Читать книгу Land of Long Juju: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 5

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If the white messenger bearing a third package had known of the first two, he might not have so jauntily entered the elevator in the glittering skyscraper.

The tragic explosion took place while he was shooting toward the eighty-sixth floor. Arriving at the eighty-sixth floor the messenger was directed to Doc Savage’s door.

Almost immediately the messenger became somewhat dizzy. He had walked over to a door that looked like a panel in the wall. It had neither lock, knob nor latch. Clark Savage, Jr., appeared in small bronze letters.

Before the messenger could reach for the buzzer, the door opened silently. The fuzzy, ugly face of Monk glowered at the visitor. Monk reached for the package.

“Gimme your book an’ I’ll sign for it,” said Monk.

“Got to deliver this personal to Mr. Savage,” said the messenger. “He’s got to see me!”

“Yeah?” piped Monk. “He’s already seen you. I’ll take it.”

A hand at the end of an incredibly long arm flipped the package from the messenger’s hands.

“You’ll stand right here!” snapped Monk. “An’ don’t move!”

Monk’s foot did something to the thick rug of the big reception room. The messenger heard nothing. The door by which he had entered was no longer in evidence. He was looking at a smooth, unbroken wall.

Monk carried the package through the library with its thousands of scientific and other books, into the laboratory. Doc Savage turned from the radio.

“There seems no doubt but they’ve got Renny,” he stated. “I have called Johnny. He will know the whereabouts of Prince Zaban.”

“Johnny” was William Harper Littlejohn, geologist and archæologist. When strange visitors came to Manhattan, Johnny nearly always made contact with them.

Monk shifted the oblong package in his hairy hands. The manila paper covering was sealed with blobs of blue wax.

In each of these seals was a grotesque miniature. It had somewhat the shape of a scorpion.

Monk started to tear off the paper. Ham caught the package.

“Wait a minute, insect,” snapped the lawyer. “Probably that package is for Doc.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Monk. “I was just goin’ to open it.”

Doc Savage’s flaky gold eyes were fixed on the parcel. In those eyes life stirred like the movement of small whirlpools.

The big laboratory was suddenly filled with a fantastic sound. It was a low, mellow trilling, as if a wind were playing over reed instruments.

Monk hastily deposited the package on a table. Doc’s trilling sound seemed to emanate from his whole body. Sometimes it warned of impending danger. At others it announced the bronze man was on the eve of a discovery.

“Leave the package untouched for a moment,” advised Doc. “I have seen the messenger. He seems to be from a regular agency. We will investigate.”

In a few seconds the agency was on the telephone. In the reception room the puzzled messenger was in somewhat of a daze. He walked along the wall which he believed to be facing the outside corridor. He ran his hands along its smooth surface.

“It’s dog-goned screwy,” he muttered. “I know that door’s right here somewhere.”

Another door of chrome steel leading into the library had been closed by Monk. The messenger was temporarily a prisoner.

Doc Savage finished his talk with the messenger agency.

“The package was left with the agency less than half an hour ago for delivery here,” announced Doc. “It was brought in by a colored man in a chauffeur’s uniform. He said it was important this be delivered at once.”

The man of bronze inspected the oblong package carefully. The whirlpools stirred again in his flaky gold eyes as he studied the seal in blue.

It was not odd that the only address was Clark Savage, Jr. In the upper left-hand corner was printed with ink a return address:

WILLIAM SMITH

4404 Crooked Neck Road, Long Island

“That isn’t in Harlem,” observed Ham, “but I mentioned this fellow Logo probably would be living under the name of Smith or something near it.”

“That might be,” stated Doc. “But if this should develop into what Renny was trying to inform us about, it is a most remarkable coincidence that it should arrive just now.”

Doc Savage took the oblong package in his hands.

The man of bronze stripped the manila paper carefully away. He was holding what appeared to be a solid block of polished teakwood.

If there was a hollow space inside, the craftsmanship of the maker had left not so much as a hair line in the fine-grained wood.

“I would proceed with extraordinary caution, Doc,” suddenly spoke a calm voice behind the bronze man. “As nearly as I have assimilated the facts, that package resembles two others that have just killed a dozen persons.”

Johnny had appeared abruptly. The archæologist had come from a sliding panel concealed by a glass tank filled with tropical fish.

Doc replaced the oblong block on the table. Johnny told of the weird tragedies.

“You say some of the men who were killed had deformed ears with extended lobes,” stated Doc. “The Masai and the Waperri of Central Africa are among the tribes having that practice. The man who carried one of the boxes had a lighter skin and an arching nose. That would make him one of the Kokonese.”

