Читать книгу Murder Melody: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 6

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Johnny and Monk stared at Doc Savage. The bronze man was testing the metal of the slender instrument taken from the dead man’s belt. He had seen the metal was of a hitherto unknown alloy before Johnny had announced his long-worded conclusion.

“It is not only of a strange alloy,” Doc stated, “but the texture of the grain indicates it contains at least two elements never before employed in a metallic combination. The tunic this man is wearing also is of woven metal of the fineness of sheerest silk.”

“Well, I’ll be dag-goned!” squealed Monk. “Some kind of a new bulletproof vest?”

“Perhaps that is it,” assented Doc, but he did not tell quite all his perceptive hands had revealed.

Under the silken, metallic tunic he had touched a dozen or more compact devices. These were so made as to fit the contour of the dead man’s ribs. Not the slightest bulge appeared. But one of these devices Doc had instantly identified as a new form of radio communication diaphragm.

The other devices would have to await closer examination. They were constructed mostly in the forms of coils wound like springs of watches.

“But how did you know it was not this man playing that thing?” questioned Johnny. “It seems as if it might have made that sort of weird music.”

Johnny’s scholarly interest had been aroused. He had placed a monocle in his eye and was bending close to examine the texture of the dead man’s tunic.

Johnny’s monocle was in reality a powerful magnifying glass.

Doc replied to Johnny’s question.

“This man was seeking us. He died too quickly to have been playing this instrument. He could not have replaced it in his belt. The metal shows no trace of moist lips having touched it. The surface still retains a recent polish.”

Johnny arose from examining the metallic tunic.

“This is also a new alloy, but it is different,” he said. “But both have a strange, almost unbelievable, carboniferous texture. Look, Doc, here is blood on the man’s neck. It must have come from his ears.”

“So I had observed,” Doc smiled. “You may have noticed something peculiar about these glassy buttons.”

He cast the ray of his flashlight upon the tunic close to the dead man’s belt. One bronze hand touched one of the buttons experimentally.

Johnny was standing beside the bronze man. Monk was peering between them.

Doc’s metal flashlight was apparently snatched from his hand. He had been holding it loosely. Monk emitted a squawking grunt. He had been carrying one of Doc’s supermachine automatic pistols loosely in his side pocket, hoping for trouble.

The pistol flew through the air. Monk’s frantic grab for the weapon missed it altogether.

Johnny’s monocle with its metal rim suddenly started dancing at the end of its cord. Only this prevented him from losing the glass.

“Holy calamities!” howled Monk. “The corpse has grabbed my gun! I’ll——”

The pistol and Doc’s flashlight plunked against the belted section of the dead man’s tunic. They remained suspended there. Monk caught the pistol with one hand. His effort only pulled the corpse toward him, almost upsetting it onto the gravel.

Doc again touched the button which had caused the seeming magic. He caught his flashlight as it fell. Monk’s pistol came free so suddenly the big chemist tottered backward on his heels. His lower jaw dropped loosely. He looked more than ever like some ancestral ape man.

Johnny’s monocle ceased to snap on its cord.

“I’ve never before heard of a magnet like that, without tremendous electrical force back of it,” said Johnny.

“I’ve sometimes believed this might be done,” stated Doc, unperturbed. “Tons of steel are lifted by such force as you mention.”

His bronze hands rippled lightly over the other buttons on the tunic. He turned one slightly. Monk was standing beside the corpse. He had pushed one hairy hand against the dead man’s shoulder.

As Doc turned the second button, Monk sprang back, staring at his hand. He had hardly more than flicked his thumb. The body had left the bench. But it had not fallen to the ground.

Instead, the corpse seemed suddenly to become weightless. It was as light as a child’s toy balloon. The dead man was floating clear of the ground, the head bobbing with ghastly nods on the raglike neck.

Doc was still close enough to reverse the turn on the button he had touched. The dead man instantly plumped back onto the bench.

“I’ve thought some day there might be something would overcome all specific gravity——” Johnny was saying.

A blinding light shot from among the trees. Johnny stopped speaking as the wide ray enveloped them, throwing their figures into relief against the shadowy background of the bushes.

Three men stepped quickly into view. One man, a little ahead of the others, was operating a flashlight which seemed to play from the front of his body rather than his hand. The other two men had slender metal flutes like that on the body of the corpse.

