Читать книгу Haunted Ocean - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 3

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“There’s a dead man just outside your door.”

The voice was calm and controlled. Its tone might have indicated the owner was accustomed to encountering dead men just outside of doors. Certainly the man who spoke was not greatly perturbed.

Doc Savage was facing the man as he entered. Except for a quick stirring of his flaky gold eyes, the bronze adventurer himself did not betray great surprise. Yet, until the visitor had announced it, neither Doc Savage nor his four companions then present had known of any presence in their corridor, dead or otherwise.

That is, with the exception of the man who had made the announcement. And this visitor had pressed the buzzer and been admitted in the usual manner. Moreover, the visitor had been expected. He had telephoned half an hour previously. His visit was for the purpose of consulting Doc Savage on the investigation in which Doc and his four men were then engaged.

There was not a ripple on the smooth bronze skin of Doc Savage’s face. Looking at his visitor, he spoke first to the big, solemn-faced man behind him.

“Renny, you will see what has happened,” he said, quietly. “You will have a look around and bring the body in.”

Colonel John Renwick, known as “Renny,” an engineer of worldwide repute, moved his great bulk toward the outer door. Renny was a giant in breath and stature. His rugged features were always solemn, almost melancholy. But that was deceptive.

Doc spoke next to the other big man beside him. This man was of ungainly, squat appearance. His small eyes twinkled under the shaggiest of jutting brows. His long arms trailed his hands below his knees.

“Monk,” directed Doc, “you will have a look around outside on the stairs. Perhaps it would be well to drop down a few floors by elevator, then come up carefully.”

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, known as “Monk,” the widely famed chemist of Doc’s group, grunted in a childish treble. He scuttled in the direction of the elevators.

Doc thus had started the quickest possible means of finding out what a dead man outside his door might mean. Then he addressed his visitor.

“Your reception has been somewhat unpleasant,” said the bronze man. “You have excellent nerve. I take it you are Professor Callus, the oceanographer?”

The man bowed and agreed. “I am Professor Callus. I have been in touch with a friend in the Geodetic Survey. He mentioned you were seeking to trace the origin of the prevailing subsea disturbance.”

“We have been working on that,” stated Doc Savage. “I admit we probably have little more information than yourself, if we have as much. What we know thus far we will gladly pass along.”

Professor Callus wagged his head again. His skull had the peculiar appearance of a shining globe. It was partly bald, and apparently too large for his scrawny neck and skinny body.

“Seeing the man outside the door was somewhat of a shock,” he said, slowly. “It was more so because I recognized him.”

The voice of Professor Callus was still so calm that another of Doc’s companions emitted an exclamation.

“That’s nerve!” he said to the man beside him. “He walks onto a dead man! He knows him! And he doesn’t turn a hair!”

The speaker was a slender, well-dressed fellow. He had the sharp nose and the keen eyes of an analyst. Which he was. For the speaker was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, otherwise known as “Ham,” the legal luminary of Doc Savage’s group. Ham carried a sword cane, the tip of which was covered with a chemical that, injected in the skin, would produce instant unconsciousness.

Professor Callus apparently did not catch Ham’s remark.

“The dead man is a colleague, after a manner of speaking,” he volunteered. “He is—or was—Professor Homus Jasson, and he also has been a deep student of oceanography. I imagine he must have been on somewhat the same mission as myself.”

They were now in Doc Savage’s great library. This room, with other offices and perhaps the world’s most completely equipped laboratory were on the eighty-sixth floor of lower Manhattan’s most impressive skyscraper.

At the time Professor Callus had entered, Doc and his companions were intensively engaged with a wide variety of instruments. Every known device for indicating weather conditions was in service.

For in the past few days, strange disturbances had been reported by the government Coast and Geodetic Survey. Delicate instruments had been disturbed to the extent of being put out of business.

The inexplicable emanation appeared to come from the depths of the sea. To-night Doc Savage was attempting to not only trace the disturbance, but to isolate the position of its origin.

Thus far, the man of bronze had been unsuccessful.

