Читать книгу Cold Death - Kenneth Robeson - Страница 5

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THE mysterious watcher had ample time to get far from the scene of the explosion before State police were aroused to investigate. The narrow lane to the old log house was some ten miles from the city of Newark.

Some time, therefore, elapsed before the tearing jolt of the blast had been definitely traced. But cars of the State police were blocking the marsh side road when Doc Savage drove into it.

"Holy cow! What a job!" growled Renny. "Look, Doc! It's a canal, straight as if it was laid out with instruments and this was intended for a feed reservoir!"

Renny saw everything from an engineer's point of view.

"It does seem to have remarkable symmetry," replied the man of bronze. "It's the first explosion I ever came upon that seemed to have been done to a geometrical pattern."

"Howlin' calamities!" muttered squat Monk, his homely, apelike features showing puzzlement. "It's about the completest mess I ever bumped into!"

"Complete's the word, all right," assented Long Tom. "And it looks as if it wiped out some high-class electrical machinery. Look here, Doc!"

They were then beside a deep, rounded crater. It could be seen from a few remaining foundation stones imbedded in the earth that this had been the site of a house. But underneath it the ground had been scooped out as if by the swing of a giant shovel.

On three sides of the cavernous hole in the spot where the house had stood, the explosive force had apparently lifted directly upward. An ordinary powder blast, if of sufficient strength and buried deeply, could have done this.

But Doc was coming to some startling conclusions, as he glanced along the fourth side of the explosion crater. Instead of spreading in a mushroom burst, the blast had been definitely directional.

Passing up, for the moment, the smashed electrical equipment Long Tom had pointed out, Doc led the others away from the blast's place of origin. They saw the explosive force had moved laterally along the ground, cutting through the marsh by reason of the road having curved in a wide bend more than two miles in extent.

The great ditch that had been cut was as evenly grooved along its sagging banks as if a steam shovel had heaved out the soggy mud. Where the house had been, this canal was its exact width. As Doc and his companions made their way along the sucking marshland, the cut gradually narrowed.

They had proceeded about a fourth of a mile, when Renny grunted, "Doc, would you look at this!"

A man lay at the edge of the knifed-out ditch. The torso, head and arms were there. The legs were missing. The man had been sliced in half. It was as if a giant cleaver had suddenly descended.

A shotgun and a pack showed the victim had been a hunter. Doubtless, he had made his lonely camp, waiting for dawn and the first flight of fowl. Ashes of a dead fire were near by.

Doc examined the explosion cut more closely under his generator flashlight. The character of the clean incision in the soft earth and the phenomenon of the hunter's body having been neatly severed in the middle were supplying him with information.

LONG TOM said, "There's a busted electrical machine back there. Something must have gone up accidentally. But that would mean tremendous voltage. Giant generators would be needed to create the energy for a lightning blast like that. Unless--"

"Unless," said Doc, "the secret of cracking the atom has been coupled up with transmitted electromagnetic force, or something similar to that."

A short distance from the dead man, possibly a mile from the annihilated house, the canal cut petered out. It terminated in a rising indentation only a few inches wide and an inch or two deep.

Doc had placed the warning message card in his pocket. Now he led the others rapidly toward the site of the greater explosion. In all that mass of scattered wreckage, the State police had passed up the thought of discovering fingerprints.

Doc produced his own outfit. He had noticed every detail of the wrecked electrical machine indicated by Long Tom. A polished copper ball had fallen to one side. With State police watching curiously, Doc dusted the gleaming surface.

The lines of a forefinger, then of a thumb, took form. Under a powerful glass, Doc studied the grimy message card, then the convolutions and whorls of the lines on the copper ball.

Returning the card to his pocket, he said, "One and the same man, a scraggly little fellow with the prehensile type fingers."

A State police sergeant stared at him.

"You're Doc Savage, aren't you?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"Wouldn't worry any more about those prints then," said the sergeant. "If he was in there, he isn't much use to anybody now. Come over here, Mr. Savage."

The man who had been in the house would neither be a menace nor a help to any one again. Only one foot remained, the leg severed roughly at the top of a high-laced boot such as a man might be wearing in the marshy ground.

Doc only glanced at it.

"No," he said, "this wasn't the man. It's some other person. I think this may be the one who was on the phone."

DOC'S final words were addressed in a low tone for his own companions only to hear. Doc was piecing together the scanty material he had.

Some one in the house in the marsh must have known he was under a sentence of death. At least he was aware of some menace hovering over him. This other man, he of the scraggly person, had been sent with a message.

