlight. The room was empty.

There appeared to be no closets and only one window alcove. If Mathers had been murdered, Doc believed he would have been left where he had died. The bronze man had evolved a tentative theory which gave him a good reason for this belief.

But neither Mathers in the flesh nor his body was anywhere to be found.

Doc returned to the doorway leading to the lounging room. He took a small vial from his pocket. Walking carefully, he sprinkled a grayish powder over the thick carpet. Then he stepped to one side. He flicked off his flashlight.

Immediately there appeared a queer greenish glow on the floor. This shaped into prints like a man's feet might have made. Alongside this row of footprints appeared a continuous glowing.

Doc knew some heavy object had been dragged across the carpet. Probably it was a man's body. The glowing trail led to the wall. But there was no door there, and no closet. Only a flat bookcase.

The powder Doc had distributed was a chemical formula of his own composition. This fluoresced with the slowly rising nap of the carpet where it had been recently disturbed.

Doc stood before the flat bookcase. The case appeared to be built solidly into the wall. The bronze giant pressed an ear close to a row of books. His handsome features set in grim lines. He had heard the rasping of a man's choking breath.

Few persons would have found the combination. Doc's thumb pressed what appeared to be merely a part of the wood carving. The bookcase swung outward.

JAMES MATHERS, broker, was huddled into the closet. Doc's quick scrutiny revealed a ventilating window. This was open. Fresh air was flowing into the closet. Carbon monoxide fumes from the death trap in the lounging room could not have reached the imprisoned broker.

The man of bronze made note of a stairway leading downward. It probably had been provided by the broker: a secret exit. Possibly the man really feared a murderous attack.

Cords bound Mathers's wrists and ankles. As Doc freed the man, he made note of the broker's muscular and beefy strength. It would have seemed that he might have broken the binding cords loose. They had seemingly been tied carelessly.

MATHERS pulled a tape gag from his lips. He groaned loudly.

"You were almost too late, Doc Savage," he complained. "I'd have been left to die in there, or it would have been the black spot! But somebody wanted to get you. I'll bet my phone wire has been tapped."

Doc made no comment on this. Clearly the gas-and-ether trap had been a murderer's trick. That it was not intended to kill Mathers, was plain enough. If the broker's life was threatened, then why had he been spared this time?

Mathers made his way into the lounging room. He had an answer as to why he had escaped.

"I'm alive only because I had no considerable amount of money that could be taken," declared Mathers. He stared at the note in the typewriter, that stated he would be back in a few minutes.

"I did not write that message," he stated.

"You were waiting in here for me?" suggested Doc.

"Yes, and the lights went out suddenly. I called Komolo, my man. He was the only one about. But he didn't answer. Then I was struck across the forehead."

"What became of this Komolo?" said Doc.

"We'll have to see about that," replied Mathers.

Komolo, Mathers's personal servant, was an odd person. He was a Japanese. But unlike his racial brethren, he was a giant in size. Doc instantly judged Komolo might not have originated in the islands of his native land. He had more the stature of some of the men of North China.

Komolo was unconscious. He had been pushed into a closet in the entrance hallway. Recovering slowly, he declared he had been attacked from behind and half strangled.

"I have no see this intruder," stated Komolo. "He has have much strength. I was quickly made not to resist."

Komolo's throat bore marks of fingers. Doc apparently took little note of the Jap's story.

RETURNING to the lounge room, Mathers's big hands probed into a pocket. He produced a package of cigarettes. A paper fluttered to the floor. Doc picked this up. He handed it to Mathers. The broker lit a cigarette with quivering fingers. Outwardly, he was showing evidence of being under terrific strain.

Mathers read the note from his pocket slowly, aloud:

"Mathers: You have brought Doc Savage to his death. Your own time has not yet come. Others are first."

The note was signed with a round black spot.

Glancing at the letters, Doc scrutinized the lettering of the note still in Mathers's typewriter. Both notes had been written on the machine.

Mathers drew two other notes from a desk drawer. Each was signed only with a round black spot. Doc saw that these two notes had been typed on a different machine. He made a quick examination with a powder that looked like a fine dust.

The man of bronze had finger prints, several of them. They were not those of some person outside the room. They were the finger prints of Mathers himself, left as he had handled the notes.