Doc’s own flashlight whipped across the three faces. The men’s skin was of the same silvery color as the dead man’s.

The leader operating the light spoke quickly, but in a controlled tone of voice. It was much the same as the bronze man’s own voice, having a carrying, penetrating quality without the speaker making extra effort.

“You are the great Doc Savage,” stated this leader. “We have come for you. You will do as I command and no harm will come to you. Make any resistance and you shall hear the death song.”

Doc’s pencil light played over the ears of the three men. He noted these were filled with thick blobs of yellow wax. The men were of normal size. Raincoats swathed their forms, but through the folds gleamed metallic garments close to their bodies.

In the direct light, the men’s eyes showed a curious black-and-white quality, as if the pupils were greatly enlarged.

“And who do you fellas think you are?” squealed Monk. “Doc, will I take them and their little tin flutes apart an’ see what it’s all about?”

Doc glanced swiftly sidewise at the face of the dead man. The blood from the corpse’s ears had formed distinct scarlet threads along the silvery skin of his throat. There was no other evidence of violence which might have been responsible for death.

“Perhaps we should obey, brothers,” Doc remarked calmly.

One of his hands was touching the roll of gold leaf he had taken from the dead man’s mouth. The movement with which he sent it into the mat of bushes behind him was too fast for the human eye.

The three men twisted their heads, glancing at each other with startled question. Perhaps each thought one of the others had started playing his instrument. For all around them was weird melody.

The exotic, vibrant music touched the notes of the scale. Yet it was something like a wind wailing in the distance through the trees of a leafless forest.

Johnny and Monk knew what it was. Doc’s face was in plain view of his three threatening foes. They could see that his lips were not moving. But Johnny and Monk knew the sound came from Doc. They were fully aware what he meant.

Again Doc’s hand had moved. There was a faint tinkling on the gravel trail.

“You think then to trick us?” said the man with the light. “I have warned you——”

The three men started toward Doc and his companions. One man lifted his flute. It touched his lips, but no sound came. This man’s eyes suddenly became dull, as if he were seeing nothing.

The leader hesitated. He spoke a few words with an apparent great effort. They were in a tongue which neither Doc nor his men had ever before heard. This was surprising. For Doc could understand nearly all of the world’s languages.

In fact, when Doc and his men wanted to converse in the presence of others, they employed a language that once was believed to have been lost with an ancient Mayan people. However, the survivors of this lost race had been discovered by the bronze man and his companions.

But Doc and his two men were instantly aware this language spoken by their three assailants was unknown to them. They had little time to study the words or phrases. The leader’s warning was cut off.

Monk and Johnny were holding their breaths. Doc also had ceased to breathe. The tinkle on the gravel had been the shattering of capsules containing a powerful anæsthetic gas. It would clear away in less than a minute, but during that space of seconds, any one breathing it would be overcome. The victim would remain unconscious for more than an hour.

Doc was instantly aware the three attackers were no ordinary persons. The leader especially was smart. Somehow, he had seen or sensed what was happening. He had breathed less than his two men. The pair holding flutes were toppling forward. They were in the throes of being overcome.

The leader was between them. With an effort he got a hand on the tunic of each man. He himself was staggering, but he had pulled at two buttons. Then his hands fell away and he fumbled at a button attached to his own belt.

The men had given themselves a final push with their toes as they were falling. From across the Bay of Georgia a stiff wind had sprung up. It had seemed to come as an aftermath of the mysterious shakings of the earth. Now it was whining through the needles of the spruce and firs in the park. It lifted the three men into the air.

Johnny sprang ahead, closely followed by Monk. Monk had drawn his mercy pistol.

“Lemme at ’em!” he squealed. “I don’t know what it is, but they can’t pull any fast one like that!”

Doc’s fingers clamped firmly on Monk’s wrist.

“You cannot bring them back with bullets,” said the bronze man. “It is just as well. Soon we shall follow them.”

Monk stared at Doc.

“Dag-gonit! Follow them!”

The apelike chemist saw no possibility of doing as the bronze man had so calmly suggested. His open mouth indicated he had no such inclination, even if it had been possible.

There was no doubt but that their three late attackers were unconscious now. Doc’s pencil light followed their floating bodies. One man was blocked for a few seconds by the gaunt limb of a fir, but the wind caught him and his figure floated away. All three disappeared, dancing and bobbing with the vagaries of the wind.

