Читать книгу The Men Who Smiled No More: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 3

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“Smiling Tony” Talliano was the first to quit laughing. That was only about an hour before he committed the murder. A murder of cold-blooded horror. A murder which had less than one slow second of premeditation.

When Smiling Tony quit laughing, a bronze giant of a man was seated on the stone coping of a downtown Manhattan park. Smiling Tony was shining this man’s shoes with an extra flourish and snap to his polishing rag.

Other shoe shiners along the row looked upon Smiling Tony with envy. The bronze man’s hair was only slightly darker than his skin. It lay upon his head like a smooth, metallic mask.

The shoe shiners of the row knew the man was Doc Savage.

Doc Savage’s own eyes of flaky gold were observing the artistic industry of Smiling Tony. Therefore he was first to see the change coming over the swarthy Neapolitan face.

For the famous smile of Smiling Tony had suddenly become a grin. It was a fixed and frozen expression. It gave him suddenly the appearance of a death’s-head. Then it became a horrible, vacant leer.

The expert hands of Smiling Tony slowed in their task. He did not speak. He did not look up. He finished the shining of the bronze man’s shoes mechanically. It was as if he had abruptly become the subject for a slow motion picture.

Doc Savage’s eyes roved swiftly. He sought for some logical cause for the sudden, sinister change in Smiling Tony. There seemed to be no reasonable explanation. Of the shoe shiners in the row along the park, those not busy were watching only the bronze man himself.

No person had paused. None had spoken. The evening stream of pedestrians flowed unbroken toward the elevated stairways near by, or toward the subway entrances.

Yet the bronze man lingered a moment after he had left a quarter in Smiling Tony’s hand. The leering grin was still fixed on the face of the shoe shiner. Always before this, an expansive smile had accompanied the completion of Smiling Tony’s task.

Now he only mumbled, “T’anks, Mr. Savage,” and stared into the springtime park with his black eyes as cold as ice.

Doc Savage was due in a few minutes at an important meeting of directors of a shipping line.

Before the bronze man there had been other customers. One had been a multi-millionaire. He had handed Smiling Tony a gilt-banded cigar from the half dozen in his pocket. This had been his almost daily habit.

The man of wealth would have been amazed to know these were not the same cigars he had purchased at his favorite stand. In a subway crush, adroit fingers had removed the original cigars. These were substitutes.

This man was due at the same directors’ meeting Doc Savage was on his way to attend. Smiling Tony had immediately stuck the cigar between his white teeth. He was smiling then.

The man of bronze made a note mentally. His interest in humanity was broad. To-morrow he would drop by and discover if the shoe shiner he had known for years had recovered the smile that had given him his name.

But Doc Savage was to see Smiling Tony again only after a thousand witnesses had seen the sudden murder on the elevated tracks.

More than ten thousand windows around the park square took on a pinkish, sunset glow. The air was mellow with the new season. The pockets of Smiling Tony jingled with an unusual amount of silver.

Smiling Tony should have been happy. But a well-dressed customer paused and glanced at him. This customer was an old one. He was about to take the seat on the white stone. Suddenly he seemed to have changed his mind.

“Never mind,” he mumbled quickly. “There’s a fella I gotta see.”

As he moved on, the customer shot a look over his shoulder. The eyes of Smiling Tony followed him. The shoe shiner expressed no particular emotion. He just stared after his departing customer.

But Smiling Tony’s lips had thinned out over his teeth. His dark jaws were set and rigid. His dark eyes held something unfathomable. Except for his sleek, black hair, Smiling Tony’s head might have been only the skull of a dead man.

Trade abruptly fell off at Smiling Tony’s shoeshine box. Prospective customers glanced at the rigid, forbidding face and moved on. This should have aroused some outward emotion. Smiling Tony came of an expressive race. But he only stared fixedly at those who paused, changed their minds and departed.

The dusk on the ten thousand windows of the park square changed the mirroring panes to purple. Crowds surged up the stairs of the elevated railway. Trains rumbled like the rising of a slow thunderstorm. The ground shook with the rolling of subway cars. Manhattan was beginning to move homeward.

For more than an hour, Smiling Tony had shined no shoes. This cessation of business apparently failed to excite him. He did not so much as give one shrug of his shoulder. He only stood, staring at the slowly darkening windows.

Sam Gallivanti came along. Sam was a friend and neighbor of Tony’s. Sam swung his shining box jauntily by a strap. He jingled coins in his pocket. His stand was a block from Tony’s.

“Hiya, Tony!” he greeted blithely. “You ready we go home now?”

“I guess I’m-a ready,” said Smiling Tony. “Yes, Sam, we go home now.”

Smiling Tony was looking straight over Sam’s head. His grin had become a death’s-head leer. His swarthy cheeks seemed to have taken on a grayish cast.

“Wassa matt’?” said Sam. “You seek, Tony?”

“I don’t feel-a seek, Sam,” replied Tony. “She’s what you call-a nothin’. I don’t feel nothin’.”

Smiling Tony gathered up his polishes and rags. He stuffed them haphazardly into the foot-rest box. Sam stared at him. Smiling Tony usually was the soul of order. He always put away his implements with the greatest of care. Now he just pushed them into the box and put the box over his shoulder.

The shoe shiners were jostled together in the crowd ascending the elevated steps. They were on the side where they would take the train to the East Side.

Sam turned with a wide grin. As they pushed through the turnstile gate where a nickel must be dropped, Sam generously supplied the extra nickel.