"We'll see what this may show," said Doc.

Then he dusted the keys of the typewriter. One by one, he put them under the glass. He had checked every letter used in the note telling him to wait for Mathers. The keys all had been wiped clean.

The man of bronze said nothing. Without finger prints from the keys of the machine, he had no means of checking whether Mathers might or might not have written the notes.

Mathers fidgeted and grew more apoplectic.

"The whole thing's an extortion plot," he finally asserted. "I've been threatened by telephone by some one calling himself the 'Black Spot.' He has been telling a crazy story about how three other men will die as proof to me that I can't escape. And he demands a cool million when, as he has said, the lesson of three murders has had time to sink in. Possibly the man is insane."

"Possibly," stated Doc, quietly. "But I mentioned Andrew Podrey Vandersleeve to you over the phone. Do you think he might be one of the three to prove this extortionist means business?"

"Good grief, yes!" croaked Mathers. "This other thing happening made me almost forget that! How did you know?"

"Vandersleeve was murdered tonight," replied the bronze man. "It appears he had a black spot on his body when he was found."

Doc was watching Mathers closely. There was no mistaking the quick grayness of his beefy cheeks. The broker was visibly shaky. He was scared through and through.

"But, Savage--tonight--I've been too late, then, for him--but I must ask you to help me--there will be others."

"I will do what I can, where lives are at stake," stated Doc. "Who are the other two of the three men you say are to die?"

"I--well, I don't know exactly," said Mathers. "Only, if you'll let me, I want to stay with you until this thing is cleared up. Perhaps I can discover the names of the other two marked for murder, before it is too late."

"It will be all right for you to stay under what protection I can give," stated Doc, then added grimly: "as I had intended to keep you with me."

THE man of bronze had his own thoughts concerning the story of an extortion plot related by Mathers. He was recalling the names of the list of eight on the crumpled paper in the broker's wastebasket.

It was plain enough to Doc that Mathers had been holding out something. Perhaps he had refrained from telling a great deal.

Doc had noted that Vandersleeve's name had been at the top of that list. It was only logical to suppose the next name below might be the next in order in the murder column.

The man of bronze acted on intuition. Vandersleeve was dead. If Mathers's story were only partly true, it was likely the murderer would waste no time in striking again.

Mathers stared at Doc when he picked the telephone from the broker's desk. He started visibly when Doc gave the number. It was the town residence phone of Homer Pearsall. Pearsall was one of the biggest real estate dealers. He had taken some fliers in the stock market of boom times.

Mathers said, "Where did you get his name?"

Doc was waiting for his number. He did not reply. Mathers's eyes rolled toward his wastebasket. A deep flush reddened his beefy cheeks.

A woman answered the Pearsall telephone.

"Mr. Pearsall is spending the night on his houseboat on the Hudson River," she replied to Doc's inquiry. "He expects to return to the city about noon tomorrow."

"Where is the houseboat anchorage?" demanded Doc.

The woman gave him a location near a convergence of two highways along the Westchester shore of the Hudson.

"It is anchored below there, under the bluff," she said.

Mathers came to his feet. His eyes seemed to be trying to crawl from their deep sockets.

"Good grief! The fool! Up there on his houseboat!"

"So you did know he might be one of the three marked men?" said Doc, softly.

"Well, I only suspected he might be," muttered Mathers.

"Not only might be, but he is," asserted Doc. "And if something doesn't happen, anything we can do probably will be too late. You may come with me."

WHEN Doc Savage issued instructions, his men obeyed implicitly. Monk and Ham had reached the headquarters shortly after Doc had gone to Mathers's penthouse. For perhaps half an hour, they had been jabbing at each other verbally.

The man of bronze had thoughtfully removed the record from the telephone. The pair of verbal feudists had no means of knowing where Doc might be.

The telephone buzzed. Ham sprang to the instrument. Monk planted himself on the extension. The big chemist was prepared to trace the call instantly, if it happened to be that kind of a call. It was.

A colorless voice croaked, "Homer Pearsall will be the next victim of the black spot. Keep out of this, Doc Savage, if you value the lives of your men or your own."

"Hey!" Ham started to utter a question.

The phone was dead.

"Too fast for me," complained Monk. "I didn't have any time to have the call traced."

