Читать книгу He Could Stop the World: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 6

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Doc Savage lifted one bronzed hand. Patricia’s enthusiastic hope for some disaster in which she might play a part was instantly stilled.

Static was again coming through on the shortwave. Because its switch had been left on, the same static was apparent in the standard broadcast instrument.

Doc manipulated the control dials. The light jumped from the shortwave to the long-wave weather band. It went back to the standard broadcasting wave, then up to the shortwave for foreign stations.

Doc’s flake-gold eyes were whirlwinds of concentration. He pushed the light into the ship area, into the aircraft zone and over to police and amateur waves.

The increasing static was unchanged on any band. This was something hitherto unknown.

“It would seem,” stated Doc, “the radios have been plunged into some universal wave or interference which none of the recognized waves of communication can overcome. Ordinary radio transmission is in the power of some greater force.”

As if in response to Doc’s amazing statement, words came simultaneously from the shortwave set and the standard broadcast instrument.

“I can pick you up on any wave,” stated a calm, unhurried voice. “No doubt, you can identify me.”

“It’s Homer!” cried Ann Garvin. “What can it mean?”

“Doc Savage, others are listening, but your special televisor can pick me out,” the voice went on.

Doc had already slid the switch of the televisor into the open notch. Ann Garvin emitted a gulping sob of happiness and unbelief.

The good-humored, smiling features of Professor Homer Randolph appeared in the slate-colored glass. His features and his tone were as controlled as if he were not now performing one of the most astounding feats of which the world had ever known.

“I am now talking to all the world listening to the English language over the radio,” announced Randolph. “There will be no waves of any length in service until the exact hour of midnight where I now am. That will be five hours from now. At that time, I will have a vital message for all the people of the world. That is all.”

The voice stopped speaking. The slate-colored glass instantly ceased to mirror the face of Professor Randolph.

Doc Savage whipped to the telephone. Seldom did the man of bronze have to wait for the putting through of a call. This moment was different.

Thousands of switchboard operators were trying to untangle a multiplicity of calls coming in from outside the zone of dial telephones.

Dial instruments everywhere were clicking. Radio fans from everywhere were calling radio stations, repair men, the police, anyone they could think of at the moment.

Perhaps no other man in Manhattan could have contacted the commissioner of police as quickly as Doc. After a half minute of conversation, Doc turned to Ann Garvin and Pat.

“There is no doubt but that Professor Randolph is alive,” he stated. “This means the others with him have survived. All this throttling and control of the radio waves is beyond all human comprehension. It is unprecedented in my own experience.”

Doc gazed thoughtfully at the now-silent radios. Lights showed power still flowed through their wires, but they were dead.

“Long Tom is taking quite a while to put away the car,” said Doc.

Long Tom had driven Doc’s armored sedan down a slanting concrete apron. This was adjacent to the headquarters skyscraper. It was the ramp leading to Doc’s underground garage.

This subterranean storage place contained some remarkable motors. Their tires were punctureproof. Bullets could not penetrate their special alloy bodies or their glass. Engines were of superspeed and supersilence.

About these cars were innumerable devices for resisting attack and frustrating pursuit. The doors of the garage closed by a photo-electric eye.

Something had happened to Long Tom. The pallid little man was usually tight-lipped. He was level-headed and laconic. Somewhat like Doc, he wasted no words.

Long Tom was now seated on the running board of the sedan inside the garage. The doors from the ramp had automatically closed and locked. But Long Tom appeared to be in a strange state of mind. He was talking aloud to himself.

“If I didn’t know it was impossible,” he muttered, “I would believe someone was in here with me. There isn’t any one here but me, though.”

At the moment Long Tom gave forth this puzzling observation, a strident, whining noise filled Doc’s big laboratory. It came from what appeared to be only a gnarled and polished panel in the wood of the wall.

Ann Garvin, whose nerves were probably on edge, cried out sharply.

“It’s only Doc’s alarm system,” stated Pat Savage. “I hope it is something which will cause us to go somewhere.”