“Indubitably,” observed Johnny, who was addicted to long words. “I judged the dead men to be omophagous Ulotrichans. They are likely to demonstrate they can be as poisonous as the Proterogluphya.”

“Howlin’ calamities!” squeaked Monk. “They couldn’t possibly be that bad!”

“Yes,” smiled Doc. “Those tribes do eat raw flesh and they would have woolly hair. Some are as deadly as cobras.”

Doc’s bronze hands played along the edges of the oblong block. The block had weight that indicated it might indeed be solid. Yet the man of bronze was convinced something was contained inside.

“Perhaps it would be well not to employ force,” Doc stated. “We will lock this away for the present.”

He placed the polished oblong block carefully in the strong safe.

In the other room the nonplused messenger tried whistling.

“I don’t care if this guy is Doc Savage,” he complained. “He can’t make a monkey outta me!”

He did not hear the step of Monk behind him.

“There ain’t anything holdin’ you,” said the ugly-looking chemist.

“Oh, yeah?” rapped the messenger. “And how the—”

He gulped and looked at the outer wall. Monk had stepped on something under the rug. The messenger was looking at the door which led to the outside.

There was the corridor. Directly opposite were the elevators. The lock was operated by an invisible electroscope.

“Good gosh!” howled the messenger. “I don’t like any of this shenanigans! Where’s that door been?”

“The door hasn’t moved,” stated Monk.

The messenger was beginning to believe he had been seeing things. A smoothly moving panel had made a false wall over the door.

Doc Savage had found it convenient at times to prevent some of his many visitors from finding their way out too quickly.

The messenger breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator’s doors closed behind his back. He had been glad to get away.

Back in the laboratory, Doc Savage was summoned to the telephone. It was the commissioner of police.

“Whatever you do, Mr. Savage, don’t accept or open any packages!” said the commissioner. “Hell seems to have broken loose! Unless I’m crazy, somebody is trying to move an African war right into Manhattan! You’ve heard of the explosion?”

“I have just been informed of the regrettable facts,” stated Doc.

“Well, your name was on the paper around the infernal machine that went off first!” said the commissioner. “Have you had any recent dealings with a bunch of heathen that runs around with their ears hanging down to their shoulders?”

“I have had no contacts of that character,” stated Doc truthfully. “Perhaps some one was trying to reach me.”

“Yes!” rapped the commissioner. “And there must have been two of them, for that other box burned up! Maybe it had your address, too!”

“It might be,” stated Doc. “I shall see what I can ascertain and keep you informed of anything that may aid the police.”

“I’ll let you know if anything more turns up,” said the commissioner. “We’ve had a report of some funny dark fellows that seem to be camping out over in the Crooked Neck section of Long Island.”

Doc turned to his three companions. Another of his men, Major Thomas J. Roberts, known as “Long Tom,” the electrician of the group, was attending a convention on the Pacific coast.

“I have no doubt,” stated Doc, “but all of this may be connected with King Udu and Kokoland. King Udu probably has sent some of his most loyal subjects to this country. The block of teakwood we have received may or may not be all right.”

“But those others, Doc?” said Ham.

“We will take all necessary precautions,” advised Doc. “But I imagine the enemies of King Udu are even now in New York. If this is true, the first two packages may have been a deliberate decoy of death, while a similar box was being delivered to us.”

“Dag-gonit!” complained Monk. “It looks like a lot of monkey business to me!”

“And who would know more about monkey business than a human ape,” grinned Ham. “If we do have to go to Africa, we’ll be busy keeping you out of the trees.”

“You’ll be plenty busy keepin’ me from pattin’ the ground on your shyster face!” howled Monk.

“Johnny, we should make immediate contact with Prince Zaban of Kokoland,” announced Doc. “You know something of his royal highness and where he might be?”

“Prince Zaban is stopping at the Adirondack Hotel. He is one of the few royal princes of a long family line. Educated at Oxford. Apparently he has been sent to America to absorb some of our modern ideas.”

“Then he has a retinue of his own servants?” said Doc.

“No,” replied Johnny. “The prince is accompanied by a former Oxford student, a Count Cardoti. Count Cardoti seems to have become his patron in this country. He has arranged several public appearances. The prince is to speak before one of the archæological societies tonight.”

“Count Cardoti could then be of the Spanish race,” said Doc.

“Apparently, though that is somewhat obscure,” said Johnny. “The count is a polished fellow. But he has spent a number of years in the Taveta country of Africa.”

Doc Savage made one more attempt to pick up the distant radio transmitter of Renny. There was no response.

“I believe Renny has been made a prisoner,” stated Doc. “He probably will be safe for some time. Those behind the trouble in the Kilimanjaro country would hardly want to become involved with the United States. We will get in contact with Prince Zaban.”