"Homer Pearsall?" said Ham. "I know that guy. He's got one of those oversize houseboats anchored up the Hudson. Say, if Doc knew about this, he'd do something. But he told us to stay here until he came back."

"Huh, you smart mouthpiece, try usin' your head," grinned Monk. "He told us to stay here, but he'd probably want us to dig into this thing. Well, he didn't leave any order for Renny or Long Tom or Johnny to wait for him."

"You're right!" gasped Ham. "You keep on and you'll really be an educated ape! You start calling them. I'll find out where this Pearsall is hanging out, right now!"

COLONEL JOHN RENWICK, better known as "Renny," was sitting up over the problem of taking on an engineering job in South America. He was among the world's leading civil engineers. But he preferred adventuring with Doc Savage, to routine projects.

"Holy cow!" he boomed into the telephone. "An' I was just tryin' to frame some way of keepin' out of South America! Maybe this is the out! Who do we start smashing?"

Renny was a giant in stature and breadth. His fists were his greatest asset, according to his own way of thinking. Thinking out abstruse engineering problems was relaxation. Smashing door panels and hard heads with his mammoth knuckles was a splendid vocation.

William Harper Littlejohn, known as "Johnny," archaeologist and geologist, drawled sleepily when he was called.

"Out of the evanescent phantasmagoria of the nebulous opaqueness comes homicidal mysticism to distract the slovenly mentality. I shall be present forthwith."

Johnny had once occupied the chair of science in a leading university. He never used a short word where a longer one would serve, except when he was excited. Awakening in the middle of the night to chase a real or mythical murderer did not excite the scholarly Johnny. He was a living skeleton in body and a whole tree full of wildcats in spirit and action.

"Long Tom"--Major Thomas J. Roberts--the electrical wizard of Doc's outfit, was laconic. He had the appearance of a man too close to death to waste his energy talking. His small body and unhealthy pallor had fooled many men. They often discovered their mistake about Long Tom's possibilities after they had been smacked down.

"I'll be right over," was all Long Tom replied.

Thus it happened that three of Doc's men were soon speeding through upper Manhattan in the direction of the Westchester banks of the Hudson. These three did not suspect they were going contrary to the bronze man's wishes.

Doc Savage had directed Ham and Monk to wait for him in order to keep them clear of what he believed to be a widespread murder plot. At this moment there seemed to be nothing of sinister importance aboard the houseboat of Homer Pearsall.

HOMER PEARSALL was a sallow-complexioned man who looked drained of vitality by the fast life of the financial district. His greatest interest lay in real estate coups.

Tonight he was in a jovial mood. He was aboard his modern houseboat on the upper Hudson. Two husky men servants had accompanied him. The houseboat itself was a small floating palace.

The servants acted as Pearsall's guards. Both were tough and both were well armed.

Pearsall had reached the houseboat shortly before midnight. His first move was to open a safe in the luxurious cabin of the boat. In this he placed a sizeable package.

"All right, Burke," he snapped briskly at one of the guards. "There's a big wad of dough in that package. You boys might keep undercover, but see that no one comes aboard until you get my signal.

"This fellow I'm dealing with has to keep in the background. I'm meeting him up the shore with the launch. He wanted me to bring the dough, but he'll have to come back with me to get it."

Later in the night, Pearsall slipped into his fast launch.

Pearsall piloted the small launch close in along the bluff. At a point about half a mile above the houseboat, the outlines of oil and gas storage tanks loomed back of an old wharf.

Pearsall cut off the lights of the launch. With a flashlight he sent short stabs of illumination toward the shore.

"Hello, on shore!" he called, cautiously.

"Right in here!" directed a muffled voice. "Stand up and toss your line!"

"Sure!" said Pearsall, erecting himself and holding the loop of the mooring rope.

The nose of the launch bumped. Pearsall saw a single figure step out of the fog. His flashlight outlined the face. Probably he could have identified the man afterward.

But Homer Pearsall never had the opportunity. The millionaire real estate manipulator did not know when his launch came broadside to the old wharf.

There had been no shot. No blow had been struck. No movement of violence had been made.

Without a sound Pearsall fell on his face in the cockpit of his boat.

AT this time, another boat was moving into the river near Pearsall's houseboat. It was a leaky rowboat. In it were Renny, Long Tom and Johnny.