Smiling Tony’s expressionless face failed to indicate any appreciation of his friend’s gesture. Sam might have only been rubbing the sore spot of his friend’s lost business of the late afternoon. It did not seem so.

One train slid its doors shut and pulled out before they could make it. But at that hour, the human stream continued flowing through the turnstiles. Several hundred persons crowded the platform.

Another train followed the departing string in less than a minute. Sam stuck close to Smiling Tony. Now and then, he glanced at Tony’s face. Then he shivered in spite of himself.

“When you get-a home, maybe you call-a da doc, Tony?” Sam queried sympathetically.

Smiling Tony did not reply to this. He was looking straight across the elevated tracks into an open window. This window was on the third floor of a vast building of steel and stone. The tracks of the elevated were slightly below the third-floor level.

Smiling Tony could see the head and shoulders of one man inside the window. The shoe shiner gave no evidence of recognizing the man as Doc Savage, the last man whose shoes he had shined that day.

Doc’s wide shoulders filled almost all of the window space. The upright head glistened oddly in the last glow of the setting springtime sun. It much resembled the head of a golden statue.

Though Smiling Tony did not seem to know it, the man of bronze was studying him closely. Doc’s flaky gold eyes had singled him out in all that black mass of humanity packed on the elevated platform near the edge.

For after the bronze giant had entered the ship line directors’ room, he had seen the same death’s-head grin upon the face of another man. The association of the double occurrence was of somewhat weird significance.

For the other man was the multi-millionaire whose shoes Tony had shined less than an hour before. And this man of wealth was as much noted for his jollity and his laughter in his own circles, as was Tony for his ready smile among his customers.

Doc Savage was now giving Smiling Tony’s countenance a more thorough reading. Just as his keenly trained vision could read words on lips at a greater distance than other men, so he could also interpret emotion. Smiling Tony’s face lacked all emotions.

And this same vacuous expression had replaced the usual hearty humor on the face of Simon Stevens, shipping line president.

The long string of the elevated train roared closer. The motorman peered straight ahead. His eye ran along the platform and took in all of the jostling crowd. Passengers were jockeying for positions from which to rush the doors when they slid open. Perhaps the first persons in would find seats.

Sam Gallivanti kept on talking. Though his friend’s face was possibly frightening to others, Sam had known him for years. Now Sam dug an elbow roughly into Smiling Tony’s ribs. It was a violently delivered blow, though it was meant only as a jest.

“Snap outta da dream!” joked Sam. “You look-a like-a da funeral, Tony!”

Smiling Tony’s expression did not change. His eyes only turned slowly upon Sam Gallivanti. His right hand reached to the strap attached to his heavy shoeshine box. The box was hung over his shoulder.

Smiling Tony uttered not a single word. His movement was as if he were merely acting to return in kind the poke in the ribs Sam had given him.

Sam screamed once.

“Tony! You no hit-a—you——”

The words of the scream were lost in the wilder crescendo of a shriek. The higher scream echoed and communicated itself to the tongues of a hundred women. The motorman of the elevated train jammed on the air brakes with such force he hurled passengers in the cars from their feet.

The motorman was too late.

Smiling Tony’s shoeshine box flew over and downward. Its arc caught the skull of Sam Gallivanti. Probably it was merciful that the screaming of many women and the hoarse oaths and shouts of many men submerged the horrible grinding of bones and flesh under the wheels of the train.

Guards slapped open the doors of the train. Several hundred passengers had heard the screaming. Men and women thrust themselves onto the platform, adding to the bedlam. Those who a minute before had been eager to catch a train, now were rushing back toward the stairs.

Two men had seized Smiling Tony. The shoe shiner still held his box by the strap. Polishing rags dribbled out of it. The men dragged Smiling Tony roughly back into the crowd.

A uniformed traffic policeman from under the elevated was the first cop to lay hands on Smiling Tony. Others were arriving. Already the elevated employees were at work trying to recover the body of Sam Gallivanti.

Of all the persons the arriving police pushed back to form a ring around Smiling Tony Talliano, none was as unexcited as Smiling Tony himself.

“What happened?” demanded a copper. “Why’d you give that other guy the works?”

“I no geeve ’im the works,” said Smiling Tony calmly. “Sam, he’s my friend. He push-a me in da ribs. I smack ’im with the box. It is all good-a fun maybe.”

Smiling Tony was grinning at the policemen. That death’s-head grin. He did not shrug his shoulders or gesture with his hands. His black eyes looked straight ahead. His lips were thinned to a leer over his white teeth.

“Holy saints!” exclaimed one of the policemen. “He knocks the guy under a train because he got a poke in the ribs! An’ he calls it good fun!”

“Something’s wrong,” said the copper who served as traffic policeman at this intersection. “I know this fella, Tony Talliano. He ain’t ever been in trouble, an’ he’s worked that one spot for years. Everybody likes the guy.

“Tony, listen! Why’d you smack Sam like that?”

Smiling Tony looked at the copper calmly, fixedly.

“He push-a me in da ribs,” he repeated. “So I push-a ’im back!”

“Good grief!” ejaculated the traffic man. “Just like that! It looks like he’s gone off his nut!”

Smiling Tony looked at him and said, “I’m not-a crazy in the head. I know all about it. I’m all-a right!”

The shoe shiner meant every word of it. He was all right, as he felt about it. He must have been feeling no emotion whatever. The horrible death of his friend, the certainty he would be accused of murder, left him wholly unaffected.