Until the moment of the arrival of Professor Callus, the phenomenon had been accepted as probably some natural, perhaps some undersea volcanic, disturbance.

But now there was a dead man outside the door. And Professor Callus had said he was an oceanographer like himself.

The matter of the identification brought no comment from Doc Savage. Renny was coming in. He was bearing a body of slight form and weight in his huge arms.

“Holy cow!” boomed Renny, placing the body on a couch near the library table. “Feels like he might have been out there some time! The body’s already stiff, Doc! And it looks to me like we missed something by him not getting in here alive!”

Doc’s bronzed hands were already busy. He was removing a variety of lethal instruments from the pockets of the dead man’s loose-fitting, shabby suit.

“Great guns!” exploded Ham. “He seems to have been a man going places for purposes of much violence! Are those things bombs, Doc?”

Ham indicated two round, black objects equipped with timing triggers.

“They are bombs,” stated Doc, calmly. “And from their compact form, I imagine they contain enough high explosive to have wrecked this whole floor.”

“This is indeed most peculiar,” commented Professor Callus. “I’ve always known Professor Jasson as a very mild sort of man. Yet that must be an automatic pistol. And is that other instrument a weapon?”

Doc had removed a loaded automatic of large calibre. He was examining the other device. It had the appearance of an oversize water pistol such as might have been used by a child. But Doc put it carefully aside.

“If I am not mistaken, this is a gun for spreading poison gas,” he said, quietly. “And be careful, Long Tom. Don’t touch that for a moment.”

The bronze man had taken a flat, ebony box from the dead man’s inner pocket. It was a large box to have been thus carried. A clasp appeared to open by the touching of a spring. “Long Tom” had been about to unsnap the clasp.

Long Tom, or Major Thomas J. Roberts, one of the world’s best-known electricians, had been helping operate some of the radio instruments.

Doc picked up the flat box.

“I believe this should have special attention,” he advised. “Of all this collection of death-dealing devices, I suspect this is the most deadly.”

Doc filled a shallow glass receptacle with a clear liquid. This was only pure alcohol. Doc’s sleeves were stripped from his forearms. Tendons of cable-like strength played under his smooth bronze skin.

Immersing the flat ebony case, his thumb flicked the spring of the hasp. The case divided. Its opening was accompanied by a sibilant, sinister hissing.

“Holy cow!” ejaculated big Renny. “It’s a snake—one of them cobras!”

The darting, writhing splash of color springing from the flat, ebony case was less than a foot in length. But its head and neck expanded enormously.

“It is the most poisonous of all the cobra species,” stated Doc. “It’s a hamadryad, which does not reach great size.”

The effect of the alcohol was almost instant. The death-dealing hamadryad hissed only once. It struck at the bronze hand which had released it. But Doc’s movement had been quicker than the cobra’s dart.

Professor Callus gasped a little. It had seemed as if the snake must have buried its fangs in the bronzed skin.

But the cobra stretched its length and fell back. Then it stretched inertly. The alcohol had overpowered it.

Professor Callus blinked a little and his big head bobbed up and down.

“Professor Jasson must have been overtaken by some form of killing dementia,” he commented. “Yet why would he be coming to your headquarters, Mr. Savage?”

Doc Savage, as was his habit when some great idea was beginning to take shape in his marvelous brain, said nothing. He moved back beside the corpse on the couch in the library.

The arms of the dead man were sticking out stiffly. His legs were rigid. The face was a cold, blood-drained mask. The eyes were open and staring.

“Must have been dead some time, the way he felt,” said Renny.

Professor Callus was looking at Doc, but he did not see his lips move. But Doc’s companions knew their bronze leader was on the eve of some important discovery.

“Yes, rigor mortis seems to have set in,” said Doc, quietly. “It would mean this Professor Jasson was dead some hours ago. But the man died within the past half hour.”

“Why, that would seem impossible!” said Professor Callus. “I thought rigor mortis would not take place for from two to five hours?”

“This man has been killed instantly by a poisonous injection,” stated Doc. “And rigor mortis was artificially induced to make it appear he had been dead for some time. He must have been at the door only a short time; perhaps a few minutes.”