Doc’s call to the Adirondack Hotel was connected with the suite of Prince Zaban. There was no reply.

“I don’t understand why they don’t answer,” said the girl at the switchboard. “I am sure they are in. There were some visitors went up quite a while ago, and they are still there.”

Doc Savage whipped from the telephone. The trill of danger was emanating from the bronze man.

“Johnny,” he directed, “you will come with me at once. We may be too late. Ham, you and Monk, stay here. Be careful whom you admit. I would not be surprised if you would have some visitors.”

Doc did not explain why he expected visitors.

When Doc Savage and Johnny arrived at the hotel, police cars were lined up at the curb. Johnny gasped. Grimly, Doc led the way to Prince Zaban’s suite. More police, reporters, and a jabbering hotel manager were crowded about the door to the royal prince’s suite. Doc Savage elbowed his way inside. And then the odd trilling sound came from his lips.

“I was afraid of this,” he said grimly.

Police officers and reporters stepped back as Doc moved forward to take a glimpse of the motionless figure on the expensive rug. A short stubby arrow, cruelly barbed, had been jammed deep into Prince Zaban’s throat. Red Ostrich feathers were affixed to the haft of the arrow. The life blood of Prince Zaban had gushed out in a stream. It was not a pretty sight.

Count Cardoti lurched through the group to Doc Savage’s side. The count looked white and stricken. He was choked with grief as he recounted what had happened.

“It was four Negro porters!” he cried. “They forced their way in here as I was admitting two newspapermen. But they weren’t really porters. They were Africans! They were Jujus!—and they tried to make Prince Zaban tell them the location of the Blood Idol.”

Two reporters crowded forward. “What is the Blood Idol?” demanded one.

“I’m sure I cannot tell you,” said Count Cardoti. “There are many tribal gods and fetishes in Central East Africa. I only know that my poor friend feared some evil was about to overtake his father, King Udu.”

“You have been a friend of Prince Zaban?” questioned Doc Savage.

“Since he was a small boy,” said Count Cardoti sadly. “Prince Zaban was like a younger brother.”

Policemen were reporting. The zone around the Adirondack Hotel had been blocked in. Down on the street a woman had fainted. Revived, she had screamed, “His ears! Those terrible ears!”

The police learned she had seen four Africans drive away in a fast car. She had not seen the license number. But she believed the car had turned toward the Queensboro Bridge across the East River.

Doc Savage said to Johnny, “There may be more in that Long Island address than we think.”

“This dead man,” stated the medical examiner, “seems to be of a peculiar type. You tell me he is an African? It is strange.”

The erudite Johnny spoke.

“Centuries ago the land of Kilimanjaro was raided by a lost legion of the ancient Romans under Cæsar,” he stated. “These raiders never returned to their own country. You see the results of a mingling of the races in the distant past.”

“That is true, I believe,” said Count Cardoti. “And my friend was the direct successor to the throne of King Udu. He was the only living heir.”

Doc Savage said quietly, “When you have finished here, Count Cardoti, will you come to my headquarters?”

Left together in Doc Savage’s headquarters, Monk and Ham were, as usual, apparently about to murder each other.

“You’ll keep that filthy, misfit quadruped off my coat or I’ll make shark bait of him!” rasped Ham.

“You touch that pig and there won’t be enough shyster lawyer left to feed the sharks!” howled Monk.

The subject of this virulent discourse waved his long ears. He was Habeas Corpus, the Australian bush hog which Monk had adopted as his special pet.

Habeas Corpus was a wise pig. He was only a few slats of ribs put together on ludicrously long legs.

Habeas Corpus suddenly was forgotten. The telephone buzzed. Each of the sparring companions got to an instrument. The voice that spoke was another point of keenest rivalry between them.

The speaker was Patricia Savage, the beautiful and talented cousin of the famous Doc. She was talking from her beauty parlor and physical culture institution just off Park Avenue.

“I must find Doc as soon as possible,” announced Pat Savage.

“You sound excited, Pat,” replied Ham. “What’s happened?”

“I can’t tell you—but I want Doc to come over—I can’t say any more from here—but it’s important—tell Doc—no, wait! It’s too late—I’ll—I’ll call back!”

The connection was cut off abruptly. But not quick enough to drown out a woman’s scream.

“Howlin’ calamities!” exploded Monk. “Somebody’s done something to Pat! Come on!”

Ham was a little more calm.

“That wasn’t Pat’s voice yelled,” he advised. “Besides, Pat never screamed in her life.”

“I ain’t wastin’ any time!” howled Monk.

Ham apparently decided Pat was more important than waiting for possible visitors. He was with Monk as Doc’s special high-speed elevator dropped them. The pair made a dash for the garage underground.