The stiff breeze was carrying them in the night out over The Narrows. This dangerous bottle-neck of water connected the harbor of Vancouver and nearly a hundred miles of deep tidal waters in the mountains with the outside Bay of Georgia.

Except at full flood or lowest ebb, the rush of the sea through The Narrows made it one of the most perilous spots on the coast for shipping of all classes. Doc judged if anything happened to restore the three bodies to the force of gravity, the men were in an extremely ticklish position.

Monk was still muttering.

“I didn’t see it, for it couldn’t happen,” were his words.

Johnny turned his monocle reflectively between his long fingers. His long, scholarly countenance indicated he was seeking the proper words in which to couch his opinion. He never used a short word where a longer one would serve.

He said solemnly, “We have witnessed a manifestation of practical ethereality, or the dissociation of gravitational impulse from the humanized inert mass.”

“That ain’t so!” howled Monk, who, with Doc’s direction, had composed the gas of which the stupefying capsules were made. “There ain’t any ether in that anæsthetic because I helped make it myself!”

Doc had returned to the side of the corpse.

“All three were unconscious before they departed, or immediately thereafter,” he reflected aloud.

He retrieved the roll of gold leaf from the bushes. Johnny and Monk stared at it. They had not even seen Doc take it from the dead man’s mouth.

When it was unrolled, the gold leaf bore the same silvery writing as the message that had summoned Doc Savage to the coast:

Be on Canadian-Pacific dock at foot of Georgia Street in Vancouver at 5 a. m. to-day. I but follow Lanta’s instructions in event I am pursued. Lanta has matter of vital importance to confide. Tell Lanta I hear the music of death. Watch Aleutians.

The message bore a signature. It was in beautiful, perfect English script of the old style. The name was “Turlos.”

“So he knew he was being murdered and he carried out the order he had been given,” said the bronze man.

He studied the gold leaf more closely.

“Perhaps this is a trap,” he said. “It may have been intended the messenger should die in this manner. Johnny, the perfection of styloscript is amazing. We are opposed by individuals of exceedingly advanced development. Perhaps it is best we should know much more before the police authorities discover too much.”

Doc was drawing a metal cylinder from under his coat. This was apparently of soft tin, about a foot in length. A short fuse was attached. The bronze man cut it even shorter. He touched a match to the fuse and dropped the cylinder near the feet of the dead man on the bench.

In a few seconds the wilderness spot was briefly illuminated by a weird blue flame. The cylinder had burst with a mushy sound. As the flame died, a thick grayish vapor enveloped the corpse.

The brisk southwest wind was dispelling this artificial mist. When the vapor was completely dissipated there was no apparent change in the body.

“Now if we could only have had time to give our departed ones the same treatment, this might have become easier,” reflected Doc.

Johnny and Monk were fully aware of the qualities of the vapor which had just passed away. They watched Doc closely.

Again there was a quick, faint trembling of the earth. It was a rolling, rumbling convolution, but this time there was no acute shock. Johnny swiftly placed the portable seismograph. The needle fluctuated only a little.

After a minute, or possibly a minute and a half, the trembling ceased. The seismograph needle became stationary. Johnny studied the record. He ran a finger across his eyes.

“I believe the larger instruments will locate the center of this disturbance as being somewhere in the northern Pacific, or perhaps in the Bering Sea,” he stated. “That would be more on the fault where such a temblor might be expected. That is the strata crossing from lower and middle California to the vicinity of Japan.”

“Might it not be somewhere adjacent to the Aleutian Islands?” suggested Doc.

“It might be anywhere there,” admitted Johnny.

Doc again gave his attention to the corpse.

“There are some devices here which would be of greatest value to us,” he stated. “But I think we will have plenty of opportunity to study them later. In the meantime, if the Canadian police know nothing of this murder, we will be much less hampered.”

Monk drew in his breath with a great gasp. Johnny never showed surprise at Doc’s reasoned action. He understood fully.

The bronze man had buttoned the raincoat around the corpse. Turlos, if that was his name, had fulfilled his mission, though his life had paid. Doc now was adopting a plan whereby the dead Turlos might still be a valuable aid to his mistress, this Lanta whom the bronze man had yet to meet.

Doc turned the middle button on the tunic under the raincoat. He lifted the weightless body. The dead man was caught by the southwest wind. He followed his unconscious murderers in the direction of the frothing Narrows and the barrier rim of mountains.