That might be it, but Doc was not thoroughly satisfied. Perhaps the person, or persons, responsible for the gruesome tragedy might have a reason for bringing him to the scene. This thought stuck with him strongly.

He pondered the possibility of this having been a demonstration. The messenger might have intended to have him on the telephone when the blast was set off. He would be sure Doc Savage would go directly to the scene. Then his purpose had been fulfilled.

No more likely evidence appeared in the wide-flung jangle of house wreckage. The booted foot was all that told a man had been in the house. Doc led his men to his car.

DURING the investigation of the explosion, an automobile had been playing hide and seek with State police and other cars arriving at the scene of the great explosion. Several times, the automobile was swung into side roads as sirens screamed warnings that forces of the law were arriving.

At last, the police having passed, the elusive car came into the main highway and sped northward toward Newark.

A motorcycle patrolman who had remained watching the highway was hidden around a curve as the speeding auto flashed by. He immediately swung onto the concrete and gave chase.

The motorcycle forged abreast of the auto's rear fender. The driver of the car jammed his foot suddenly on his brakes. The auto swayed and rubber squealed. When it skidded, the motorcycle patrolman hadn't a chance.

The motorcycle catapulted into the air. It turned over three times. The policeman became only a limp bundle in the ditch.

The driver of the car glanced along the highway. No other lights were showing. The man talked rapidly for perhaps a minute. It was peculiar behavior, for he seemed making some sort of a speech.

Then he climbed from the car. He kicked around in the loose soil a few yards from where the motor cop lay motionless. The driver then got back under the wheel and the car sped toward Newark.

By this time, some of the State police were returning from the scene of the explosion.

When Doc Savage and his men reached this spot, a State police car had just discovered the policeman in the ditch. The motor cop was beginning to revive. He had only been knocked out.

He was able to say it was a car of well-known make, that had wrecked him. The license plate had been smeared with mud.

Doc eased from his car.

Two other police cars stopped. Passing motorists halted their machines. Soon there was a small crowd around the motor cop. The man's face was badly slashed.

From the last of the civilian cars to stop, three men got out. None noticed the driver of this car turn off into a near-by side road. At this moment, the small group around the injured patrolman had frozen to silence.

From the wall of foggy darkness over the marsh beside the highway, floated a high-pitched voice.

"Doc Savage beware! Do not seek more information! I cannot be overcome! I control the world's most terrible force of destruction! I will not brook interference! For I am--Var!"

The mysterious voice ceased abruptly.

"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "What is it, Doc?"

DOC had scanned every foot of the near-by ground. It had been much trampled. The flashlight produced nothing.

"We'll have a look along the edges of the marsh," advised Doc. "You might try kicking around a bit in the loose grass."

Monk's short body with his gorilla arms trailing vanished in the fog. The chemist peered closely from the eyes deep-set in rolls of bristly gristle.

"Dag-gone it!" he growled. "I did hear it!"

He was not referring to the sepulchral tones coming from nowhere on the highway. Monk had heard another faint voice. It had sounded like a man's hoarse cry for help. Where any one needed help, there might be a fight. Monk pushed forward hopefully.

Separated from his companions, Monk decided he would rather handle this alone than wait and miss it. Pushing deeper into the marsh, he saw a man waist-deep in the sucking mud of a bog. The man was sinking deeper with each second.

"Keep your chin up, fella!" Monk called, and started to wade into the mire.

From the tall grass, figures sprang upon him. There were three of the men. They had Monk at a disadvantage. He was already knee-deep in the bog. One man hurtled through the air and landed on Monk's back. It was his mistake.

Monk's long arms snapped up and back. His clasped hands hooked behind the other man's head. Monk's shoulders barely twisted and the man turned over twice in mid-air before he splashed face down in the mud.

Unable to release his mired feet, Monk whipped a fist into another man's face. The man sat down with a whoosh! The third man had been more wary. He had held back. When he moved, a thick, heavy club swished down upon Monk's unprotected skull.

Monk fell as if he had suddenly sunk in the quagmire. Oozing mud and water choked his mouth and nostrils.

AFTER several minutes of fruitless searching for the origin of the spoken warning, Doc, Renny and Long Tom came back to the highway. They waited ten minutes, but Monk did not appear.

A big car, with a rear trunk compartment opening under the wide seat, came from the side road a hundred yards away. Unnoticed, it wheeled into line with the parade of cars now returning to the city from the scene of the explosion.

Doc and the others combed the marsh for more than an hour. Then Doc summoned Renny and Long Tom.

"They've got Monk," he said. "I found the place in the swamp where they fought it out."

Doc had retrieved Monk's muddy hat.