Under the panel several indicators were quivering. The swinging of one told Doc intruders had entered the underground garage. The alarm would not have worked unless Long Tom had locked the doors. This automatically set the alarm device.

Or perhaps Long Tom had failed to reach the garage. The matter of the radio had kept Doc tied up.

“Wait here and permit no one to enter,” instructed Doc.

The man of bronze whipped through the big reception room. He disregarded the phalanx of elevators. Entering his own high-speed elevator, he shot downward.

This elevator seemed to fall all eighty-six floors before there was the slightest checking of its speed. Doc caught his own weight on his massive, springy legs and was out of the door before the elevator had quit moving.

Doc entered his underground garage through a secret door. He was instantly alert. The ramp doors were standing open. All but one light had been cut off.

Under this light Long Tom sat on the running board of the sedan he had driven into the garage. The pallid electrician held his face in his hands. Mumbling speech spilled through his fingers.

Doc moved noiselessly, with infinite caution.

“What happened, Long Tom?” he asked, in a low voice. “Who has been in here with you?”

Long Tom raised his head and stared at Doc. But he made no reply. Doc deliberately spoke louder, making his speech seem as if he suspected nothing wrong.

“I came down, Long Tom, because I have some good news,” said Doc. “Professor Randolph has just contacted us over the radio. It means that Johnny is alive. All the radios in the world were cut off for a little while.”

Long Tom did not move from his place on the running board.

“What about it?” he snapped, in a tone none had ever heard the mild little man use before. “If Johnny can’t keep out of trouble, that’s his own affair. I’m tired of mixing up in the business of other people. This radio thing now, that isn’t any of your business, Doc, or mine!”

Doc’s keen senses were taking in all the surroundings. His brain was grappling with this new angle to the night’s weird happenings. Ann Garvin had changed her mind on social security while making a speech.

All the radio waves had been brought under a mysterious, perhaps a sinister influence. Now Long Tom.

The man of bronze did not betray outwardly his surprise at Long Tom’s demeanor. Watching and listening, he continued to talk.

“This affair of the radio waves is perhaps the greatest problem we have ever encountered,” he stated, speaking so his voice might carry. “Not only is Johnny involved in some way, but my good friend, Professor Randolph, seems to have control of this universal force. Your own knowledge of electrical energy will probably be called upon before we begin to solve the queer angles of this.”

“I don’t intend to get myself mixed up in any more messes!” said Long Tom, still snappishly. “You’ve got us into all kinds of trouble! I’ve been wanting to take a vacation for a long time! I think I will spend a few months in Bermuda!”

Doc Savage had ceased to listen now. He had become a shadow flowing along a wall toward the open door of the garage. The sound he had detected, the odor he had picked up, would have escaped any other man in the world.

Two men were standing in the darkness on the sloping ramp. Doc took them in from head to foot. Neither was of the type to be expected as associating with crookedness. The men were well dressed, and their faces denoted keen intelligence.

Just then, though neither man moved his hands, a faint, far-away whirring sound came to Doc’s ears. Doc was upon the men with the speed of a striking python. Both men jerked around.

Doc was caught by a queer and passing emotion he could not define. It was something that suddenly caused him to withhold a double grip that would have temporarily removed both men from active interest in their surroundings.

One man slipped away from him. Doc’s fingers curled along the other man’s neck. This man was quick, also. Doc was forced to snap up one fist in a sharp blow to the chin, in order to retain the hold seeking the great nerve at the base of the man’s brain.

The man was sinking to his knees. A guttural shout came from his companion. Some instinct sent Doc leaping backward. Only his jump, quick as a missile thrown from a steel spring, got him inside the garage doors in time.

From the spot where Doc had stood arose a small cloud of blue vapor. The wind up the ramp caught the vapor and it was swiftly dissipated. Doc stood motionless. He was looking at two glowing heaps of white ashes.

There did not remain even a small metal object, a button or other small appurtenance that might have been carried by the two men. Doc held his place, watching until every vestige of the white ashes had been picked up by the wind.

The man of bronze could judge from what had occurred, that the ruthlessness of this incredible menace was as ready to destroy its own agents as other persons. He came to the quick conclusion that the mysterious force just applied had been meant to obliterate him.

Doc glided back to Long Tom. The pallid electrician had displayed no interest whatever in what Doc might have been doing.

“We’ll go up to headquarters, Long Tom, and talk things over,” suggested Doc. “Everything seems to be cleaned up down here.”

“I think I will go home!” snapped Long Tom. “If I go up there, something will happen to get me mixed up in trouble! I’ve got my mind set on going to Bermuda!”

Doc refrained from further verbal argument. The man of bronze never engaged in an altercation with his men or any other person. On those personal matters where there was no agreement, he always kept his thoughts to himself.

However, Long Tom accompanied Doc to the eighty-sixth floor. It was accomplished so swiftly in Doc’s private elevator that none would have known that Long Tom was wholly unconscious.

Doc had applied a quick nerve-deadening grip that had ended Long Tom’s opposition instantly.

All doors of Doc’s headquarters were standing open when he entered the room. Whining noises came from the alarm system inside the huge laboratory. This indicated some visitor had entered by other than the customary entrances.

This might have been through any of several passages leading through the walls of the immense skyscraper. Doc Savage had been one of the designers of the building.

There was no evidence of a struggle.

Patricia Savage and Ann Garvin had disappeared. It was apparent they might have departed by the regular elevators. An operator confirmed this.

“Miss Savage and the other young woman were taken down with one man,” he stated. “The man was well dressed, black of hair and generally good in appearance. He was saying something about taking the strange young woman to a man named Randolph.”

Doc kept Long Tom close beside him. The electrician was in a daze brought about by numbed nerves. He was beginning to revive somewhat from Doc’s administrations.

Doc went back to his laboratory.

“Well have to take up the matter of Ann Garvin later, Long Tom,” he announced. “Pat is smart enough to possibly outwit this man. I am much surprised she was tricked.”

At the moment, he was thinking of Ann Garvin’s change of mind, of the queer condition of Long Tom. Perhaps Patricia Savage had been brought to change her mind, too.

“Pat’s always getting into things that aren’t any of her business,” declared Long Tom. “And why should we fool around with this Ann Garvin? I don’t like college professors, and I like them less when they go around making speeches on boxes.”

Doc ignored this increasing antagonism of Long Tom. For a time, the man of bronze made various adjustments about the special radio. The power remained on, but the deadness of the instrument seemed to lie wholly in the lack of waves whereby communication might be established.

“I’m not staying around here any longer,” announced Long Tom. “The next thing, we’ll be mixed up in this mess.”

Long Tom started for the outside door. Doc intercepted the electrician. One bronze hand gently, but firmly, touched Long Tom’s neck.

The man of bronze followed this by administering an anæsthetic. This did not put Long Tom to sleep. Doc stood before him. His flake-gold eyes fixed his strangely rebellious companion.

“Long Tom,” he stated slowly, “we have a great problem to solve. Pat is in danger.”

“ ‘We have a great problem to solve,’ ” repeated Long Tom. “ ‘Pat is in danger.’ ”

“Very soon we may have a message which will be of vital interest to us, to the whole world,” said Doc. “You and I must go to work on this at once.”

“There will be a great problem,” muttered Long Tom. “You and I must go to work on it at once.”

Thereafter, Long Tom became tractable. Doc had discovered that the mysterious force he was opposing at least would yield to hypnotic influence. This suggested that the power itself might have something of a hypnotic effect.

But in the meantime, all radio power was dead. Until the message came from Professor Randolph, Doc felt he could make no movement or take no action to seek the whereabouts of Patricia and Ann Garvin.

The same influence which temporarily delayed action by Doc Savage had, at this same time, put two more of his companions in deadly peril.